cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 23

aaaaaand it's time for a new discussion post! :D (you guys are so fast!)

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

There's more of us now! :D

From:

selenak

New post, new picspam, as I now can do screenshots. ;) Remember the 2003 movie My Name is Bach, discussed many an entry ago? Now with some illustrations. Also back when Mildred and self did discuss it, I hadn't even read the Fredersdorf letters and knew nothing of Amalie. Going back with new knowledge in my head does make a difference. As a quick reminder as to what it's about: a fictional rendering of the May 7th 1747 meeting of Fritz and the Bach, Johann Sebastian. Co-starring JSB's two sons, Friedemann and Carl Emmanuel (who has a steady, if not very well paid job with Fritz), and Amalie (representing all the sibs except for Wilhelmine) and therefore having a far worse relationship with Fritz than in rl). Fritz is played by Jürgen Vogel, Bach by Vadim Glowna, Amalie by Karoline Herfurth, Friedemann by Anatole Taubmann and Carl Emmanuel by Paul Herwig. Quantz: Philippe Vuillemier. Director: Dominique de Rivaz. Bavarian fellow director Detlev Buck has a cameo as a customs officer, and Michel Cassagne as Voltaire at the very end of the movie. (When he arrives in Prussia three years too early.) The movie has Hohenzollern dysfunction meet Bach family drama and is focused on the emotional push and pull between Fritz and Bach. The Fritz characterisation is that of jerk woobie, with emphasis on the jerk, but there are woobie moments, too. Bach learns at the start of the movie that he's going blind and is dealing (or not) with said news throughout the film, though he only tells his family near the end, and it influences his actions both towards his sons and towards Fritz somewhat, but in general, he's the model of a confident, fair minded artist and patriarch, and that Fritz both wants to adopt him as a so much preferable Dad and best him (because grr, argh, fathers) makes for the push and pull. And last but not least: the movie does deserve credit for presenting Fritz unambigeously as gay, both in dialogue (in his inner monologue, he refers to Katte as his lover), and in action (both towards Goltz, the amalgan figure taking over both Fredersdorf's and Eichel's rl roles, and towards Friedemann. To my knowledge, it's the first movie to do so.

As far as I can telll, the producers must have secured permission to film at Sanssouci, too, though you see far less of it since part of the subplot is that it's nearly finished and Fritz personal household and court is about to move there. So most of the action takes place at the older Potsdam Hohenzollern palace and in Carl Emmanuel's house, most of which I suspect to be studio constructions. Otoh you can tell this is no tv production, the lighting is more cinematic - and uses actual candlelight a lot; otoh, the wigs are something to behold and are, err, less than authentic. Someone liked the punkier versions of Mozart's wigs in Amadeus a lot. Now, on to the screencaps:

Quantz playing with Amalie, whose musical teacher (in additon to being Fritz' teacher) he is in this film. He's also presented as Bach's old friend.

Amalie, like I said, is the only one of the siblings to show up in this movie, and the only other sib mentioned is Wilhelmine (in the big climactic scene when Fritz tells Bach all about his backstory trauma). There is no indication in the movie Fritz has siblings other than these two, and the relationship between him and Amalie is presented as very hostile, with him roleplaying FW when with her (that is definitely the not so subtext). So basically she's also Heinrich and AW in addition to being herself?

Jürgen Vogel as Fritz:

Bach gets presented by Fritz with his theme that Bach's supposed to improvise on. The periwig Bach is wearing here looks downright plausible compared to later versions. Incidentally, Bach wearing the old fashioned periwig as opposed to everyone else does signal something about the generational difference. (And of course fits with his portraits.) By contrast, Voltaire stuck with the Louis XIV style periwig simply because he thought it worked better for him than the later style wigs as far as I know, and he may have been right.

For about 23 minutes into the movie, Fritz has been presented as a jerk. Then the first woobie moment happens, ironically enough while a soldier is whipped for desertion, Fritz sits watching in the rain on a horse, broods and flashes back to Katte's execution. This is when his inner monologue in German - arguing with the late FW that he and his lover Katte have done nothing to be ashamed of - is slightly but significantly different from the English subtitles.

Yep, that's a Küstrin flashback to Katte's headless corpse, which after all was ordered to lie until 2 pm where Fritz could see it.

Amalie's short affair with Friedemann Bach in this movie is entirely fictional, but the film does show her passion for music itself and deep admiration for all three Bachs. Here she's asking JSB for his autograph:

Here she's listening to Friedemann and Emmanuel playing a duet together:

The movie has its excentricities, one of which comes when Fritz shows Bach the Czarina's - in 1747, that would be Anna Iwanova - present, a camel, and they actually ride it from the old Potsdam palace to the Sanssouci building site.

Fritz in this film isn't depicted nearly as often with dogs as he's in Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria - at a guess, the actor wasn't as comfortable with them? - but there's one Italian greyhound often around, called Amore, and she's featured in the scene where Fritz has the dialogue he had in rl with D'Argens with Bach, complete with trying out his tomb (with a dog) and saying the "Quand j'erais ici, je erais sans souci" line, in French.

This shows Vogel actually has the right size for Fritz, btw, most of the other male actors are taller than him. Tomb trying out is a bit too much for Bach who takes his leave at this point to play at the Garnison Church, with the result that Fritz comes after him and actually shows up at the church concert. I included this shot because it shows the outside of the Sanssouci main biulding before the terrace was finished, and comparing it with my photo of where the tomb is actually located, this reconstruction has the right distance:

Concert time again, and now Bach's periwig has gone punk:

Bach hands over his composition that forms the core of the "Musical Sacrifice", the "King's Theme":

And now we get to the next big woobie sequence interrupting Fritz the jerk, at around 1.06. Fritz is dictating his not quite abolition but severe limitation on the use of torture in the middle of the night to an exhausted Goltz who, like I said, seems to be take over the rl roles of both Fredersdorf and Eichel, and - something I couldn't appreciate back in the day - seems to have stolen Heinrich's wig:

Something the movie gets right is Fritz' constant insomnia problem, during which he either is shown playing the flute or working, like here. Goltz at last pleads exhaustion due to it being 3 am.

Which Fritz takes as a signal to trauma role play. The true emotional sucker punch is of course that he doesn't play his younger self, no, he plays Katte (while Goltz has to play Fritz). Goltz protests at first with "you know this isn't good for you" but then gives in, and Fritz plays Katte and the moment where Katte agrees to flee with him:

Now, one and a half years ago, as mentioned, I didn't know yet much about the Fritz/Fredersdorf relationship and so I didn't quite agree with Mildred's complaint that the movie by replacing Fredersdorf with the fictional Goltz simultanously also alters the relationship to something that's far less mutual, that movie!Goltz comes across as just tired and wishing this would be over in this scene. Many a book later, I've changed my opinion and agree with her. The movie doesn't give the impression that Fritz cares about Goltz as Goltz, and while it's impossible to say how much or little Goltz cares (he does seem to be somewhat crushed in a later scene when Fritz is sarcastic towards him at Sanssouci and says just because he's the spymaster doesn't mean he means anything), this still makes for a far different relationship than the one coming across from the Fritz/Fredersdorf letters. This said? I now want a story where Fritz, not as a regular habit but as a one time only thing once in a blue night asks Fredersdorf to do this roleplay with him and Fredersdorf for a variety of reasons says yes.

Next: Fritz and Bach as hobbits. Aka the emotinal jiu-jitsu has given way to actually confiding in each other:

Enough so that Fritz at last talks about his backstory trauma (not just Katte - Dad in his entirety, and the loss of Wilhelmine due to him):

From:

selenak

Bach is sympathetic, but still has no intention of becoming a permanent fixture in Berlin, because look, Fritz, he has his own family drama going on and is going blind. Being nicely turned down in his request for adoption is still being turned down, and so Fritz is in an extra bitchy mood when coming across Amalie, dressed as a man, and Friedemann in the stables. Amalie - who looks great in Prussian uniform, so if anyone wants to know how Wilhelmine in the getaway sequence from "Fiat Justitia" would have looked, somewhat like this - wants to run away with Friedemann. Friedemann is somewhat more realistic and also, as he tells her, attached to his head and very aware how running away with royals adventures end in her family. They do still have sex and that's when Fritz makes his presence known:

Friedemann (off screen) protests he's not the guy to go steady with for a princess:

Profile shot:

Making out (Amalie is now wigless):

And Fritz shows up to tell her she'll never be a guy and a Princess of Prussia is a valuable commodity. Now remember, Fritz and Amalie suposedly looked a lot alike. In the rest of the movie, this isn't true for the actors, but here it just about works:.

And then we get the follow up where Fritz (jealous because old Bach cares more for his sons than him) disses Friedemann and invades his personal space, and Friedemann returns the favor by invading Fritz' personal space back and flirting with him to the point of an almost kiss which is when he smugly basically says "sorry, not interested, see ya" and leaves a fuming Fritz behind:

And now, near the end, the move to Sanssouci has happened. Now, remember how in "Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria", they used the ballroom from the Neues Palais as Fritz' audience room/office in one of the scenes with Fredersdorf? Here, they use one of the audience rooms as Fritz' bedroom for the scene in which he disses Goltz (while preparing to have his medical treatment, hence him lying semi-naked on the bed:

And lastly, as the Bachs (that is, JSB and Friedemann) are leaving Brandenburg, they encounter a new arrival en route in the very final scene, who is interrogated by the same customs officer who let them in:

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yay screenshots! Thank you for the illustrated write-up!

the relationship between him and Amalie is presented as very hostile, with him roleplaying FW when with her (that is definitely the not so subtext). So basically she's also Heinrich and AW in addition to being herself?

Once I learned more about Fritz and AW, Heinrich, and Amalie, I mentally went over this movie and came to the same conclusion.

Yep, that's a Küstrin flashback to Katte's headless corpse, which after all was ordered to lie until 2 pm where Fritz could see it.

Which they put under a black cloth!

More seriously, I've paused this film many times on this shot (of course I did!) and still can't figure out: is he lying on some kind of cart, or is the wheel supposed to indicate that he was tortured? Given the context, I would think the latter, but since he wasn't historically tortured, and it kind of looks like some kind of wheelie device for removing the body...do you have an opinion?

the Czarina's - in 1747, that would be Anna Iwanova

Slight chronological correction: Anna died within a few days of Charles VI, if that makes it easier to remember (1740 was the year of monarchs dying), her infant son inherited, and Elizaveta's coup was a year later. So the Czarina in 1747 is Elizaveta already.

complete with trying out his tomb (with a dog)

That scene was so visceral for me in terms of getting across just *how* badly psychologically damaged he is.

something I couldn't appreciate back in the day - seems to have stolen Heinrich's wig:

LOL! That's hilarious! You're absolutely right.

Mildred's complaint that the movie by replacing Fredersdorf with the fictional Goltz simultanously also alters the relationship to something that's far less mutual, that movie!Goltz comes across as just tired and wishing this would be over in this scene.

Yeah, my main complaint here is that the roleplay scene opens with Goltz saying he's tired and wants to leave, and Fritz shoving him down and telling to stay put. That makes the roleplay extremely nonconsensual no matter *how* many pitying or longing looks Goltz gives Fritz in other scenes (and after you pointed it out, I watched more closely and agree that he does). It was a conscious choice of the filmmakers to send the message of an absolute monarch making an unwilling servant/courtier do something he said he doesn't want to do (and he's plausibly exhausted, as well as convinced this is a bad idea), and that colors my interpretation of the whole rest of the roleplay.

All they had to do was omit that, and I would have concluded they gave Fredersdorf a different name. But here we have Fritz conscripting unwilling therapists again. (At least Goltz doesn't have to get married?)

This said? I now want a story where Fritz, not as a regular habit but as a one time only thing once in a blue night asks Fredersdorf to do this roleplay with him and Fredersdorf for a variety of reasons says yes.

YES THIS. Have I not already said I want this? If not: I WANT THIS.

Next: Fritz and Bach as hobbits.

LOLOLOL, omg you're right. Well spotted. *dies*

You know, the Voltaire actor's nose is...actually pretty close.

Thanks as always for this!

Btw, since

prinzsorgenfrei did the Katte play, I've been wondering if anyone has read or has access to "The Sorrows of Frederick"? My look at the Google preview, way back in the day (probably 2019), gave me the impression that the theme was, "WOW was Frederick messed up. Like, really messed up." Which I guess is what the title says. :P

Edited Date: 2021-01-28 12:28 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

This said? I now want a story where Fritz, not as a regular habit but as a one time only thing once in a blue night asks Fredersdorf to do this roleplay with him and Fredersdorf for a variety of reasons says yes.

YES THIS. Have I not already said I want this? If not: I WANT THIS.

But also I am NOT having ideas about this and am NOT writing it in the next 3 months.

cahn, if I start trying to rope you into a dual-part Fritz/Katte, Fritz/Fredersdorf roleplay fic, just say no. It's like drugs. :P (Wiki link in case any of our Germans aren't familiar.) You don't have to yell at me about quota, and you don't have to do reading group, but you do have to yell at me about fic.

I haven't even finished Horowski yet, much less any of the MILLION other things I'm supposed to read! My sleep is wretched (hence continuing partial salon hiatus)!

No fic, Mildred. Bad Mildred.

Edited Date: 2021-01-28 12:55 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

since he wasn't historically tortured, and it kind of looks like some kind of wheelie device for removing the body...do you have an opinion?

Definitely not torture. I had to do some research on historical torture and while that was many years ago, I do recall the main instruments. That's not what a wheel used for that purpose looked like. I really don't think it was just meant to be a device for removing the body, nothing more complicated than that.

Czarina: right you are.

That scene was so visceral for me in terms of getting across just *how* badly psychologically damaged he is.

Definitely. Someone who knows Fritz only from this movie might not like him, but they'd be very aware he was incredibly damaged. And I think it's good the script doesn't just signal this via him being abusive or having temper tantrums, but also - and every effectively - in scenes like this one, where he's downright cheerful (and means every word he says).

LOLOLOL, omg you're right. Well spotted. *dies*

Sorry, Dominique de Rivaz, Peter Jackson owns this shot. :) As we've said many a post ago as well, thank all deities Fritz never got his hands on the the One Ring. d

THe Sorrows of Frederick: before your question, I had never heard of it. Googling doesn't give me more than you got, i.e. the Google excerpt. Since it's a play from the late 1960s, I do expect "how messed up is Fritz?" to be the main theme. I see there's also a later opera version with a 20 minutes excerpt on vimeo, which throws me right at the start, where the US audience is informed Fritz was the greatest King Germany ever had....

Historian: He was King of Prussia. A very different thing.
MT: I'll say.
A great many HRE Emperors from Charlemagne onwards to MT's son Joseph, all of whom had to be Kings of the Germans first before becoming Emperor: No kidding.

"...the greatest general in a war torn century..."

Prince Eugene and Napoleon, bookending that century: Say what?
Duke of Marlborough: Malplaquet, anyone? There was also me.
Heinrich: *points to his obelisk*

Thomas Carlyle: He was definitelyl the greatest King Prussia ever had, though!
Jürgen Luh: Yeah, no. FW was an awful human being, but I'm backing him for that title. More marks for effort - taking over a broke Kingdom and leaving it prosperous and with a completely new mentality will get you that - and no new wars, meaning despite his use of the death penalty to punish his son's beloved, he got a whole lot less people killed.

F1, FW II - IV: No one nominating us?
Everyone: No. Nor W1, who was the last King of Prussia and then became German Emperor under Bismarck. And then came Willy. No more need to be said. FW and Fritz are each other's sole competition for "best King Prussia ever had".

Aaaaanyway. I see from the cast list the play includes not just Katte but also Fredersdorf and the googleable excerpt shows Fritz crying at the thought of him, which is good. Otoh, the cast list includes EC but not Wilhelmine or SD, which is certainly a choice!

Lastly: I know Goethes novel "Die Leiden des jungen Werther" has the English title "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (though Sorrows as Leiden is not quite the same), so I assume "The Sorrows of Frederick" is an allusion to that, which cracks me up given Fritz' opinion on Young Goethe.

From:

selenak

But after the three months, you could in theory write it, right? Because the set up has so much potential! Since Frederdorf would be playing Fritz, not Katte, it would also be telling on how he sees Fritz. And of course on how Fritz sees Katte. And maybe there are things Fredersdorf just could not say or do in his relationship with Fritz because even at their closest, there is still that power differential. But the roleplay could free him to say/do it once?

(BTW, the power differential was there for Katte, too, but in a different way and also mitigated by the fact that FW had all the power then.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

LOL WELL

Yes, it has potential, and that's why my brain went there. Plus

cahn apparently needs to ship Fritz/Katte!

But as for timing...three months is a *minimum*. Current plan:

1 Learn German.
2 Read Katte- and young Fritz-related materials in German.
3 [Optional]: Write Katte fic, if muses cooperate.
4 Learn French (while reading more stuff in German).
5 Read Fritz stuff in French (while reading more stuff in German).
6 Write fic??

So no roleplay until steps 1-2 are complete. I'm not even done with Horowski! And I'm definitely not at a point where I can comfortably read Katte stuff that I can't easily consult Google Translate about.

Oh, and step 1.5 is "get more comfortable with ~~stupid~~ blackletter fonts," which I think I might do with Stratemann, i.e. interesting, but not critical to understand perfectly.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

That's not what a wheel used for that purpose looked like.

No, but that's never stopped artists from depicting Catherine of Alexandria with a wheel that looked like that. I wouldn't have considered the possibility that it was an instrument of torture if not for the way that the scene keeps hinting that Katte was tortured. Which just left me confused. Your shot, though, definitely looks rather more like a means of carrying away the body. So we'll go with that.

in scenes like this one, where he's downright cheerful (and means every word he says).

Exactly. My reaction was, "Oh, Fritz."

Lastly: I know Goethes novel "Die Leiden des jungen Werther" has the English title "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (though Sorrows as Leiden is not quite the same), so I assume "The Sorrows of Frederick" is an allusion to that

My brain keeps trying to call it "The Sorrows of Young Frederick" for that very reason! Though I admit to not having read "Werther". (I'm really not much of a literature person.)

From:

selenak

"Werther" is a very 18th century Sturm und Drang novel. Warning: academic diatribe ahead: I know in the English speaking world, that entire period of German literature is swept up under the label "Romantic", but that drives every German literature teacher crazy. German Romantic literature = Novalis, E.T.A. Hoffmann, the Schlegels. All of whom writing in the 19th century. Very much NOT Goethe, who in his old age in the 1820s once went on a "I loathe Romantic literature" rant. What young Goethe, Lenz, Herder, and young Schiller were writing in the 1770s and 1780s was Sturm und Drang, it's own genre; they then moved on to other styles, in Goethe's and Schiller's case creating the German classic period. So whenever I see an English language publication refer to "Werther" as a romantic novel, every single literature teacher and professor I ever had howls in protest in my mind.

Back to good old Werther: being an 18th century novel, it mostly consists of letters. (With fake editorial comments.) (Reminder: Samuel Richardson's "Clarissa" and "Pamela" are probably the most famous letter-novels in English of the era; Jean-Jaques Rousseau wrote "Julie, or the New Heloise" as his entry to the genre; and then of course there's "Les Liasons Dangereuses" by Chloderos de Laclos. Plus of course now we know Voltaire created his own letter novel. *g*) Said letters are written by our titular hero to his childhood bff Wilhelm. Now, there are two rl inspirations for what unfolds. One was young Goethe - supposed to study the law, but not too keen on that because he knows he's more into writing already - coming to a German small town, Wetzlar, falling in love with Charlotte Buff who is already engaged, being friends with her and her fiance and then husband for a while while flirting a lot and then departing from Wetzlar, to fall in love with another married woman next. (He kept in letter writing contact with Charlotte and her husband for some more years, though.) The other inspiration is that while Goethe was hanging out with Charlotte, he also met, in the same town, a young guy with the last name of Jerusalem. Who was in love with a married woman as well (not Charlotte Buff), only unlike Goethe did not fall out of it again but committed suicide, with pistols he borrowed from Kestner, Charlotte Buff's husband, who wrote about the whole affair to Goethe (who by then was back in Frankfurt.) Now Goethe hadn't been great friends with Jerusalem, but he'd known him, and the coincidence, the might-have-been was eerie, and out of the combination of these two events grew the idea of a novel. (Mind you, said novel ended his friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Kestner, because naming the heroine "Lotte", using a lot of autobiographical incidents and mixing them with the Jerusalem tale did not strike them as cool.)

Werther in the novel, unlike Goethe, isn't a writer, he has Jerusalem's job(s), but he meets Lotte the way Goethe met Charlotte Buff (the scene subsequently became much imitated and parodied, hilariously by Thackeray in a limerick) - mutual aquaintances pick her up for a countryside ball at her father's house (nobody is a noble here, so shared carriages are a thing for money saving purposes), where because she's the oldest sister and her mother is dead she's still busy cutting bread and butter for her kid siblings for dinner before rushing off to the ball. She and Werther then hit it off over loving the same poetry - Klopstock - and having a sneaky fondness for trashy English novels, dance, and he falls in love with her while learning she's engaged. After some more weeks of hanging out together and enjoying literature and hiking (this is the era where the middle class discovers taking strolls through landscapes as a hobby), her fiance Albert shows up, and Werther tries to be fair: Albert is a good guy who loves Lotte. Werther attempts to do the sensible thing and leave after one more evening with Lotte and Albert (on Goethe's real life birthday, August 28th), taking a position elsewhere as an envoy's secretary.

However, the elsewhere doesn't work out, not least because it's a court and Werther is a non-noble and gets snubbed by the nobility. He quits and returns to the small town where Lotte and Albert are now married. Now Werther has given up being fair to Albert and sees him in a far more critical light (this is also where Kestner wrote an "WTF, Goethe?!?" letter when reading that part of the novel in protest), as someone who takes Lotte for granted and doesn't appreciate her enough. Lotte and Werther geeking out about literature is still a thing, but now he's into Ossian. (Cue subsequent readers, aware that the Ossian poems were a fraud, wondering whether Goethe is doing this to signal Werther's mental decline. Since Goethe himself didn't known yet when writing that the poems were a fraud, probably not.) Events come to a head in a kiss after which she tells him to leave, and he commits suicide the way rl Jerusalem did. Then we get the famous last sentence of the novel (from the supposed editor of the letters) stating that Werther, as a suicide, was buried outside the town. "Kein Geistlicher hat ihn begleitet." (This in is contemporary context is a wham last line managing to depict the treatment of suicides by the clergy of both main faiths as heartless without ever saying so.)

Now, what made this novel such a big bestseller at the time (and inspired a Werther fashion craze, with young men wearing the outfit Werther wears when first meeting Lotte and young women Lotte's dress, not to mention the infamous Werther style suicides) wasn't the plot as such, it was the language, the immediacy of feeling (remember, in theatre, French formalism still ruled absolutely), the nature descriptions (aside from this being a life long interest of Goethe's, he pulls out all the stops of being a young gifted writer here), the novelty that the characters and what they experience aren't nobles (aside from Werther's brief stint as an envoy's secretary, which is summed up in a letter to Wilhelm), they're people you could actually meet, and there's no villain (even when critical about Albert as a husband, the worst Werther can accuse him of smugness and self satisfaction). Also, while the letter format was the most popular format for novels at the time, somehow the Werther-to-Wilhelm letters really struck a nerve, feeling authentic to many a reader in a way the other letter-novels didn't. The preamble of the novel, addressing the reader and saying that if for some reason life hadn't granted them a friend, they should regard this book as that friend, even heightened the identification.

It certainly worked this way for Karl Philip Moritz, who unlike Goethe had an upbringing more like Fritz', only the lower class version - his father was a tyrannical super religious military man, he went through a horrid abusive school, then a horrid abusive master (he was supposed to become a hatmaker), when he ran away. For Moritz, "The Sorrows of Young Werther" became what music and literature were for Fritz, he regarded the book as his friend, and of course he fanboyed the author. Now, this could have gone horribly wrong - not a few people who loved "Werther" were irritated to disappointed to crushed when meeting Goethe later in life, when he hadn't just moved on stylistically but also was a courtier and minister (of Carl August, remember), not to mention sharp tongued if he wanted to be. But Moritz lucked out, for he met Goethe when Goethe was on his two years "finding myself again as a poet" runaway time in Italy, and Goethe wasn't just kind to him but memorably described Moritz as "my damaged younger brother", seeing in him a might have been if he hadn't lucked out by being born the son of a wealthy Frankfurt citizen and given all the advantages from that, so Moritz from this point onwards had connections and job security. He still died young (his health was wrecked), and left German literature with the haunting autobiographical novel "Anton Reiser" which is perhaps the first German literary text to astutely describe psychological abuse through childhood and youth, and the long term damage resulting from this. "Anton Reiser" also contains a description of the narrator reading "Werther" for the first time, and "I'm not alone anymore! Here's someone who feels as I do!" is very much a part of it.

Another famous Werther fan was Napoleon, who read it dozens of times (in translation, of course), wrote a bad imitative novel as a young man as a result, and upon his meeting with Goethe had a "Han shot first" type of conversation with him. (There are two versions of the novel; the later edition contains some more editorial comments and more stuff about Werther's job frustrations, possibly because the author by then was working at the Weimar court. Napoleon liked the original version with minimal fake editorial comments better.) For today's readers, coming to the novel from a completely different context than later 18th century readers, the impact is basically impossible to reproduce. However, there's a very good 1970s novel by Ulrich Plenzdorf, "Die neuen Leiden des jungen W.", in which the hero, Edgar Wibeau, comes across the novel by accident and mocks everything about it, only to find himself in a plot where basically everything that happened to Werther happens to him, and he comes to understand Werther more and more. Instead of letters, the novel consists of transcriptions of tape recordings as Edgar speaks his thoughts on tape for his buddy Willy.) It's an East German novel which also has to get around GDR censorship - for example, Edgar as a drop out instead of a young man eager to join the work force had to be presented in a way that didn't glorify hippiedom (that's something for decadent Westerners!), and no sympathetic hero of a novel licensed by GDR censorship could be allowed to commit suicide (in a worker's paradise? No way!), which with the death being quintessential to the plot was a problem. However, Plenzdorf got around censorship in style - Edgar is perfectly willing to join the work force, just in a way that puts his ability to good use, so after his firing from the equivalent of the secretary-to-an-envoy situation (this is working as part of a a handymen's unit), he is busy secretly inventing and building a machine to help the handymen's unit with painting that's supposed to prove to them his abilities, and it's this invention being badly haywired that gets him killed after his night-plus-ensueing-goodbye with Charlie; he doesn't commit deliberately suicide. However, the subtext of him just risking it because he doesn't see a point anymore is quite strong.

Edited Date: 2021-01-29 08:30 am (UTC)

From:

cahn

I am super enjoying this; it really adds a certain something to have the screenshots :D

Yep, that's a Küstrin flashback to Katte's headless corpse, which after all was ordered to lie until 2 pm where Fritz could see it.

...wow. Holy cow.
(I agree, btw, that the wheel just looks like part of the cart.)

The movie has its excentricities, one of which comes when Fritz shows Bach the Czarina's - in 1747, that would be Anna Iwanova - present, a camel, and they actually ride it from the old Potsdam palace to the Sanssouci building site.

...I must say that I am indebted to you for screencapping the camel. LOL. (I also actually laughed out loud on reading "Aren't we a bit fast? My stomach has trouble" as the subtitle.)

...the punk periwig???? That is sure... something

and - something I couldn't appreciate back in the day - seems to have stolen Heinrich's wig:

omg SO HE HAS, I am dying

I now want a story where Fritz, not as a regular habit but as a one time only thing once in a blue night asks Fredersdorf to do this roleplay with him and Fredersdorf for a variety of reasons says yes.

...I see that below

mildred_of_midgard has already conscripted me for betaing this :PPPP (And yes, I want it too!)

Next: Fritz and Bach as hobbits.

ahahaha another thing I would not have seen myself and yet SO TRUE

From:

cahn

Lol! While this story sounds brilliant I would also like to do other things with my life in the next three months (even salon things! I want to finish and write up Orieux, I'm so close!), so: no. NOOOOOO. :P :)

From:

cahn

Heinrich: *points to his obelisk*

AHAHAHAHAHA

F1, FW II - IV: No one nominating us?
Everyone: No.

heeeee!

From:

cahn

Okay, I am indebted to mildred mentioning this because I should have realized that I could just ask you about Werther and you would tell me in a way that would explain to me why I should read it, but it... never occurred to me! (Though I am interested in reading it, because it's one of those things I haven't got around to reading yet, I guess it's no surprise that I am interested partially because of the Massenet opera, which I have never seen, and, er, because there's an extant production with a young Thomas Hampson, which is the one I'd see if I watched it :D )

I know in the English speaking world, that entire period of German literature is swept up under the label "Romantic", but that drives every German literature teacher crazy.

This is good to know, because yeah, this is what I have heard. But now I know :)

Samuel Richardson's "Clarissa" and "Pamela" are probably the most famous letter-novels in English of the era; Jean-Jaques Rousseau wrote "Julie, or the New Heloise" as his entry to the genre

Oh! I haven't read these but I know them from Pushkin mentioning them in Eugene Onegin :D (Also I believe they showed up in Orieux?) Everything is starting to make sense :P

(He kept in letter writing contact with Charlotte and her husband for some more years, though.)

Until he WROTE THEIR PRIVATE LIVES INTO A BOOK, huh.

not least because it's a court and Werther is a non-noble and gets snubbed by the nobility.

I suppose this isn't fair to Jerusalem, but I find this hilarious given what you've told us about Goethe and Carl August.

(this is also where Kestner wrote an "WTF, Goethe?!?" letter when reading that part of the novel in protest)

Aw, man. I can see why Kestner was not amused.

"Kein Geistlicher hat ihn begleitet." (This in is contemporary context is a wham last line managing to depict the treatment of suicides by the clergy of both main faiths as heartless without ever saying so.)

Ohhhhh, I see. (And this is the kind of thing I am really glad you are telling me!)

The preamble of the novel, addressing the reader and saying that if for some reason life hadn't granted them a friend, they should regard this book as that friend, even heightened the identification.

Even though the Kestner thing still annoys me, this is actually rather touching to me.

However, Plenzdorf got around censorship in style

Wow, yeah, I like that.

Thank you for this! I shall put it on my (sadly extremely large) stack of things to read :D Though I am thinking that I should read a biography of Goethe first (not that you haven't been awfully helpful with that too), as knowing a bit about Voltaire beforehand certainly helped a lot with Candide :)

From:

cahn

Awwww, Amalie.

I laughed at Voltaire showing up, though! He looks rather hilarious (just in terms of the expression on his face). And like mildred said his nose is great!

From:

selenak

The Voltaire cameo at the very end of the film is hilarious, though not without dark subtext, as one of the themes is that Fritz, much as his longing for art and artists is real, can't help fucking these relationships up by being a despot (and a badly damaged by FW human being); earlier in the movie, he tells Bach he's expecting Voltaire and that he'll squeeze him like an orange etc., and one of the things Bach later says when declining to stay is that he'd rather not be squeezed like an orange. (Mind you, Bach didn't need the Voltaire quote to get that impression; there's son Carl Emmanuel, whose entry scene in the movie is like this:

Emmanuel: Your majesty, since I've just become a father, and I know you don't give bonuses for free, I thought I'd compose something special so you can pay me for that and I have some more money for the wife & kid?

Fritz: Yeah, no. Did I commission a composition? I did not. See you at the next concert.

From:

selenak

...I must say that I am indebted to you for screencapping the camel. LOL. (I also actually laughed out loud on reading "Aren't we a bit fast? My stomach has trouble" as the subtitle.)

The entire scene is a hilarious 18th century take on "son takes adopted dad out for a joyride" ("but how are you steering it?" "With my knees!").

Wigs: am glad you're as amused as I was by the Heinrich wig recognition. :) Seriously though, I blame Amadeus for getting the notion out there that wigs could go punk.

From:

selenak

The Massenet opera: is a very French and 19th century take. The novel leaves it ambiguous how much Lotte requites Werther's feelings - she likes him, she loves geeking out with him, and she might even be attracted to him, but she does love her fiance/husband, and whether she ever loves Werther is up to debate. And like I said, Albert is NOT the villain of the tale, and even in the second half of the novel when Werther is very Albert-critical, he doesn't find worse things to say than smug, self satisfied, takes Lotte for granted, boring. The opera, otoh, changes this so that Lotte is unquestioningly in love with Werther, is only with Albert because her mother wished that with her dying breath and her father wants it as well, and Albert turns into a domestic tyrant who forbids Lotte Werther's company once they're married. (The novel's Albert never does, he trusts her completely.) This said, the music is beautiful, but much like Gounoud's Faust is not Goethe's Faust, Massenet's Werther is not Goethe's Werther, either. Have an aria anyway. (That's Jonas Kaufmann singing "Pourquoi me reveiller".)

While I'm providing links: Lego Werther, a hilarious summary of the novel in English.

A beautiful trailer advertising a theatre production (all the spoken text is directly from the novel)

Another trailer, quoting directly from the letter Werther writers after his first encounter with Lotte and showing the locations in Wetzlar (there was A LOT of Werther tourism in the late 18th and then in the 19th century because Goethe had described the locations for the various scenes very recognizably, which was another thing that the Kestners weren't thrilled about)

Also I believe they showed up in Orieux?

They do!

Until he WROTE THEIR PRIVATE LIVES INTO A BOOK, huh.

Well, quite. Thomas Mann wrote a novel called "Lotte in Weimar" about Charlotte Kestner, nee Buff, visiting Weimar 44 years later and basically closing that chapter of her life with one last meeting. By then, she's on the one hand treated by all the Weimar society as a walking, talking bit of literature which both flatters and irritates her, but on the other avoided by Goethe; their one meeting in public is inconclusive and she's dissappointed that he's now so formal and a walking, talking institution, but then they meet again in a carriage and have a real conversation, allowing her to make peace with the past. It's a famous novel (also filmed) but has one problem, and that's Thomas Mann basically writing Goethe as himself. (He very much saw himself as the new Goethe in his life time.) And they were different people with different tempers, to put it simply. (His version is why avid Thomas-Mann-reader Susan Sontag, in her novel about Sir William Hamilton in which Goethe has a cameo showing up in Italy where he meets Sir William and Emma, writes Goethe as Thomas Mann, too,)

Biography of Goethe: postpone that, not just because there is so much else to read, but also because he lived a very long and rich life, and also I don't know which English language biography is good. Otoh, there is a short text available in English which I just ordered for you (also just in case my calendar doesn't arrive), which is one of the "incensed monologues for incensed women" written by Christine Brückner and translated by Eleanor Bron. It's a collection of imaginary speeches by a variety of women, both mythological, historical and from literature, so you get, among others, Desdemona (if she'd actually talked with Othello and he'd heared her out, uninterrupted), Luther's wife Katharina, and Christiane the long time mistress and eventual wife of Goethe. It's a funny and poignant text, no longer than a short story, and the other speeches are great as well.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Heee. I knew saying I hadn't read a work of German literature would result in a summary of said work of literature!

Your write-up is greatly appreciated, though because of limited salon participation I alas have to leave it at that. Though I see

cahn is making the most of it, so yay!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, this is the ONE post from my reading I'm going to allow myself to make today. I wish I could share all the Horowski goodies with you guys, but I will never sleep if I do, and I will certainly never learn German. So here goes.

The master of ceremonies who's come up a couple of times is Johann von Besser, son of a preacher from the Pomeranian Besser(er) family. Is there another preacher Besser(er) from the general vicinity who's come up a lot in our fandom? Yes, there is! (Was with Katte at the end, wrote the sympathetic account to Hans Heinrich.) Are they related? Probably!

Anyway, our future master of ceremonies Besser was planning to become a preacher, but he got into a notorious duel and that ended that career. He ended up in diplomacy instead (thanks to a bunch of connections), and the Great Elector (F1's father) sent him to the court of Charles II of England, as the Brandenburg Resident. As his performance with the sword duel and then his tennis matches with C2 proved, he was a very athletic guy.

Now, Brandenburg and Venice were about equal when it came to precedence at court. Which meant Besser and the Venetian envoy were always duking it out, trying to get the edge over the other. After the Venetian envoy managed to get ahead of Besser in making it to a door and entering a room before him, Besser knew if it happened again, that all the diplomats would have to write home that Venice clearly should treated with more respect than Brandenburg.

So when C2 died and his brother James became king, Besser and the Venetian guy were racing down the hall to be the first to present their compliments to the new king. Here is where I have to quote from Horowski:

Besser's martial arts lessons at Leipzig proved useful one last time. All diplomats could improvise this kind of speech, but only Besser was capable of talking and keeping his gaze fixed on the king while simultaneously grabbing the competition by the pants and giving him the most elegant kickboxer kick possible to shove him far into the back of the room, all without breaking stride in the delivery of his speech of compliments upon the accession to the throne. When he finished speaking, the room broke into spontaneous applause, and we should not be surprised, if from then on, his career had something to do with ceremonials.

His first day on the job as master of ceremonies for F1 was F1's homage ceremony in Prussia (no coronation yet), where Horowski gives a description that may be of interest to fanfic writers, if anyone wants to lead into the 1740 Strasbourg and Cleves trip with the Königsberg trip before it. He did such a good job--including tricking the Polish envoys into accepting chairs with lower backs than his boss, the new Elector, as part of a campaign to signal that an Elector was about the equal of a king (remember, the thing he'll have to go back on later, when his elector becomes king)--that F1 ennobles him, and that's when he becomes "von Besser."

He keeps his job until 1713, when F1 dies and FW kicks out all his father's unnecessary staff, and then he goes to Dresden and advises August the Strong until his death.

Next hilarious observation by Horowski is that, during his homage ceremony, the elector (here in his capacity as sovereign Duke of Prussia), did not make a speech. He points out that we are used to our rulers being on a permanent election campaign and making speeches all the livelong day, but early modern monarchs were trained to be pithy and make short observations that would not risk their dignity.

If an early modern monarch could talk well, that was a wasted stroke of luck among born rulers. How gladly would Frederick the Great have given speeches! But there were practically no occasions, and so his entourage alone got the full weight of his monologues.

Lol. I guess Leuthen was his chance to shine in more ways than one!

His entourage: *weary*
Catt: My real job title is Royal Listener!

Edited Date: 2021-01-30 02:52 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, one more thing that I figured out just now, since my last post:

I've realized at least one reason descriptions of Fritz's height veer between 5'2" (157 cm) and 5'7" (170 cm) with very little middle ground: Voltaire reports it at 5'2" in his pamphlet. Now, that has to be French inches, which would be about 5'6" (167 cm) in English inches. Now, he probably did lose a few inches as an old man, which was when he was a celebrity, (if nothing else, he was apparently stooped over with arthritis), but this is the same thing that happened to Napoleon: he was 5'2" in French inches, and he got a reputation for being super short because someone failed to make the conversion.

So if Voltaire is telling the truth, Fritz would have been not super short, but not tall, and probably around the same height as Katte (imo).

FW I've only seen described as 5'2", and I do wonder whose units those are.

Okay, I really need to call it a day for new salon posts!

(The Prussian state archives have an entry for "correspondence with youth friend and royal adjutant Peter Karl Christoph von Keith 1745-1750", which is super interesting to me. One day we should think about ordering it!)

Edited Date: 2021-01-30 02:08 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

Hey, I knew that about Napoleon, but never considered it might also apply to Fritz!

Re: Katte - did not mention this, but Martin v. K. writes he saw the body in 1921 and you could tell he was medium sized - mittelgroß - with straight blond hair. Now, considering that was medium sized in 1921 might have been tall in 1730, and that hair does not necessarily stay the same color after death (especially when the coffin gets opened as often as poor Katte's ways by gruesome tourists), I'm not sure how reliable that observation is, but there it is, and at least the lack of natural curls and straight hair is reliable?

The Prussian state archives have an entry for "correspondence with youth friend and royal adjutant Peter Karl Christoph von Keith 1745-1750", which is super interesting to me. One day we should think about ordering it!

One day we should. Of course, now I wonder why there are no more letters after 1750. Lack of contact or Peter being close at hand if contact was wanted anyway? Other than Voltaire coming to town, I don't recall anything big happening in Fritz' life in 1750... when did Peter get married to Ariane again?

From:

selenak

That's absolutely priceless, and I so hope one day a film will include that sequence of Besser kickboxing the Venetian ambassador while keeping eye contact with James II. and delivering his congratulations speech.

James: for once in his life, not the most status conscious person in the room!

Lol. I guess Leuthen was his chance to shine in more ways than one!

No kidding. And good lord, yes, he'd have loved to give speeches. As it is, he was the King with the most modern PR work anyway, with all those articles he launched in the press.

Catt: My real job title is Royal Listener!

The other readers: So say we all!

but early modern monarchs were trained to be pithy and make short observations that would not risk their dignity.

Lord Hervey: Pity the training never seems to hold for Germans, then. Of course, I learned to tune out G2 a lot of the time, but not enough not to satirize him on that count, too, in my memoirs.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Hey, I knew that about Napoleon, but never considered it might also apply to Fritz!

I had considered it, but it was just a hypothesis; I had no evidence. Poking around the archives today (looking for Peter Keith) led me to an entry that was titled "Idée de la Personne, de la Manière de Vivre du Roi de Prusse, et de sa Cour", by an unknown author, probably in the hand of Catt. Googling it gave me a bilingual edition of Voltaire's pamphlet (bonus letter to Madame Denis complaining about Frankfurt). And that pamphlet opens with "He has a height of 5 feet 2 inches", which we already knew from reading it in French, but what the bilingual edition told me is that the English translator rendered it "five feet two inches," and I was like, "Aha! Just like Napoleon!"

Now we have actual textual proof that's what happened.

Now, considering that was medium sized in 1921 might have been tall in 1730

That is interesting. I'd always assumed medium-sized in 1730, because Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz say "shorter than average," but he was in the Gens d'armes and met the height requirements, so I figured average with a deduction due to Wilhelmine relying on her memories 10-15 years later and not remembering him fondly.

Blond hair is interesting! But yes, it could have been bleached by all the millions of things that happened to the corpse. Wilhelmine also said he had black eyebrows and a swarthy complexion (which I would expect her to remember a little better), so you may be right that blond may not have reflected his real-life hair color. Straight rather than curly is new, though!

I don't recall anything big happening in Fritz' life in 1750... when did Peter get married to Ariane again?

1742. If it helps to remember, the first chapter of "Lovers" is set in 1750, so he's already married with two kids running around. (Though admittedly the timing of other events is speculative; see below.)

Pretty much everything about "Schriftwechsel mit dem Jugendfreund und königlichen Adjutanten Peter Karl Christoph von Keith 1745 - 1750" intrigues me.

Schriftwechsel mit

One thing that's worth noting is that we've so far encountered *no* letters to or from Peter, only *about* him. If this description means we have correspondence of that type, that would definitely mean it was something new to us.

dem Jugendfreund

So from this entry, I can't tell if the correspondence is between the cabinet and Peter, or Fritz and Peter, or both. "dem Jugenfreund" with no "of Fritz" makes me think Fritz? But then the top header says "Cabinet of Fritz", so...

[Ignore the pink, it's a bug in Linux with screenshots.]

und königlichen Adjutanten Peter Karl Christoph von Keith

This is interesting to me, because I made him ADC in "Lovers" because I had read somewhere that he was (it might actually have been AD, I'm going from an increasingly old and faint memory here). I have never found any other evidence that he served as royal adjutant or ADC, plus I had found a different Lt. Col. von Keith who did, so I had concluded someone got confused. But now this counts as a second piece of evidence, and I'm very intrigued!

1745-1750

The dates I find extreeeeemely interesting! The only interaction, such as it is, between Fritz and Peter in 1746-1749 that I'm aware of, is the letter *about* Peter as prospective envoy where Fritz is all "Lol no, and in case that wasn't clear: over my dead body." Those are the years where he seems to be least in favor (well, starting in 1742). Up until 1742, you can speculate that Fritz was leaving him in Berlin for his own safety and letting him be an intellectual (while keeping him far, far, away from power or even the *rumor* of any influence over Fritz, like SD et al.).

But in 1742, a humiliated Peter requests (and is granted) an army commission, and also says he needs to leave Berlin because it's too expensive and his salary isn't equal to the cost of living there. That's also the year he gets engaged and married (he's engaged when he gets the commission). Note that this information is contained in letters from Jordan to Fritz, nothing either to or from Peter! (Or Fritz on this occasion.)

In 1747, Fritz seems extremely suspicious of Peter, on grounds that he might be scheming for a diplomatic position, and on grounds that he's become half English (and whose fault is that, Fritz!).

1747 is also the year Peter becomes curator at the Academy of Sciences (given the subject headings in his archive entry, this might be related to that). I'm not sure how directly Fritz would have been involved in that, though; I used to think he was, but then the Maupertuis book told me he was less micromanagery before Maupertuis left, and Maupertuis had a free hand (remember, M is roleplaying "I'm Fritz, the rest of you are Prussia" at the Academy).

1750 is the first record we have of Fritz making a nice personal gesture in Peter's direction, namely giving him a gift of money for his mother-in-law and a letter to said mother-in-law praising him. And that's why my slashy fic is set then.

I would love it if the archives contained that 1750 letter!

[ETA: And he becomes an honorary academy member in early 1744, so it can't be that.]

At a guess, 1745-1750 is a question of survival of documents. Unless in 1750 he was made adjutant and no more correspondence was needed because he was *very* close at hand, as you speculate, which would be very interesting and then I would have to update the notes on my fic and write another, even slashier fic. :P

Alternatively, maybe it was during the 1745-1750 period that Peter got administrative responsibilities for Charlottenburg and/or the Tiergarten, and the archives have the records of those official assignments--but I went with 1750, since there's very little evidence so far that Fritz is anything but suspicious in the late 1740s. Also, it does say "correspondence with" and not "patent for new responsibilities" or somesuch, and the archives do tend to say when there's an official document, unless I'm leaning too heavily on my understanding of "Schriftwechsel mit".

Ooh, scrolling down the list of illustrious people of arts and sciences (<3 Peter getting listed alongside Algarotti and Voltaire), I see:

"Schriftwechsel mit dem königlich-polnischen Geheimen Rat Ulrich Friedrich von Suhm
Enthält u. a.:
- Reise von St. Petersburg nach Warschau, 1740
- Versorgung der Kinder und Geschwister Suhms nach dessen Tod, 1740/41."

I bet they have the letter from Nicolas de Suhm describing Suhm's death that Preuss referred to but refused to transcribe!

Also, 4 boyfriends listed in one page of entries of illustrious people of arts and sciences, that's pretty good. :D

Voltaire: Some of us were more illustrious than others. *cough*

Edited Date: 2021-01-30 05:43 pm (UTC)