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

Re: Silly comic from yours truly

[mildred_of_midgard]

Just look at avid teacup collector Ingersleben (honestly, why does this guy have 42 teacups, I have FOUR), FW did know mercy!

Wait, what about the teacups? Tell me more!

I think Ziebura mentions the minimum height for soldiers at some point, saying that regulations said you needed to have men of 165 cm or taller, "but those were hard to find, so they opted for shorter people too". That was for low ranking soldiers and not officers though, maybe they were more strict there.

Well, the context in Ziebura is Heinrich and/or Heinrich's officers being lax about this, to where Fritz noticed during an inspection and used it as a stick to beat Heinrich with. So, we know it happened, but we also know that you were taking a risk if you did. (Probably during the latter stages of the Seven Years' War, much less of a risk.)

But for the Gens d'armes regiment, hanging out in Berlin/Potsdam and personally inspected by FW, since this is his personal bodyguard regiment, and we know how he felt about heights :P, I'm going to go with "everyone is of at least minimum height."

One point about Fritz's height that I didn't consider: I keep seeing in secondary sources that EC was taller than he was. Horowski says, "You didn't have to be very tall for an 18th century woman to be taller than 162 cm (iirc)," but if I'm correct that that was Fritz later in life, then if she really was taller than he was when they got married, she had to have been fairly tall.

I did consider giving them a more realistic height difference (cause it ended up being... a lot) but then again, my joke wouldn't have worked out without drawing more difficult angles :'D

Oh, no, we're definitely glad you went with the silly approach for this! It was perfect.

Speaking of your art, when I was chatting with Royal Patron yesterday, telling him crazy stories like the setting trees on fire one, and he said, "You know, if they had a show about these people, it would be way more interesting than the Kardashians," and I said, "Let me tell you about this comic series called Keeping Up With the Hohenzollerns." :'-D

Tea Party at Ingersleben's

[prinzsorgenfrei]

Wait, what about the teacups? Tell me more!

It's part of the printed sources in the back of Kloosterhuis.
Ingersleben, like Keith, Katte, and Fritz himself, gets a list of stuff found in his rooms and among the things found are "Three and a half dozen teacups made of real porcelain" :'D For comparison: Lieutenant von Spaen, who gets a list of his own, too, owns "four teacups made of real porcelain" and Fritz has 11 in two different places. Spaen also owns four napkins while Ingersleben has t w e n t y.
Maybe Ingersleben is hosting tea parties for the whole regiment, who knows. If more than 42 people show up, he can still serve them tea in "six chocolate-cups made of real porcelain".

Average Prussian Lieutenant owns 10 porcelain cups factoid actually statistical error. Lieutenant Johann Ludwig von Ingersleben, who owns 48 porcelain cups minimum, is an outlier and should not have been counted.

Though I have to admit, my favourite weird thing from the lists is the point on Katte's (who doesn't get a full list but only a list of stuff that the people checking the place thought might have belonged to Fritz, too bad) that just says "a heart". I mean, I ASSUME it's a charm, but it really just says "a heart" and I think that's wonderfully ominous :'D

Re: Tea Party at Ingersleben's

[mildred_of_midgard]

Teacups Georg, that's HILARIOUS!

Thank you for reminding me that I need to keep cementing my German so I can read the Kloosterhuis book cover to cover, instead of just using it as a reference! I mean, I'm at the point now where I *could* read it, with occasional reference to Google for help, but I want to read it slowly for content and not miss anything, and for both those reasons, I should wait. Atm, I'm practicing on books that I can read quickly and afford to miss things.

it really just says "a heart" and I think that's wonderfully ominous :'D

<3

selenak, any historical context on what this heart may have been?

Re: Tea Party at Ingersleben's

[prinzsorgenfrei]

I should have been working on my roman history homework, but... teacups georg.



Back to homework now :'D
I don't think I've even read Kloosterhuis cover to cover... I vaguely recall there being a part saying something like "Fritz was acting like a bitch", but other than that I've mostly used it for some of the primary sources

Re: Tea Party at Ingersleben's

[mildred_of_midgard]

LOLOL! This is so great. And you're so fast! I bow to your artistic prowess. :D

Re: Tea Party at Ingersleben's

[cahn]

LOL FOREVER :D Teacups Georg looks so happy, too! (also I love this isn't even the full collection!)

And ditto what mildred said about being fast! It took you half the time to make that picture than it did for me to write a two-line comment on it, wow! (well, okay, I was doing other stuff too)

Re: Tea Party at Ingersleben's

[selenak]

This is wonderful and hilarious! See, I mainly recalled about Ingersleben that he got into trouble for chaperoning Fritz and poor Doris Ritter on their few strolls together, but was left off lightly with a slap on the wrist and FW saying not to do it again. (Unlike sixteen years old Doris, who got whipped in public six times and then put into hard laber prison, and no, I'll never let that go, because a) it's the best argument against the "FW was not being personally vindictive in November 1730, he was simply putting justice above all, more so than the judges" crowd, and b) Doris Ritter is in a tie with Katte as to who had it worst. On the one hand, she survived. On the other, he died knowing he loved and was loved, and even the people surrounding him during the execution made it clear they respected him. She was repeatedly tortured and shamed in public, had to do hard labor for three years and later never heard from Fritz again, unless you count her husband getting a carriage licence.)

But googling Ingersleben, I see he somehow managed to be liked by FW and Fritz (both before and after 1730) and Heinrich (since he ended up on the Rheinsberg Obelisk), with his luck finally running out in 1757 by first getting shot at Prague, then at Kolin and finally at Breslau. The wiki entry doesn't say anything about his teacup mania, so I suspect it was simply the 18th century craze for porcellain. I mean, almost the first thing every Prussian officer during the winter headquarters in Dresden in 1756/1757 seems to have done was go shopping for porcellain, and as late as 1760 Fritz when camping near Meissen called it the "Porcellain camp" and was busy filling boxes with the stuff (at a time when he had already his own Prussian porcellain manufacturer), so Ingersleben was in good company, albeit more succesful than most. :)

re: Kloosterhuis, I did a write-up of the book as a whole here.

Heart: sorry, mildred_of_midgard, I have no idea. Though the Sandman and fairy tale reader in me now wonders whether you could construct a fairy tale version whether the heart was from Fritz, which he gave to Katte to keep, and which ended up in the Prussian State's possession, hence the entirety of the rest of Fritz' life!

Re: Tea Party at Ingersleben's

[mildred_of_midgard]

Though the Sandman and fairy tale reader in me now wonders whether you could construct a fairy tale version whether the heart was from Fritz, which he gave to Katte to keep, and which ended up in the Prussian State's possession, hence the entirety of the rest of Fritz' life!

Ommgggg, yes, would read!

That reminds me of something I read in Horowski a few months ago, which was that Wartenberg, one of the "three Weh's" (the prominent and unpopular ministers during F1's time whose names all began with W, one of whom was Katte's Grandpa Wartensleben), when he fell into disgrace, wrote a pleading letter, and with it he included the "Bernsteinherz" (amber heart) that F1 had given him as thanks for his services. Horowski, slightly paraphrased: The disillusioned monarch put it in the archives, where someone turned it up in 1841 and recorded, 'the pressure of the files had probably broken the heart.' The metaphorical sense was an equally good description of what had happened.

So I like your fairy tale even more!

</3 has never been more appropriate.

Re: Silly comic from yours truly

[prinzsorgenfrei]

if she really was taller than he was when they got married, she had to have been fairly tall.

Ah dangit, yet another (dumb) thing one could possibly dislike her for :'D Poor EC.
I read something similar about MT once (I think they said something about her being 178cm tall, which is... quite something), but I can't find the article anymore, so I am inclined to not believe that. Although it would certainly make the possible "Fritz meets MT's ghost" picture quite funny.

Speaking of your art, when I was chatting with Royal Patron yesterday, telling him crazy stories like the setting trees on fire one, and he said, "You know, if they had a show about these people, it would be way more interesting than the Kardashians," and I said, "Let me tell you about this comic series called Keeping Up With the Hohenzollerns." :'-D

KUWTH is a concept I'd still be totally down for :'D Who needs the 50th documentary when you can have this. I'd hire whoever chooses the music for german wife swap, it would be hilarious.

Re: Silly comic from yours truly

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ah dangit, yet another (dumb) thing one could possibly dislike her for :'D Poor EC.

That is exactly the context in which I keep seeing it (in modern histories, I reiterate): Fritz met her, saw how tall she was, and noped right out of that. :P No idea what the historical basis for this may be.

I think they said something about her being 178cm tall, which is... quite something

That's how tall my wife is. If she wore a cuirass, I would have a lot of bloody noses!

Re: Silly comic from yours truly

[felis]

if she really was taller than he was when they got married

She's certainly depicted as such in this 1733 engraving, although I'm not quite sure what kind of shoes she might have been wearing...

/love both the comic and the height discussions btw :D

Re: Silly comic from yours truly

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oof. If he really is as tall as I'm guessing, she must either be wearing shoes or a giant among women! (Or the engraving is not totally accurate.)

/love both the comic and the height discussions btw :D

And the teacups!

Re: Silly comic from yours truly

[selenak]

Well, presumably she was wearing shoes with heels at her wedding, but then...so was he. Male shoes with heels were still being all the fashion, and if he was dressed as depicted, he does look as if he was wearing Louis XIV style shoes.

BTW, is that FW with AW and Heinrich in the foreground on the male side? As we only see him in profile, there's no way of telling whether he looks realistically punched. :)