mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
mildred_of_midgard ([personal profile] mildred_of_midgard) wrote in [personal profile] cahn 2021-02-28 08:11 pm (UTC)

Re: Schöning: Old Fritz: Not Your Dream Boss (Unless You're Dog)

Haha, I love the thread title. Over a year ago, I replied to [personal profile] cahn's comment on my fic "The Care and Feeding of Italian Greyhounds" with:

Fritz: not your dream boss. :P Possibly your dream owner if you're a dog. [ETA: Well, aside from the whole taking you into a war zone. ;) ]

Salon hivemind at work again today? :D

My speculation: it's a matter of perspective. Compared with the huge number of daily performances, see my previous translated excerpt, Schöning can say Fritz only attended rarely concerts anymore. To normal people, two or three times a week is often.

I did remember you telling us the one author argued with this traditional depiction, and I immediately started making protesting sounds when I got to this part of the write-up, haha. Your explanation makes sense.

Concerts Georg, who lives at Sanssouci and attends 10,000 concerts a day, is an outlier who should not have been counted. ;)

if you treat the army as a deposit for people you want to punish, you're not making it look attractive and honorable

This is a good point, Fritz!

He used to say "Post mortem nihil est, and that proves that he thought that he didn't believe in the immortality of the soul. He also used to say : Ex nihilo nihil est. So there has to be someone who created the world and everything in it; (...) so he recognized a single God as the creator and beginning of all things.

Ha, Catt! :P

But yes, this jives with what Fritz said for most of his adult life, starting with when Voltaire won the battle against Wolff. ;)

Regarding chastity and honesty, the King showed a great deal of shame about his person; he didn't even allow his own servants to see him in the nude(Sidenote: in case this isn't clear, Schöning means he didn't piss or shit in their presence. Now today that's a given, but not so much in the 18th century, or earlier. One of the important offices among the courtiers of Henry VIII., for example, was the gentleman of the stool, who, yes, had to wipe the royal bottom.)

Same for Louis XV, if I'm not mistaken.

But yes, given what I'd read about Fritz dressing himself and not wanting to be seen in the nude (Fritz, you're just giving Zimmermann ideas!), I assumed that he was also unusual in not relieving himself in front of other people.

Fritz: a good patient? The more pain he felt during his illnesses, the kinder and more graciously he behaved towards those who were nursing him. It was always a certain sign of his impending recovery when he started to be rude to the people he'd been content with while he was suffering.

Good grief.


Oh, Fritz.

of these one was the favourite, and the others were this favourite's companions

Awww. <33

The former was always lying next to the King on a chair with cushions and slept in her master's bed at night. The others had to leave the room in the evening, but returned early in the morning when the King was woken up.

Aaahh. Okay, a plot hole I *didn't* know about. *grumbles* But okay, that's a minor one because it's Fritz's specific practice, not like having your servants light the fire and wake you up, which is *everyone*, even "I dress myself and want privacy for relieving myself* weirdo Fritz. ;)

he also owned a pack at the palace of Potsdam and in the Jägerhof which consisted of forty to fifty whippets

Had encountered this, had not had it confirmed by a reliable source. This source is a treasure trove!

Also, Jägerhof. Hmm. A Potsdam Jägerhof (I know they were ubiquitous), separate from the Berlin one? Google is not helping me out here, the only Jägerhof hit I get being some 20 km south of Sanssouci, but we've established that "Jägerhof" is almost as hard to google as "Völker". It was only thanks to Lehndorff mentioning that the Ariane got compensated with a pension when Fritz turned the Berlin Jägerhof into a bank in 1765 that we ever found the Keith residence.

Anyway, I'm tentatively leaning toward a separate Jägerhof, since otherwise you have an interesting situation at the bank after 1765, and before that, you'd better hope the Keiths were dog lovers!

(Either way, I want that fic!)

But no, Schöning doesn't tell us what became of them after Fritz' death, either.

Sigh.

In his younger years, he wanted to find out by a self experiment whether the Roman-Catholics deserved credit for their fasting. However, he decided that it wasn't much effort if you were allowed to eat fish, eggs, butter, cheese and milk; though he did try to live for forty days without the earlier mentioned food, but found it hard, and in order to make it through that time resorted to chocolate.

This isn't fasting, Fritz, but you do you.


No? My vague impression was that Lenten fasting was abstaining from meat and eating one meal a day. We know Fritz can do the one meal a day thing (though that August 5 meal should count as three, no wonder he needed so much time to digest :P), and what he seems to be saying is that pescetarianism isn't hard, but veganism is.

Grandpa F1, who treated his wife and kid gently, loved culture and never hit anyone in his life: stunned.

Poor, underappreciated F1.

In conclusion, Schöning is a gold mine, and I'm still pinching myself at having someone who reads and translates book after book for me! Hand kisses!

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