cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 19

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

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

I did it! I finished the book! Wilhelmine memoirs start tomorrow.

I'm sorry I just did not keep up on this readthrough like I'd said I would! I'm still going, just... much slower than you are. I should be able to finish it before you get through the second volume of the memoirs, though, even at your super-rapid pace :PP

No, no worries! My goals were 1) stay on track with German, 2) get you to read up on Wilhelmine because FIC, and those were accomplished. :D

Besides, I'm lagging behind on commenting; I might not get to it until this weekend.

But now I'm going to give you an additional job: because Wilhelmine is somewhat harder, and we're not doing it together, you must yell at me periodically to hurry up so we can do Lehndorff together. :D Okay?

I find if I outsource my motivation to other people, I can focus more brainpower on the learning part. It works for me!

From:

cahn

That sounds good! I had one of those colds where I felt better but it had sort of a long tail. Today was the first day I felt actually normal and I managed to finally read a larger chunk than I've been doing, so one day I will at least vaguely reply to your comments :)

From:

selenak

I'm awed at the pace of your progress. Also, I wanted to report that the Stabi has the entire 1803 edition of Lady Mary's letters and poetry online for me to read, all five or volumes. Which I won't have the time for right now, since I have a lot of reading and writing to do elsewhere, but for later, it's there. (Granted, the 1803 one is censored by the family. But Stabi also has Halband's selected edition of her works from the 1960s for me to check.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The 19th century editions aren't hard to find, it's that I keep hearing that, even in addition to the censorship, the scholarship is bad: portions of different letters are mixed and matched and presented as if they're from the same letter, letters are misdated, etc. That was why I wanted Halsband (and got him, up through 1751). But at least the 19th century versions should help us with our Wilhelmine-in-Italy question.

But Stabi also has Halband's selected edition of her works from the 1960s for me to check.

Excellent!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Minimal German today: 5 pages. Not because I didn't yell at myself a lot, but because my rule is that if I have to choose between meeting my German quota and doing something else, I should meet my quota, but if I have to choose between meeting my quota and not hating German, I should get some sleep and try again another day. ;)

But that did mean I had time to do something less difficult, namely get the two volumes that I own of Lady Mary letters into the library. It really is a library!

Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough

From:

cahn - Date: 2020-10-08 05:16 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-10-09 02:12 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Aww, I'm sorry to hear that. Glad it's finally tailing off, and hope the rest of the family is recovering too!

From:

cahn

OK, so I was feeling a bit guilty about not even having made it through the 1730's but WOW it took a REALLY long time to get there, given all the interminable wedding negotiations! There were sure a lot of them.

* Oster has the "don't get married just to get me out of prison" letter, AWWW. I still love the mutual self-sacrifice between these two. YOU TWO. <3

<3

* Oster on Wilhelmine bringing Marwitz to Bayreuth: Little did she know that this girl would one day ruin her marriage.

That's right, blame the woman.

Oh, yeah. Although it is pretty ironic.

Speaking of Fritz and Fredersdorf, as we head into Christmas 1732, Fritz had been visiting FW at Wusterhausen before Wilhelmine arrived! I had missed that and assumed it was the first visit in a while, and wrote accordingly. Oh well! Fanfic takes liberties with chronology.

Ha! I had the same reaction.

[personal profile] cahn, you missed the chance to include that scene. :P (Though historically, as far as I can tell, FW hadn't taken up painting yet. What is fic for if not for chronological liberties!)

OMG. That would have been HILARIOUS and I am deeply mourning the missed opportunity :D

the Sonsfeld who takes care of little Friederike while Wilhelmine is in Berlin is not Sonsine the much loved, but her inexperienced sister who's like, "Halp, a baby, what do?" Or at least so Wilhelmine claims in her letter to try to get money for a proper nurse--I hope that was partly a rhetorical device!

I know, right? Especially since she ended up taking care of the kid for a while! But kid seems to have survived :)

* Judging by the letters and not the memoirs, Fritz had already left for his regiment when the German comedian episode happened, because Wilhelmine reports to him on it.

THAT is one chronological liberty I will stand and die by! Besides, we were writing fanfic of her memoirs. :P

I knoooooow I was so saaaad about that :P Oh well, it makes better fic this way :P

* Fritz of Bayreuth: *loves his baby*
Fritz of Bayreuth: Please don't tell your sarcastic brother-in-law.
Wilhelmine to Fritz: Please tease my husband about this.

Okay, Wilhelmine?

(And yes,

selenak, I do remember you giving us this part! <3 ) So, like...there were several parts, this one, and the bit where Fritz and Fritz of Bayreuth get into a competition to see who loves Wilhelmine most, where I start really remembering that little character sketch

selenak wrote about the Erbprinz... it's really kind of unsettling. Definitely emotional incest going on here.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

WOW it took a REALLY long time to get there, given all the interminable wedding negotiations! There were sure a lot of them.

That's what I thought! I was like, we're almost done with the book and she's still not married yet?? I mean, I was being hyperbolic, but still. :P

I LOVE that you and I had the same fic-related reactions!

OMG. That would have been HILARIOUS and I am deeply mourning the missed opportunity :D

I now have this mental image of your FW painting your Fredersdorf, it's GREEEEAT. :D

I hope that was partly a rhetorical device!

I know, right? Especially since she ended up taking care of the kid for a while!

Well, that's exactly why I hope it was exaggerated for effect! If the kid didn't end up in her care, it wouldn't matter.

Definitely emotional incest going on here.

So I just got to the part in W's memoirs where she's like, "My new husband's sister, Wilhelmine, was hoping to marry my brother, and it would have been awesome if they'd been well-suited to each other, but she was kind of awful, so no."

And I was like...symbolic double incest? Also, can you imagine if Fritz's wife was named Wilhelmine, our heads would explode from all the confusion. :P I confess I'm glad that one didn't work out. BAD ENOUGH that I kept reading "Wilhelmine and Friedrich" in Oster as the siblings.

From:

selenak

re: emotional incest - there is this later quote in the Oster biogrpahy from one of Wilhelmine's letters during her 1750 visit to Prussia. The Margrave is already en route back to Bayreuth, Wilhelmine has fallen sick and stays behind in Berlin, Fritz is currently busy with something or the other, but the younger sibs try to entertain her, and she writes that it's nice to spend some time with them but "the one who owns all my heart" not being there makes her long for him. There's no question she doesn't write this about the Margrave.

Bayreuth Friedrich: I, too, am glad my sister did not marry the Great. I would have ended up dead on one of his battlefields for sure. As for name confusion, I will say that my mistress being called Wilhelmine Dorothea (von Marwitz) did make things easier in bed...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

As for name confusion, I will say that my mistress being called Wilhelmine Dorothea (von Marwitz) did make things easier in bed...

LOL forever.

And yes, I remember that Oster quote and thinking, yep, sounds like those two. "This lute will be your only rival" indeed.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

[personal profile] cahn, you missed the chance to include that scene. :P (Though historically, as far as I can tell, FW hadn't taken up painting yet. What is fic for if not for chronological liberties!)

OMG. That would have been HILARIOUS and I am deeply mourning the missed opportunity :D

We had an even better missed opportunity than I thought! I was reading Wilhlemine's memoirs today, and she's still in her 1732-1733 visit, and she refers to her father painting!

I demand an outtake! FW paints Fredersdorf!

From:

cahn

OMG. He soooo would have :P

Re: Oster Wilhelmine - reply to 1730s

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-10-14 12:29 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Remember back when Catherine the Great said in her memoirs that Countess Bentinck was the first woman she saw ride a horse? And I questioned that, because the 18th century is full of women who ride horses, just mostly sidesaddle? And

selenak guessed that it was different from country to country, and that Germany was not big on horseback riding? E.g. MT having to learn for her Hungarian coronation.

Well, I just got to the part in Wilhelmine's memoirs where she says that she learned horseback riding at Bayreuth, partly for her health and for fun. And because ladies riding was a thing in England and France, but not in Germany, everyone freaked out and tried to get her to stop.

Random courtier: I have it on very good authority, from a GHOST, that if Wilhelmine rides out in the next six weeks, something very bad will happen to her. She must stay inside and not set foot outdoors for six weeks!

Wilhelmine: Omg, this is the stupidest thing ever. Husband, make yourself useful.

Bayreuth Fritz: Attention everyone, a reward is offered for any information pertaining to the identity of this alleged "ghost".

Random poor woman: *comes forth with evidence that this ghost was basically a person wearing a sheet*

Aaand, this tells you how controversial horseback riding was for women in Germany.

From:

selenak

LOL. It does indeed. Incidentally, Himmelkron, where Wilhelmine and husband repeatedly go as you saw in Oster and see in the memoirs, is one of the places claiming that this is where the original Hohenzollern White Lady, i.e. the family ghost supposed to signal impending death to any member of the House of Brandenburg, had lived and died.

From:

cahn

Okay, this is amazing and I love it. Also absolutely adore your title, heeeee!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

* In 1743, Wilhelmine's daughter's future husband's mother gets to make a copy of La Pucelle when Voltaire and Fritz visit Bayreuth?

Fritz: WTF, Voltaire. I didn't get a copy until 1750!

*

cahn,

Since the Margravine did not understand the academic language Latin and did not value the French professors too highly, she asked them to discuss the two theses in German.

should read:

Since the Margravine did not...estimate the French language skills of the German professors too highly.

Not what's happening here, but one thing I noticed while reading this is that when Google randomly decides to delete half a sentence or a sentence and a half or whatever, it's frequently the part immediately following a direct quotation. Not just when quotes are split up by "he said," but when it's like "Blah blah. 'Direct quote here.' New sentence not in the quote.", Google will go, "Blah blah. 'Direct quote here.' in the quote.", and completely drop the words "New sentence not", for example.

I might programmatically inject paragraph breaks at the ends of quotes in the future and see if that helps.

* Erlangen journalist who trashes Fritz and causes a Fritz/Wilhelmine fallout is Johan Gottfried Groß.

Ohhhh!

That makes sense of something Blanning said. When recounting how Fritz's lack of people skills and unwillingness to make nice with foreign envoys backfired on him diplomatically, he writes:

So when Frederick went out of his way to insult the newly arrived Russian envoy, von Gross, by asking him whether he was related to a journalist of the same name, he was also ensuring that every last piece of malicious gossip would be reported back to St. Petersburg.

I thought that was just a remark that would be snide in a very classist era (which it was also that!), but Fritz is specifically asking about the guy who trashed him a few years before. See, Blanning needs to tell us these things.

The source, btw, is Koser in an article on the Prussian court circa 1750, which looks potentially interesting, as well as other articles (mostly the Great Elector, but at least one containing letters from Sophie Charlotte to FW's governor Dohna), but in addition to having the bad 1903 font, it is exceedingly tiny. Are they trolling me? :P I can almost read this (a fluent German reader should have no problem), but it just drives me crazy whenever I'm making a good faith effort to deal with a foreign language in a foreign font and then the text *also* has tiny, blurry, faint, or smeared font to boot. :P

Anyway, see Hohenzollern_Jahrbuch under Articles if you're interested.

* Long ago, we had questioned why Fritz calls female Marwitz "Medea": Oster gives enough of the quote that it looks to me that Fritz is saying Marwitz is bent on revenge, which is certainly a feature of Medea.

* Oster says Marwitz was responsible for the Bayreuth court allying more closely with Vienna!

* Wilhelmine is eerily like Fritz when it comes to hanging out with French intellectuals and snarking at her own subjects:

"They take 10 years to learn how to say good day and good evening, and another 10 to learn how to make an awkward bow."

This reminds me of Heinrich's

"I am busy feeding my officers and teaching them to speak. Until recently, they could only speak single words, but I dipped some cookies in Hungarian wine and now they can produce whole sentences."

* Wilhelmine getting the money to build an opera house by telling the committee in charge of finances that if they give her money to build a new palace, she and the Margrave can stay in Bayreuth longer in the winter and not have to go to Erlangen.

Then, "Oops, I accidentally built an opera house with the money." :P

Also, lol at Wilhelmine starting out wanting an opera house like Fritz's and then, after the fallout, even after they've made up, deciding she wants one like the one in Vienna.

* Aww at Wilhelmine enduring a horrible winter trip by pretending she's on her way to Berlin to see Fritz. YOU TWO. <333

* Aww at Wilhelmine wanting to see Fritz so much that she says she would have set out even if on death's door.

(You know which boyfriend I'm thinking of here. <3)

* Oster believes in the orange peel quote, sigh.

* Lol at Wilhelmine getting Fritz's permission to go to Montpellier, in France, for the sake of her health, all the while knowing she's using it as a jumping off point for an Italy trip, but doesn't want to ask him for permission for that up front.

Now I see where Heinrich got it from!

* Lol at Wilhelmine spending the night at the Marquis de Sade's!

* Lol at Wilhelmine making nice with the Pope's people so they'll look the other way while she illicitly exports art from Italy.

And apparently she left the whole Italy collection to Fritz in her will, and so it's still in Berlin to this day.

* Ansbach brother-in-law votes against Fritz in the imperial ban, Fritz swears to avenge himself if he survives the war! Ansbach brother-in-law also criticizes Wilhelmine's expenses, and Fritz says, "That's rich, coming from you, mister big spender. Just be glad the Italy trip was good Wilhelmine's health and she's still alive. Also, I'm not kidding about the vengeance part."

Brother-in-law conveniently dies early in the war, thus evading his eventual meeting with destiny, aka a gangster with good PR. :P

* And with that, I'm finally finished with the Oster comments! I have to say, I appreciated how Oster did justice to Wilhelmine and her husband as doing a good job at being the Baroque/Rokoko representational rulers they wanted to be, while repeatedly pointing out that this meant they were completely out of touch with their people, who justifiably resented their spending and were less than impressed.

From:

selenak

Fritz: WTF, Voltaire. I didn't get a copy until 1750!

Voltaire: First, the Duchess Marie Auguste was hot, just ask the Marquis D‘Argenson. Secondly, Würtemberg has a border with France, which is why I parked some of my money there, where neither you nor my sovereign could got your paws on it. I also made loans to the Duchess and her sons with huge interest on that occasion. All of which started by me permitting her to copy La Pucelle.

Johann Gottfried Groß: who also, as I recall Oster reports, was gleefully happy to note that clearly, his was the only German newspaper Fritz actually was reading. :)

Female Marwitz being pro-Austrian: well, not only was her husband Austrian but she did end up in Vienna once she had left Bayreuth, conducting a very successful salon there. Presumably she‘d calculated early on that there was no future back in Prussia being married to a Dad and Fritz chosen guy, and that as Maitresse en titre of Bayreuth Friedrich it wasn‘t in her interest to promote a policy strengthening the ties to the all mighty brother of her lover‘s wife, but rather the opposite. In addition to which Bayreuth really was surrounded by largely Catholic HRE principalities, except for Ansbach.

Also, lol at Wilhelmine starting out wanting an opera house like Fritz's and then, after the fallout, even after they've made up, deciding she wants one like the one in Vienna.

Well, the result would argue she made the right choice. *g*

And yes, Oster‘s good at keeping the balance between showing Wilhelmine and BayreuthFritz acting as princes of their era were supposed to and showing how this affected their subjects. (Hence also the readiness to believe the „that fire was totally a plan, just like Nero and Rome“ story.)

Now I see where Heinrich got it from!

Had not thought of this, but you‘re absolutely right. Well, one of this strengths as a general was noticing and studying efficient strategies. *g*

Ansbach brother in law: in addition to this, he was also yet another lousy husband I am reminded of Fritz‘ unexpectedly touching reaction in a letter to Heinrich when his Ansbach sister died: My dearest brother,
It is the heartbroken with pain that I write to you today. I have just learned of the death of our poor and unhappy sister in Ansbach. This comes back, my dear brother, to what I have been telling you lately, that what is left of our family is shaking up their sleeves. I have always thought of going to Ansbach to see my poor sister again; I never could find the moment. She was a very good and honest person, whose heart was full of integrity. I confess to you, my dear brother, that this distresses me so much, that I will put off another day to answer you.

Friederike Luise had once been a spirited girl whose cheeky telling FW that the food he gives his children is lousy triggered the occasion where he threw with the plates at Wilhelmine and Fritz; she was the first to get married, and by the time she died, she was an utterly depressed lonely woman hardly able to talk anymore.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Well, one of this strengths as a general was noticing and studying efficient strategies. *g*

Wilhelmine: the Traun of the Hohenzollern siblings. :D

Friederike Luise had once been a spirited girl whose cheeky telling FW that the food he gives his children is lousy triggered the occasion where he threw with the plates at Wilhelmine and Fritz; she was the first to get married, and by the time she died, she was an utterly depressed lonely woman hardly able to talk anymore.

Yeah. :/ Her appearance in the last part of Wilhelmine's memoirs is filled with sibling rivalry and resentment.

Wilhelmine: She said to wake up early so we could go on a trip, and then when I Got up early, she stayed in bed and said she didn't feel like going, but she looked fine to me! Her maid said it was just moodiness.

Me: Could be clinical depression.

Wilhelmine: I'm mad at her because she didn't follow my lead in standing on ceremony with this one guy who didn't agree with me about how to treat me as a King's daughter, and she's mad at me because I insisted on my rights! Naturally, everyone at her court agreed with me.

Me: You just keep telling yourself that.

Wilhelmine: And then she insulted me by insisting on standing on ceremony with me and treating me as her social superior! Which technically I am, but I never insist on that with family. This was an insult!

Me: Judging by the previous anecdote, I CAN SEE WHERE SHE GOT THE IDEA she needed to stand on ceremony with you!

Wilhelmine: And then my totally changed now-king brother *shocked* me by wanting to see her when he came to visit me, because he never liked her before. And then he was nicer to her than to me and gave her more presents!

Me: To quote

selenak, have I mentioned yet that you all need therapy?

More memoir updates:

* Wilhelmine buying into toxic masculinity: When an unmarried woman is flirting with every man in sight and her doctors have essentially diagnosed her with sexual frustration, her father is obliged to hit her, otherwise no one will be able to control her. Also, my father-in-law was forced to lock up my mother-in-law because of her bad behavior.

Me: Go back to the horseback riding!

* Wilhelmine says FW abdicated the day he died (remember, there was some ambiguity in different editions of Fritz's correspondence whether it was the day of or the day before), but as caveats, she wasn't there, she was writing 4 years later, and she reports the final parting at 7 am instead of Fritz's 5 am.

Oh, and hilariously, when FW dies and she's sad because none of her relatives would let her come (apparently her husband, brother, and mother were all against it, although to be fair, Fritz said, "Up to you, though,"), she reports that Fritz and SD withdrew into another room and cried together, but whether the tears were genuine or fake, I can't tell.

Probably a little of both? The occasion would have been moving, and Fritz *clearly* had strong feelings, and also this was the last chance for FW to do a "Well done, son." Which, judging the exchange with Voltaire and also the dreams 20 years later, did not happen to Fritz's satisfaction. So I'm guessing the tears were real, which doesn't mean he wasn't also thinking, "Oh, thank God."

* Her dog dies and she takes the opportunity to talk about how dogs are better than people.

I honor the loyalty of dogs; it seems to me that they have the advantage here over people, who are so fickle and changeable (veränderlich).

Granted I'm reading in translation, I'll have to keep an eye out when it comes time for French, but she's writing this in 1744 (the dog died back in 1735; this isn't Folichon), and "verändert" is the word she most often uses of Fritz in this volume. :/

Worth pointing out that she says on his way to the siege at Phillipsburg, he was all sweetness; but her husband wrote her letters from the front talking about how he had changed, and she reports that never after that did she meet the Fritz she used to know; on his way back a few weeks later, he was awful (mocking the "little" court at Bayreuth, that sort of thing).

Now, I know she's writing with hindsight during their fallout and trying to convince herself she should have seen it coming, and I know she reports the first signs of him changing in 1731 (and vacillation after that, until 1734), but given how Fritz *did* seem to have an at-war mode he switched into, and given how absolutely common that is among veterans, I actually buy it.

Mind you, she also says Fritz of Bayreuth "changes" toward her on multiple occasions: immediately after he inherits, and after he recovers from a serious illness and starts checking out Marwitz.

Aaaand, I see why she appreciated her dogs. Therapy animals for everyone.

Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough

From:

selenak - Date: 2020-10-15 05:31 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

selenak

Here it is: after describing the disaster that was Fritz & Hanbury Williams, Koser continues:

Even rougher were at the same time the ending of diplomatic relations wiht Russia. The Empress Elisabeth was represented in Berlin by one Herr von Groß, since 1749, who had succeeded the well-liked Count Keyserling. Since he'd achieved a reputation for rough manners in Paris, the King of Prussia believed that his arrival was supposed to worsen the Prussian-Russian relationships, who'd been in a decline since the second Silesian War, and for his part did nothing to win the new arrival over. Groß emphatically noticed the mockery in the question when the King asked him on his first visit whether he was a brother of the Erlangen journalist Groß. After a yar, in August 1750, Groß felt entitled to complain that he hadn't been invited to supper after a court festivity in Charlottenburg, which all the other foreign envoys had been. The Russian court let three months pass, then recalled its envoy, and listed this complaint in a note presented to the Prussian envoy in St. Petersburg among other complaints. Groß left Berlin without announcing this to any official; he limited himself to asking for postal horses, with a note that goes as follows in its entirety: "The Russian Envoy needs 16 horses for four wagons until tomorrow, December 2nd, in order to get from Berlin to Memel, and hence kindly requests that they should be given to him. Groß."
He was given the horses; later, the explanation was given that while after the first of the Charlottenburg festivities only three foreign envoys had been invited to supper, the Imperial envoy, the Swedish and the Danish envoy, on the second day all the envoys, including Herr von Groß, had been invited to both the ball and to supper.
Maria Theresia's envoy, the imperial Generalfeldwachtmeister Count Anton de la Puebla used his position very differently. Despite in a way fighting for a hopeless cause, he due to his qualities navigated the difficult position he was in quite happily, and accordingly found himself treated with distinction and even up to a point with benevolence. In the summer of 1752, the King gifted him with a splendid box, and he did so, as the court put it, in a fine manner, for the present was offered as an exchange object. The King had wished to see a portrait of the Empress-Queen, Puebla sent one to him, and the King replied that if one was in the possession of such a beautiful portrait, one did not let it go anymore, so the Envoy should in exchange accept the King's portrait along with this box. When rumor had it that Vienna wanted to recall Puebla in favor of a new envoy, the King wrote to his envoy in Vienna that such a change would displease him.

(Puebla remained until the war. Koser adds a footnote re: MT's portrait saying: Maria Theresia's portrait may have been the same which the King pointed to in July 1756 when talking with the British envoy Mitchell while saying: "This lady wants war? She'll get it."

Puebla: I'd like to enter the "Who's the best envoy?" ompetition as a dark horse, please. Since I clearly had the worst start, seeing as Fritz and MT would always hate each other, and there was nothing I could do to change that, and yet I made myself popular with not just the court but Fritz himself. Moreover, Lehndorff reports my mistress kept my portrait on display in her salon even after the war had started and was open about missing me.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Royal reader and translator hard at work, I see. :) (I'm pleased I got at least some of this from a quick skim, but it would have given me a headache to do the whole thing, so thank you.)

Puebla: well done! MT inherited a talent for picking envoys?

From:

felis

In 1743, Wilhelmine's daughter's future husband's mother gets to make a copy of La Pucelle when Voltaire and Fritz visit Bayreuth?

Do we know if/when Fritz found out? (Also, Pleschinski says that Voltaire visited Bayreuth without Fritz, is he wrong about that?)

I thought that was just a remark that would be snide in a very classist era (which it was also that!)

Same here! Great to get more context on that.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Do we know if/when Fritz found out?

I don't. I hope he didn't! Perhaps

selenak knows, though.

Also, Pleschinski says that Voltaire visited Bayreuth without Fritz, is he wrong about that?

I would have to check, but my impression from Oster was that they went to Bayreuth together, but Fritz went off and did his own thing for much of the time without Voltaire, who stayed behind in Bayreuth. Take that with a grain of salt, as I'm going by memory and don't have time to check at present.

Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough

From:

selenak - Date: 2020-10-15 06:25 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough

From:

felis - Date: 2020-10-15 11:56 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough

From:

selenak - Date: 2020-10-15 12:14 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough

From:

felis - Date: 2020-10-15 07:25 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2020-10-16 02:48 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

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. :)

From:

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!

From:

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. ;)