cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 22 (or: Yuletide 2020 edition)

ETA: Whoops, I missed my cue -- this might as well be the next discussion post, I guess! :)

This is about the fic I didn't author (I have another reveals post for the fics I did author).

So my goal this Yuletide was NOT to write any historical fandom (because hard!) and just enjoy the excellent stuff that other people wrote. And... that sort of happened? I didn't end up authoring anything history-intensive? Buuuuut I ended up spending a lot more time than I did on any of my own fics working with

mildred_of_midgard on her fic, which she was worried about being able to pull off because she had had this completely insane idea to write a long casefic about Frederick the Great that every time I turned around had another twist put in :P :) She supplied me with what we called a "rough opal in matrix" bus pass casefic, and I cut away the matrix that remained and in some cases carved the opal -- that is to say, writing additional text for some of the scenes, what we liked to call "putting in feels," and in at least two cases entirely rewriting and/or restructuring the scene she'd written. She didn't always keep what I wrote (which we'd agreed upon in the beginning), but when she did (which was most of the time :) ) she then went in and rewrote/restructured what I put in to wordsmith (some of the words I gave her were really rough) and match her style, adding even more scenes -- that is, polishing it up and adding some gold and diamonds -- and voila, a beautiful pendant, I mean, story :)

I'm really proud of it and also it was really fun and also what I could handle this year, especially because mildred did all the parts I thought were hard and also wrote all the parts involving actual history or subtle AU before I was brought in so I didn't actually have to know historical stuff (though I guess I will never forget the battle of Leuthen now), and took full responsibility for how the whole thing turned out, so all I had to do was be like "Here, I'll write some rough feels for you for this scene!" The funny part was that I would often then write a paragraph justifying why I *had* to write the scene the way I did, and more likely than not mildred would be like, "yeah, I was sure you would do that, of course it should be written like that." (The most glaring example of this was where I inserted the Letter of Doom at the climax. I was worried there was some reason she didn't want it there, but she said, no, she just didn't have time to put it in herself and was just trusting me to do that :) ) She started jokingly calling me her "other self," to which I replied that it was with 1000% less angst and frustration -- as Frederick the Great's brother was his "other self" (which actually comes up in the fic) that he could trust to do all kinds of competent things, but they had a relationship that was, um, fraught? radioactive? Whereas this was just fun :)

Mildred did so much more than I did (we estimated a 90%/10% word ratio, not even counting the part where she wordsmithed a lot of my text) that I felt very uncomfortable being listed as a co-author, but hey, ~3000 words is a respectable Yuletide fic length :)

Yet They Grind Exceedingly Small (30384 words) by mildred_of_midgard
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Anna Amalie von Preußen & Wilhelmine von Preußen, Anna Amalie von Preußen & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen, Wilhelmine von Preußen & Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia
Characters: Anna Amalie von Preußen (1723-1787), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758), Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802), Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1732-1780), Wilhelmine von Hesse-Kassel (1726-1808), August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Alcmene 1 | Frederick the Great's Italian Greyhound, Voltaire (Writer), Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Family, Suicide, Alternate Universe - Dark, Siblings, Canon-Typical Violence, Mystery, Tide of History Challenge
Summary:

January 1758. Prince William is dead, some say of a broken heart. Frederick wants to absolve himself of blame for William's death. Henry schemes to end the Third Silesian War on his terms. Amalie and Wilhelmine team up to find out what really happened to their brother. Alcmene just wants to be told she's a good dog.

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Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

felis

Which I hadn't read yet, though the letters to Countess Camas were on my to do list for a while, so thank you for reading them!

By the way, I've now finished all there is at Trier and definitely enjoyed reading, so let me know if I should post some excerpts. There aren't that many letters in either correspondence and they don't overlap, i.e. Fritz' letters to her start a couple of years after her husband's death (1734-1740 vs. 1744-1765). What they have in common is that Fritz seems to have had a lot of respect and affection for both of them and wrote pretty openly about his state of mind (when he wasn't being cryptic, see above, although that's also being open about his state of mind, just not the particulars).

With him, Fritz talks about army matters (recruits and 1734 and plans), gifts that are sent back and forth (Fritz: "quickly break the glasses I sent you so I can send you more!" ;)), and he gives reports on what he's doing (not much) and on his ever volatile relationship with FW, especially when he's in Berlin. Oh, and there's some gossiping about two women writing letters to Voltaire and Voltaire possibly answering. (Fritz needs to know everything of course.)

His correspondence with her is basically all during wartime (save for a few letters in 1764/65), short reports on the state of the war and of himself, grief after Keyserlingk's death (which is how I got there in the first place), sending gifts, a couple of problem-solving matters concerning his mother, a girl that got pregnant at court, and the queen. All very affectionate ("ma chère/bonne maman" is the usual adress from the first letter on), occasionally self-deprecating, and - unlike her husband - she doesn't even get a "write me more often" letter. (At least not one that's published at Trier. Preuss definitely left out some of hers, no idea if he also skipped some of Fritz's.)

From:

selenak

Does he at least have a fairy servant? Magician or no, I feel like he would acquire one somehow.

Oh God. This totally explains his readers. Why one of them hightails it out of Prussia (Darget), one sells him out to France (de Prades), and one fictionalizes him in order to cope with him. Clearly, what Henri de Catt was trying to do was a complicated reality warping spell to make Fritz more bearabe (to him) by literally rewriting him. It just didn't work because of leftover Fredersdorf protection spells woven around Fritz.

From:

selenak

Oh, and there's some gossiping about two women writing letters to Voltaire and Voltaire possibly answering. (Fritz needs to know everything of course.)

LOL. Of course!

Preuss definitely left out some of hers, no idea if he also skipped some of Fritz's.)

Well, the only editions where I can contrast and compare is Fritz/Wilhelmine with Preuss versus Volz versus "So lange wir zu zweit sind", and Preuss definitely left out some (especially of Wilhelmine) which Volz has, so it wouldn't be surprising if he did the same with the Camas letters. As for excerpts, please do. I'm currently way too busy to read and review.

OH, and btw,

cahn: Countess Camas is the old lady depicted in Menzel's Flute Concert at Sanssouci painting, and the one one delivering the punchline in Lehndorff's Wartensleben the sugar horder write-up. Lehndorff also mentions her greeted and hugged by Fritz upon his return post 7 Years War (as opposed to poor EC). Her being called "Maman" is telling in itself.

From:

felis

Preuss actually quotes a couple of lines from her unpublished letters in the footnotes to explain what Fritz is talking about, instead of just including the letters themselves. Sigh.

Lehndorff also mentions her greeted and hugged by Fritz upon his return post 7 Years War

Yeah, I definitely had to think of this Lehndorff entry when Fritz repeatedly told her in his letters that he would do that, so she could "prepare for it". :D

Speaking of Lehndorff, I checked what he had to say on the occasion of her death in 1766 and it's very complimentary:

Countess Camas, the Queen's Oberhofmeisterin, died at the age of 80. This venerable woman should have lived centuries. I have never known a woman of such perfection; a dignified, cheerful, kind, and magnificent character; everything about her was perfect and remained so despite her age. Until the last moments of her life, she retained her freshness of mind. I will mourn her all my life and forever miss what I lost in her. The queen's court ought to mourn her forever, for all its splendor has died out with her. The king loved and respected her. She was the only lady His Majesty distinguished and yet she never got above herself, on the contrary, she knew how to assess everything according to its correct value.

And then there was the whole EC hits Wartensleben with a fan incident, where his and Countess Camas' reaction was to find a quiet spot for themselves and talk about Candide.

Will be back with some letter excerpts!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Will be back with some letter excerpts!

Yay! It's awesome that we have different people in the salon reading and reporting on different selections of the correspondence, so that no one person has to read all those volumes. :)

From:

cahn

I've finished! It's short and very Voltaire :) (I am glad I read this while reading the Orieux -- having a sense of Voltaire helps, I think.) Unfortunately no really good footnotes to share in the last half, although I will say that the footnotes make it clear that Voltaire continues to make fun of everyone whom he has any kind of conflict with. But some general thoughts/description, anyway:

As even my barbaric ahistorical self knew before reading it, the major idea of Candide is to rebut Leibniz's idea that this is the best of all possible worlds (which is the teaching of the absurd tutor Pangloss). He does this by having all kinds of terrible (and often hilarious) things happen to Candide, and Candide is also put in the path of many other characters (most interestingly the Old Lady and Martin the Manichee, the latter of whom I'll speak a bit more later) who also have horrible terrible (and again often hilarious, because this is Voltaire) things happen to them. And a couple of times Candide goes about trying to prove that someone in the world is happy -- but is always shown to be wrong. The idea is that this our most well-documented of all possible worlds (as John M. Ford once riffed on it, which I think is a hilariously brilliant way of putting it) could not possibly be the best of all possible worlds given that a) all these terrible things are happening, and b) they're happening to pretty much everyone; there is no one who is portrayed as happy in the book until the last chapter (with one notable exception which I will discuss).

Honestly, I felt like the strength of his arguments varied greatly. First, there seemed to be a lot of emphasis on Leibniz being disproved by terrible things happening to an individual person. I'd always conceived of "best of all possible worlds" to be a global condition rather than a local one: that is, one could certainly easily conceive of worlds where a particular person, or collection of people, had a better life than in this one, and my understanding of Leibniz's idea (which might be wrong?) is that it refers to everyone as a whole -- whatever that means (I haven't read Leibniz source; does he quantify happiness or utility of a world in a not-totally-undefined way?) -- that although at any particular moment a person or group of people might be unhappy, as a whole this is the best for humanity. Also that there might be constraints on what worlds are possible, e.g., if there hadn't been a horribly destructive earthquake at this time (one of the events in Candide, following real life), perhaps there would have been an even worse one. Or something. (I freely admit that I'm very influenced here by my religion having basically this as its theology, so I may be projecting the arguments.)

Though one could argue that if everyone is unhappy (which as becomes more and more clear in the book is pretty much the case), then it couldn't possibly be the best of all possible worlds just because this seems unlikely to be it in absolute terms. But this doesn't seem to be the primary argument Voltaire is making, as far as I could tell (though it could very well be a secondary argument). I do think that he's saying that it is pretty easy to postulate a universe where, e.g., soldiers didn't rape Cunegonde; that universe would clearly be better than the book-canon universe where she was.

Speaking of which, Voltaire also makes a more explicit argument from counterexample: that this is not the best of all possible worlds because he can construct a much better possible world that isn't this one. In the middle of the book Candide and his servant Cacambo somehow find themselves in the hidden-away and fabled land of El Dorado, which is a utopia where everyone is happy, there is lots of SCIENCE!, there is no war or crime or poverty (how this is attained isn't entirely clear, though Voltaire seems to tie it at least partially to the lack of organized religion), and no one cares about money, though their pebbles are precious stones and their mud is (literally) gold. Also, "Cacambo explained the king's witty sayings to Candide, and even when translated they still seemed witty. Of all the things which astonished Candide, this was not, in his eyes, the least astonishing." LOL. I wonder if this king writes poems that are actually good :PP

Candide and Cacambo decide to leave El Dorado in a stunningly stupid move (so Candide can find Cunegonde, whom he's been separated from) and take a bunch of gold and gems with them, which certainly make their life reasonably easier for the rest of the book, although Candide keeps losing money through various acts of stupidity (by him) and swindling (by others). Cacambo is dispatched to find Cunegonde, and Candide takes up with Martin the Manichee (whose name has come up before in salon). Manichaeism is the belief that there's evil as a tangible power in the world in addition to good/God (as opposed to the belief that an all-good God is the source of everything). Where Martin is concerned, this manifests in him being basically a raging pessimist, and whenever Candide goes around thinking that he's found a happy person or a happy way of life, Martin is like "I bet no." (He is always right.)

At the end of the book, Candide finally finds Cunegonde (whom he's been searching for during most of the book), only to find that, horrors, during the course of her misfortunes she has become ugly. But he marries her anyway, because he feels obligated to. He's also run out of money by this time, and he ends up on a farm with a bunch of random people from the book, some of whom have shown up again after some time (including Pangloss, who seems to have died twice during the book, but both times his death was greatly exaggerated). They're all quarreling and terribly unhappy!! Until... on the last page, they meet a man who is actually happy (the first non-ElDoradoean in the entire book!), because he cultivates his small garden with his family. In the last few paragraphs Candide and the other characters decide to also cultivate their garden, and become what, if Voltaire were in fandom, I'd call a nice little found family :) (Whether this is a lasting happiness is left to the reader, and it does seem rather unlikely, though I like to imagine that they're all so tired of adventures at this point that they do keep going like that.)

~~next step: gonna go watch the Bernstein musical~~

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Thank you so much! Can I just say again how lucky I feel to be in a fandom where people read me books. :D

My own reading rn consists of finishing the chapter of Horowski I'm on tonight, and the book by the end of the month. I was planning to reply to Fritz's mystery affliction today, but...I'm on a roll. :) In the meantime, just assume I'm following all salon developments eagerly, even when not replying.

From:

selenak

On the occasion of Heinrich's birthday, have a Lehndorff description of how he celebrated Heinrich turning 30 on 18th January 1756. Bear in mind that Lehndorff actually has fallen in love with Charles Hotham at this point and is making emigration plans. He's in as serious a state about leaving Heinrich as he'll ever get. The Duc de Nivernais was the unfortunate guy who had the job to negotiate the continuation of the France/Prussia Treaty when the news of the Prussia/England treaty were about to break.

18th January. Morning with the King. Then I present my congratulations to Prince Heinrich who receives me very amiably. I lunch in small company with the Duc de Nivernais with whose manners I am delighted. After the reception at the Queen's, I accompangny Prince Heinrich to Countess Monroy and introduce him as my cousin. The ruse works perfectly well since the Prince has put on a different outfit, we arrived in a hired carriage, and didn't fall out of character. Afterwards the Prince comes to me and I present him with a small party. At first, I let him enter a darkened room, where he finds the following words written at the wall with phosphorus: "The most worthy of mortals shall await the God's messenger here!"
A moment later, a man disguised as Mercury enters and gives him a letter from the assembly of gods, where it's said that the entire Olympus has been busy selecting presents worthy of him: Jupiter and his brothers had wanted to turn over the rulership of their realms to him, but after a vote Jupiter had decided that the Prince could not abandon his current position where he's crucial for the happiness of mankind and thus indispensable to it. Mars and Apollo had wanted to give him their courage and their mind, but Minerva then humiliated them by proving to them that the Prince surpasses them in both by far. At last, the noble assembly was much embarrassed at finding a worthy present, until Venus freed them through the suggestion to send him letters by his grandmother, Queen Sophie, whose worthy heir he was. At the same time, Mercury gave him letters from this Queen which I had received from Fräulein v. Fuchs. While the Prince reads them now, I change into evening wear and present my congratulations for the day. Then we dine in high spirits.

From:

selenak

Yay, you finished! Do tell when you get to the Bernstein musical, I've never seen it in its entirety, only in excerpts. Re: Leipniz' original argument and Voltaire's issue with it in context of the contemporary debate, this wiki article sums it up pretty well from what I recall - the various Émilie books I read in the past months also touched on it, but they're back in the Stabi library, so I can't look it up again.

Also, "Cacambo explained the king's witty sayings to Candide, and even when translated they still seemed witty. Of all the things which astonished Candide, this was not, in his eyes, the least astonishing." LOL. I wonder if this king writes poems that are actually good :PP

LOL. Maybe that's the true issue Fritz had with Candide, about which he once complained to Catt as I recall.

From:

selenak

Preuss actually quotes a couple of lines from her unpublished letters in the footnotes to explain what Fritz is talking about, instead of just including the letters themselves. Sigh.

Sigh indeed. Because of course Preuss thinks readers would only care about the Fritz part of the correspondence. :(

I definitely had to think of this Lehndorff entry when Fritz repeatedly told her in his letters that he would do that, so she could "prepare for it". :D

On the one hand, aw. On the other, if he could plan his gestures at the post war big welcoming reception in such detail, you'd think he'd been able to come up with a bland nice remark for EC as well since it was inevitable he'd see her there with all ears and eyes on them. I mean, I have a headcanon as to what went on inside him on that occasion, but that's mere speculation.

And yes, Lehndorff was definitely a fan, and I haven't found a biographer who had to say anything negative about her, either, both of the hero worshipping and the deconstructing type. Incidentally, does Fritz write "Maman" from the start, or does this come after SD's death? I've always wondered.

From:

felis

Awwww. ... that's all I have really. :D

(No, wait. The "Heinrich as Sophie's worthy heir" is rather interesting, and the fact that old family letters as a present are a thing. And I love the phosphorus detail. Not gonna go into the Gods' thoughts as foreshadowing, though. ;P)

From:

felis

I'd be interested in that headcanon! And I'll include the whole quote in context later, but I just wanted to clarify that the "plan" is from early 1762 and more teasing and wanting to see her again, not related to any official end of war receptions at that point.

re: "maman" - he uses that from the start! There's even one where he's talking about both of them - maman vs. mère - which was a tad confusing for a moment. My subjective impression was that he got even more affectionate and clingy after SD's death, but there's of course no way to tell if that wasn't just due to his general state of mind during the war, particularly because there aren't any letters between 1745 and november 1760.

From:

selenak

It says something about the standing Sophie (Charlotte) had in popular Prussian imagination half a century after her death,, doesn’t it? And/Or it could be that Heinrich was particularly interested in her and Lehndorff, as his friend, knew that. Much later historians credit her with bringing the intellectual/artistic streak into the Hohenzollern - of which Fritz and several of his siblings are an example - but this is just fifty years later, when some who knew her are still alive. (And if she hadn’t died while still in her 30s, even more people knowing her would be.)

Given that I read Barbara Beuys’ biography last year, I’m also curious as to what this says about how SC was seen by her son. Older biographers were sure he must have loathed her (female intellectual, wanted to turn Berlin into Athens, ~~made FW dance ballet~~), but Beuys quotes several highly affectionate letters between mother and son, and points out he went painting hunting for her in The Hague when he was there because he knew she’d like it. And of course FW was sentimental for a prince about family relationships (with his idea of living the middle class family life) and super respectful to his parents both. So how did he talk about her to his children, if he did at all?

Back to SC’s high standing in 1750s Prussia (that Lehndorff could find preserved letters from her is telling by itself): this is also why it so surprised me when reading in Hervey’s memoirs that Queen Caroline, who had been raised by her for some years, referred to her as a “shallow, silly woman”. Ouch. (Then again, Caroline is the woman who according to Hervey repeatedly described her oldest son as only worthy of death, the worst of the worst, etc., etc.)

Phosphorus: my own question is - did he get that out of the tapestry again afterwards or did his apartment still have that inscription when he got married a few years later?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Happy birthday, Heinrich!

So how did he talk about her to his children, if he did at all?

That's a really interesting question! You're right that he was super into the idea of a close-knit, loving family. And also she's been dead for decades, which makes it even easier to glorify her memory. Hmm! I guess Stratemann doesn't say anything on the matter? It's the kind of thing he'd be likely to report.

did he get that out of the tapestry again afterwards or did his apartment still have that inscription when he got married a few years later?

Ha! Good question. Man, these wives put up with a lot, didn't they?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Sigh indeed. Because of course Preuss thinks readers would only care about the Fritz part of the correspondence. :(

PREUSS!! I still haven't forgiven him for not including the letter from Suhm's brother to Fritz reporting Suhm's death in detail, but rather starting the published exchange with Fritz's response. I HOPE that letter is still out there in some archive.

This is like Richter going, "No one cares about Fredersdorf. These letters are just to highlight how great Fritz is!"

Grrr.

From:

selenak

Yes, Stratemann would be just the type to get misty-eyed about the King reminiscencing about his late mother, yet I don't recall him ever recording anything of the sort.

Man, these wives put up with a lot, didn't they?

They did indeed. Incidentally, it's of course also interesting and telling that Heinrich chooses to spend so much of his thirtieth birthday not with his boyfriend du jour (Kalckreuth, whom he had only just fallen for), or even with beloved brothers AW and Ferdinand, but with Lehndorff. (Spending the day with Mina is of course out of the question.)

From:

prinzsorgenfrei

If this is Lehndorff in his "I'm gonna leave"-mode, I wonder what he was capable of in full "Prince Heinrich is the center of the world"-mode :'D

I have a WIP for you for this special occasion! I would have liked to finish it, but I have to wait for the paint to dry for the finishing details (the transparent jabot-thing) and the important parts are done anyway and it's his birthday ... so without further ado: Heinrich's portrait for my wall!

images

and the corresponding tumblr post on my newly (re-)established art blog ^^

This thing was done in oil paint and I still like it SO much better than acrylic, it's incredible. I'm rather satisfied with the hair, not quite as satisfied with the skin tone (mixing colours from scratch is not my forte, so it turned out rather pink...). Overall it's not as bad as others, I'm definitely improving my painting skills :D They still don't match my drawing skills, so Wilhelmine will remain the prettiest person on my wall for quite a while, but the birthday boy has definitely surpassed poor Fredersdorf :'D

P.S.: I spotted

mildred_of_midgard 's Fanart post in Rheinsberg only fairly recently and I didn't get to thank you for that yet, so consider this my humble thanks to you :D I will get back to the list eventually! Possibly after repainting poor Fredersdorf. He's hanging right next to my computer and keeps looking at me with his sad, sad eyes.

From:

selenak

Lehndorff and I heartily approve of this beautiful painting of the worthiest of mortals. :) Seriously though, I continue to be in awe of how your paintings manage to capture something of the person. (And in this case do justice to the amazing punk wig, too!

If this is Lehndorff in his "I'm gonna leave"-mode, I wonder what he was capable of in full "Prince Heinrich is the center of the world"-mode :'D

Well, hiding from his carriage lest his heart would burst at the sight of Heinrich leaving Berlin, for starters, see the entries for the early May days of 1753. :) Lehndorff's diary entry for Heinrich's 1753 birthday went: January 18th: As this is the Prince's birthday, the court of the Queen Mother's is assembled in full. I am convinced that as many have good wishes for the prince as those wearing clothing on their skin. For to know him is to love him. I seek out my dear H., embrace him tenderly and await with impatience the next opportunity to be alone with him. (...) I feel something for him I haven't felt for anyone else. Sometimes I wish he was poor, so I could give him everything I have; at other times, I would be ready to do the most humble service if only that meant I could be always with him.

Author of "Prince Heinrich's development as a military leader" dissertation, in a disapproving footnote: "Eva Ziebura is totally misunderstanding the emo tone of the era when ascribing gayness to Heinrich or his entourage in her biography. Take Lehndorff. He was just that enthusiastic a courtier, okay!"

From:

mildred_of_midgard

<3 Lehndorff. Don't forget the whole height of pleasure!

Why am I not surprised it was a military history work. The cult of manly chaste Prussians continues, I see.

(Also, if I were a total homophobe, I could just about see saying Lehndorff as a courtier is just that taken with his prince. But what about Hotham? What other than romantic love would lead Lehndorff to think about leaving his prince and emigrating to another country with someone he just met but has been expressing passionate declarations of love for? This is not rational courtier behavior! This is not going to move him up the social ladder!)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Zomg! A painting of Heinrich for his birthday! I'm still so in awe of your talent, I will never stop saying that. Wow, that wig, lol. You clearly have the best-decorated apartment walls in all the land!

Lol at poor Fredersdorf. Practice makes perfect, I guess. I indeed endorse you fixing Fredersdorf so he can stop being sad, haha. :'D Poor Fredersdorf.

I spotted [personal profile] mildred_of_midgard 's Fanart post in Rheinsberg only fairly recently and I didn't get to thank you for that yet, so consider this my humble thanks to you :D

Consider the post my/our humble thanks to you! You create all the art; all I do is catalog it. <3

From:

selenak

The Polterabend is of course its own special entry. (And unsurprisingly only shows up in volume 2 despite being a December 1752 entry.)

Well, in fairness to military historians, there's also non-military Charlotte Pangels who was the first 20th century author I came across to insist that not just Fritz but also Heinrich were straight (and that Lehndorff was just an enthusiastic yenta shipping Heinrich with Bentinck while being in love with Amalie himself).

But what about Hotham? What other than romantic love would lead Lehndorff to think about leaving his prince and emigrating to another country with someone he just met but has been expressing passionate declarations of love for?

Job frustration and enthusiasm for the English way of life? I'm just guessing, btw, the dissertation writer didn't bother with Lehndorff more than in that footnote. But, you know, anyone who can describe the state of Heinrich's marriage in January 1759 with "it can't be denied that the spouses were no longer as close" has their perspective of human relationships so irrevocably fixed that it can't be helped....

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, here I am!

This is quite an interesting mystery. Many clues, and I'm not sure how to put them together.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw the date was EC, which I see you guys discussed. FW is on him about the succession, and he's going to have to move in with her soon. That said, on further reading, I join you in rejecting this hypothesis. Not only does it not fit the further clues he drops, but I don't think he would hesitate to confide in Wilhelmine. If he couldn't say, "I'm really afraid I'm going to have to start sleeping with her regularly or she's going to tell on me to Dad," he could at least bitch about having to move in with her, and vent that way. And he seems to have had no trouble saying "I can't sleep with my wife out of passion" to other people, so...I agree with

selenak that I don't think that's it.

That said, if anyone is planning on writing 1736 fanfic, fear of having to sleep with her regularly might be something preying on his mind. ;)

So, putting the clues I have together:

- It primarily concerns someone else.
- He's worried about one of his friends.
- He's afraid of being told not to worry so much.
- It doesn't come from the heart.

The last one doesn't seem to fit with the other three. I'm not sure what to make of that. Like you guys, my first reaction was Gröben and the STD! But Gröben's gambling debts make at least as much sense, maybe more. We know that Fritz was lending/giving money to his friends during these years, that was one reason he was pumping everyone he knew for money. (Or at least that's what he claimed, but I believe it.)

If it were just his own debts, he would say so and ask for money, but someone else's debts and general poor life choices might worry him.

Alternately, given what we know about Fritz's tendency to be very distressed when his loved ones are sick, it could be that. Now, normally he would just say so. But there are at least two people he might worry about that he couldn't necessarily say he was worried about.

- Duhan, who he's not supposed to be in contact with, and who's apparently struggling with depression in the 1730s.
- Fredersdorf, whom he's not supposed to have feelings for.

Now, he seems to have secure lines of communication with Wilhelmine, and she certainly respects the heck out of Duhan, so I *think* Fritz would have said he was worried about Duhan if that were it.

Could Fredersdorf be sick? And Fritz is worried about him (especially if Fritz is in Berlin and Fredersdorf had to stay in Ruppin, but even if not), and he can't admit it, because people are going to be like, "He's a valet. You can get another one." And he can't go, "HE'S MY ~~BOYFRIEND~~ LIFE PARTNER!"

You know, while a friend's gambling debts or another form of trouble a friend could have gotten into could be it, my current headcanon is Fredersdorf being seriously sick.

The only thing that doesn't fit is "it comes not from my heart but from another part," but I can't quite figure that line out at all.

Given that he's building Rheinsberg around the time, and that he has the vague "morality beyond my reach" line in his letter to Camas, Wilhelmine's guess might be it?

Okay, so, based on my reading of Fritz's correspondence, where this theme crops up over and over again, I'm 99% sure "morality" is referring to Stoicism here. He's afraid of being told to take a stiff upper lip stance, accept that bad things happen, and console himself with philosophy.

It goes with:

as regards my sorrow, I do not feel any decrease. I speak to myself, I reason, I moralize; but I feel that temperament still has the upper hand over reason. In the end, dear Camas, that of adversity is a hard school; I was, so to speak, born and brought up in it; it takes away a lot from the world, it shows the vanity of the objects it presents to us, their lack of solidity, and the inconstancy that the revolution of time brings with it.

And he's saying he loves his friends too much to be indifferent to their sorrows, so please don't tell him to be a good Stoic.

Which. Fritz. Is what he *always* says when he's worried or grieving someone, and then the moment someone *else* is worried or grieving, he writes a condolence letter going, "I know from experience that philosophy is basically useless at a time like this, but remember your philosophy!"

This is Fontane on Fritz when Henricus Minor (our term for AW's son Heinrich, to distinguish him from birthday boy Heinrich) dies:

Rittmeister von Wödtke brought the sad news to the king. The King was moved to a rare degree. One of the high officers comforted the king and urged him to calm himself. "He ["er" of direct address] is right," Fritz answered, "but he doesn't feel the pain that this loss has caused me." "Yes, Your Majesty, I feel it; he was the most promising of princes." The King shook his head and said, "He has the pain on his tongue, I have it here." And so saying, he laid his hand on his heart.

But when Duhan's father dies, this is one of Fritz's better condolence letters:

It is certain that the most severe tests, which we are obliged to pass in this world, are when we lose people forever who are dear to us. Constancy, steadfastness, and reason seem little help to us in these sad circumstances, and we only listen to our pain in these moments. I feel sorry for you with all my heart, seeing you in such a situation. [...] What is more common than being born and dying? However, we are always astonished at death, as if it were something foreign to us, and uncommon.

Console yourself, my dear Duhan, as best you can. Consider that there is a necessity which determines all events, and that it is impossible to fight what is resolved. We only make ourselves unhappy, without changing anything in our condition, and we spread bitterness over the happiest days of our life, the brevity of which should invite us not to grieve so much with unhappiness.

The struggle between reason and philosophy on the one hand, and compassion and grief on the other, tormented Fritz for his entire life. When Biche died, he wrote to Wilhelmine along the lines of, "I know a good philosopher wouldn't be this torn up over a dog, and I'm kind of embarrassed. But I don't want to be the kind of person who wouldn't be torn up over losing their favorite dog! Dogs are worthy of love and grief!! *sob*"

I worked this into my fic when he loses his dogs, and he's *trying* to be philosophical, and he can't fully.

The fact that this is consistently his discourse when it comes to death makes me think that in January 1736 someone is worryingly sick and he can't talk about it. Which makes me think of Fredersdorf. But I'm not ruling out other people's STDs or gambling debts either!

Confiding in Pöllnitz, really, Fritz? You know better.

Well, there's confiding and there's confiding. There's a decent chance Fritz, who is pretty cynical and suspicious by this age, is playing an intrigue game.

Oh, also, speaking of 1736 fanfic and the relationship between Fritz and FW being on the downswing in January 1736, by May 2, FW is all "There stands one who will avenge me!" (which is admittedly more motivated by politics than Fritz being on his good side). For all that the Rheinsberg years were the "happy" ones, the constant whiplash was a huge stressor on Fritz.

Edited Date: 2021-01-18 06:01 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So, Fritz and his contemporaries being as conversant with Plutarch as they were (I think Fritz read him in translation regularly), I feel pretty confident in saying that's where he got the quote and that he knew the anecdote in question. Whereas if someone today were to use it, I wouldn't necessarily assume they knew the source.

But given how widely applicable the moral of the story is, I don't think Fritz would have limited himself to applying it to marital bed situations. It could just as easily be gambling debts. Though I admit I did think of EC and the imminent move to Rheinsberg when I saw he'd made the allusion to the shoe pinching story!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Mostly caught up on existing threads, slowly chipping away at my backlog of things I ran across in my reading during Yuletide.

So we've talked about how the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar happened gradually in Europe, meaning different countries were on different calendars at the same time. Catholic countries switched first, than gradually Protestant, and eventually Eastern Orthodox (Russia not until the Russian Revolution). So different dates are given for different events depending on who's reporting them, and if your event took place around the beginning of the year, you'll have different years, and don't even get me started on having March 25 as the first day of your new year.

But I thought I was on top of this, confusing as it is, until I learned in November that Sweden decided to make things extra complicated! From Henrik Lunde's A Warrior Dynasty: The Rise and Decline of Sweden as a Military Superpower:

Sweden did not begin making the change to the Gregorian calendar until 1700 and, to make matters worse, it was done in a confusing and halting manner. The Swedish calendar was therefore out of step with both calendars for forty years. The common rule that you add 10 days [Mildred's comment: note that it's 10 days in the 17th century, 11 in the 18th, 12 in the 19th, and 13 in the 20th.] that to the Julian calendar to arrive at the Gregorian date is therefore not applicable in the case of Sweden during the period 1700–1740.

How have other authors handled this problem? Swedish sources and some English sources, such as Michael Roberts, use the Julian calendar. Most make no mention of it and one therefore doesn’t know which calendar they are using. Both Robert I. Frost and Ragnhild Hatton address this problem in their books. Frost tried to use the Gregorian calendar (New Style or NS) but admits that there probably are mistakes.

Hatton, in her note at the end of her preface, has this to say:

But in 1700 Sweden opted for a modified form of the Julian calendar in the hope of a gradual progress to the Gregorian one: they dropped leap-year of that year and thus remained ten days behind N.S. but at the same time one day ahead of O.S. [Old Style]. [end Hatton quote]

To make this confusing situation even more bewildering, in 1712 Karl XII decided that the system in place gave the Swedes the worst of both worlds and switched back to the Julian calendar.

While I have tried to use the Gregorian calendar wherever I knew which calendar was used by my source, there will no doubt be numerous inconsistencies since most of the sources did not specify which calendar they used. After spending a long time trying to figure out how to handle a problem that two eminent professors had so much difficulty with, I decided to change dates when I knew they needed to be changed but to leave them as found in whatever source I was using when I was not sure.

From:

prinzsorgenfrei

did he get that out of the tapestry again afterwards or did his apartment still have that inscription when he got married a few years later?

Uh... I was tempted. Have another silly comic.

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