selenak: That, and when EC married Fritz, he actually (faked?) affection enough for her to satisfy Dad.
cahn: Yeah, and Ziebura quotes at least one letter from Fritz to EC during the Rheinsberg years that was... much nicer than anything afterwards that I know of. (to be fair, I've been told mostly of the not-so-great letters because those are the WTF ones, but...)
Per Blanning:
Frederick went out of his way to emphasize his affection, as in: “I very much look forward to being back in Rheinsberg and even more to the pleasure of kissing you… May God protect you, my lady! Please do not forget me, and permit me to embrace you with all my heart, be sure that I am totally devoted to you.” But a letter written two weeks later which he expressly stated was not to be shown to his mother was appreciably less fulsome, ending simply with “your most obedient servant.”
Also in Blanning, immediately before this passage, two things that had escaped my notice:
In 1738 [Fritz] sent Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau on a secret mission to the Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, Friedrich Karl von Schönborn, to secure imperial assistance in getting the marriage dissolved. 64 Moreover, hitherto unpublished letters from Manteuffel to other correspondents, and from Frederick to a Lieutenant von der Groeben, indicate that he continued to maintain intimate relations with young officers of his regiment. 65
64: Rudolf Endres stated this in the discussion which followed the papers given by Peter Baumgart and Volker Press at a symposium held at Bayreuth in 1986— Manfred Agethen, “Diskussionsbericht,” in Heinz Duchhardt (ed.), Friedrich der Grosse, Franken und das Reich (Cologne and Vienna, 1986), p. 196.
65: Hahn, Friedrich II., p. 47.
Better citation needed for the first one; I extremely need more details for the second one. :P Hahn, based on selenak's rec and the fact that it's on Kindle and not terribly expensive, is on my maybe list for when I can actually read German. We'll see if he presents better citations (like, "I saw the letters and am reproducing excerpts here") than with the handsome hussar episode, where Selena only kind of accidentally ran across the actual source.
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Re: No Pity for the Wives readthrough (cont) - EC and Fritz
Per Blanning:
Frederick went out of his way to emphasize his affection, as in: “I very much look forward to being back in Rheinsberg and even more to the pleasure of kissing you… May God protect you, my lady! Please do not forget me, and permit me to embrace you with all my heart, be sure that I am totally devoted to you.” But a letter written two weeks later which he expressly stated was not to be shown to his mother was appreciably less fulsome, ending simply with “your most obedient servant.”
Also in Blanning, immediately before this passage, two things that had escaped my notice:
In 1738 [Fritz] sent Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau on a secret mission to the Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, Friedrich Karl von Schönborn, to secure imperial assistance in getting the marriage dissolved. 64 Moreover, hitherto unpublished letters from Manteuffel to other correspondents, and from Frederick to a Lieutenant von der Groeben, indicate that he continued to maintain intimate relations with young officers of his regiment. 65
64: Rudolf Endres stated this in the discussion which followed the papers given by Peter Baumgart and Volker Press at a symposium held at Bayreuth in 1986— Manfred Agethen, “Diskussionsbericht,” in Heinz Duchhardt (ed.), Friedrich der Grosse, Franken und das Reich (Cologne and Vienna, 1986), p. 196.
65: Hahn, Friedrich II., p. 47.
Better citation needed for the first one; I extremely need more details for the second one. :P Hahn, based on