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

Re: Good news

[selenak]

Tag set: I saw!

Stollberg-Rilinger: take your time, I'd advise, because it's really academic German. Don't get me wrong, the biography has a lot of useful info, but it's written in a dry style, not least since our biographer keeps establishing 18th century context, and with, as I said, very academic vocabulary. Better do the other stuff first.

Wilhelmine: now I'm curious (being familiar only with the German version, of course). We've already seen the English versions censored the Dresden visit in part 1 and SD & Charlotte talking of fistula in EC's anus in part 2- can you tell me another especially notabl example of English bowlederizatiaon? (Also: does this mean 19th century Germans were less censorious than 19th century Brits and Amerians? Given which nation had to deal with state censorship and which one prides itself on free speech, I find that, shall we say, iiiinnteresting.

Wilhelmine bowdlerization

[mildred_of_midgard]

Lehndorff is definitely next on the list, after Wilhelmine, and Krockow at the same time. Possibly some Horowski, depending on how things are going. Then MT. So hopefully by then I'll be ready, because academic German is exactly what I need to learn to read!

(My short-term motivation for learning German is of course Fritz and Katte, the reason I'm buckling down is that my long-term motivation is to be able to read academic German when I want to. I'll never have this much short-term motivation again, so if I ever want to be able to develop my German skills to where they should have been when I finished grad school, I have to do it now.)

Wilhelmine: now I'm curious (being familiar only with the German version, of course). We've already seen the English versions censored the Dresden visit in part 1 and SD & Charlotte talking of fistula in EC's anus in part 2- can you tell me another especially notabl example of English bowlederizatiaon?

Well, there's two kinds of bowdlerization that I'm seeing: one where it's really obviously prudishness at work, and one where I'm not really sure what's going on.

So, like, when the Emperor and Empress visit the baths because they only have living daughters and they're hoping for an improvement in her fertility for the sake of an heir, our English translator just says, "They visited the baths! Because of reasons." Literally,

The emperor and empress visited Carlsbad at this time, to take the benefit of the baths and mineral waters.

Whereas the German, page 267 in the Kindle copy, has

Der Kaiser und die Kaiserin begaben sich ungefähr um diese Zeit nach Karlsbad, um dort eine Bade- und Trinkkur zu gebrauchen. Sie hatten nur drei Prinzessinnen; der Erzherzog war im Jahre 1716 gestorben. Man hoffte, daß die Bäder, die als der Fruchtbarkeit sehr zuträglich galten, der Kaiserin zu einem Erzherzog verhelfen und so der Wunsch des gesamten Reiches sich erfüllen würde.

But then there's Wilhelmine's lying-in. And I get that references to her pregnancy have to be cut. But if

Wir schrieben Ende Juni, und im August sollte ich niederkommen.

can be translated

It was now the end of June. I reckoned upon being brought to bed in the month of August.

Then I don't see why everything from Da ich am Ende des Monats niederkommen sollte und wir den siebenten hatten, meinte der König, es sei nun so weit,Er fand mich sehr elend und verabreichte mir fürs erste eine Dosis seiner wunderbaren Pillen, has to be cut. Then, just to show you how aggressive the cutting is, the entire love affair between Grumbkow's niece? and Wilhelmine's brother-in-law is cut on page 279, everything between Der Hof von Ansbach hielt sich noch einige Tage länger bei uns auf and Durch die Abreise des Ansbachschen Hofes wurde diese Sorge wieder von mir genommen, inclusive.

But okay, one is medical and one is a love affair. But what I really don't understand is cutting everything between Der Markgraf mit dem Prinzen, seinem Bruder, nahmen tags darauf Abschied von mir, da sie nach Himmelkron gehen wollten" and Ew. Königliche Hoheit ihm einen Boten senden, muß man sich nach ihm richten.«, inclusive, and then everything between Herr von Voigt machte sich alsbald auf den Weg nach Berlin; and Er war mit der Zusammenstellung sehr zufrieden, und einen Augenblick später verließ er mich on page 283.

That last bit means that you lose Wilhelmine telling her father-in-law she may never see him again, the drama around him wanting to be informed by cannon shots instead of reports, and then the part where that goes wrong because the winds are contrary and the cannons are misplaced, and then he's upset about not finding out, then the part where the baby has to be baptized on the third day, and Wilhelmine picking the godparents.

I mean, there are two references to "Niederkunft," lying in, just as a marker of time, but since we've already seen that translated as "brought to bed," I don't see why we had to lose almost 4 pages because of it, including the decision of which family members got to be godparents.

???

You can look up the full passages, or I can copy-paste them if you want, and tell me if you see why all that was cut, but it seems a bit extreme to me. Love affair, okay; announcing the birth of a child--okay?; baptism and godparents--what?

(Also: does this mean 19th century Germans were less censorious than 19th century Brits and Amerians?

Evidently, but let's not forget why I'm reading the German: because neither the English nor the French edition I was looking at had the fistulas, and you told me the German did. Looking more closely, this 1810 French edition was published in Brunswick, and omits the *entire* trash-talking scene of EC, including the foolish laugh and the "only says yes or no." Brunswick honor at stake here!

So everyone cuts something different, I guess. :D

Btw, cahn, I did find a French version with fistulas, so when we go to tackle it in French, we should be good. :)

Given which nation had to deal with state censorship and which one prides itself on free speech, I find that, shall we say, iiiinnteresting.

Well, I would argue that social customs regarding bodily functions and and political freedom of speech are two totally different things. I'm much more ready to tell you my unfavorable opinions about my current president than about my bowel movements, and that bit of self-censorship has nothing to do with my first amendment rights. ;)

ETA: I forgot to mention, one key scene that got cut from the English translation of Wilhelmine's memoirs that I wanted to share was the one where she gets accused by her father-in-law of faking her pregnancy. Because not marrying into the Hannovers is no guarantee you'll be spared this fate.

At least her husband didn't drag her by carriage to another palace while she was in labor?

Re: Wilhelmine bowdlerization

[selenak]

True, and her mother-in-law was first locked up and then in Scandinavia, instead of around and loudly doubting her husband could sire children at all.

As to the bowlderization: honestly? I suspect the non-prudery cuts were because some editor at the English publisher's said: Nobody knows who these people are anymore anyway, these memoirs are getting read because of the Fritz related stuff, so cut down the rest where you can.

I did know some of the 1810 French version was cut. Keep in mind it got still accused of being a an evil anti Hohenzollern forgery until people could check out the manuscript. This wasn't as far fetched as it sounds; in the 18th century, faked memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV's mistress and morganatic wife, were published, and it took a while until they were identified as false. Voltaire said so from the start, but Voltaire was biased since he'd just published his "Age of Louis XIV", and this would have been a major source to have missed, had they been the real deal. Also, there was the famous Ossian fraud. So you could forgive people reacting to "check out the memoirs of Frederick the Great's favourite sister, making her entire family sound nuts!" with "aha, forgers strike again!". And that's before we get to the part where Prussian spirits were really low ever since Napoleon had defeated Prussia at Jena and Auerstedt, thus shattering the leftover nimbus of "The army of Frederick the Great".

Re: Wilhelmine bowdlerization

[mildred_of_midgard]

As to the bowlderization: honestly? I suspect the non-prudery cuts were because some editor at the English publisher's said: Nobody knows who these people are anymore anyway, these memoirs are getting read because of the Fritz related stuff, so cut down the rest where you can.

You'd think, but if so, why did they cut a reference to Fritz (being godfather to his niece) in favor of reams and reams of intrigues between obscure people that I've been slogging through the last few days, and that are the reason that cahn and I never made it all the way through volume 2 in English? I decided to read this in German right now solely because the only way I will ever force myself to read volume 2 line by line is if I'm getting language practice out of it. :P

This wasn't as far fetched as it sounds; in the 18th century, faked memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV's mistress and morganatic wife, were published, and it took a while until they were identified as false...Also, there was the famous Ossian fraud. So you could forgive people reacting to "check out the memoirs of Frederick the Great's favourite sister, making her entire family sound nuts!" with "aha, forgers strike again!"

Yep!

Ossian fraud: cahn, this was a collection of poems on ancient Irish mythology (Oisín, the son of Finn McCool) that were published in the mid-18th century by a Scottish guy, who claimed they were from ancient manuscripts he found, but he would never produce. A *huge* debate raged on whether they were real or whether he made them up. Consensus: there was no manuscript, the poetry was 18th century, the material was based on oral traditions that were older.

This is not unlike what happened with the Kalevala, except Lönnrot, though he may have underreported the extent of his own involvement in composition, never claimed he had an ancient manuscript, but actually said he was collecting older songs and working them into a single national epic. Disclaimer: I am not an expert on the Kalevala and am only reporting what I've read: although he acknowledged turning multiple oral songs into a written single epic, he may have invented more than he let on.

At any rate, if the Ossian guy (*googles* MacPherson) had acknowledged what he was doing instead of trying to pass it off as an ancient manuscript, there wouldn't have been this big controversy and we wouldn't be using the word "fraud"! And people would have told him he was a good poet, but no, he wanted to claim antiquity. (Which tells you something about society's priorities: people want folklore and mythology to be really old.)

Auld Lang Syne

[selenak]

Also, in this particular case: the the Scots were in a situation where the last uprising had been violently quelled and the Highlander gear forbidden, where there was increasing anti-Scots and anti-Northern English feeing in the English south. (I mentioned the Boswell recorded incident when the returning from the 7 Years War soldiers from the Highlander Regiment get booed and hissed at in a London theatre with cries of "No Scots! No Scots!"; as they said to Boswell, "if these were French, could they have done worse?". Scots bashing was en vogue, not just by Tories like Johnson but also by liberal radicals like John Wilkes. (Because of Lady Mary's son-in-law, the PM Lord Bute, who was a Northerner and accused of sleeping with G3's Mom Augusta without any basis for this whatsoever other than G3 treating Lord Bute as a father figure. So if you were writing against the government, you more often than not did not just bash the PM but all Scots while you were at it.) Scots they were constantly told how much lesser they were, accused of being a burden on English tax payers and having nothing to compare to the great English cultural heritage. So the "discovery" of supposedly ancient Gaelic verses by a Scotsman that had nothing to do with Anglosaxon heritage was considered one big identity/heritage booster, too.

(Incidentally:remember George Keith giving Boswell his copy about an actual old Scottish epic about Robert the Bruce, to be read once a year? That's in this spirit, too.)

Just to show how things change just in a few decades, with Sir Walter Scott deserving much of the credit: with his novels, labelled as fiction and specifically his own fiction, he made Scottish history very popular in England. To the degree that when G4, the former Prince Regent, visited Scotland (first Hannover King to do so), Sir Walter Scott got him to wear a Highlander kilt. In public. A King of the House of Hannover, whose great uncle, Billy the Butcher Cumberland, had quelled the 45 uprising with war crimes, after which the wearing of kilts had been strictly forbidden. From this point onwards at the latest, Scotland wasn't the land of primitive boo-hiss worthy barbarians anymore, it was the romantic country of heroes, and of years yet two more decades later you get young Victoria and Albert building themselves a holiday home there, Balmoral, where the royal family holidays to this day, and the English singing Auld Lang Syne on New Year.

Re: Wilhelmine bowdlerization

[cahn]

:D I had actually heard of the Ossian fraud before (my history: I probably have not heard of whatever-it-is unless it involves Celtic literature in some way) but I had forgotten about it :) (But I know almost nothing about the Kalevala except that I have to read it at some point because The Raven Tower is based on it :P )