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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

From:

selenak

All this reminds me that one angle we haven't looked on yet is that she's writing the memoirs not just simultanously to the Fritz fallout but to her husband's affair with Marwitz, i.e. both her two main relationships now look to her as if the men don't love her anymore and have traded her in for other people. In addition to therapy animals, the memoirs themselves are also therapy (hence that one Fritz biographer ungraciously though not inaccurately referring to them as "Wilhelmine getting all the gall out of her system"; it's certainly her way of venting all the resentment and yes, absolutely, sibling jealousy. (Mainly in terms of Fritz - as in that outburst about him and Friedrike Luise - , but not exclusively. If you recall, in the memoirs she claims that she used to be FW's favourite daughter early on. Whereas the 20th century biographers, with full access to the preserved Hohenzollern letters and to the envoy correspondances, don't think she ever was once she wasn't the only daughter in talking age anymore, because while Charlotte, Ulrike and early on Friedrike ("Ike", as FW calls her) Luise take turns in the envoy reports as to who's the favourite daughter, it never is Wilhelmine, and there are tender FW letters to Charlotte and Friedrike Luise which just don't exist from FW to Wilhelmine. (Though he could be sentimental about her, too, see Stratemann's reports, if she cried and submitted enough, and pleased if she did things like arrange a smoking room for him during his Bayreuth visit, but that's not on the same level.)

So the Wilhelmine writing her memoirs in the 1740s is one whose sense of self worth has been thoroughly shattered: the lady-in-waiting whom she thought was her best friend has an affair with her husband, the same husband whom her mother blamed and ridiculed her for marrying, with Wilhelmine's counter argument having been "he may not be a future King, but at least he truly loves me"). And the first and foremost affectionate relationship of her life, the one with Fritz, now looks ended or at least so changed she can no longer draw from it the love and confidence she used to.

=> presto Wilhelmine the memoir writer lashing out in jealousy, whether it's sister Friederike Luise or for that matter Katte and Keith, and clinging extra hard on her social standing as the one thing still intact to be proud of

Wilhelmine's other method of self therapy was of course opera composing, and it's worth pointing out that in Argenore, you don't just have

Argenore: tyrannical king who in final scene commits suicide after realising he's destroyed his son and daughter
Palmida: his daughter, is supposed to marry Leonida but loves Ormodo
Ormodo: his long-lost son, whose true identity however is only uncovered to everyone, including himself, in the last act

but also

Leonida: Palmida's fiance, who secretly has a love affair with
Martesia: Palmida's best friend, believed to be Ormodo's sister through most of the opera. Also the sole survivor of this opera (everyone else is dead by the final note).

Wiki points out Martesia is possibly the most interesting role, since the composer gives her the same amount of arias as Palmira has, including the final arias of the second and third act, and the final aria of the overall opera. She is the one who calls the titular character, King Argenore, a "monstrous father" and clears up who's related to whom and what happened in the end. She also isn't a villainess, since she gives up her love for Leonida so he can marry Palmida, and is the only one not killing anyone else. Her guilt is that she holds back on the document that reveals Ormodo is really not her brother but Palmida's, so she's not innocent, either.

...and then of course, the opera has such plot points as King Argenore, wishing to force his daughter Palmida to marry Leonida and forget about Ormodo, wants first to force her to kill Ormodo , and then, when that doesn't work out and he thinks he's got Ormodo killed (but in reality, Ormodo has managed to escape and kill the executor instead, trading clothes with him), wants to force Palmida to look at her lover's dead body.

Meaning: it's not like one opera character completely corresponds to one in Wilhelmine's life, but that the autobiographical points are all intermingled, remixed and given to several characters. The final kicker, btw, is that this opera premiered on the Margrave's birthday, it was officially Wilhelmine's birthday present for him. (Just like her next opera, the opera version of Voltaire's Semiramis, aka the one that ends in matricide, was staged as a birthday present to SD.)

Mind you, all of which is still less harmful a way to work through your trauma than roleplay with your younger siblings or go to war, but then Wilhelmine didn't have the option to do either.

Edited Date: 2020-10-15 05:34 am (UTC)