A couple brief notes from my occasional glances at Asprey, who inundates you with military, political, and economic detail for several hundred pages and doesn't give you half as much confidence as Horowski does that his details can be trusted, and whose writing style is pretty damn dry, so I'm selectively skimming rather than reading...
1) Fritz "softened the blow" of "Madame has grown plump" with a gift of five thousand thalers. Do we know of any evidence backing this? Is it in Lehndorff?
2) The Heinrich/Mina marriage fell apart shortly after the 7 Years' War because Heinrich "was a cold fish and had been cuckolded by his adjutant."
There seems to be this whole tradition called "Lehndorff who? I didn't read Lehndorff" about Heinrich. *facepalm*
3) Per Asprey, the reason a sympathetic Fritz finally came down on EC2's affairs was because:
Princes Henry and Ferdinand -- second and third in line to the throne -- informed the king that they would never allow a bastard to take away their legitimate rights to succession. The king was forced to arrange a divorce.
1) I just looked it up: Lehndorff does mention it, a few entries after the "Madame has grown more corpulent" one, but in the context of Fritz making presents to all the women in his family (i.e. also the ones he hasn't insulted): The King dines with the Princess Amalie and presents her with 4000 Taler and a golden box decorated with diamonds. To the Queen, he's sending 5000 Taler, to the Princess of Prussia (Louise) a box decorated with diamonds, to the Princess (Mina) a watch of great beauty with diamonds which is worth 5000 Taler as well, to Princess Ferdinand (F's wife)a diamond ring worth 3000 Taler and to young Princess Wilhelmine (AW's and Louise's daughter) a precious textile.
This to me does not sound like the 5000 for EC were meant as an apology, and it's of course telling Amalie gets the shared meal and the gift, and EC's money does not exceed the worth of what everyone else is getting.
2.) Poor Mina. So unlike Fritz, Asprey believes Kalckreuth's kneefall/hand clutching gesture signals an affair, does he?
3.) There's an indirect evidence in the fourth Lehndorff volume. Remember when Heinrich returns from his second Russia trip, he tells Lehndorff about his time there, including the somewhat chilling tale of him being ruthlessly practical when Grand Duke Paul's wife dies in agony of childbirth by arranging a second marriage? Well, this first unfortunate daughter-in-law of Catherine's had been related to the Hohenzollern as well, for her sister was future FW2's second wife (another Louise). (Both were princesses of Hesse-Darmstadt, which Mina was as well, which might be of significance.) Well, Heinrich also tells Lehndorff that after the death of the poor woman, he got handed over her correspondence to take with him home to Prussia, including the letters from Mrs. Future FW2. Apparently he doesn't believe in discretion for he reads them, and finds out the future Queen of Prussia is pretty negative about himself (i.e. Heinrich), who says to Lehndorff, go figure, she owes her marriage to me, ah well, such is life. "She owes her marriage to me" could be an allusion to him and Ferdinand making that gesture. Or it could be a reference to him suggesting the Hesse-Darmstadt girl as future FW2's next wife, who knows. (The mother of both Mrs. Grand Duke and Mrs. FW2 was the one who wrote to Amalie to find out whether Amalie had any advice of how to survive at court for her daughter the bride, triggering Amalie's "we're all awful here, let me tell you how, except for Louise, she's an angel" reply.)
What makes me hesitate a bit re: Asprey's interpretation is that I don't think Fritz would have avoided blaming Heinrich (and Ferdinand) for this situation if they actually had put such an ultimatum to him, and I don't recall any fuming Fritz letters on that note. And of course, if both Heinrich and Ferdinand knew Elisabeth had affairs to match future FW2's, a lot of other people knew as well, since Heinrich was hardly hanging out with the young ones enough to be finely tuned to discreet gossip.
This to me does not sound like the 5000 for EC were meant as an apology, and it's of course telling Amalie gets the shared meal and the gift, and EC's money does not exceed the worth of what everyone else is getting.
I thought it might be something like that. Thanks for looking it up!
So unlike Fritz, Asprey believes Kalckreuth's kneefall/hand clutching gesture signals an affair, does he?
Well, the IMPORTANT thing is that Heinrich is a cold fish, so it can't POSSIBLY be that HE just broke up with his adjutant. :P
Since he's writing in the 1980s, before Ziebura, I can forgive the Mina affair, but Lehndorff! (Asprey also straightforwardly presents Fritz as gay (or bi, I forget), so homophobia on his part doesn't seem to account for Heinrich not being gay. Too much relying on the wrong sources, I guess.)
"She owes her marriage to me" could be an allusion to him and Ferdinand making that gesture. Or it could be a reference to him suggesting the Hesse-Darmstadt girl as future FW2's next wife, who knows.
Interesting!
I don't think Fritz would have avoided blaming Heinrich (and Ferdinand) for this situation if they actually had put such an ultimatum to him, and I don't recall any fuming Fritz letters on that note.
Well, the IMPORTANT thing is that Heinrich is a cold fish, so it can't POSSIBLY be that HE just broke up with his adjutant. :P
Aha, we're talking Human Automaton Heinrich again, as in Kepler's novel and Koser's book. By now, I really wonder whether this characterisation starts with Koser (remember, in that 7 Years War era paragraph of how Heinrich isn't like Fritz and Wilhelmine in that he's cold and not passionate), and since Koser otherwise is such a great source, a lot of people adapted it? Still, given how open the gossip about Heinrich's favourites was - and how far spread not just in Prussia but in Europe, remember, several people who met Heinrich in Paris were surprised about how he didn't fit with the image of ruled-by-his-favourites, and it's hard to imagine Frau von Bielke meaning anything else when she writes to Catherine in 1766 that if Heinrich had married Sophie, then the stories "darkening his fame" today would not be told - given all that, it's amazing how by the 19th century "Heinrich didn't have female lovers" was translated into "Heinrich was cold and without passions". And even if you ignore all the boyfriends (though seriously, Kaphengst and Meseberg are hard to ignore!), there are emotions which are not about sex, and that obelisk was not build by a passionless man.
...no, the 19th century excuse doesn't work for me, either. I mean, Asprey, good old Theodor Fontane wrote a century before you did, and was a Wilhelminian with no access to the Marwitz letters, and he still a) doesn't present Heinrich as passionless in general, and b) leaves no doubt that Heinrich was gay (from Kaphengst kommt to Comte Last Warming Beam of the Setting Sun). Conclusion: Asprey has no excuse.
Aha, we're talking Human Automaton Heinrich again, as in Kepler's novel and Koser's book.
Yep, that's that what I meant by "relying on the wrong sources," when I quoted the "cold fish" line. Hard agree with everything you wrote here.
...Why does everyone take Koser's evaluation of Heinrich's personality at face value and remember it forever, and nobody has noticed his brilliant takedown of Catt? GAH.
ETA: I meant to say, no, Asprey hasn't impressed me at all. Which is too bad, given the length and detail.
Meanwhile, Lehndorff loves to use the word "fire" when describing his prince, and not just in the bedazzled days of their youth, for verily:
Never have there been two men less fitting with each other than the Prince and Kaphengst. The former, all mind, passion and fire, loves a debauched, ignorant man who only loves women and gambling.
Mind you, Lehndorff also occasionally describes Heinrich as cold towards him back in the mid 1750s when he - L - is constantly going through the "Yes! No, it's all over! Yes, we're back together again!" rigmarole. but never as cold per se. And of course Heinrich could be cold as ice, both on a political leve (see second marriage of Paul, see, of course, Partition of Poland) and on a personal level (Mina, definitely). (Fritz: he was also cold to me for some mysterious reason after the Marwitz affair in 1746 and did not talk to me for six months! I was sarcastic about this in writing!) And if Asprey had written "a cold fish towards his wife", he'd have had a case. (Though even then, the context of being gay and of how this marriage came to be is important.) Though, again, even leaving Heinrich's sex life completely out of it, you're left with someone who was to AW and Ferdinand a devoted and constantly affectionate brother (for that matter, even his ups and downs argumentative relationship with Amalie had him being concerned for her, from preparing rooms for her at Rheinsberg to worrying about her health in letters to Ferdinand in the middle of the war), who took in refugees and emigrants with whom he disagreed politically and helped them, who was praised by everyone who had a chance to see him in miltary action for the humanity with which he treated prisoners of war, and even whose old age excentricities (like going ahead with the marriage of young Henckel von Donnersmarck's sister despite the groom being late by having H v D stand in for him and ignoring the actual groom when he arrived) are hardly to be described as "cold".
And once again, here's dear Fontane, a century before Asprey, pondering in the Rheinsberg chapters of the "Wanderungen" why Heinrich in his (Fontane's) time has been half forgotten, and I'm leaving this in German so Mildred can practice:
Wenn man wieder ins Freie tritt, um, über den Schloßhof hin, dem Park und dem See zuzuschreiten, so kann man die Frage nicht abwehren, wie kommt es, daß dieser kluge, geistvolle Prinz Heinrich, dieser Feldherr sans peur et sans reproche, dies von den nobelsten Empfindungen inspirierte Menschenherz, so wenig populär geworden ist. (...) Es muß zugegeben werden (und ich habe bereits in dem Kapitel »die Kirche zu Rheinsberg« darauf hingewiesen), daß etwas prononziert Französisches in Sitte, Gewöhnung, Ausdruck, sowie das geringe Maß jener kurbrandenburgischen Derbheit, die wir an Friedrich dem Großen, all seiner Voltaire-Schwärmerei zum Trotz, so deutlich erkennen und so sehr bewundern, der Volkstümlichkeit des Prinzen Heinrich immer hindernd im Wege stehen wird, es fehlt aber auch noch viel bis zu jenem bescheideneren Teile von Popularität, worauf er unbedingten Anspruch hat. Seine Repliken waren nicht im Stile des älteren Tauenzien, als dieser, unter Androhung, »daß man das Kind im Mutterleibe nicht schonen werde« aufgefordert wurde, Breslau zu übergeben; aber wenn er in seinen Antworten auch nicht dem Richard Löwenherz glich, der mit seinem Schwert ein zolldickes Eisen zerhieb, so glich er doch dem Saladin, der mit seiner Halbmondklinge das in die Luft geworfene Seidentuch im Niederfallen durchschnitt. Nur selten war er derb, rauh nie.
And the intro to the Comte La Roche-Aymon's appearance: Gleichviel, 1794 erschien ein junger, sechs Fuß hoher Offizier von dunkelstem Kolorit und dürftigster Kleidung in Rheinsberg und gab bei »Demoiselle Aurore«, jener schon genannten Schauspielerin des prinzlichen Hoftheaters, einen Empfehlungsbrief ab. Der Brief enthielt die Bitte, den Überbringer, den jungen Grafen La Roche-Aymon, bei günstiger Gelegenheit in die Nähe des Prinzen zu bringen. Demoiselle Aurore war echte Französin, lebhaft und gutherzig, dabei Royalistin und zu Abenteuern geneigt; sie bestritt also eine passende Equipierung aus eignen Mitteln, und vor Ablauf einer Woche war der Graf in des Prinzen Dienst. Er bezog Wohnung im Kavalierhaus und übernahm den Befehl über die vierzig Leibhusaren, die, wie mehr erwähnt, als eine spezielle Prinz Heinrichsche Truppe zu Rheinsberg in Garnison lagen. Kurze Zeit darauf wurde er Adjutant des Prinzen. Schön, gewandt, liebenswürdig, ein Kavalier im besten Sinne des Worts, trat er alsbald in eine Vertrauensstellung, ja darüber hinaus in ein Herzensverhältnis zum Prinzen, wie's dieser, seit Tauentzien, nicht mehr gekannt hatte. Der Graf erschien ihm als ein Geschenk des Himmels; der Abend seines Lebens war gekommen, aber siehe da, die Sonne, bevor sie schied, lieh ihm noch einmal einen Strahl ihres beglückenden Lichts. Graf La Roche-Aymon war der letzte Adjutant des Prinzen.
Basically: Heinrich is our problematic fave and he's definitely Lehndorff's absolute fave, why isn't he Everyone Else's problematic fave, it should be obvious how awesome he is :D
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timeasmymeasure
Asprey
Date: 2021-01-31 03:14 pm (UTC)1) Fritz "softened the blow" of "Madame has grown plump" with a gift of five thousand thalers. Do we know of any evidence backing this? Is it in Lehndorff?
2) The Heinrich/Mina marriage fell apart shortly after the 7 Years' War because Heinrich "was a cold fish and had been cuckolded by his adjutant."
There seems to be this whole tradition called "Lehndorff who? I didn't read Lehndorff" about Heinrich. *facepalm*
3) Per Asprey, the reason a sympathetic Fritz finally came down on EC2's affairs was because:
Princes Henry and Ferdinand -- second and third in line to the throne -- informed the king that they would never allow a bastard to take away their legitimate rights to succession. The king was forced to arrange a divorce.
Do we know of any evidence for this?
Re: Asprey
Date: 2021-01-31 05:07 pm (UTC)This to me does not sound like the 5000 for EC were meant as an apology, and it's of course telling Amalie gets the shared meal and the gift, and EC's money does not exceed the worth of what everyone else is getting.
2.) Poor Mina. So unlike Fritz, Asprey believes Kalckreuth's kneefall/hand clutching gesture signals an affair, does he?
3.) There's an indirect evidence in the fourth Lehndorff volume. Remember when Heinrich returns from his second Russia trip, he tells Lehndorff about his time there, including the somewhat chilling tale of him being ruthlessly practical when Grand Duke Paul's wife dies in agony of childbirth by arranging a second marriage? Well, this first unfortunate daughter-in-law of Catherine's had been related to the Hohenzollern as well, for her sister was future FW2's second wife (another Louise). (Both were princesses of Hesse-Darmstadt, which Mina was as well, which might be of significance.) Well, Heinrich also tells Lehndorff that after the death of the poor woman, he got handed over her correspondence to take with him home to Prussia, including the letters from Mrs. Future FW2. Apparently he doesn't believe in discretion for he reads them, and finds out the future Queen of Prussia is pretty negative about himself (i.e. Heinrich), who says to Lehndorff, go figure, she owes her marriage to me, ah well, such is life. "She owes her marriage to me" could be an allusion to him and Ferdinand making that gesture. Or it could be a reference to him suggesting the Hesse-Darmstadt girl as future FW2's next wife, who knows. (The mother of both Mrs. Grand Duke and Mrs. FW2 was the one who wrote to Amalie to find out whether Amalie had any advice of how to survive at court for her daughter the bride, triggering Amalie's "we're all awful here, let me tell you how, except for Louise, she's an angel" reply.)
What makes me hesitate a bit re: Asprey's interpretation is that I don't think Fritz would have avoided blaming Heinrich (and Ferdinand) for this situation if they actually had put such an ultimatum to him, and I don't recall any fuming Fritz letters on that note. And of course, if both Heinrich and Ferdinand knew Elisabeth had affairs to match future FW2's, a lot of other people knew as well, since Heinrich was hardly hanging out with the young ones enough to be finely tuned to discreet gossip.
Re: Asprey
Date: 2021-01-31 06:18 pm (UTC)I thought it might be something like that. Thanks for looking it up!
So unlike Fritz, Asprey believes Kalckreuth's kneefall/hand clutching gesture signals an affair, does he?
Well, the IMPORTANT thing is that Heinrich is a cold fish, so it can't POSSIBLY be that HE just broke up with his adjutant. :P
Since he's writing in the 1980s, before Ziebura, I can forgive the Mina affair, but Lehndorff! (Asprey also straightforwardly presents Fritz as gay (or bi, I forget), so homophobia on his part doesn't seem to account for Heinrich not being gay. Too much relying on the wrong sources, I guess.)
"She owes her marriage to me" could be an allusion to him and Ferdinand making that gesture. Or it could be a reference to him suggesting the Hesse-Darmstadt girl as future FW2's next wife, who knows.
Interesting!
I don't think Fritz would have avoided blaming Heinrich (and Ferdinand) for this situation if they actually had put such an ultimatum to him, and I don't recall any fuming Fritz letters on that note.
Agreed.
Re: Asprey
Date: 2021-01-31 06:37 pm (UTC)Aha, we're talking Human Automaton Heinrich again, as in Kepler's novel and Koser's book. By now, I really wonder whether this characterisation starts with Koser (remember, in that 7 Years War era paragraph of how Heinrich isn't like Fritz and Wilhelmine in that he's cold and not passionate), and since Koser otherwise is such a great source, a lot of people adapted it? Still, given how open the gossip about Heinrich's favourites was - and how far spread not just in Prussia but in Europe, remember, several people who met Heinrich in Paris were surprised about how he didn't fit with the image of ruled-by-his-favourites, and it's hard to imagine Frau von Bielke meaning anything else when she writes to Catherine in 1766 that if Heinrich had married Sophie, then the stories "darkening his fame" today would not be told - given all that, it's amazing how by the 19th century "Heinrich didn't have female lovers" was translated into "Heinrich was cold and without passions". And even if you ignore all the boyfriends (though seriously, Kaphengst and Meseberg are hard to ignore!), there are emotions which are not about sex, and that obelisk was not build by a passionless man.
...no, the 19th century excuse doesn't work for me, either. I mean, Asprey, good old Theodor Fontane wrote a century before you did, and was a Wilhelminian with no access to the Marwitz letters, and he still a) doesn't present Heinrich as passionless in general, and b) leaves no doubt that Heinrich was gay (from Kaphengst kommt to Comte Last Warming Beam of the Setting Sun). Conclusion: Asprey has no excuse.
Re: Asprey
Date: 2021-01-31 06:44 pm (UTC)Yep, that's that what I meant by "relying on the wrong sources," when I quoted the "cold fish" line. Hard agree with everything you wrote here.
...Why does everyone take Koser's evaluation of Heinrich's personality at face value and remember it forever, and nobody has noticed his brilliant takedown of Catt? GAH.
ETA: I meant to say, no, Asprey hasn't impressed me at all. Which is too bad, given the length and detail.
Re: Asprey
Date: 2021-02-01 02:13 am (UTC)Re: Asprey
Date: 2021-02-01 06:27 am (UTC)Never have there been two men less fitting with each other than the Prince and Kaphengst. The former, all mind, passion and fire, loves a debauched, ignorant man who only loves women and gambling.
Mind you, Lehndorff also occasionally describes Heinrich as cold towards him back in the mid 1750s when he - L - is constantly going through the "Yes! No, it's all over! Yes, we're back together again!" rigmarole. but never as cold per se. And of course Heinrich could be cold as ice, both on a political leve (see second marriage of Paul, see, of course, Partition of Poland) and on a personal level (Mina, definitely). (Fritz: he was also cold to me for some mysterious reason after the Marwitz affair in 1746 and did not talk to me for six months! I was sarcastic about this in writing!) And if Asprey had written "a cold fish towards his wife", he'd have had a case. (Though even then, the context of being gay and of how this marriage came to be is important.) Though, again, even leaving Heinrich's sex life completely out of it, you're left with someone who was to AW and Ferdinand a devoted and constantly affectionate brother (for that matter, even his ups and downs argumentative relationship with Amalie had him being concerned for her, from preparing rooms for her at Rheinsberg to worrying about her health in letters to Ferdinand in the middle of the war), who took in refugees and emigrants with whom he disagreed politically and helped them, who was praised by everyone who had a chance to see him in miltary action for the humanity with which he treated prisoners of war, and even whose old age excentricities (like going ahead with the marriage of young Henckel von Donnersmarck's sister despite the groom being late by having H v D stand in for him and ignoring the actual groom when he arrived) are hardly to be described as "cold".
And once again, here's dear Fontane, a century before Asprey, pondering in the Rheinsberg chapters of the "Wanderungen" why Heinrich in his (Fontane's) time has been half forgotten, and I'm leaving this in German so Mildred can practice:
Wenn man wieder ins Freie tritt, um, über den Schloßhof hin, dem Park und dem See zuzuschreiten, so kann man die Frage nicht abwehren, wie kommt es, daß dieser kluge, geistvolle Prinz Heinrich, dieser Feldherr sans peur et sans reproche, dies von den nobelsten Empfindungen inspirierte Menschenherz, so wenig populär geworden ist. (...)
Es muß zugegeben werden (und ich habe bereits in dem Kapitel »die Kirche zu Rheinsberg« darauf hingewiesen), daß etwas prononziert Französisches in Sitte, Gewöhnung, Ausdruck, sowie das geringe Maß jener kurbrandenburgischen Derbheit, die wir an Friedrich dem Großen, all seiner Voltaire-Schwärmerei zum Trotz, so deutlich erkennen und so sehr bewundern, der Volkstümlichkeit des Prinzen Heinrich immer hindernd im Wege stehen wird, es fehlt aber auch noch viel bis zu jenem bescheideneren Teile von Popularität, worauf er unbedingten Anspruch hat. Seine Repliken waren nicht im Stile des älteren Tauenzien, als dieser, unter Androhung, »daß man das Kind im Mutterleibe nicht schonen werde« aufgefordert wurde, Breslau zu übergeben; aber wenn er in seinen Antworten auch nicht dem Richard Löwenherz glich, der mit seinem Schwert ein zolldickes Eisen zerhieb, so glich er doch dem Saladin, der mit seiner Halbmondklinge das in die Luft geworfene Seidentuch im Niederfallen durchschnitt. Nur selten war er derb, rauh nie.
And the intro to the Comte La Roche-Aymon's appearance: Gleichviel, 1794 erschien ein junger, sechs Fuß hoher Offizier von dunkelstem Kolorit und dürftigster Kleidung in Rheinsberg und gab bei »Demoiselle Aurore«, jener schon genannten Schauspielerin des prinzlichen Hoftheaters, einen Empfehlungsbrief ab. Der Brief enthielt die Bitte, den Überbringer, den jungen Grafen La Roche-Aymon, bei günstiger Gelegenheit in die Nähe des Prinzen zu bringen. Demoiselle Aurore war echte Französin, lebhaft und gutherzig, dabei Royalistin und zu Abenteuern geneigt; sie bestritt also eine passende Equipierung aus eignen Mitteln, und vor Ablauf einer Woche war der Graf in des Prinzen Dienst. Er bezog Wohnung im Kavalierhaus und übernahm den Befehl über die vierzig Leibhusaren, die, wie mehr erwähnt, als eine spezielle Prinz Heinrichsche Truppe zu Rheinsberg in Garnison lagen. Kurze Zeit darauf wurde er Adjutant des Prinzen. Schön, gewandt, liebenswürdig, ein Kavalier im besten Sinne des Worts, trat er alsbald in eine Vertrauensstellung, ja darüber hinaus in ein Herzensverhältnis zum Prinzen, wie's dieser, seit Tauentzien, nicht mehr gekannt hatte. Der Graf erschien ihm als ein Geschenk des Himmels; der Abend seines Lebens war gekommen, aber siehe da, die Sonne, bevor sie schied, lieh ihm noch einmal einen Strahl ihres beglückenden Lichts. Graf La Roche-Aymon war der letzte Adjutant des Prinzen.
Re: Asprey
Date: 2021-02-13 06:06 am (UTC)Re: Asprey
Date: 2021-02-13 06:04 am (UTC)Aw, Heinrich. That is an awesome story about Future FW2 and Heinrich, even if we don't know exactly why he said that.
(Also, that letter of Amalie's is still the best <3)