Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20

[cahn]

Yuletide signups so far:
3 requests for Frederician RPF, 2 offers
2 requests for Circle of Voltaire RPF, 3 offers !! :D :D

(I am so curious as to who the third person is!)

Comments

Widow

[mildred_of_midgard]

Practicing German today instead of participating in salon, but pausing briefly to share the following episode reported by Horowski:

It's January 1733, so Christmas 1732 has just happened, Wilhelmine is in Berlin, Fritz is in Ruppin, Fritz is engaged but not yet married, and it's Carneval season.

So what does Fritz dress up as, as an act of silent protest against his upcoming wedding, in his Ruppin Carneval festival?

A widow.

You couldn't make these people up.

(No specific source given, but sources given in this passage have been letters between Fritz and Wilhelmine, so it might be one of those.)

And yes, Witwe, not Witwer. In addition to the normal penchant for crossdressing during festivals like these, I assume the mourning attire for women was more elaborate?

Re: Widow

[felis]

Heh, I read that in "Solange wir zu zweit sind" yesterday and was wondering if I should comment on it! It's from Fritz' letter to Wilhelmine on January 11th: In order to give you an exact picture of our pleasures on Epiphany, I must be a little more detailed. It all comes down to a bean. Anyone who finds it baked into their piece of cake has to give a coffee. In the evening there was a masked ball. I appeared as Scaramuccio. After supper, the party lasted until one o'clock in the morning. The next day there was coffee and in the evening there was a ball without masks, the day before yesterday there was coffee and a masked ball, yesterday a big game of chance, today coffee and, when Prince Heinrich comes, a masked ball. Today I dress up as a lady, even as a widow. But to make the joy perfect, I miss you, dearest sister, because in spite of everything I always think of you.

Re: Widow

[mildred_of_midgard]

Aha, thank you! And yep, Horowski gives the date as January 11. It's the same day that Grumbkow is in Crossen about to unintentionally drink August the Strong to death.

Oh, Horowski says that Grumbkow had this practice of getting the cook to boil water for him to create bubbles, so that it looked like champagne, so that he could pretend to be getting drunk like everyone else while really being sober. Then Horowski presents evidence that Grumbkow probably drank a mixture of champagne and bubbled water, so that he was neither as drunk as he pretended to his dinner host nor as sober as he pretended he'd been when he wrote up his official reports.

The cake bean practice

Re: Widow

[mildred_of_midgard]

In addition to the normal penchant for crossdressing during festivals like these, I assume the mourning attire for women was more elaborate?

And Horowski has just told me (upon the death of August II) that mourning attire for men was not surpassed by that of women when mourning a dead king (which I didn't think it was), but I'm still not sure about marital mourning: my admittedly 19th century impression is that the sexual double standard meant men were allowed to get over their wives a lot more easily than women their husbands, but the 18th century was a different time, so who knows. I remain curious!

Am enjoying Horowski so far. :)