cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20

As a creator who has lost work, I share your frustration, but I am full of awe at what you've accomplished even in this medium!

Be aware that you're only encouraging us to send you more and more requests. :D

And it will be put up in the apartment! Decoration staples of any student's home: Vaguely off-looking portraits of fritzian boyfriends :'D

The best possible decorative theme!

(Your icon!! *my heart*)

Speaking of losing work, i accidentally deleted the post :'D I'll just put the tumblr link here and pretend nothing happened.

All requests are going on the list! I just never know when I'll get around to drawing them because I am a rather lazy artist. I was struck by creativity today though, so I have about ten new Fritz-related sketches that I'd like to refine. They're portraits of Fritz and some of the people in his life, each with some sort of attribute/attempt at symbolism. So far there are doodles of Katte, Fredersdorf, Peter Keith (whom i included because it could be fun, i hope i can somehow unearth a better portrait than the picture on wikipedia), Caesarion, Algarotti, Voltaire, Heinrich, Wilhelmine and two of Fritz, one young and one old. I am now trying to figure out which kind of attribute I could give to AW and whether I should include The Parents or not. Wilhelmine is by far the prettiest up until now, as she would have wanted :'D

Peter Keith (whom i included because it could be fun, i hope i can somehow unearth a better portrait than the picture on wikipedia)

AAAH, sorry, I've been meaning to warn you away from trusting this one! Yes, Wikipedia and Alamy assign it to Peter Keith, but my further googling assigns it to James Francis Edward Keith. I'm inclined to think James is right, because it matches every other painting of him, *and* because he's wearing the star and the ribbon of the Order of the Black Eagle, which James was awarded, and to my knowledge, Peter was not. Peter had a very undistinguished career.

Here it is captioned as James Keith.

Here are some other portraits that it strongly resembles:

* This one.

* This other one.

* This one in color.

* The chin(s) on this statue.

* The ribbon on the same statue.

Can you tell I researched the question of whether there exists a portrait of Peter Keith very hard in the last year? :D He's one of my low-key faves.

I didn't find any, alas, but I'm still hoping one turns up. The larger our fandom grows, the better our chances!

(The only thing I've turned up wrt Peter paintings is the one that FW had commissioned so he could be hanged in effigy, and which was paid for by selling off the belongings Peter had left behind in his quarters in Wesel. Somehow I doubt that one was preserved. :P)

So far there are doodles of Katte, Fredersdorf, Peter Keith (whom i included because it could be fun, i hope i can somehow unearth a better portrait than the picture on wikipedia), Caesarion, Algarotti, Voltaire, Heinrich, Wilhelmine and two of Fritz, one young and one old.

You are AWESOME. I bow to your artistic prolificacy!

whether I should include The Parents or not

Only if I can hang FW's in effigy. :P

*massive cheers for your artistic endeavors*

Edited 2020-10-24 19:38 (UTC)

I actually thought the same thing when I saw a portrait of James, glad to see that I wasn't just being paranoid :'D At least he's not a Reuß... I'll just make something up. Vaguely 19-year-old-looking guy in a powdered wig, it will be fiiiine.

It would be interesting to know where the hanging-painting ended up. I mean, does one just chuck it in the trash after taking it from the gallows? Does it have to be buried? :'D I have a book about executions somewhere (it's technically specific to Saxony, but overall information could be similar), maybe I should check what it says about hanging in effigy.

It would be interesting to know where the hanging-painting ended up. I mean, does one just chuck it in the trash after taking it from the gallows? Does it have to be buried? :'D

I was wondering the same thing! Well, burying didn't occur to me, but burning did.

I have a book about executions somewhere (it's technically specific to Saxony, but overall information could be similar), maybe I should check what it says about hanging in effigy.

Ooh, please do!

I rise from the dead after my last exam of the summer semester! Wiiith the winter semester starting next week, oh hell :'D

I checked the book I have, but it did not say anything about effigy-punishments. I did some google searching after that and found this paper that someone wrote on the topic, but since it apparently covers every kind of effigy-punishment from antiquity to the 19th century, I'm not sure the specific question would be answered.

I also tried the Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte which lists a variety of effigy-related punishments, one of which being what I assume was done in Peter's case. It does not list what was done with the portraits, but it could be kind of interesting anyway. Awkward translation of law-German coming in:

"7. Name notice, deserter's sheet, painted bust on high war gallows was known in military criminal law from the 17th to the 19th century, not as a replacement for forfeited corporal punishments of the deserter but as a deterring honor punishment comparable to edictal citation"

The Original:
"7. Namensanschlag, Deserteursblech, gemaltes Brustbild am hohen Kriegsgalgen kannte das Militärstrafrecht vom 17. bis ins 19. Jh., jedoch nicht als Ersatz für verwirkte Leibesstrafen des Fahnenflüchtigen, sondern als abschreckende Ehrenstrafe vergleichbar der → Ediktalzitation"

My search continues. I really want to know this now :'D

I hope we turn it up! Good finds so far. Perhaps Detective

gambitten can help?

I'll just make something up. Vaguely 19-year-old-looking guy in a powdered wig, it will be fiiiine.

That's probably exactly what the commissioned painter did!

Actually, wait, wait, that reminds me. Peter's younger brother was stationed in Wesel a few months before the execution-in-effigy. I wonder if he got used as a model for general family resemblance, or at least had to serve as a consultant for what his brother looked like, before attending his execution.

D-:

Btw, that reminds me, are you familiar with the descriptions of Peter's appearance? From

rheinsberg:

Lehndorff...has this to say about his appearance: "He had an attractive face and an honest-looking physiognomy, such that you didn't notice his somewhat cross-eyed gaze, unlike in most cases of squints."

Friedrich Wilhelm, trying to get Peter arrested in London after the escape, gives out this description of the fugitive: "medium height, straight, thin, brown, a little pallid, and squint-eyed" (Preuss, vol 2 appendix, p. 157; translation Lavisse, p. 239).

Eulogy: He was above middle height [but middle height by FW's standards, remember :P], and his eyes were peculiar, but once you got used to it, it wasn't bothersome.

Btw, that reminds me, are you familiar with the descriptions of Peter's appearance?

!!!
I was not! I vaguely recall reading the Lehndorff one in a discussion post, but the others are new (and very practical!). I really like that they mention the height :D For some reason it's really interesting to me how tall historical people were.

Also that eulogy is quite something :'D "We're here to mourn our dear friend Peter Keith. He had a face you had to get used to, but it was fine after a while"

Only if I can hang FW's in effigy. :P

The only reason to draw FW (besides making fun of him in weird comics) :P
I am also unsure as to which attributes I could even use for the parents. I try to have about two per person (because it's fun and i am pretentious) and the only things i can think of for FW are... idk, a gun and jug of beer. Which is more than what I can think of for SD because the concept of her... specific kind of motherly love is difficult to capture in an object :'D
So I probably won't draw them. I don't like them enough to put too much energy into them :'D

AW would deserve a picture though, i'll have to think of something for him. I need something good for Caesarion too, so far he's only got a menuett-like pose and that's a little too boring. Wilhelmine has her lute and some Artemis/Diana symbolism with young Fritz having his flute and some Apollo symbolism because connecting them felt right. I'm thinking Heinrich will get half a crown (edgy, I know, but the other thing my friend suggested was "a spade and a butt plug") and some freemason imagery? Maybe some Neoclassicism? I could thematically connect him to AW somehow, that could be cool.
... somehow this all sounds vaguely like catholic saint depictions.

I'm sorry for rambling about this, I just need to get my ideas out somehow ^^'

hich is more than what I can think of for SD because the concept of her... specific kind of motherly love is difficult to capture in an object :'D

See, I hear you on not wanting to draw them, but one idea that immediately came to mind when I read this sentence was her pinning English flaggs on Wilhelmine and Fritz. :)

AW and Heinrich: well, the most visual of objects connecting them is the Obelisk.:(

Also the bust of AW in the Rheinsberg park which strikes me as probably being more life like than the stylized portraits. And of course there's that striking passage in a 1799 letter from Heinrich to Ferdinand, when he sets up temporary quarters at Wusterhausen (the first time since the ill fated family reunion one Hohenzollern is there): I have preserved as much of the old days as I could. I believe I can forget here what happened in the last twelve years, and I don't want to think of what will happen in the fuiture. I have put up the portrait of our mother next to my bed, and the portrait of our brother Wilhelm at the opposite wall where I can see it always. I indulge in illusions about the past and push away the present. One can't burden the mind too much with matters one cannot change.

(As we've said elsewhere - if Katte's death and its circumstances was the thing Fritz could never really get over with, AW's death and its circumstances was this for Heinrich. At the same time, forgetting the "the last twelve years" in the March of 1799 just happens to be the time during which Fritz is dead. It's as close as Heinrich ever got to admitting he misses the bane of his life.)

An object/circumstance for living AW and Heinrich: how do you feel about illustratiing rl crackfic? I.e. the Lehndorff reported event where AW, Heinrich, Heinrich's boyfriend Reisewitz, Fritz' pal Bielfeld (who also taught Heinrich and Ferdinand after FW's death) and Lehndorff himself are having a picknick at the Tiergarten, AW puts fire on a fir tree to see what happens before realising this is a terrible idea (he lucked out in that the fire didn't spread far), and everyone reacts as follows:

- Bielfeld: runs away
- Reisewitz: panicks and dumps the water meant to extinguish the flames on the tree on Heinrich
- AW: How am I going to explain this?
- Heinrich: rescues everyone else
- Lehndorff: "I kept my cool and observed"

(Reisewitz: yes, you "observed" soaked to his skin Heinrich, alright.)

If this is too complicated, I would venture two scenarios for AW as a child illustrating his character. One is when he (successfully) asks FW to pardon a Potsdam Giant who deserted when he was just four years old (because SD and various other courtiers evidently treated this as a test case to see how much FW's favourite kid could get from him; this starts AW's near life long role as family mediator), and the other we discovered just recently, as reported by Braunschweig envoy Stratemann. Here's eight years old AW after Katte's death:

It's also told that the second royal prince the other day during drilling grew exhausted when an officer was supposed to teach him all the right grips, and hadn't wanted to continue; then the King came to him, he told him, if you don't want to drill anymore, you'll have to return your sword, to which the Prince replied: Dear Papa! I want to return it at once! and the King answered: Wilhelm! Then you can't be an officer! To which the Prince supposedly returned, I don't care for it, my dear Papa orders his officers' heads to be cut off.
What then happened should rather be covered with silence; by now the King suspects someone has been talking in front of the Prince with such speeches, and he's approached him somewhat harshly to confess to this; but (AW) did not provide anyone's name; but still, the Councillor Lindener as the likely informant has been in hot waters because of this.

I could imagine a visualization of this by little AW returning his toy sword to Dad. Which also works as a long term symbolism; AW's non-fulfillment of the military hero role which is the only one Prussian princes were taught to regard as viable would break him, after all. Speaking of breaking - broken sword for AW in general? That's also one of the things done at casheerings (though not at AW's as far as I know), so people might get the symbolism.

Mythology wise, the fact that Fritz and Heinrich were both charmed and latching on to the ridiculous "Remus doesn't get killed by Romulus, he escapes and lives out a long life at Rheinsberg where he's buried on an island in the Gienicker See" has inspired me to connect the Romulus and Remus symbolism to them in two ways. Either way, Fritz is Romulus. But you can both code AW as Remus - the brother killed by his brother, with the murder being one key steop on the brother becoming supreme ruler of the newly founded Rome; but Romulus will die alone and without children, and in one version of the story hated by his people, in the other taken by the gods to be among them - or you can code Heinrich as Remus, the Rheinsberg version - the brother who doesn't die, fratricide is avoided, he may never become King, but he lives out his long life in Rheinsberg.

(The gallery at Sanssouci does have a Romulus and Remus painting, but it shows the baby twins being found, not the fratricide. Still, the story evidently stuck with Fritz and kept meaning something to him beyond an anecdote to amuse his correspondants with when he lived at "Remusberg".)

For Heinrich and Fritz, there's also, I think, (slightly distorted) mirror imagery that might work, as they are each other's might-have-beens and other selves.

See, I hear you on not wanting to draw them, but one idea that immediately came to mind when I read this sentence was her pinning English flaggs on Wilhelmine and Fritz. :)

Hee. The two things that came to mind for attributes for her were the English flag and a crown.

AW and Heinrich: well, the most visual of objects connecting them is the Obelisk.:(

Me: What about the bu-

Also the bust of AW in the Rheinsberg park

:)

I could imagine a visualization of this by little AW returning his toy sword to Dad.

OMG I want grieving and extremely not reconciled Hans Heinrich at the big revue laying his sword down before FW!! There are paintings of Hans Heinrich, this is doable! (I mean, by someone with artistic talent, not me. :P)

Context:

Stratemann: Berlin, June 31st 1731: Supposedly General Lieutenant v. Katte after leading his regiment at the revue before the King got off his horse and put his sword at the King's feet, and asked again for his demission, whereupon his majesty showed itself very much displeased. Rumor even has it (Hans Heinrich) got arrested as a consequence.

selenak: Now, obviously the arrest didn't happen - I don't think biographers would have overlooked that! -, but this is also the first time I heard about Hans Heinrich making this gesture. Since the revue was a really big public spectacle (this is also why Fritz was pissed off when Heinrich didn't salute him properly in the after the 7 Years War, remember), such a gesture would have been quite something. And does argue it's FW Hans Heinrich is struggling for forgive. Not to mention that it gives the lie to the "Hans Heinrich totally on board with FW executing his son!" version. All the more so since Stratemann is really the most FW friendly envoy ever.

WANT.

That's also one of the things done at casheerings (though not at AW's as far as I know)

Fritz: See? Our family is so harmonious!

AW puts fire on a fir tree to see what happens before realising this is a terrible idea

Sounds complicated, but I would love it! Would also love it as fic if someone were inspired, just saying.

No, no worries! Watch us ramble about our fic brainstorming all the time. This is the place to do it.

So I probably won't draw them. I don't like them enough to put too much energy into them :'D

Don't blame you, would only hang them in effigy anyway!

... somehow this all sounds vaguely like catholic saint depictions.

It does! And Catholic saint attributes are actually exactly what got me into art history (v. v. casually).

Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20

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