Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20
Oct. 19th, 2020 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnYuletide 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!)
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!)
Re: Biche Painting
Date: 2020-10-29 07:39 pm (UTC)Turns out it was mentioned in this dog letter article I turned up at the very beginning of our salon, over a year ago.
Biche was also painted in her own right [i.e. not just on the Sanssouci murals] by Antoine Pesne, with her collar, clearly identifying her as a royal dog, owned by ‘the Great’ Frederick.
It does look like Solange wir zu zweit sind is their source for at least some of the claims in the article, so probably this one as well. I note that they use one of the posthumous bios with the "Alcmene shared his vault" anecdote that we are highly suspicious of and think was probably a misunderstanding (actually, now that I remember, this article is where I got that idea and put it in my first posted Fritzian fic--so yeah, I read this article a *long* time ago.)
Frederick had Biche painted similarly, into the lap of the goddess Diana, in Sanssouci’s intimate Concert Room. Biche in fact, died in the Concert Room
Aww! If that's true, I didn't know she'd died there. :(
Thank you for sharing this picture, and also the Dresden letter!
Re: Biche Painting
Date: 2020-10-31 09:29 pm (UTC)the "Alcmene shared his vault" anecdote that we are highly suspicious of and think was probably a misunderstanding
I found an article in "Communications from the Society for the History of Potsdam" (1864), Die Gruft auf Sanssouci (The Vault at Sanssouci), which talks about the two 19th century cave-ins. It says the first one happened between 1830 and 1840, the second one January 24th, 1860, which I'm side-eyeing, given how very convenient that date is. (On the other hand, maybe there were more people running around on that day specifically and that's why the cave-in happened? Who knows.)
Anyway, the author - A. Bethge, secretary of the garden administration - says he used the 1860 cave-in to go inside the vault! There was only a small hole so it was pretty dark, but he says he found a small pile of calcified bones that he thinks must have belonged to the one dog who got buried in there. And he took a piece of these bones as a souvenir. (He gives a source for his dog information, Manger, from 1789, who does indeed have a half-sentence saying that the favourite dogs were buried next to and the last one inside the vault, but there's no mention of his source for that and no name for the dog. Wiki tells me that Manger was an architect and construction official/building director, who seems to have worked on the New Palais, and actually got imprisoned shortly before Fritz' death for bad management and possible embezzlement, but then rehabilitated and promoted by FWII. Wiki also says that he kept a lot of building related records that Fritz told him to destroy.)
Bethge also cites the report of a guard who was there when the first cave-in happened, and who said that he saw a wooden box with a dog skeleton in the vault. Also, both cave-ins were due to rotting beams, and the vault itself was very simple, with whitewashed brick walls.
Make of that what you will. :)
(Btw, he has Biche dying in the concert room as well, but I think he got that from Preuss, which is the source he gives for all the (alive) dog related anecdotes he includes. And he's got the wrong death date for Thysbe (1770 instead of 1775), unless Fritz had two of... oh, wait, he did. Fritz, using the same name for multiple dogs? Really not helpful for research purposes.)
Alcmene and the vault
Date: 2020-10-31 10:02 pm (UTC)Ooooohh! See, we were thinking there was no report of dog bones in 1991, but we didn't know about the earlier cave-ins! Well, this is sounding more and more likely.
He gives a source for his dog information, Manger, from 1789, who does indeed have a half-sentence saying that the favourite dogs were buried next to and the last one inside the vault, but there's no mention of his source for that and no name for the dog.
Okay, this makes it even more likely, as we've researched Manger before, and he would be in a position to--well, I wouldn't say he's 100% in a position to know personally, but if he says so, *and* there were two cave-in attestations, *and* Büsching says so (and names Alcmene)...
I think Alcmene was actually buried with Fritz and my fic was historically accurate in that respect! Wooot!
Oh, and that's interesting if he says the *last* favorite was buried inside the vault. That would mean it wasn't the Seven Years' War Alcmene who died in 1763, as I'd thought, but the 1770s and 1780s Alcmene.
Actually, wait, since the Alcmene of the vault was supposed to have died while Fritz was away on the Silesian maneuvers, and the Alcmene of the Seven Years' War was dying in October 1763, when Fritz was in Potsdam, of course it was the other Alcmene. I should have put two and two together.
And he's got the wrong death date for Thysbe (1770 instead of 1775), unless Fritz had two of... oh, wait, he did. Fritz, using the same name for multiple dogs?
Yep, he definitely did! Two Alcmenes as well, as indicated above. And two Dianes.
The names on the tombstones according to a 19th century visitor: Alcmene, Thisbe, Diane, Phillis, Thisbe, Alcmene, Biche, Diane, Pax, Superbe, Amourette.
Really not helpful for research purposes.
Totally convenient for the fic-writer, though, who can cheerfully reuse names. :D
ETA: Oh, and he must have had more than one Superbe, at least if the reports that the dog that was in the room when he died (his final order was for a servant to cover her up, as IGs have low body fat and get cold easily, and she was shivering) was named Superbe are to be believed.
Re: Alcmene and the vault
Date: 2020-11-01 08:47 am (UTC)Anyway, if the bones were there in 1860 but calcified, I'm assuming they were entirely gone by 1991.
Folichon would like to point out he was the one and only Folichon in Wilhelmine's life, and she never used the name again. She also built him a tomb of his own, to wit:
But he would have been happy to share it with Biche!
Re: Alcmene and the vault
Date: 2020-11-01 02:55 pm (UTC)Secondly, while I don't mind someone taking one of Alcmene II's bones as a souvenir as much as I mind people doing the same to Katte's skeleton, I have to day, 19th century tourists really have no shame in that regard, do they?
What I was thinking! Though 18th century tourists had no shame when it came to looting works of art and archaeological remains: I enjoyed Wilhelmine cozying up to the Pope's people so they would look the other way while she illegally removed piece after piece from Italy. ;)
Anyway, if the bones were there in 1860 but calcified
I'm wondering what it means that they were calcified: I thought bones *were* calcified, like, by definition?
If he means they were already starting to visibly break up, then yeah, they were probably gone 130 years later.
Re: Alcmene and the vault
Date: 2020-11-02 12:08 am (UTC)Re: Alcmene and the vault
Date: 2020-11-02 06:45 am (UTC)