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.
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timeasmymeasure
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.