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

Early Education

[felis]

I've been reading some primary sources related to Fritz' early education, including FW's 1718 teaching instructions. I suspect the part quoted most often from this is the paragraph about learning to love being a soldier, which brings "glory and honour like nothing else in the world", but I actually had to pause for a minute much earlier, because while "to please me and my wife [...] in everything he does" is basically a set phrase, it's also literally impossible to accomplish later on. Poor kids. Not to mention all the emphasis on needing to learn that he owes his parents genuine love, respect, and complete trust, and that there shouldn't be any fear or "subservient love and slavish affects". That worked out well. :/
Funny enough, this whole part was then followed by a provision stating that if Fritz was disobedient, they (= Finkenstein and Kalkstein) should always threaten him with the Queen's reaction, never with FW's ("müssen sie Ihn mit [der Königin] alle Zeit schrecken, mit Mir aber niemahlen").

Also interesting was the 'everything else once lots of religion, morals, and being a soldier are done with' list, explicitely directed at Duhan: German, French, Calculation, Maths, Artillery(?), Economics, European History*, History of the House of Brandenburg, Natural Law and Law of Nations, Geography.
Emphatically forbidden: "opera, comedies, and other worldy vanities", Latin ("I don't want anybody to even talk to me about this"), and in a separate document, written by Duhan and annotated by FW,
* he specifies that there's to be no Roman or Greek History, because those "aren't good for anything" ("dient zu gar nichts")

The two things that were new to me from the 1721 Wusterhausen timetable: the emphasis on doing everything speedily and the fact that it dictated Fritz' days not just by hours but down to the minute, which means that on sundays for example, he was allocated exactly seven minutes for breakfast in between "short prayer/washing/dressing" and "long prayer/religious education/..."

On the funnier side: on December 3rd, 1730, FW wrote letters to both Finkenstein and Kalkstein to inform them that he's very disappointed that he had been re-reading his 1718 instructions and realized that the two of them had done a bad job! And he'd be totally justified if he punished them! (Which he didn't apparently, only poor Duhan got sent into Memel exile on September 3rd already.)

Trivia: Finkenstein and Kalkstein accompanied their "fiery youngling", as the editor calls Fritz, on the 1728 Dresden visit. Said editor also says that if you look at the results, you wouldn't think that Finkenstein did a good job, but FW didn't punish him and Fritz later praised him, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also new to me: that Fritz managed to get Duhan out of exile and working for the Braunschweigs in 1733. Good on him. I've now started reading his correspondence with Duhan, which is very sweet so far.

__

In other news: Yesterday I learned that there were two different Schulenburgs involved in the Küstrin business, one heading the tribunal (Achaz v.S.), the other close advisor to FW (Adolph Friedrich v.S. according to wiki), who kept the occasional eye on Fritz in Küstrin, preached him morals and disapprovingly reported conversations about open marriages and sex to Grumbkow. Huh. [And hey, I'm definitely farther than Blanning in that regard, who indexes one Schulenberg for three different ones and still has the wrong one for both these cases. Volz on the other hand omitted the sex talk I see.]

Re: Early Education

[mildred_of_midgard]

Funny enough, this whole part was then followed by a provision stating that if Fritz was disobedient, they (= Finkenstein and Kalkstein) should always threaten him with the Queen's reaction, never with FW's

Yes indeed. We have discussed how FW, in many respects, didn't understand child psychology, like, at all. And--surprise!--none of his children turned out as he intended.

poor Duhan got sent into Memel exile on September 3rd already.

This is why, if I ever manage to write that fix-it fic I've been sporadically talking about for over a year now, Duhan's going to be the first one to join Fritz in exile while we wait on everyone else to show up over the course of the story.

Also new to me: that Fritz managed to get Duhan out of exile and working for the Braunschweigs in 1733

Yeah. As I recall, Fritz tried to get him back, but couldn't, so a position with the in-laws was the best he could do until he inherited. Then Duhan and Algarotti got nearly verbatim "come quickly!" one-liners on June 3. Thrifty reuser of words, as Selena likes to joke. (This was not the first time Fritz self-plagiarized; Voltaire and Suhm got nearly verbatim reports of Algarotti's visit to Rheinsberg in 1739.)

I've now started reading his correspondence with Duhan, which is very sweet so far.

Ooh, do share if you find anything good. This is the one thing I don't think any of us have read, only seen quoted in other sources. (The bit where Fritz says "They have cut deeply into the marble [with Katte and Küstrin], and that stays forever," has always stuck with me.)

disapprovingly reported conversations about open marriages

An opinion Fritz seems to have kept throughout his life! From his 1730s declared intention of having an open marriage with EC (whether he would have followed through in practice is an open question), to Catt recording disapprovingly in his diary Fritz's progressive opinion that if the husband cheats first, the wife is free to follow suit, to Fritz privately sympathizing with niece EC2 when future FW2 was cheating on her and she retaliated in kind, Fritz is partway to not having a double standard. (The man still has to cheat first, and if it's politically expedient to punish the woman, she still has to pay the price while her husband gets off scot-free, but it's a step in the right direction!)

And hey, I'm definitely farther than Blanning in that regard, who indexes one Schulenberg for three different ones and still has the wrong one for both these cases.

Ooh, good catch! My Kindle copy lacks an index altogether. Blanning does miss things from time to time, as we've found.

Re: Early Education

[cahn]

Funny enough, this whole part was then followed by a provision stating that if Fritz was disobedient, they (= Finkenstein and Kalkstein) should always threaten him with the Queen's reaction, never with FW's

Yes indeed. We have discussed how FW, in many respects, didn't understand child psychology, like, at all. And--surprise!--none of his children turned out as he intended.

Heh, this actually does seem to me that he kind of did understand the concept of good cop, bad cop? Only... it might have worked better if he had actually stuck to it and not in fact had all these over-the-top reactions that everyone was quite correctly scared of :P

Re: Early Education

[cahn]

Not to mention all the emphasis on needing to learn that he owes his parents genuine love, respect, and complete trust, and that there shouldn't be any fear or "subservient love and slavish affects".

Oh dear. FW just... is... very low on the self-awareness scale.

Funny enough, this whole part was then followed by a provision stating that if Fritz was disobedient, they (= Finkenstein and Kalkstein) should always threaten him with the Queen's reaction, never with FW's

Heh, that's interesting. And interesting too that this seems to have completely backfired.

he was allocated exactly seven minutes for breakfast in between "short prayer/washing/dressing" and "long prayer/religious education/..."

Wow! I... usually take longer than that to eat my bowl of cereal :P

FW wrote letters to both Finkenstein and Kalkstein to inform them that he's very disappointed that he had been re-reading his 1718 instructions and realized that the two of them had done a bad job! And he'd be totally justified if he punished them!

oh lol! Oh FW. Poor Finkenstein and Kalkstein, at least they didn't actually get punished.