Also, speaking of people Fritz listed as loved at some point, here's Nicolai, who lists D'Argens and Quintus Icilius as his main sources early on, only slightly paraphrased:
"So, we're all clear that of the foreign intellectuals from the first fifteen years or so, D'Argens was the only one to truly deserve Fritz' affections, right? Lemme go through a check list: Darget: respected Fritz, but didn't love him, couldn't bear living with him and hence headed back to Paris. La Mettrie: Ugh. Firstly, kept making mischief by telling everyone what everyone else had said about them and telling it wrongly or making it up, and secondly, have you read his theories? Ugh. Totally deserved his gross death. Algarotti: "subtle man with subtle manners" (direct quote), Fritz truly loved him, but Algarotti was mostly into the relationship because Fritz was a King, and after a while, Fritz figured that out. Maupertuis didn't do anything ungrateful, but he was a weird control freak. And VOLTAIRE. Need I say more? Okay, intellectually, yes, he was the foremost writer of Europe and as such deserved Fritz as a reader BUT he totally did not deserve him as a person. I mean. Do we remember how he repaid our glorious King for his affections, all the shady deals, the freaking pamphlets? Let me quote D'Argens again here: "The man had wit for thirty, but was as malicious as a monkey." Fritz was FORCED to retrieve those poems the way he did at Frankfurt, as any rightthinking person will admit. And no, I don't get how the King could forgive him enough to correspond with him again from the late 1750s onwards, either. Freaking Voltaire. In conclusion: our noble King thought these guys were his friends, showered them with affection, praise and worldly goods, and they were just - ugh. Except for D'Argens! The King's true friend!"
Also Nicolai, in volume 3, only slightly paraphrased: "Having reported to you, dear readers, that Fritz loved to sit near the beautiful Antinous statue and SEEMINGLY gaze at it in summer days in his old age, I must tell you that only shallow people would think he only did this because it appealed to his senses. I mean, sure, our glorious King enjoyed beauty, statues, and summer days, more power to him. But look, you know where that statue was located at Sanssouci before our new King moved it to the Berlin town palace? NEXT TO FRITZ' GRAVE. So what Fritz was actually doing wasn't related to the statue. He was contemplating his grave and his impending death. Because he was deep like that, our philosopher king. That's why he kept resting at this particular spot, so everyone I interviewed tells me."
Okay, so first of all, this Nicolai sounds super reliable and unbiased, lol forever.
And secondly,
Fritz loved to sit near the beautiful Antinous statue and SEEMINGLY gaze at it in summer days in his old age
It's always great when reality confirms my headcanons, because this was ALREADY MY HEADCANON. :D
And yeah, he's totally thinking about death while he's doing it, but that's largely because he's thinking ABOUT KATTE. Same with Wilhelmine when he goes to sit at her temple. (Didn't we run across something recently--a Camas letter?--where he said he visited her temple regularly and thought about her? I maintain Antinous was the same.)
Algarotti was mostly into the relationship because Fritz was a King
I mean...they definitely hit it off as individuals, but was much of Algarotti's behavior driven by Fritz being king? Imo, totally yes.
Also, wasn't d'Argens the one Fritz got upset with for going back to France for health reasons? But then he had a grave monument built for him? Just like Algarotti? JUST SAYING.
I mean, sure, our glorious King enjoyed beauty, statues, and summer days, more power to him.
Lolol.
I knew this collection would have goodies! Also, judging by what I saw in the table of contents, there are a *lot* of d'Argens anecdotes. Makes sense if d'Argens was one of his main sources.
. La Mettrie: Ugh...secondly, have you read his theories?
cahn: he was a materialist, who argued that humans don't have souls, so I can see why Nicolai would be all "ugh" at his theories.
Fritz, writing to Wilhelmine, on the manner of his death:
We lost poor La Mettrie. He died for a joke, eating a whole pheasant pâté; after having gotten a terrible indigestion, he dared to be bled, to prove to the German doctors that one could bleed in an indigestion. It did not succeed; he took a violent fever which, having degenerated into putrid fever, prevailed.
I am so far behind on comments. I will try to catch up this weekend, but goodies keep coming in!
re: reliability, in fairness, Nicolai actually, biased or not, fares pretty well in this regard. (Compared to his contemporaries, not compared to current day standard of research, obviously.) Every volume contains corrections to the previous one based on getting new intel. And not only does he use first hand wintesses - Quintus Icilius, D'Argens, Quanz (whom he knew personally and who is his source for some Fritz and music stories), as well as dozens of veterans from the 7 Years War who tell him war stories -, but he's careful to read everything else published, including English sources, not just French ones. This can cause nearly half a volume of eviscaration of said sources, but he reads them first. BTW, this was fascinating of me in terms of crossover to another interest of mine. Apparently, when Fritzmania exploded in Britain during the 7 Years War, Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote a short article on Fritz on public demand, while admitting that a) he doesn't speak German and b) it's only based on other articles he read about Fritz. As Nicolai says, the article would not have been reprinted and been forgotten if it hadn't been by Dr. Johnson. Once Johnson himself died, everything Johnson sold well, including the two first biographies/anecdote collections - by John Hawkins and Hester Thrale, respectively; Boswell was still working on his magnum opus - and Nicolai read both, which republish the Johnson-on-Fritz stuff due to the closeness of Fritz' death which also heightened interest again. And Mrs. Thrale, now Mrs. Piozzi, also published a book on her travels through the continent, including Prussia. While admitting she doesn't speak German, either, she did read Voltaire. This means Nicolai while saying Mrs. Thrale Piozzi writes entertainingly is busy being indignant that everyone - Johnson, Hawkins, Thrale - gets it so wrong about Fritz (and also FW), good intentions or not, about Prussian customs and law, and what rubbish is this!
You may also recall that Nicolai published Münchow's letter to him, and followed this up later when Minerva published another letter. Where I'm going with this: Nicolai is strongly opinionated and biased as hell, but his collections aren't cheap rip-offs; he does his research, if he finds evidence contradicting something he previously thought to be true, he says so, and he doesn't invent stuff.
But his biggest feud is with Zimmermann, which I dimly recall from Zimmermann's fragments. Now Zimmermann (Cahn, that's the doctor of "broken penis" fame) is mentioned as a friend in volume 1 of Nicolai, but then they have a fallout which Nicolai can't quite explain and Zimmermann turns against Nicolai and trashes him, while Nicolai trashes back. (My own suspicion is that Zimmermann must have been planning to publish and was disgruntled Nicolai got there first.) One big bone of contention is whether or not MT's Dad the Emperor saved Fritz' life in 1730 by having Seckendorff point out that FW can't pass a capital sentence on Fritz, because Fritz is a Reichsfürst of the HRE, and only the diet in Frankfurt could condemn him to death. This is a story which was debated at the time, and which Zimmermann believes, not least because it feeds into his theory that Fritz really wasn't off to escape to France or England but secretly was planning to escape to Austria and marry MT. Nicolai argues that while they can't know for sure because they can't access the state archive, he thinks this is rubbish. Undoubtedly the Emperor, like the other crowned heads of Europe, wrote a letter to FW pleading with him not to kill his son. This was announced in newspapers at the time, and Nicolai has found some articles mentioning it. But he really really doubts that the Emperor pulled out the "FW: you are not allowed to kill your son, a prince of the HRE!" argument. (And as we know, he's correct there.)
Another half a volume rant of Nicolai's triggered by Zimmermann and some other publications is everyone who took Voltaire's sarcastic description of some Sanssouci rooms being full of satyrs after nymphs and that if anyone could have seen the table round gatherings, he'd have assumed philosphers met in a brothel,and ran with it. Nicolai interprets this as Voltaire (and the others) saying that Fritz had painted porn on his walls in Sanssouci, and indignantly defends him against it, saying that sure, Fritz had some beautiful nudes there, but no porn, not ever, never would the King have stood for something like that! (Meanwhile, yours truly has been to Sanssouci and yes, there's a lot of nymphs and satyrs there, enough to my my AP go "are you sure he was gay?" Painted porn, it's not, but then that's not what Voltaire wrote.) This is another bone of contention between Zimmermann and Nicolai, because Zimmermann sees it as part of his no homo theory of Fritz the prostitute client in his younger years who now, with broken penis, can't anymore but still wants to.
A lot of the anecdotes you already know because they made it into later biographies, like the servants having to say Sie/Vous to the dogs ("bellen Sie nicht so laut, Biche! Fressen Sie doch auf, Alkmene!"), or Fritz naming his horses after politicians. There's a lot about the horses, in fact.
And yeah, he's totally thinking about death while he's doing it, but that's largely because he's thinking ABOUT KATTE. Same with Wilhelmine when he goes to sit at her temple. (Didn't we run across something recently--a Camas letter?--where he said he visited her temple regularly and thought about her? I maintain Antinous was the same.)
It's definitely mentioned in a Voltaire letter, but yes, I think also in a Camas letter. I'm with you on Antinous being the same. Nicolai at some other point says that Fritz did come around in his late years to believing in the immortality of the soul, because he hoped to see his sister again.
I mean...they definitely hit it off as individuals, but was much of Algarotti's behavior driven by Fritz being king? Imo, totally yes.
As we agreed with other people as well, it's impossible to have a relationship with someone who is a Crown Prince/A King and completely block that factor out. With Algarotti, who was looking for a job, definitely not. At the same time, the Algarotti essay collection and the Lady Mary biography have informed me Algarotti did root for Fritz during the 7 Years War in writing and in person in Italy (i.e. when with people who aren't Fritz' subjects), even if he wrote an MT poem just in case as well (perhaps a reaction to having written an earlier poem calling the battle of Prague the Prussian Pharsalos, which, not so much?), and while he clearly had decided at some point that living with Fritz was just too much, he still held respect and affection for him. (Another example of Algarotti being not nearly as gigolo like in his relationships as one could think is as I mentioned in my anthology write up that in the original version of his Russia book, he lets all his letters there be addressed to Lord Hervey, despite the fact the Russia book was published long after Hervey's death and a point where Hervey's name wasn't recalled with fondness by anyone of influence . And of course him reopening relationships with Lady Mary at a point when she's an English exile in Italy with not nearly as much money as she used to have.)
Also, wasn't d'Argens the one Fritz got upset with for going back to France for health reasons? But then he had a grave monument built for him? Just like Algarotti? JUST SAYING.
But that's different! D'Argens clearly had REAL health trouble! Algarotti was just faking it! And only one of them befriended Nicolai!
(BTW, I had known this but reading brought it back to me: D'Argens and Nicolai did team up in Fritz' life time to get him to make Moses Mendelsohn (one of the greatest philosophers of his time, the model for Lessing's Nathan the Wise, grandfather of Felix the composer) an Academy member. No dice. However, they did get Fritz to provide Mendelsohn with a Schutzbrief (given the shaky legal status of Jews, very important to have).
Same with Wilhelmine when he goes to sit at her temple. (Didn't we run across something recently--a Camas letter?--where he said he visited her temple regularly and thought about her? I maintain Antinous was the same.)
It's definitely mentioned in a Voltaire letter, but yes, I think also in a Camas letter
Quick note to say: definitely not a Camas letter, not least because they were both dead when the temple was built in 1768. But yes, both you and I quoted the Voltaire one at some point.
Also, very interesting summary of Nicolai's approach and reliability - I had him on my list as more reliable than others and it's great to get a fuller picture.
re: Mendelssohn - I'm still annoyed that Fritz didn't get over himself, and not just regarding the Academy membership, but also when it came to meeting him. Missed chance IMO.
Re: Nicolai in general, here's a Heinrich Heine quote about him: „Wir müssen doch eingestehen, daß der alte Nicolai ein grundehrlicher Mann war, der es redlich mit dem deutschen Volke meinte, und der aus Liebe für die heilige Sache der Wahrheit sogar das schlimmste Martyrtum, das Lächerlichwerden, nicht scheute.“
Quick note to say: definitely not a Camas letter, not least because they were both dead when the temple was built in 1768. But yes, both you and I quoted the Voltaire one at some point.
Aha. Thank you for straightening out the chronology for me!
re: Mendelssohn - I'm still annoyed that Fritz didn't get over himself, and not just regarding the Academy membership, but also when it came to meeting him. Missed chance IMO.
Only a brief comment (I've been limiting myself to comments I can write while standing up):
Every volume contains corrections to the previous one based on getting new intel.
Good for him! That is a good contrast to a variety of other sources.
You may also recall that Nicolai published Münchow's letter to him, and followed this up later when Minerva published another letter.
I don't recall this. What I recall is that it was published by Gallus in his "History of the Mark Brandenburg," and that when a very similar letter was published in Minerva, Nicolai wrote a response that was also published. I *seem* to recall, but don't have time to check, that Nicolai complained that the Gallus letter was published without his permission, but that in any case it had been published and so this near duplicate letter wasn't offering much new to readers (though he said it quite wittily).
Regardless, good for him for him for doing his research, bias or no.
Undoubtedly the Emperor, like the other crowned heads of Europe, wrote a letter to FW pleading with him not to kill his son. This was announced in newspapers at the time, and Nicolai has found some articles mentioning it.
Indeed, we not only have the letter, and we know that it was only handed over on October 31, when the court martial had met and it had become clear (to Seckendorff) FW was going to pardon Fritz, but the modern editor says that the letter was composed by Seckendorff in the Emperor's name. (I don't know what the evidence for that claim is.)
This means Nicolai while saying Mrs. Thrale Piozzi writes entertainingly is busy being indignant that everyone - Johnson, Hawkins, Thrale - gets it so wrong about Fritz (and also FW), good intentions or not, about Prussian customs and law, and what rubbish is this!
Hee. I had found Johnson's essay on Fritz a long time ago, and never brought it up as it seemed woefully uninformed (and not nearly as entertaining as the likewise uninformed Macaulay). It does clarify where the "Karl Frederick" in the Orzelska Wikipedia article might come from!
Looking at it again now, I notice the following:
1784: Johnson dies. Voltaire's memoirs are published. 1786: Fritz dies. Johnson's essay on Fritz is published.
To wit, I notice that 1) this is a good time to cash in on some celebrity, 2) the editor of Johnson's essay adds footnotes that clearly draw on Voltaire's memoirs: Wilhelmine being thrown out of the window, FW being present at Katte's execution, etc. It's even the editor who adds that Charles VI saved Fritz's life by arguing that Fritz was a prince of the empire and could only be condemned to death by the Diet. (Which might or might not be in Voltaire, I forget.) Ah, yes, that's in Voltaire. Yeah, the footnotes to the Johnson essay are almost verbatim from Voltaire. (And I might add that the English translation of Voltaire was published already in 1784.)
And that's aside from Johnson's own mistakes! I can see why Nicolai would have to dedicate some page time to eviscerating these English publications.
I've gone ahead and put it in the library, though--even if it's not useful as a source on Fritz, it might be relevant to your Johnsonian interests.
Meanwhile, yours truly has been to Sanssouci and yes, there's a lot of nymphs and satyrs there, enough to my my AP go "are you sure he was gay?"
Every time I see those paintings, I think of your AP! (And as I've mentioned, the naked breasts on the Flora statue on his grave certainly had me ?? when I was there many years ago.)
who now, with broken penis, can't anymore but still wants to.
To clarify, Zimmermann's theory, as I recall, is the far more convoluted "with disfigured but fully functional penis, thinks he can't but actually can, because our great king couldn't be *impotent*, now!"
Voltaire just straight up says he was impotent (*and*, of course, that he bottomed for his page boys, oh the shame). :P
Nicolai at some other point says that Fritz did come around in his late years to believing in the immortality of the soul, because he hoped to see his sister again.
Huh. That's in Catt (memoirs, not sure about the diary). Might his source be Catt, directly or indirectly? (I've always been a bit skeptical, because devout Catt is always insisting that Fritz was actually very superstitious, and that Fritz kept bringing up arguments against the immortality of the soul because he was very unsure of himself and wanted to be talked out of them. But then again, I was skeptical about the sincerity of Katte's sudden piety before death, and I've had to revise my opinion on that!)
Okay, I'm signing off for the night, but I hope to have a productive weekend catching up on my salon backlog! :D
Huh. That's in Catt (memoirs, not sure about the diary). Might his source be Catt, directly or indirectly?
Directly. He does say he talked to Catt. And yes, Catt is less than reliable, but Nicolai doesn't know that.
I can see why Nicolai would have to dedicate some page time to eviscerating these English publications.
Quite. BTw, I note that with all his railing against Voltaire the ungrateful wretch, it's half a volume rant about how Fritz would never go for painted porn, but exactly zero comments on the "bottoming for page boys and soldiers" allegation. (As opposed to Zimmermann in his Fragments, who of course has "Fritz wasn't gay!" as the key thesis of the work.
Okay, then I think we have our source for Nicolai. Will take it with a grain of salt pending further evidence. (Naturally, Fritz *wished* he could see his mother and sister after death; whether he actually believed there was a possibility is another question.)
exactly zero comments on the "bottoming for page boys and soldiers" allegation.
Ah good, I was about to ask if Fritz coming to believe in the immortality of the soul was possibly true, because that really went against a lot I thought I understood about him, but if Nicolai got it from Catt :P
If you read Catt's memoirs, you can see him *insisting* repeatedly that there's no way Fritz is really, *really* sure about his convictions (and also that he was totally superstitious, because that's what happens when you don't have religion to show you the light), so *major* grain of salt here, and I said that before we learned anything about Catt's unreliability. (Actually, part of my argument then was that just as I was biased toward hoping Katte was faking, Catt would have been biased toward believing that Fritz would come around to agreeing with Christianity! (I do try to at least be aware of my biases at a scholarly level, though at a fannish level it's no fun not having them.))
As we agreed with other people as well, it's impossible to have a relationship with someone who is a Crown Prince/A King and completely block that factor out. With Algarotti, who was looking for a job, definitely not.
Yeah, definitely. It's just really obvious with Algarotti's coming and going that after the initial honeymoon and disappointment, he was totally looking for a job and couldn't make up his mind whether it was worth it or not. I agree that there was genuine affection and it wasn't pure exploitation. But if Fritz hadn't been king, I suspect it would have been like Algarotti's visits to Cirey: a few weeks and no more.
BTW, I had known this but reading brought it back to me: D'Argens and Nicolai did team up in Fritz' life time to get him to make Moses Mendelsohn (one of the greatest philosophers of his time, the model for Lessing's Nathan the Wise, grandfather of Felix the composer) an Academy member. No dice.
MacDonogh tells me that Thiebault says that this was partly an unfortunate accident of timing, that Mendelssohn's name came up right after Catherine the Great's and it would have looked bad to juxtapose an empress and a Jew. Even if true (and I take everything Thiebault says with a grain of salt, even if he started working for Fritz at the time), it is still anti-Semitic AS HELL and unacceptable.
However, they did get Fritz to provide Mendelsohn with a Schutzbrief (given the shaky legal status of Jews, very important to have
Agreed, though according to Wikipedia, his wife and children didn't get one. FRITZ!
On a lighter note, also according to English Wikipedia:
Mendelssohn became (1756–1759) the leading spirit of Friedrich Nicolai's important literary undertakings, the Bibliothek and the Literaturbriefe, and ran some risk (which Frederick's good nature mitigated) by criticizing the poems of the King of Prussia.
I mean, I am definitely coming out of this with a MUCH better opinion of Nicolai than Zimmermann ...not... that this... would be hard exactly, but still!
D'Argens and Nicolai did team up in Fritz' life time to get him to make Moses Mendelsohn (one of the greatest philosophers of his time, the model for Lessing's Nathan the Wise, grandfather of Felix the composer) an Academy member. No dice. However, they did get Fritz to provide Mendelsohn with a Schutzbrief (given the shaky legal status of Jews, very important to have).
this is neat to know, thank you! Go D'Argens and Nicolai, even if Fritz was... Fritz :P
Having reported to you, dear readers, that Fritz loved to sit near the beautiful Antinous statue and SEEMINGLY gaze at it in summer days in his old age, I must tell you that only shallow people would think he only did this because it appealed to his senses. I mean, sure, our glorious King enjoyed beauty, statues, and summer days, more power to him. But look, you know where that statue was located at Sanssouci before our new King moved it to the Berlin town palace? NEXT TO FRITZ' GRAVE. So what Fritz was actually doing wasn't related to the statue. He was contemplating his grave and his impending death. Because he was deep like that, our philosopher king.
*chokes*
I can see why you immediately thought of Mildred! I did too, LOL!
And VOLTAIRE. Need I say more?
I feel like I will forever find hilarious that Fritz/Voltaire had this crackship going that NO ONE understands :D
I can see why you immediately thought of Mildred! I did too, LOL!
Because this was ALREADY my headcanon and I had ALREADY developed entire storylines in my head revolving around Fritz sitting by the Antinous statue and contemplating Katte and death in the last years of his life. :D
History owes me a headcanon or two confirmed, after OBLITERATING so many of my long-cherished ones. :P
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timeasmymeasure
Re: The Strassbourg Trip
Date: 2021-02-16 06:42 pm (UTC)"So, we're all clear that of the foreign intellectuals from the first fifteen years or so, D'Argens was the only one to truly deserve Fritz' affections, right? Lemme go through a check list: Darget: respected Fritz, but didn't love him, couldn't bear living with him and hence headed back to Paris. La Mettrie: Ugh. Firstly, kept making mischief by telling everyone what everyone else had said about them and telling it wrongly or making it up, and secondly, have you read his theories? Ugh. Totally deserved his gross death. Algarotti: "subtle man with subtle manners" (direct quote), Fritz truly loved him, but Algarotti was mostly into the relationship because Fritz was a King, and after a while, Fritz figured that out. Maupertuis didn't do anything ungrateful, but he was a weird control freak. And VOLTAIRE. Need I say more? Okay, intellectually, yes, he was the foremost writer of Europe and as such deserved Fritz as a reader BUT he totally did not deserve him as a person. I mean. Do we remember how he repaid our glorious King for his affections, all the shady deals, the freaking pamphlets? Let me quote D'Argens again here: "The man had wit for thirty, but was as malicious as a monkey." Fritz was FORCED to retrieve those poems the way he did at Frankfurt, as any rightthinking person will admit. And no, I don't get how the King could forgive him enough to correspond with him again from the late 1750s onwards, either. Freaking Voltaire. In conclusion: our noble King thought these guys were his friends, showered them with affection, praise and worldly goods, and they were just - ugh. Except for D'Argens! The King's true friend!"
Also Nicolai, in volume 3, only slightly paraphrased: "Having reported to you, dear readers, that Fritz loved to sit near the beautiful Antinous statue and SEEMINGLY gaze at it in summer days in his old age, I must tell you that only shallow people would think he only did this because it appealed to his senses. I mean, sure, our glorious King enjoyed beauty, statues, and summer days, more power to him. But look, you know where that statue was located at Sanssouci before our new King moved it to the Berlin town palace? NEXT TO FRITZ' GRAVE. So what Fritz was actually doing wasn't related to the statue. He was contemplating his grave and his impending death. Because he was deep like that, our philosopher king. That's why he kept resting at this particular spot, so everyone I interviewed tells me."
Re: The Strassbourg Trip
Date: 2021-02-16 07:03 pm (UTC)Okay, so first of all, this Nicolai sounds super reliable and unbiased, lol forever.
And secondly,
Fritz loved to sit near the beautiful Antinous statue and SEEMINGLY gaze at it in summer days in his old age
It's always great when reality confirms my headcanons, because this was ALREADY MY HEADCANON. :D
And yeah, he's totally thinking about death while he's doing it, but that's largely because he's thinking ABOUT KATTE. Same with Wilhelmine when he goes to sit at her temple. (Didn't we run across something recently--a Camas letter?--where he said he visited her temple regularly and thought about her? I maintain Antinous was the same.)
Algarotti was mostly into the relationship because Fritz was a King
I mean...they definitely hit it off as individuals, but was much of Algarotti's behavior driven by Fritz being king? Imo, totally yes.
Also, wasn't d'Argens the one Fritz got upset with for going back to France for health reasons? But then he had a grave monument built for him? Just like Algarotti? JUST SAYING.
I mean, sure, our glorious King enjoyed beauty, statues, and summer days, more power to him.
Lolol.
I knew this collection would have goodies! Also, judging by what I saw in the table of contents, there are a *lot* of d'Argens anecdotes. Makes sense if d'Argens was one of his main sources.
. La Mettrie: Ugh...secondly, have you read his theories?
Fritz, writing to Wilhelmine, on the manner of his death:
We lost poor La Mettrie. He died for a joke, eating a whole pheasant pâté; after having gotten a terrible indigestion, he dared to be bled, to prove to the German doctors that one could bleed in an indigestion. It did not succeed; he took a violent fever which, having degenerated into putrid fever, prevailed.
I am so far behind on comments. I will try to catch up this weekend, but goodies keep coming in!
More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-17 10:45 am (UTC)re: reliability, in fairness, Nicolai actually, biased or not, fares pretty well in this regard. (Compared to his contemporaries, not compared to current day standard of research, obviously.) Every volume contains corrections to the previous one based on getting new intel. And not only does he use first hand wintesses - Quintus Icilius, D'Argens, Quanz (whom he knew personally and who is his source for some Fritz and music stories), as well as dozens of veterans from the 7 Years War who tell him war stories -, but he's careful to read everything else published, including English sources, not just French ones. This can cause nearly half a volume of eviscaration of said sources, but he reads them first. BTW, this was fascinating of me in terms of crossover to another interest of mine. Apparently, when Fritzmania exploded in Britain during the 7 Years War, Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote a short article on Fritz on public demand, while admitting that a) he doesn't speak German and b) it's only based on other articles he read about Fritz. As Nicolai says, the article would not have been reprinted and been forgotten if it hadn't been by Dr. Johnson. Once Johnson himself died, everything Johnson sold well, including the two first biographies/anecdote collections - by John Hawkins and Hester Thrale, respectively; Boswell was still working on his magnum opus - and Nicolai read both, which republish the Johnson-on-Fritz stuff due to the closeness of Fritz' death which also heightened interest again. And Mrs. Thrale, now Mrs. Piozzi, also published a book on her travels through the continent, including Prussia. While admitting she doesn't speak German, either, she did read Voltaire. This means Nicolai while saying Mrs. Thrale Piozzi writes entertainingly is busy being indignant that everyone - Johnson, Hawkins, Thrale - gets it so wrong about Fritz (and also FW), good intentions or not, about Prussian customs and law, and what rubbish is this!
You may also recall that Nicolai published Münchow's letter to him, and followed this up later when Minerva published another letter. Where I'm going with this: Nicolai is strongly opinionated and biased as hell, but his collections aren't cheap rip-offs; he does his research, if he finds evidence contradicting something he previously thought to be true, he says so, and he doesn't invent stuff.
But his biggest feud is with Zimmermann, which I dimly recall from Zimmermann's fragments. Now Zimmermann (Cahn, that's the doctor of "broken penis" fame) is mentioned as a friend in volume 1 of Nicolai, but then they have a fallout which Nicolai can't quite explain and Zimmermann turns against Nicolai and trashes him, while Nicolai trashes back. (My own suspicion is that Zimmermann must have been planning to publish and was disgruntled Nicolai got there first.) One big bone of contention is whether or not MT's Dad the Emperor saved Fritz' life in 1730 by having Seckendorff point out that FW can't pass a capital sentence on Fritz, because Fritz is a Reichsfürst of the HRE, and only the diet in Frankfurt could condemn him to death. This is a story which was debated at the time, and which Zimmermann believes, not least because it feeds into his theory that Fritz really wasn't off to escape to France or England but secretly was planning to escape to Austria and marry MT. Nicolai argues that while they can't know for sure because they can't access the state archive, he thinks this is rubbish. Undoubtedly the Emperor, like the other crowned heads of Europe, wrote a letter to FW pleading with him not to kill his son. This was announced in newspapers at the time, and Nicolai has found some articles mentioning it. But he really really doubts that the Emperor pulled out the "FW: you are not allowed to kill your son, a prince of the HRE!" argument. (And as we know, he's correct there.)
Another half a volume rant of Nicolai's triggered by Zimmermann and some other publications is everyone who took Voltaire's sarcastic description of some Sanssouci rooms being full of satyrs after nymphs and that if anyone could have seen the table round gatherings, he'd have assumed philosphers met in a brothel,and ran with it. Nicolai interprets this as Voltaire (and the others) saying that Fritz had painted porn on his walls in Sanssouci, and indignantly defends him against it, saying that sure, Fritz had some beautiful nudes there, but no porn, not ever, never would the King have stood for something like that! (Meanwhile, yours truly has been to Sanssouci and yes, there's a lot of nymphs and satyrs there, enough to my my AP go "are you sure he was gay?" Painted porn, it's not, but then that's not what Voltaire wrote.) This is another bone of contention between Zimmermann and Nicolai, because Zimmermann sees it as part of his no homo theory of Fritz the prostitute client in his younger years who now, with broken penis, can't anymore but still wants to.
A lot of the anecdotes you already know because they made it into later biographies, like the servants having to say Sie/Vous to the dogs ("bellen Sie nicht so laut, Biche! Fressen Sie doch auf, Alkmene!"), or Fritz naming his horses after politicians. There's a lot about the horses, in fact.
And yeah, he's totally thinking about death while he's doing it, but that's largely because he's thinking ABOUT KATTE. Same with Wilhelmine when he goes to sit at her temple. (Didn't we run across something recently--a Camas letter?--where he said he visited her temple regularly and thought about her? I maintain Antinous was the same.)
It's definitely mentioned in a Voltaire letter, but yes, I think also in a Camas letter. I'm with you on Antinous being the same. Nicolai at some other point says that Fritz did come around in his late years to believing in the immortality of the soul, because he hoped to see his sister again.
I mean...they definitely hit it off as individuals, but was much of Algarotti's behavior driven by Fritz being king? Imo, totally yes.
As we agreed with other people as well, it's impossible to have a relationship with someone who is a Crown Prince/A King and completely block that factor out. With Algarotti, who was looking for a job, definitely not. At the same time, the Algarotti essay collection and the Lady Mary biography have informed me Algarotti did root for Fritz during the 7 Years War in writing and in person in Italy (i.e. when with people who aren't Fritz' subjects), even if he wrote an MT poem just in case as well (perhaps a reaction to having written an earlier poem calling the battle of Prague the Prussian Pharsalos, which, not so much?), and while he clearly had decided at some point that living with Fritz was just too much, he still held respect and affection for him. (Another example of Algarotti being not nearly as gigolo like in his relationships as one could think is as I mentioned in my anthology write up that in the original version of his Russia book, he lets all his letters there be addressed to Lord Hervey, despite the fact the Russia book was published long after Hervey's death and a point where Hervey's name wasn't recalled with fondness by anyone of influence . And of course him reopening relationships with Lady Mary at a point when she's an English exile in Italy with not nearly as much money as she used to have.)
Also, wasn't d'Argens the one Fritz got upset with for going back to France for health reasons? But then he had a grave monument built for him? Just like Algarotti? JUST SAYING.
But that's different! D'Argens clearly had REAL health trouble! Algarotti was just faking it! And only one of them befriended Nicolai!
(BTW, I had known this but reading brought it back to me: D'Argens and Nicolai did team up in Fritz' life time to get him to make Moses Mendelsohn (one of the greatest philosophers of his time, the model for Lessing's Nathan the Wise, grandfather of Felix the composer) an Academy member. No dice. However, they did get Fritz to provide Mendelsohn with a Schutzbrief (given the shaky legal status of Jews, very important to have).
Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-17 11:59 am (UTC)It's definitely mentioned in a Voltaire letter, but yes, I think also in a Camas letter
Quick note to say: definitely not a Camas letter, not least because they were both dead when the temple was built in 1768. But yes, both you and I quoted the Voltaire one at some point.
Also, very interesting summary of Nicolai's approach and reliability - I had him on my list as more reliable than others and it's great to get a fuller picture.
re: Mendelssohn - I'm still annoyed that Fritz didn't get over himself, and not just regarding the Academy membership, but also when it came to meeting him. Missed chance IMO.
Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-17 12:08 pm (UTC)Re: Nicolai in general, here's a Heinrich Heine quote about him: „Wir müssen doch eingestehen, daß der alte Nicolai ein grundehrlicher Mann war, der es redlich mit dem deutschen Volke meinte, und der aus Liebe für die heilige Sache der Wahrheit sogar das schlimmste Martyrtum, das Lächerlichwerden, nicht scheute.“
Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-20 06:28 pm (UTC)Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-20 01:41 pm (UTC)Aha. Thank you for straightening out the chronology for me!
re: Mendelssohn - I'm still annoyed that Fritz didn't get over himself, and not just regarding the Academy membership, but also when it came to meeting him. Missed chance IMO.
SAME. Fritz! >:(
Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-17 01:44 pm (UTC)Every volume contains corrections to the previous one based on getting new intel.
Good for him! That is a good contrast to a variety of other sources.
You may also recall that Nicolai published Münchow's letter to him, and followed this up later when Minerva published another letter.
I don't recall this. What I recall is that it was published by Gallus in his "History of the Mark Brandenburg," and that when a very similar letter was published in Minerva, Nicolai wrote a response that was also published. I *seem* to recall, but don't have time to check, that Nicolai complained that the Gallus letter was published without his permission, but that in any case it had been published and so this near duplicate letter wasn't offering much new to readers (though he said it quite wittily).
Regardless, good for him for him for doing his research, bias or no.
More to come when RL permits.
Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-20 01:12 am (UTC)Indeed, we not only have the letter, and we know that it was only handed over on October 31, when the court martial had met and it had become clear (to Seckendorff) FW was going to pardon Fritz, but the modern editor says that the letter was composed by Seckendorff in the Emperor's name. (I don't know what the evidence for that claim is.)
This means Nicolai while saying Mrs. Thrale Piozzi writes entertainingly is busy being indignant that everyone - Johnson, Hawkins, Thrale - gets it so wrong about Fritz (and also FW), good intentions or not, about Prussian customs and law, and what rubbish is this!
Hee. I had found Johnson's essay on Fritz a long time ago, and never brought it up as it seemed woefully uninformed (and not nearly as entertaining as the likewise uninformed Macaulay). It does clarify where the "Karl Frederick" in the Orzelska Wikipedia article might come from!
Looking at it again now, I notice the following:
1784: Johnson dies. Voltaire's memoirs are published.
1786: Fritz dies. Johnson's essay on Fritz is published.
To wit, I notice that 1) this is a good time to cash in on some celebrity, 2) the editor of Johnson's essay adds footnotes that clearly draw on Voltaire's memoirs: Wilhelmine being thrown out of the window, FW being present at Katte's execution, etc. It's even the editor who adds that Charles VI saved Fritz's life by arguing that Fritz was a prince of the empire and could only be condemned to death by the Diet. (Which might or might not be in Voltaire, I forget.) Ah, yes, that's in Voltaire. Yeah, the footnotes to the Johnson essay are almost verbatim from Voltaire. (And I might add that the English translation of Voltaire was published already in 1784.)
And that's aside from Johnson's own mistakes! I can see why Nicolai would have to dedicate some page time to eviscerating these English publications.
I've gone ahead and put it in the library, though--even if it's not useful as a source on Fritz, it might be relevant to your Johnsonian interests.
Meanwhile, yours truly has been to Sanssouci and yes, there's a lot of nymphs and satyrs there, enough to my my AP go "are you sure he was gay?"
Every time I see those paintings, I think of your AP! (And as I've mentioned, the naked breasts on the Flora statue on his grave certainly had me ?? when I was there many years ago.)
who now, with broken penis, can't anymore but still wants to.
To clarify, Zimmermann's theory, as I recall, is the far more convoluted "with disfigured but fully functional penis, thinks he can't but actually can, because our great king couldn't be *impotent*, now!"
Voltaire just straight up says he was impotent (*and*, of course, that he bottomed for his page boys, oh the shame). :P
Nicolai at some other point says that Fritz did come around in his late years to believing in the immortality of the soul, because he hoped to see his sister again.
Huh. That's in Catt (memoirs, not sure about the diary). Might his source be Catt, directly or indirectly? (I've always been a bit skeptical, because devout Catt is always insisting that Fritz was actually very superstitious, and that Fritz kept bringing up arguments against the immortality of the soul because he was very unsure of himself and wanted to be talked out of them. But then again, I was skeptical about the sincerity of Katte's sudden piety before death, and I've had to revise my opinion on that!)
Okay, I'm signing off for the night, but I hope to have a productive weekend catching up on my salon backlog! :D
Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-20 07:41 am (UTC)Directly. He does say he talked to Catt. And yes, Catt is less than reliable, but Nicolai doesn't know that.
I can see why Nicolai would have to dedicate some page time to eviscerating these English publications.
Quite. BTw, I note that with all his railing against Voltaire the ungrateful wretch, it's half a volume rant about how Fritz would never go for painted porn, but exactly zero comments on the "bottoming for page boys and soldiers" allegation. (As opposed to Zimmermann in his Fragments, who of course has "Fritz wasn't gay!" as the key thesis of the work.
Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-20 01:22 pm (UTC)Okay, then I think we have our source for Nicolai. Will take it with a grain of salt pending further evidence. (Naturally, Fritz *wished* he could see his mother and sister after death; whether he actually believed there was a possibility is another question.)
exactly zero comments on the "bottoming for page boys and soldiers" allegation.
LOLOLOL.
Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-20 06:21 pm (UTC)I knew you guys would be on top of it! :D
Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-20 06:26 pm (UTC)Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-20 01:37 pm (UTC)Yeah, definitely. It's just really obvious with Algarotti's coming and going that after the initial honeymoon and disappointment, he was totally looking for a job and couldn't make up his mind whether it was worth it or not. I agree that there was genuine affection and it wasn't pure exploitation. But if Fritz hadn't been king, I suspect it would have been like Algarotti's visits to Cirey: a few weeks and no more.
BTW, I had known this but reading brought it back to me: D'Argens and Nicolai did team up in Fritz' life time to get him to make Moses Mendelsohn (one of the greatest philosophers of his time, the model for Lessing's Nathan the Wise, grandfather of Felix the composer) an Academy member. No dice.
MacDonogh tells me that Thiebault says that this was partly an unfortunate accident of timing, that Mendelssohn's name came up right after Catherine the Great's and it would have looked bad to juxtapose an empress and a Jew. Even if true (and I take everything Thiebault says with a grain of salt, even if he started working for Fritz at the time), it is still anti-Semitic AS HELL and unacceptable.
However, they did get Fritz to provide Mendelsohn with a Schutzbrief (given the shaky legal status of Jews, very important to have
Agreed, though according to Wikipedia, his wife and children didn't get one. FRITZ!
On a lighter note, also according to English Wikipedia:
Mendelssohn became (1756–1759) the leading spirit of Friedrich Nicolai's important literary undertakings, the Bibliothek and the Literaturbriefe, and ran some risk (which Frederick's good nature mitigated) by criticizing the poems of the King of Prussia.
Lol. Fritz is surely used to it by now.
Re: More Nicolai
Date: 2021-02-20 06:27 pm (UTC)D'Argens and Nicolai did team up in Fritz' life time to get him to make Moses Mendelsohn (one of the greatest philosophers of his time, the model for Lessing's Nathan the Wise, grandfather of Felix the composer) an Academy member. No dice. However, they did get Fritz to provide Mendelsohn with a Schutzbrief (given the shaky legal status of Jews, very important to have).
this is neat to know, thank you! Go D'Argens and Nicolai, even if Fritz was... Fritz :P
Re: The Strassbourg Trip
Date: 2021-02-20 06:17 pm (UTC)ha, thank you for the clarification!
Argh, bleeding!
Re: The Strassbourg Trip
Date: 2021-02-20 06:16 pm (UTC)*chokes*
I can see why you immediately thought of Mildred! I did too, LOL!
And VOLTAIRE. Need I say more?
I feel like I will forever find hilarious that Fritz/Voltaire had this crackship going that NO ONE understands :D
Re: The Strassbourg Trip
Date: 2021-02-20 06:18 pm (UTC)Because this was ALREADY my headcanon and I had ALREADY developed entire storylines in my head revolving around Fritz sitting by the Antinous statue and contemplating Katte and death in the last years of his life. :D
History owes me a headcanon or two confirmed, after OBLITERATING so many of my long-cherished ones. :P