So, for context: Zimmermann published this in 1788, one and a half years after Fritz' death. He's not yet fallen out wiith Nicolai, which is noticeable because at one point, he advertises for a Nicolai publication, to wit, the German versions of the comedies written by Catherine the Great. However, he's already engaged in arguments about who's the biggest Fritz fan of them all, and the big publishing rush about Fritz has of course long since started. Nor is this the first time Zimmermann throws his hat into the ring; he's already published about his first meeting with Fritz, in 1771. This book consists of: a narration of his being summoned to Fritz in the summer of 1786 and the several meetings and conversations he had with him, in detail; then another description of his first meeting with Fritz back in the day; then ponderings and warnings about where all this freethinking and religion mocking is leading among people less morally fortified than Fritz and the hope FW2 will do something about this at least in Prussia. Most of all, though, the book is yet another fannish love declaration to Der Einzige König.
Fritz isn't just the greatest King of the 18th Century, he's the greatest man of the 18th Century. And he had the most beautiful eyes ever given to a human being, ever. And Zimmermann was filled full of male tenderness (männliche Zärtlichkeit) when visiting this wonderful human being dying before him, which he also felt for Fritz in happier, healthier days. His tone of voice is the clearest and most agreeable Zimmermann has ever heard. Also, no one was ever so misunderstood as Fritz was. His critics accuse him of never having loved, which is so wrong, and no, Zimmermann isn't just speaking of the dogs. (Though he does tell a touching dog story, about Fritz' current favourite dog having been ill in 1785, when Fritz was doing his last trip to Silesia, so he couldn't take the dog with him but had fast couriers standing by to bring him news of how the dog was doing, and was heartbroken when the dog died.) Zimmermann, like the Salon, has read the printed Crown Prince Fritz/Suhm letters and thinks they're the most beautiful testimony to Fritz' capacity of feeling and love.
All this Fritz fannishness does not, however, prevent him from also plugging his own royal patron, who since he's (while born Swiss) a citizen of Hannover is Frederick Duke of York, younger son of G3, currently studying at the university of Göttingen which his family co-sponsors; Göttingen is about to become the most famous German university. Luckily, Fritz like Fred of York, too; he even tells Zimmermann repeatedly he loves the Duke of York like a son and hopes Fred of York will stay in Hannover after he's finished with uni and be a German, because Brits, eh. Zimmermann's other famous royal patron is none other than Catherine the Great. (Who has just ennobled him in 1786, making him Ritter von Zimmermann.) About her, he and Fritz have this exchange:
KING: You're corresponding with the Empress of Russia? I: The Empress condescends to writing to me occasionally, yes. KING: So the Empress consults you about her health? I: The Empress doesn't need to, since she enjoys excellent health. Literature, philanthropy and philosophy are the themes of the letters with which the Empress honors me. KING: But eveyone knows the Empress is sick! I: The Empress knows everyone believes that. She often jokes about it and once wrote to my: her yearly expenses for her health are thirty pennies. KING: Not what I've heard. I: Your Majesty knows best how unreliable in such a case even secret news from so called confidential sources are. I know perfectly well and very recently that everyting which is said about the Empress being sickly can't be true. The Empress endures the toughest fatiguing trials. As late as last year, she undertook a journey of more than twohundred and fifty German miles, in a great mood and in cheerful spirits. Her good mood doesn't leave her all day. Her busy mind never rests and remains effective. In her hours of leisure, she's recently written by her own hand a new book of laws for Russia's nobility, and a new law book for Russia's towns. She's also started a book which is amazing from a philosophical point of view, a glossary comparing slang and phrases between different languages and dialects. A few of the comedies the Empress herself wrote in order to ridicule superstition, full of sparkling satire and wit I received by the Empress' own hands this very year.*
*footnote: Three comedies against superstitions: 1) The Con Man (Cagliostro), 2.) The Deluded Man, 3) The Siberian Shaman. By Her Imperial Highness Katharina Alexejewna, published by Friedrich Nicolai, Berlin 1788. Buy it, readers!
KING: I admit it, the Empress of all the Russias is a woman of uncommon genius.
** Footnote: The King wasn't just saying that then, he ALWAYS said it. After his death, my dear friend the Marchese Lucchessini wrote to me: L'Imperatrice de la Russie, un temps l'amie du grand Frederic, toujours la rivale de sa gloire, etoit toujours aussi l' object des discours et de 'l admiration de ce roi unique.
(Now Luccessini puts it a bit differently in his diary, where he he lets Fritz give Catherine credit for writing well and also for offering, via future FW2 who has just visited her when Lucchesini writes in his diary in 1780, to mediate between Fritz and Heinrich ("„L‘Imperatrice di Russia scrive bene. Ho apiuto in quesito giorni da altra parte, che la prima conversazione dell‘ Imperatrice di Russia col Principe Reale si piegrava a porre in ricilolo il Re, e il Principe Enrico"), but also says she spent her first few years being ruled by the Orlovs, and also he's still the biggest genius of them all. But Luccessini wasn't just ennobled by her and hoping for future gifts.)
Speaking of Luccessini, since Zimmermann here uses almost identical phrases to describe him as he uses in "Fragments" to describe the unnamed companion of Fritz' last years who had the deepest insight etc. into Fritz and to whom Fritz said he had had sex until directly before the 7 Years War, which briefly led Zimmermann to assume that all the gay rumors could be true until he figured out this was just part of Fritz' distraction campaign to fool people about his tragic broken penis, I think we can settle that Luccessini is indeed the source for this story. Which still makes it sound as if Fritz/Glasow happened to me.
Back to Zimmermann. He isn't just emo all the time, he can describe Fritz' various symptoms with medical accuracy. I also believe him when he says he realised at once that Fritz was dying, and that conversely Fritz refused to acknowledge it until shortly before Zimmermann left. (Heinrich, not a medic, also realised Fritz was dying when he saw him in January that same year and wrote to Ferdinand that if he wanted to see Fritz again alive he should make his visit now. So Zimmermann, a celebrated doctor of his day, definitely must have realised it.) In terms of describing people, Zimmermann is neither a Lehndorff nor a Boswell, which is to say, he doesn't have the gift of bringing them to life with a few sentences; he resorts to stock phrases instead. Take this introduction of Schöning; Zimmermann is in conversation with an unnamed courtier, who told him Fritz has fired his regular doctors before summoning Zimmermann:
"But Sir, how is the King, and who is the King's Doctor?" "The King," he replied, "is very ill, and he has no other doctor but his chamber hussar." "His Chamber Hussar is his doctor?" "Yes, and in between and mainly the King himself is his own doctor. This Chamber Hussar is the King's valet. He's called Herr Schöning. He will now lead you to the King." Herr Schöning entered, and greeted me politely and with good manners, but very seriously, and with great alacrity. In this moment I thought: Next to the King, I need to get along best with Herrr Schöning. So I pulled myself together and said and did what a lifetime of knowing people had taught me in order to study and win over the chamber hussar as much as I was able. Herr Schöning soon showed me his true nature. I found him to be a man of good sense, of feeling and of intelligence, who spoke with great deliberation, yet truthfully, and very well. He seemed to know the King through and through. Soon Herr Schöning showed himself to be a Herzensfreund of Professor Selle of Berlin, whom the King had dismissed for a good while. This heightened the good opinion I had already formed of Herr Schöning, for this wasn't courtier behavior. (To show friendshp for a fired official.) But as it had to grieve him that I, a stranger, replaced his Herzensfreund at the King's side, this thought, or rather this suspicion made us equal and made us be very delicate in all we said and did to each other.
It's servicable as a description, but no more. Oh, and speaking of descriptions, Zimmermann never fails to mention that Fritz has a portrait of Joseph in the last antechambre where he can see it when the door of his study is open. This Zimmernann takes to mean he wants to keep an eye on Joseph. (Coming menace of Europe in Fritz' view, we might add, though Zimmermann probably thinks of Joseph as the son MT and Fritz never had instead.) Though the one Fritz truly loves as a son, as is repeatedly said by Zimmermann in this text, is the Duke of York. (Who will, btw, later marry FW2's daughter, thus concluding yet another miserable Hohenzollern and Hannover marriage.)
I feel a bit cruel for mocking Zimmermann; it's clear he did adore Fritz and was deeply affected by having to watch someone he loved so extensively be painfully ill without being able to truly help. (Because while some of the symptoms can be relieved temporarily, it's clear that he's dying.) But even for the spirit of the age, the mixture of high strung adoration on the one hand and the insistence of being The One Who Truly Understands (while all the other competing publications are wrong, of course) is annoying, and even in this book, before he starts to speculate about Fritz' sex life or lack of same, you can see why he's about to fall out with his fellow fanboys.
Edited 2021-03-02 17:55 (UTC)
Re: Zimmermann: Über Friedrich den Großen und meine Unterredungen mit ihm kurz vor seinem Tod
And Zimmermann was filled full of male tenderness (männliche Zärtlichkeit) when visiting this wonderful human being
Such manly, heterosexual tenderness! I am moved.
And he had the most beautiful eyes ever given to a human being, ever...His tone of voice is the clearest and most agreeable Zimmermann has ever heard. Also, no one was ever so misunderstood as Fritz was.
Zimmermann: fanfic writer extraordinaire.
Though he does tell a touching dog story, about Fritz' current favourite dog having been ill in 1785, when Fritz was doing his last trip to Silesia, so he couldn't take the dog with him but had fast couriers standing by to bring him news of how the dog was doing, and was heartbroken when the dog died.
Aaaahhh. Thank you for this! I've been wanting a date for that. I'd only figured out that it must be after the War of the Bavarian Succession.
That must be Alcmene II, the one who was buried in the vault with him and whom he (supposedly) had exhumed when he returned from Silesia. That makes sense if it that was happening in 1785. Furthermore, the Silesian maneuvers in 1785 were when he's supposed to have stayed several hours in the pouring rain reviewing the troops, caught a fever, and pushed himself too hard, and triggered the beginning of the end: the final year of his life, September 1785-August 1786, in which it was clear he was dying.
He must have known Alcmene would be the last favorite he would outlive, and that's why she was in the vault with him.
MY HEART. (It's okay, Fritz, I wrote a fic where she finally gets to wake you up in 1991. And Prinzsorgenfrei drew beautiful art of you, sans souci at last!)
Oh, speaking of dogs! Have any of our recent 1780s/1790s sources confirmed that Superbe was the name of the dog who was with him when he died? I think I've only seen that in secondary sources, but most of the detail I've seen has been borne out so far.
Zimmermann, like the Salon, has read the printed Crown Prince Fritz/Suhm letters and thinks they're the most beautiful testimony to Fritz' capacity of feeling and love.
I don't disagree (as everyone knows), it's just that...love is easy, love without abuse is harder. Many, maybe most, abusers can genuinely say they love their victims. But yes, all those claims that Fritz never loved anyone, or only loved Fredersdorf, or only Lord Marischal, or whoever, those can be dismissed out of hand.
But the Fritz/Suhm letters remain THE BEST, uniformly positive and supportive, and endearing to read. <3 A little one-dimensional, but hey. There's enough complex relationships in this fandom (inc. Fritz lying to Katte!) that I'll take it.
ce roi unique
Der Einzige!
he resorts to stock phrases instead.
Oof, yes. That's forgettable in the extreme.
But even for the spirit of the age, the mixture of high strung adoration on the one hand
Per Blanning:
After his first encounter with his hero in 1771 [Zimmermann] left the room in floods of tears, exclaiming, “Oh, my love for the King of Prussia is beyond words!”
On the one hand, 18th century. On the other hand...yeah.
the mixture of high strung adoration on the one hand and the insistence of being The One Who Truly Understands (while all the other competing publications are wrong, of course) is annoying
Can if you imagine if The Other One Who Truly Understands had published at this time? The literary wars! The feuds!
Re: Zimmermann: Über Friedrich den Großen und meine Unterredungen mit ihm kurz vor seinem Tod
Superbe: haven't seen her in the Kletschke account, but maybe Rödenbeck or Büsching have her? I'm still slowly rereading Nicolai.
Such manly, heterosexual tenderness! I am moved.
I know. Zimmmermann, we would not mock your gigantic crush if you didn't attempt to provide no homo historians with fodder for centuries with your tinhat theories.
BTW, he had his wife with him on that journey (not when meeting Fritz, of course), since his cover story was that he was visiting Berlin only to show her Potsdam. Why did he need a cover story? Because he wanted to be discreet and not signal to the rest of the world how ill Fritz had to be if he was summoning Dr. Zimmmermann. Unfortunately, says Zimmermann, SOMEONE gossipped in advance about his impending arrival nonetheless, and the poetess Anna Maria Karsch wrote a poem about him coming to the King's aid which got published in the Berlin papers, thus ruining his cover story.
He must have known Alcmene would be the last favorite he would outlive, and that's why she was in the vault with him.
And thus you have answered another question, Poirot! Also, awwww. Zimmermann does note there was a new dog sitting next to Fritz on a chair with blue cushions, but not whether she was called Superbe.
love is easy, love without abuse is harder. Many, maybe most, abusers can genuinely say they love their victims.
True, and FW is a case in point. I have no doubt he loved his children and his wife, and yearned to be loved by them. (And naturally he loved his Potsdam Giants! And the rest of the army, a little bit less but still. Doesn't mean they didn't get gruesome punishments for desertion.)
Oof, yes. That's forgettable in the extreme.
Isn't it? I do regret we haven't found yet Schöning encountering one of the better letter or diary writers.
Can if you imagine if The Other One Who Truly Understands had published at this time? The literary wars! The feuds!
Ha, this reminds me that in his anti Zimmermann book, Nicolali addresses Zimmermann saying - after the storm over his "Fragments" broke loose - that this was just anti Swiss xenophobia on the part of the Germam publishing industry. To which Nicolai says that firstly, Zimmermann used to be highly respected by him and the others before his last three books, as Zimmermann damm well knows, and secondly, none of them has ever said a harsh word about the equally Swiss Catt, did they? On the contrary, see all the positive references to Henri de Catt in his and Büschings collections since they talked with him, too. But you see, Z, CATT would never!
Henri de Catt, currently busy beefing up his memoirs: Okay, that does it. I'm only publishing once I'm dead.
Re: Zimmermann: Über Friedrich den Großen und meine Unterredungen mit ihm kurz vor seinem Tod
Many, maybe most, abusers can genuinely say they love their victims.
True, and FW is a case in point.
Yep, he was front and center in my mind when I wrote that. (A long with a lot of modern psychological literature on trauma.)
secondly, none of them has ever said a harsh word about the equally Swiss Catt, did they? On the contrary, see all the positive references to Henri de Catt in his and Büschings collections since they talked with him, too. But you see, Z, CATT would never!
Henri de Catt, currently busy beefing up his memoirs: Okay, that does it. I'm only publishing once I'm dead.
AHAHAHAAAAA, wow. I had noticed both Zimmermann and Catt were Swiss, but hadn't realized that aspect featured in the great feud. This is hilarious!
Man, if Catt *had* published during his lifetime, Nicolai would have eviscerated him a work that people might have read, because it was in the main text, rather than a preface that people like me always skip. ;)
Mind you, that hasn't stopped the Fritzian penis theory from spreading, sadly. (I know you told AP about his naked body being examined, but we were trusting Blanning at that point--does he know we now have more detail and it seems very reliable?)
Re: Zimmermann: Über Friedrich den Großen und meine Unterredungen mit ihm kurz vor seinem Tod
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Zimmermann: Über Friedrich den Großen und meine Unterredungen mit ihm kurz vor seinem Tod
Fritz isn't just the greatest King of the 18th Century, he's the greatest man of the 18th Century. And he had the most beautiful eyes ever given to a human being, ever. And Zimmermann was filled full of male tenderness (männliche Zärtlichkeit) when visiting this wonderful human being dying before him, which he also felt for Fritz in happier, healthier days. His tone of voice is the clearest and most agreeable Zimmermann has ever heard. Also, no one was ever so misunderstood as Fritz was. His critics accuse him of never having loved, which is so wrong, and no, Zimmermann isn't just speaking of the dogs. (Though he does tell a touching dog story, about Fritz' current favourite dog having been ill in 1785, when Fritz was doing his last trip to Silesia, so he couldn't take the dog with him but had fast couriers standing by to bring him news of how the dog was doing, and was heartbroken when the dog died.) Zimmermann, like the Salon, has read the printed Crown Prince Fritz/Suhm letters and thinks they're the most beautiful testimony to Fritz' capacity of feeling and love.
All this Fritz fannishness does not, however, prevent him from also plugging his own royal patron, who since he's (while born Swiss) a citizen of Hannover is Frederick Duke of York, younger son of G3, currently studying at the university of Göttingen which his family co-sponsors; Göttingen is about to become the most famous German university. Luckily, Fritz like Fred of York, too; he even tells Zimmermann repeatedly he loves the Duke of York like a son and hopes Fred of York will stay in Hannover after he's finished with uni and be a German, because Brits, eh. Zimmermann's other famous royal patron is none other than Catherine the Great. (Who has just ennobled him in 1786, making him Ritter von Zimmermann.) About her, he and Fritz have this exchange:
KING: You're corresponding with the Empress of Russia?
I: The Empress condescends to writing to me occasionally, yes.
KING: So the Empress consults you about her health?
I: The Empress doesn't need to, since she enjoys excellent health. Literature, philanthropy and philosophy are the themes of the letters with which the Empress honors me.
KING: But eveyone knows the Empress is sick!
I: The Empress knows everyone believes that. She often jokes about it and once wrote to my: her yearly expenses for her health are thirty pennies.
KING: Not what I've heard.
I: Your Majesty knows best how unreliable in such a case even secret news from so called confidential sources are. I know perfectly well and very recently that everyting which is said about the Empress being sickly can't be true. The Empress endures the toughest fatiguing trials. As late as last year, she undertook a journey of more than twohundred and fifty German miles, in a great mood and in cheerful spirits. Her good mood doesn't leave her all day. Her busy mind never rests and remains effective. In her hours of leisure, she's recently written by her own hand a new book of laws for Russia's nobility, and a new law book for Russia's towns. She's also started a book which is amazing from a philosophical point of view, a glossary comparing slang and phrases between different languages and dialects. A few of the comedies the Empress herself wrote in order to ridicule superstition, full of sparkling satire and wit I received by the Empress' own hands this very year.*
*footnote: Three comedies against superstitions: 1) The Con Man (Cagliostro), 2.) The Deluded Man, 3) The Siberian Shaman. By Her Imperial Highness Katharina Alexejewna, published by Friedrich Nicolai, Berlin 1788.
Buy it, readers!KING: I admit it, the Empress of all the Russias is a woman of uncommon genius.
** Footnote: The King wasn't just saying that then, he ALWAYS said it. After his death, my dear friend the Marchese Lucchessini wrote to me: L'Imperatrice de la Russie, un temps l'amie du grand Frederic, toujours la rivale de sa gloire, etoit toujours aussi l' object des discours et de 'l admiration de ce roi unique.
(Now Luccessini puts it a bit differently in his diary, where he he lets Fritz give Catherine credit for writing well and also for offering, via future FW2 who has just visited her when Lucchesini writes in his diary in 1780, to mediate between Fritz and Heinrich ("„L‘Imperatrice di Russia scrive bene. Ho apiuto in quesito giorni da altra parte, che la prima conversazione dell‘ Imperatrice di Russia col Principe Reale si piegrava a porre in ricilolo il Re, e il Principe Enrico"), but also says she spent her first few years being ruled by the Orlovs, and also he's still the biggest genius of them all. But Luccessini wasn't just ennobled by her and hoping for future gifts.)
Speaking of Luccessini, since Zimmermann here uses almost identical phrases to describe him as he uses in "Fragments" to describe the unnamed companion of Fritz' last years who had the deepest insight etc. into Fritz and to whom Fritz said he had had sex until directly before the 7 Years War, which briefly led Zimmermann to assume that all the gay rumors could be true until he figured out this was just part of Fritz' distraction campaign to fool people about his tragic broken penis, I think we can settle that Luccessini is indeed the source for this story. Which still makes it sound as if Fritz/Glasow happened to me.
Back to Zimmermann. He isn't just emo all the time, he can describe Fritz' various symptoms with medical accuracy. I also believe him when he says he realised at once that Fritz was dying, and that conversely Fritz refused to acknowledge it until shortly before Zimmermann left. (Heinrich, not a medic, also realised Fritz was dying when he saw him in January that same year and wrote to Ferdinand that if he wanted to see Fritz again alive he should make his visit now. So Zimmermann, a celebrated doctor of his day, definitely must have realised it.) In terms of describing people, Zimmermann is neither a Lehndorff nor a Boswell, which is to say, he doesn't have the gift of bringing them to life with a few sentences; he resorts to stock phrases instead. Take this introduction of Schöning; Zimmermann is in conversation with an unnamed courtier, who told him Fritz has fired his regular doctors before summoning Zimmermann:
"But Sir, how is the King, and who is the King's Doctor?"
"The King," he replied, "is very ill, and he has no other doctor but his chamber hussar."
"His Chamber Hussar is his doctor?"
"Yes, and in between and mainly the King himself is his own doctor. This Chamber Hussar is the King's valet. He's called Herr Schöning. He will now lead you to the King."
Herr Schöning entered, and greeted me politely and with good manners, but very seriously, and with great alacrity. In this moment I thought: Next to the King, I need to get along best with Herrr Schöning. So I pulled myself together and said and did what a lifetime of knowing people had taught me in order to study and win over the chamber hussar as much as I was able.
Herr Schöning soon showed me his true nature. I found him to be a man of good sense, of feeling and of intelligence, who spoke with great deliberation, yet truthfully, and very well. He seemed to know the King through and through. Soon Herr Schöning showed himself to be a Herzensfreund of Professor Selle of Berlin, whom the King had dismissed for a good while. This heightened the good opinion I had already formed of Herr Schöning, for this wasn't courtier behavior. (To show friendshp for a fired official.) But as it had to grieve him that I, a stranger, replaced his Herzensfreund at the King's side, this thought, or rather this suspicion made us equal and made us be very delicate in all we said and did to each other.
It's servicable as a description, but no more. Oh, and speaking of descriptions, Zimmermann never fails to mention that Fritz has a portrait of Joseph in the last antechambre where he can see it when the door of his study is open. This Zimmernann takes to mean he wants to keep an eye on Joseph. (Coming menace of Europe in Fritz' view, we might add, though Zimmermann probably thinks of Joseph as the son MT and Fritz never had instead.) Though the one Fritz truly loves as a son, as is repeatedly said by Zimmermann in this text, is the Duke of York. (Who will, btw, later marry FW2's daughter, thus concluding yet another miserable Hohenzollern and Hannover marriage.)
I feel a bit cruel for mocking Zimmermann; it's clear he did adore Fritz and was deeply affected by having to watch someone he loved so extensively be painfully ill without being able to truly help. (Because while some of the symptoms can be relieved temporarily, it's clear that he's dying.) But even for the spirit of the age, the mixture of high strung adoration on the one hand and the insistence of being The One Who Truly Understands (while all the other competing publications are wrong, of course) is annoying, and even in this book, before he starts to speculate about Fritz' sex life or lack of same, you can see why he's about to fall out with his fellow fanboys.
Re: Zimmermann: Über Friedrich den Großen und meine Unterredungen mit ihm kurz vor seinem Tod
Such manly, heterosexual tenderness! I am moved.
And he had the most beautiful eyes ever given to a human being, ever...His tone of voice is the clearest and most agreeable Zimmermann has ever heard. Also, no one was ever so misunderstood as Fritz was.
Zimmermann: fanfic writer extraordinaire.
Though he does tell a touching dog story, about Fritz' current favourite dog having been ill in 1785, when Fritz was doing his last trip to Silesia, so he couldn't take the dog with him but had fast couriers standing by to bring him news of how the dog was doing, and was heartbroken when the dog died.
Aaaahhh. Thank you for this! I've been wanting a date for that. I'd only figured out that it must be after the War of the Bavarian Succession.
That must be Alcmene II, the one who was buried in the vault with him and whom he (supposedly) had exhumed when he returned from Silesia. That makes sense if it that was happening in 1785. Furthermore, the Silesian maneuvers in 1785 were when he's supposed to have stayed several hours in the pouring rain reviewing the troops, caught a fever, and pushed himself too hard, and triggered the beginning of the end: the final year of his life, September 1785-August 1786, in which it was clear he was dying.
He must have known Alcmene would be the last favorite he would outlive, and that's why she was in the vault with him.
MY HEART. (It's okay, Fritz, I wrote a fic where she finally gets to wake you up in 1991. And Prinzsorgenfrei drew beautiful art of you, sans souci at last!)
Oh, speaking of dogs! Have any of our recent 1780s/1790s sources confirmed that Superbe was the name of the dog who was with him when he died? I think I've only seen that in secondary sources, but most of the detail I've seen has been borne out so far.
Zimmermann, like the Salon, has read the printed Crown Prince Fritz/Suhm letters and thinks they're the most beautiful testimony to Fritz' capacity of feeling and love.
I don't disagree (as everyone knows), it's just that...love is easy, love without abuse is harder. Many, maybe most, abusers can genuinely say they love their victims. But yes, all those claims that Fritz never loved anyone, or only loved Fredersdorf, or only Lord Marischal, or whoever, those can be dismissed out of hand.
But the Fritz/Suhm letters remain THE BEST, uniformly positive and supportive, and endearing to read. <3 A little one-dimensional, but hey. There's enough complex relationships in this fandom (inc. Fritz lying to Katte!) that I'll take it.
ce roi unique
Der Einzige!
he resorts to stock phrases instead.
Oof, yes. That's forgettable in the extreme.
But even for the spirit of the age, the mixture of high strung adoration on the one hand
Per Blanning:
After his first encounter with his hero in 1771 [Zimmermann] left the room in floods of tears, exclaiming, “Oh, my love for the King of Prussia is beyond words!”
On the one hand, 18th century. On the other hand...yeah.
the mixture of high strung adoration on the one hand and the insistence of being The One Who Truly Understands (while all the other competing publications are wrong, of course) is annoying
Can if you imagine if The Other One Who Truly Understands had published at this time? The literary wars! The feuds!
Re: Zimmermann: Über Friedrich den Großen und meine Unterredungen mit ihm kurz vor seinem Tod
Such manly, heterosexual tenderness! I am moved.
I know. Zimmmermann, we would not mock your gigantic crush if you didn't attempt to provide no homo historians with fodder for centuries with your tinhat theories.
BTW, he had his wife with him on that journey (not when meeting Fritz, of course), since his cover story was that he was visiting Berlin only to show her Potsdam. Why did he need a cover story? Because he wanted to be discreet and not signal to the rest of the world how ill Fritz had to be if he was summoning Dr. Zimmmermann. Unfortunately, says Zimmermann, SOMEONE gossipped in advance about his impending arrival nonetheless, and the poetess Anna Maria Karsch wrote a poem about him coming to the King's aid which got published in the Berlin papers, thus ruining his cover story.
He must have known Alcmene would be the last favorite he would outlive, and that's why she was in the vault with him.
And thus you have answered another question, Poirot! Also, awwww. Zimmermann does note there was a new dog sitting next to Fritz on a chair with blue cushions, but not whether she was called Superbe.
love is easy, love without abuse is harder. Many, maybe most, abusers can genuinely say they love their victims.
True, and FW is a case in point. I have no doubt he loved his children and his wife, and yearned to be loved by them. (And naturally he loved his Potsdam Giants! And the rest of the army, a little bit less but still. Doesn't mean they didn't get gruesome punishments for desertion.)
Oof, yes. That's forgettable in the extreme.
Isn't it? I do regret we haven't found yet Schöning encountering one of the better letter or diary writers.
Can if you imagine if The Other One Who Truly Understands had published at this time? The literary wars! The feuds!
Ha, this reminds me that in his anti Zimmermann book, Nicolali addresses Zimmermann saying - after the storm over his "Fragments" broke loose - that this was just anti Swiss xenophobia on the part of the Germam publishing industry. To which Nicolai says that firstly, Zimmermann used to be highly respected by him and the others before his last three books, as Zimmermann damm well knows, and secondly, none of them has ever said a harsh word about the equally Swiss Catt, did they? On the contrary, see all the positive references to Henri de Catt in his and Büschings collections since they talked with him, too. But you see, Z, CATT would never!
Henri de Catt, currently busy beefing up his memoirs: Okay, that does it. I'm only publishing once I'm dead.
Re: Zimmermann: Über Friedrich den Großen und meine Unterredungen mit ihm kurz vor seinem Tod
True, and FW is a case in point.
Yep, he was front and center in my mind when I wrote that. (A long with a lot of modern psychological literature on trauma.)
secondly, none of them has ever said a harsh word about the equally Swiss Catt, did they? On the contrary, see all the positive references to Henri de Catt in his and Büschings collections since they talked with him, too. But you see, Z, CATT would never!
Henri de Catt, currently busy beefing up his memoirs: Okay, that does it. I'm only publishing once I'm dead.
AHAHAHAAAAA, wow. I had noticed both Zimmermann and Catt were Swiss, but hadn't realized that aspect featured in the great feud. This is hilarious!
Man, if Catt *had* published during his lifetime, Nicolai would have eviscerated him a work that people might have read, because it was in the main text, rather than a preface that people like me always skip. ;)
Mind you, that hasn't stopped the Fritzian penis theory from spreading, sadly. (I know you told AP about his naked body being examined, but we were trusting Blanning at that point--does he know we now have more detail and it seems very reliable?)
Re: Zimmermann: Über Friedrich den Großen und meine Unterredungen mit ihm kurz vor seinem Tod
Hey, I totally missed that! Interesting. Do we have other sources for this? Was Heinrich in regular contact with her?
Couples therapy with Catherine the Great, I'm intrigued.