Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 19

[cahn]

Yuletide nominations:

18th Century CE Federician RPF
Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria
Voltaire
Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Ernst Ahasverus von Lehndorff
Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Anna Amalie von Preußen | Anna Amalia of Prussia (1723-1787)
Catherine II of Russia
Hans Hermann von Katte
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf
August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758)

Circle of Voltaire RPF
Emilie du Chatelet
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (Madame de Pompadour)
John Hervey (1696-1743)
Marie Louise Mignot Denis
Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
Armand de Vignerot du Plessis de Richelieu (1696-1788)
Francesco Algarotti

Comments

Wilhelmine

[mildred_of_midgard]

Aaand, I finished Wilhelmine's memoirs! Increasingly without a translation, because I feel like almost a third of the second volume was cut from the English edition. Also, the German edition included about 10 pages of letters from Wilhelmine to Voltaire in the last year of her life, and those had no translation, and I got almost all of them. *beams* Of course, it helps that she died during the Seven Years' War and not while building a palace, because my architectural vocabulary is much weaker than my military vocabulary, as some of you know. ;)

So! Lehndorff starts tomorrow, and I'm hoping to get Krockow digitized soon as well.

* Most important finding:

A couple of weeks ago, we had this exchange.

mildred_of_midgard: Speaking of SD's politics, I keep seeing in places like Ziebura and Oster that she was disappointed that Fritz didn't let her influence him politically. Is there evidence for this, or just an assumption?

selenak: I've seen this, too, starting with good old Preuß and Koser, but never with a footnote saying "see letter X" or "memoirs y", or "ambassadorial report Z". So until I see a citation, I'm going with "assumption", based on the fact that SD had these political battles with FW for all those years and, I suspect, also a very 19th century moralistic desire to see her punished in some fashion. "She got what she wanted, only to find out her son wasn't her puppet at all but his father's worthy successor and our national hero!", that kind of thing.

Turns out, it's in Wilhelmine! And she wasn't bashing SD, she was bashing Fritz. "He was awful when he became king, everyone was unhappy with him, even Mom, etc."'

Oster's almost quoting, behold.

Oster: Wilhelmine mußte sich mit der Gesellschaft ihrer Mutter begnügen. Die aber hatte schlechte Laune: Sie hatte gehofft, von ihrem Sohn um politischen Rat gefragt zu werden und wurde bitter enttäuscht.

Wilhelmine had to be content with the company of her mother. She, however, was in a bad mood: she had hoped to be asked for political advice by her son, and was bitterly disappointed.

Wilhelmine: Ich war täglich bei der Königin-Mutter, die nur sehr wenig Menschen sah und in tiefer Betrübnis war. Sie hatte stets gehofft, einen starken Einfluß auf den König, meinen Bruder, ausüben zu können und an der Regierung einigen Teil zu haben, sobald er den Thron bestiegen hätte. Der König hingegen zeigte sich auf seine Autorität eifersüchtig und zog sie in keiner Weise zu Rate, worüber sie sich gar nicht fassen konnte.

I went every day to my mother, who saw very few people, and who was plunged in a deep chagrin. She had always flattered herself with having a great ascendency over the mind of the king my brother, and having some share in the government when he ascended the throne; but the king, jealous of his authority, would not allow her to have any interference with business, which appeared very extraordinary to her.

Btw, this echoes another passage in her memoirs, set during the 1734 Phillipsburg campaign, which is when, according to Wilhelmine's narrative, Fritz *really* changed, permanently. In the following passage, Fritz is explaining to Wilhelmine how you should see him in a crown he's going to be a completely different king than everyone expects:

"I shall show the utmost consideration for the queen my mother; I shall load her with honors ; but I will never suffer her to interfere with my affairs, and if she ventures to do so, she will soon find her mistake." I was struck with surprise when I heard this. I hardly knew whether I was dreaming or waking.

Given that the "SD was really unhappy with Fritz!" claim was written during Fritz/Wilhelmine fallout, and is part of a larger argument that how *everyone* in 1740 agreed that Fritz was now the worst (aside from one of the Münchow family, whom Fritz favored at the expense of all the people who were nice to him when he was Crown Prince), I'm keeping this Wilhelmine claim in mind, but holding off until I have further evidence. Because I agree with selenak that SD *doesn't* seem unhappy with Fritz, or interested in politics even during FW's time, aside from the English marriage. And even that is an obvious attempt to compensate for her own failed dreams by living vicariously through her children, and not remotely motivated by a belief that England will be a good alliance for *Prussia*.

I have been listening to "You should see me in a crown" a lot lately, btw; thank you for introducing me to it, selenak! It's a chillingly appropriate Fritz song.

* Before Wilhelmine can agree to meet the Empress (the one before MT), their people have to spend a whole day negotiating about etiquette, and explaining to Wilhelmine that since she's in Frankfurt incognito, as a countess, she can't insist on being treated with the full honors due to a Margravine and King's daughter.

So after a day of negotiating, they settle on: the Empress gets a small armchair, Wilhelmine gets a chair with a large back (but no arms).

This sounds absurd, but (you may know this from your French historical fiction reading, cahn), Versailles had a whole etiquette on who was allowed to sit on what kind of surface (or at all) in whose presence. And it depended on who was in the room: as people who outranked you entered or left, you had to move chairs (or give up your stool and remain standing, or vice versa.) So this is the context in which the chairs are really, really important to Wilhelmine.

Wilhelmine: not on board with "the stupidest goes first".

* selenak: I see what you mean about a lot of Wilhelmine's chronic illnesses being stress-related; she says so herself, repeatedly. Man. :/

* cahn, Lehndorff translation is expected to appear in the library tomorrow. I finished formatting, and I just need to tweak my translation script and run it through. Will do that tomorrow.

I did something very clever that I've been annoyed with Schmidt-Lötzen for not doing, namely putting the year at the beginning of every paragraph so you don't have to flip around to figure out what year you're in, every single time. (He could have done it at the top of each page; since my script ignores pages, I went with paragraphs, because it was programmatically easier.)

I did split some paragraphs immediately after closing quotation marks, in hopes of getting Google to not delete those words. We'll see how it goes. It'll mean some sentence fragments at the beginning of a paragraph, but hopefully that'll be less confusing than just completely missing words. Machine translation is not yet a perfected art. :)

Re: Wilhelmine

[cahn]

Turns out, it's in Wilhelmine! And she wasn't bashing SD, she was bashing Fritz.

Ahhhhhh this explains a lot! Excellent :D

Versailles had a whole etiquette on who was allowed to sit on what kind of surface (or at all) in whose presence.

I may have known this at some point -- it certainly does not surprise me -- but if so I had forgotten, so thank you for the explanation :D

I did something very clever that I've been annoyed with Schmidt-Lötzen for not doing, namely putting the year at the beginning of every paragraph so you don't have to flip around to figure out what year you're in, every single time. (He could have done it at the top of each page; since my script ignores pages, I went with paragraphs, because it was programmatically easier.)

This is genius!

Re: Wilhelmine

[mildred_of_midgard]

This is genius!

If I have dated a text more transparently than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of 18C handwriting decipherers and programming language developers. ;)