cahn | Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 25

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Thank you for your dedication! I'm glad it contained raw material we hadn't seen, and am headdesking right along with you on the 19th century-ism and the poor scholarship. I notice a few end notes further along in MacDonogh, he did warn me: "There is an anti English tone throughout Oncken's essays, which may have something to do with the time in which he was writing."

He made it look like there were only parts 1 and 2, but I checked the subsequent volume, and lo! there is a part 3. So the pdf in the library has now been updated to include pages 68-98. If it turns out there's a part 4, let me know!

In the meantime, I look forward to more on how perfidious Albion betrayed everyone and how Raumer and Carlyle TOTALLY misrepresented FW.

More when time permits!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I haven't actually read it yet, but I had a gander at the passages dealing with what caused the search, to wit, the use of torture and the death penalty in 18th century Prussia.

That is really the only thing I was asking for--certainly not for the entire book! Anything beyond that is totally up to you and your interests and how engaging you find the book.

If there's anything about what happens to portraits of criminals executed in absentia, I remember

prinzsorgenfrei was interested in the likely fate of Peter Keith's portrait! But I realize that's highly unlikely.

I haven't found anything in these pages more specific to whether or not the "sodomy" indicated as having been abolished included the m/m variety or not.

Yeah, what felis found, as I recall, was that the death penalty for m/m remained on the books (but unenforced) in Prussia until the 1795 reform. No idea about Lepsch.

*googles*

Bestiality, it looks like! "Viehische Sünde." At least according to my skimming of this 1733 pamphlet. Check out Schubert_Lepsch.pdf in the contemporary documents section of the library.

Okay, I really need to stop doing research and start doing work, it's Monday morning!

From:

selenak

No part 4 indication. Now, part 2 already described the letters affair which I think you must know from Horowski and elsewhere, i.e. the Brits via Hotham presented FW with the letters Grumbkow and Reichenbach (the Prussian resident in London) exchanged as proof for Grumbkow being the worst. Cue much indignation from Oncken about the disgraceful opening of diplomatic letters. Hothan is the most provocative worst envoy England ever sent. While this was going on, Hotham also had been authorized to offer the old compromise, i.e. a double wedding, but Fritz/one of G2's daughters was a must.

(Reminder: ever since the Clement affair, the Prussians also opened envoy letters they got their hands on. Not all the time, but often enough. If you read Oncken, you'd think the Brits were the only ones to open letters and invented the practice.)

FW throws the Grumbkow letter on the floor and yells at Hotham. Not only is he refusing to believe ill of Grumbkow, he is promoting Reichenbach to, as Hotham reports home, "vice president of all spiritual affairs of the country", with a salary of 1000 Taler per annum. Hotham now wants to leave, but this is when Guy Dickens has his first secret meeting with Fritz and of course immediately reports to Hotham that the Crown Prince wants to leave (via France but with Britain as his long term destination). Now Hotham stays, Dickens goes to Britain immediately to report this to G2. G2 sends a letter back that's essentially "calm down, nephew, you have our sympathies, but maybe not do a runner?" (remember, the near war/duel was just last year; methinks G2 actually does believe FW would go to war if Fritz shows up in England). During the Dickens trip to London and back, there are slightly contradictory reports from Hotham, Seckendorff and Grumbkow in their respective letters as to whether or not Hotham offered FW as a last minute compromise what FW wanted all along, the separation of the two marriages, with FoW/Wilhelmine now, and Fritz/any of G2's daughters he wants a few years later. But for Oncken, all is clear: the true criminals which are at fault for the big tragedy in Fritz' life are the Hannover cousins. Not content with sending Hotham for an anti Grumbkow, anti HRE maneuvre disguised as a marriage negotiation, they encourage SD, Wilhelmine and Fritz in their behaviour towards FW, thus creating and deepening a rift in the Prussian royal family. Then they seduce Fritz into believing he'd be received with open arms by this ambigous mumbling instead of saying clearly that they don't care about the marriages, and of course they don't warn FW. And then they look cold heartedly at the ensuing tragedy. Which would not have happened but for perfidious Albion!

FW, meanwhile, only acted like the thoroughly decent honest man he was, indignant about all this British double talk, about the disregard of private mail and about the slander of his faithful servants, and deeply wounded in the backstabbing from his own family. So there.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I would say "maybe that's why his letters got cut by editors?" except depressingly I suspect it's more in line with the general policy of editing anyone not Fritz' letters as the editors assume the only interest in these people lies in what reactions they get out of Fritz.

Sadly, this was my thought too.

I think if you're not pro-Imperially minded and a member of Fritz' circle, that's almost guaranteed.

But until this past week, I had no idea how Suhm, a Saxon envoy, might feel about the HRE! Only in the past few days has a picture of pro-England, anti-HRE leanings started to emerge. (Which, as noted, would explain a lot about FW's feelings, even beyond Suhm/Fritz.)

I look forward to the Knobelsdorff and Gundling novel write-ups!

You can add Mitchell who notoriously pissed off his superiors in London with his pro-Prussia reports from the front enough that they replaced him with Joseph Yorke for a hot second before relenting to Fritz wanting to keep Mitchell

Oh, right, yes, him too!

Incidentally, it has occured to me that in a perverse way, Suhm being ready to commit to him and Prussia might have been one of the reasons why Fritz absolutely did not want someone like Peter, who liked it in England and had forged ties there, as an envoy - he was vain, but not so much that he believed becoming emotionally attached to your posting could happen only when he was there.

Well, he wrote that the British regard Peter as "half a Briton," and it sure didn't sound like he disagreed, so I suspect he already suspected Peter of having gone native.

Rottembourg: I forgot to mention this, but Morgenstern claims he liked it so much in FW's Prussia that he longed for it from Madrid. After reading Leineweber, I choose to believe this was another instant where Morgenstern was being sarcastic.

Rottembourg, of all people!

So I consider it plausible and even likely that Rottembourg missed people that he left behind. He had clearly forged close ties with Katte, so most likely with other Berliners as well.

He may, while in Madrid, have written that he missed X about Prussia/Berlin. Humans can always find something to complain about!

He may even have been telling the truth that the reason he wanted to leave was his health (he did die in 1735, shortly after being recalled from Madrid for that reason).

But what I don't buy is that he missed *FW's* Prussia, qua FW's Prussia. Not the guy who put the finishing touches on Katte's French manners and tried to stage a coup! If he missed anything, it was SD's Prussia.

So yeah, Ima guess sarcasm with you. :P

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Ha, I just saw that Blanning even mentions him and quotes some of his Fritz-related reports (via Carlyle). Did not remember that.

This is why I periodically reread key works. When I first read Wilhelmine's memoirs, I had no idea who most of the characters in volume 1 were! And only recently did I get Duke Anton Ulrich straight in my head, just in time for my Suhm letters reread.

If FW thought he was working with the English in 1729 already, true or not (FW's paranoia is certainly not enough evidence)

Yep, that's the conclusion I came to. Btw, if Diaphane did nickname himself specifically for the drinking club, part of me thinks a possible interpretation was "transparent," i.e. "not hiding anything from you, FW, totally. Straightforward straight-shooter, I am!"

No wonder FW called him an arch villain whom he should have hanged in 1737, and that Fritz and Suhm had to take some precautions with their correspondence.

Indeed. We wondered at the time if there was a reason other than Fritz/Suhm, and now I think we've found it! Or one. Possibly he didn't convincingly drink enough. :P

... but now I'm wondering what it must have been like for Suhm to follow the whole 1730 drama from afar. :(

I've wondered that for a long time, especially since writing their post-1730 reunion in "Heaven." It wasn't all that afar--Suhm was in Berlin! Just not at court, or not officially. (Even if he was showing up at court from time to time, I bet he kept a low profile August-January that year.)

what we call "diplomatic" in English: phrasing things so as not to give offense

Same in German. :)

Good to know, thank you! (Learning German one word at a time, lol.)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Thank you for looking him up and reporting what you found!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

This was helpful, thank you for reading (and putting up with Oncken) and summarizing for us. Our gratitude is eternal, O Royal Reader. Even with his ridiculous commentary, the original sources are useful.

and btw, learned a new thing, Sir Charles Hotham was married to the Earl of Chesterfield's sister! Which means he was related to the Schulenburgs and thus to the Kattes in a roundabout way

Good to know! As Horowski says more than once, you have to pay attention to mistresses, wives, aunts, etc. in order to understand the networking of the 18th century.

At this point I lost my professional respect. I can take 19th century nationalism, but look,you can't otoh complain about Caryle falsifying evidence by selected quotes and otoh dismiss something you don't like as a lie just because it doesn't fit with your idea of a historical personality.

Right? Omg. Ugh.

he was clear instructions from London for how to proceed

Wants clear instructions? I read that as "has" initially, but I'm thinking "wants" makes more sense.

Anyway, Hotham's report show him between Scylla and Charybdis, because obviously what FW wants and what London wants is imcompatible

Yeah, they really have conflicting interests there.

what London wants is imcompatible, except for the withdrawal of the Prussian envoy which will happen in summer

So remind me--that was Reichenbach? Who was Degenfeld, his replacement?

George and Caroline are already trying to figure out a way in which younger beloved son Cumberland, aka Bill the future Butcher, can inherit after all, if not the crown, then at last part of the kingdom. The ideal solution, though it will take a few arguments and years more for them to say it out loud, is for FoW to die without an heir, so Bill of Cumberland becomes the next crown prince.

Hohenzollerns: dysfunctional.
Hanovers: dysfunctional.
Hohenzollern + Hanover marriage negotiations = dysfunction squared.

look no further than that letter. (Well, okay, look further to being raised for twenty years with the No.1. goal of your education being to please these people, this causing incredibly heartache to you because it's a big reason for your father to treat you as the enemy, and then they just dismiss you like that.)

Yep. :/ I feel so sorry for all of these children of royal parents.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Wow, Oncken, seriously. Not impressed!

Reminder: ever since the Clement affair, the Prussians also opened envoy letters they got their hands on. Not all the time, but often enough. If you read Oncken, you'd think the Brits were the only ones to open letters and invented the practice.

Lolol, everyone was opening all the letters they could!

there are slightly contradictory reports from Hotham, Seckendorff and Grumbkow in their respective letters as to whether or not Hotham offered FW as a last minute compromise what FW wanted all along, the separation of the two marriages, with FoW/Wilhelmine now, and Fritz/any of G2's daughters he wants a few years later

See, that's the kind of thing I wanted to know! It's useful when you're reading other sources that say one or the other.

FW, meanwhile, only acted like the thoroughly decent honest man he was, indignant about all this British double talk, about the disregard of private mail and about the slander of his faithful servants, and deeply wounded in the backstabbing from his own family. So there.

Facepalming so hard. I was about to thank you for taking one for the team again, and that reminded me--there was the 1944 (!) book that we think might have the source for the Fredersdorf embezzlement accusation.

Alfred Weise: König und Kämmerer - Eine Freundschaft. Berlin 1944.

Any chance you can get your hands on that via book order?

(You spoil us so much that we just want more! :D <3)

(Still waiting for my copy of Fahlenkamp, btw, sigh. It's now taken almost as long as the calendar!)

From:

selenak

Wants clear instructions?

Yes, should have been "Wants", sorry.

So remind me--that was Reichenbach? Who was Degenfeld, his replacement?

Yes and yes.

Hohenzollerns: dysfunctional.
Hanovers: dysfunctional.
Hohenzollern + Hanover marriage negotiations = dysfunction squared.

No kidding!

From:

selenak

re: the Weise book - I doubt it. The problem is the age of the book. There's no way I'll be allowed to read a book that old outside of the reading room, and the reading rooms aren't available yet, and won't be any time soon the way our infection numbers are on the rise again due to the mutations and the slow vaccinations.

From:

selenak

Peter the Great with black page - at first I thought, oh, must be Pushkin's great-grandfather, but then I read the description and saw it couldn't have been because Pushkin's great grandfather was already in his 20s at that point. (He was also a fascinating character, check out his wiki entry, who lucked out within the bad luck of being a slave in that he got adopted by Peter, got to study at the university in France sponsored by him, and later was an important figure at Elizaveta's court. Otoh no one knows what became of the boy in the painting, who can't have been him.

Also, since you asked whether RussianFritz would have staged a coup against RussianFW or waited for AW's succession to stage a coup against: I think as a male prince, he wouldn't have had the luxury to wait. Russian FW would have either killed him directly or put him into a monastery. Speaking of which, SD and Wilhelmine would have ended up in nunneries in Siberia, too, as soon as those English marriage arguments got serious. As to whether Russian AW would have survved beyond a successful coup - only in the way poor Ivan and his siblings did, I fear, if he didn't get killed outright or died a few months later of some disease. (Heinrich and Ferdinand survive and stay at court by virtue of being young enough and there not being a Fritz heir around, assuming RussianFritz already has a clue he won't reproduce himself.)

From:

selenak

I wanted to wait until I've read the non-fiction Gundling biography I'm awaiting, but since I've now not only read both novels but also seen the film version of Der König und sein Narr, you get the fiction reviews now.

First of all, Der Meister von Sanssouci, the novel about Knobelsdorff, isn't strictly speaking by Martin Stade, it's by Claus Back, a GDR novelist who died in 1969 with an unfinished manuscript, so Stade, who must have already been hard at research work for the Gundling novel, completed it. You can tell, not in a bad sense, just that the Knobelsdorff novel has a different authorial voice by and large, and I think it's also obvious that the last part is where Stade takes over. The two novels share themes, of course, and not just because of the temporal closeness of the setting: the "the artist/scholar and the man of power" dialectic chief among them, though it ends better for Knobelsdorff than it does for Gundling.

Now, Der Meister von Sanssouci is a well done historical novel, but it's also both less intense and far more orthodox than Der König und sein Narr. Orthodox in the sense of adherring to the historical outlook reflecting the GDR in the 1960s, by which I mean: Knobelsdorff as the hero might be a nobleman by birth, but he's in every sense a man of the people. He holds only progressive views, so for example when he visits France, he's not only able to spot the horrible conditions for the general population preparing the revolution, he also is disgusted by Versailles - which he wanted to visit as an architect - symbolizing all that's wrong: the exterior pretending to dignity and stiff etiquette, the interior over the top excess and indulgence. (At which point I was tempted to say: Back and Stade, I know you guys can't visit Versailles because iron curtain, but I did visit, and I also saw the interior of palaces Knobelsdorff created, and believe me, one is not more over the top than the other.) He's not just standing by his workers when they strike because if delayed payment, he's horrified by Fritz turning out to be an invading gloryhound in 1740, and when he visits him in the aftermath of Soor in the second Silesian War, he's similarly horrified by Fritz being able to play the flute Knobelsdorff brings him when there are so many dead bodies around. While he's initially depressed that no sooner has he finished Rheinsberg that Fritz moves out, no sooner has he finished renovating Charlottenburg that Fritz decides he's going to reside in Potsdam after all, etc., he quickly decides he's not really bulding for the King but for the people to enjoy it now and in subsequent generations.

Now, given that Knobelsdorff lived in common-law marriage with a non-noble, Charlotte Schöne (and in his last will asked Fritz to take care that she and the kids are cared for, which Fritz did, with the caveat that these children were not able to inherit any land and titles belonging to nobility), I'm absolutely willing to believe he had some progressive views. Just not all of them. And I really doubt that he eventually came to the Marxist conclusion that Fritz' tragedy isn't just his character but that he's stuck in his role that history has put him in, at the wrong side, as all Kings are, while the people move forward.

This said, the novel does a good job of whenever it gets to Knobelsdorff's pov describing how he sees the world in a painterly/architect terms. He's described as a strong-headed, no-nonsense type of guy, and his increasing clashes with Fritz the longer Fritz is King and the more interfering he becomes feel very natural. The novel uses not just the anecdote of how their final clash ended; to quote his wiki entry: " An attempt to bridge this gap ended in failure. The king summoned him to Potsdam in summer 1750, but soon got annoyed about some comment of the architect's and ordered him to return to Berlin. Knobelsdorff immediately set out, but halfway to Berlin a Feldjäger (military policeman) caught up with him with the message that he was to return to the court. According to tradition his response was, "The king himself ordered me to return to Berlin. I well known whether I have to follow his orders or those of a Feldjäger", whereupon he continued his journey. After that episode he never saw the king again."

It moves it from 1750 to 1753 so it can coincide with the Voltaire implosion, and I think that's Stade's major contribution to the book, along with the death scene. Because in the previous novels, the lines are cleary drawn: the people (and Knobelsdorff) are good and on the side of progress (with one and a half notable exceptions, to which I'll get), so are artists, the rest of the nobility is well meaning at best (including Fritz when he's in a good mood), but really unable not to be on the wrong side of history, and in Fritz' case just too much of a traumatized egomaniac ("he'll make us pay for what his father did to him for the next ten years" says a character in 1740 when talking with Knobelsdorff about Fritz) to seriously try anyway. Now, in the last section, Knobelsdorff makes one more attempt to reconcile with the King. Wwhen travelling from Berlin to Potsdam and back finds himself in the company of young Lessing, who wants to visit Voltaire. Knobelsdorff watches a bit of the Lessing/Voltaire encounter from afar, seeing that Voltaire is talking non stop and being just as much of an egomaniac as Fritz is. Then Voltaire gets literally kicked out of the palace on Fritz' orders by two grenadiers, and Knobelsdorff is so disgusted that he returns to Berlin without ever having announced himself to Fritz. En route back to Berlin, he talks with Lessing about Voltaire and is surprised Lessing isn't more disllusioned and disappointed with Voltaire's shadiness, flattery of the King (before their bust-up) and general Voltaire-ness. Lessing says he differentiates between Voltaire the person (extremely flawed) and Voltaire the writer (fighting the good progressive fight in a dazzling way and always getting back up to do that whenever his own shadiness gets him down) . Knobelsdorff concedes this is true, and comes to the conclusion that Fritz is really a tragic figure, trapped by both his character and his historical role of king, and that Fritz has just destroyed his last true friendship and has condemned himself to utter loneliness ever more. Leaving aside the various unhistorical factors here (since young Lessing had been Voltaire's translator in the infamous 1750 trial against Hirrsch, he had met him way before 1753, and you bet he was disillusioned), the idea that you can be progressive and a non-noble and still a vain egomaniac and that one doesn't exclude the other is new to this novel, as is the concept that in a King vs Intellectual clash, the intellectual might have non-progressive motives as well. (Also, since Stade finds a way to bring up a much younger Voltaire in the Gundling novel, I'm 99% certain this entire sequence was written by him.)

"Der Meister von Sanssouci" actually has the Strasbourg trip, since in the novel, Knobelsdorff particpates in it, though unlike everyone else, he doesn't turn around after the jig is up but continues to Paris in order to see Versailles, see above. AW is mentioned as present, but doesn't get any lines. Later in the novel, we get another example of a GDR writer or two getting Heinrich's life dates wrong and eliminating AW because in 1747 (!!!!!), Fritz tells Knobelsdorff he can't return to Rheinsberg anymore, he's given it to Heinrich because Heinrich will be Regent if anything happens to him or if he retires, and Heinrich can prepare himself for the rule of the Kingdom in Rheinsberg just as Fritz himself has done.

Callbacks and callforwards: FW shows up early on for a cameo, and you can so tell Claus Back has read Klepper's Der Vater, because at one point FW thinks that poor EC gets dissed by his family as "die Bauernprinzess" which is a term Klepper invented. (For a real opinion on SD's part, I hasten to add. Yours truly would go for "Landpomeranze" instead. My point is, though, that Klepper coined the term. ) Otoh, I'm pretty sure the scriptwriter(s) for "Mein Name ist Bach" must have read this novel, which also includes Bach's visit and meeting with Fritz. Why? Because Bach's son Friedemann makes almost identical sarcastic remarks about the King, both re: his music (mediocre artist), re: that his father the genius should have to dance attendance to a despot with artistic pretensions. And one phrase Friedemann says in "Mein Name ist Bach" is said by Knobelsdorff himself instead re: Soor - about Fritz playing his flute surrounded by corpses.

Now, about the one man of the people who isn't a good guy: can you guess who it might be? It's Fredersdorf!

From:

selenak

He starts out as an okay servant among other servants (no mention of his backstory with Fritz) but from the moment Fritz becomes King is an egomaniac schemer who is jealous as hell of Knobelsdorff and his friendship with Fritz, and spends the rest of the novel intrigueing against him. First he gets Knobelsdorff's trusted master builder Diterichs replaced by his tool Jan Bouman, and then he's gunning for Knobelsdorff himself, at fault for all the Fritz/Knobelsdorff's arguments that don't happen because Fritz thinks he's the better architect and can tell Knobelsdorff how to do his job. Boumann is the "a half" man of the people who isn't good and progressive, in that he's not actually evil, just dumb, mediocre, and a tool of Frederdsorf.

As you might guess, I was, shall we say, startled, and did a bit of googling to find out whether Claus Back and Stade came up with that on their lonesome or whether they had inspiration. The go to source for stories about the building history of Frederician Potsdam is Manger, of whom we have a section about Fredersdorf in the library. Now, Knobelsdorff died in September 1753, Fredersdorf in January 1758, and Manger didn't become Bauinspektor in Potsdam until 1763 (i.e. after the 7 Years War), so he presmably didn't know either of them unless from afar, since he joined the Potsdam Baukontor in a low position in 1753. His write-up on Fredersdorf which we have in the library doesn't contain anything about a Fredersdorf/Knobelsdorff clash, but it does claim Fredersdorf butted heads with Bouman (i.e. the very guy who is his minion in the novel) and did not rest until he had driven him away. Except that far from being driven away, Bouman according to his wiki entry got royal jobs all over the Berlin place (including, btw, the palace for Heinrich which ended up as the core building of the Humboldt university), and was in fact appointed Oberbaudirector of Berlin and Potsdam by Fritz in 1755 (i.e. two years before Fredersdorf's death), which he remained until the 1770s (well after Fredersdorf's death). Just to make the historical background even more confusing, Diterich's (i.e. the guy whom Bouman replaced as master builder for Knobelsdorff) wiki entry does contain a Manger quote from evidently a different section in Manger's chronicle, i.e. one not in the library, in which Manger says: „Allein entweder Diterichs hatte dem damaligen Kammerlieblingen des Königs (gemeint ist Fredersdorf) nicht genug hofieret, oder er mußte sich auf andere Art Feinde gemacht haben, die nicht unterließen, ihm einen schlimmen Streich zu spielen. Denn vierzehn Tage nach angefangener Arbeit (also nach der Grundsteinlegung vom 14. April 1745) erhielt Neubauer einen Brief von Fredersdorf aus Neisse vom 21ten dieses Monats, mit der Nachricht, "daß der vorige königliche Befehl ungültig seyn, und die Gelder zum Weinbergs-Lushause nicht durch Diterichs, sondern durch Baumann zur Zahlung sollten assignieret werden."

("Alas either Diterichs hadn't flattered the chamber favourite of the King enough, or he must have made himself enemies in another way, who didn't miss out of playing a bad trick on im. For fourteen days after the work had been begun Neubauer received a letter by Fredersdorf from Neisse dated on the 21st of that month with the news that "the earlier royal command was annuled, and the money for the vineyard ouse should not be dispensed through Diterich, but through Baumann (i.e. Boumann) anymore.")

For comparison, here's what the same Manger writes in his brief Fredersdorf write up - btw, Fredersdorf appears under the subsection "Persons who were not master builders but through whom King Friedrich made his orders known if he was angry with the master builders and did not talk to them himself" - re: Fredersdorf's involvement with the master builders and architects:

Right after the ascension of King Friedrich, Fredersdorf became Chamberlain and did not only get the administration of the so called royal money box but the supervision of all court offices, to which in some years the Bauamt was added after the King started to build in Potsdam in 1744.
He was an intelligent courtier who kept strict order in the departments entrusted to him, so he was either respected or feared by all the court servants. Only the chatelain Bouman didn't want to submit to him in building affairs, or adher to his prescriptions, and told him his opinion in good Dutch, which is even more expressive than good German, and thus it came to be that he persecuted the later until he had driven him away from court and from Potsdam.

So what's going on there - did Fredersdorf feud with two master builders in a row? Given Manger is publishing all of this in 1789, I suspect we have another case of telescoping due to Manger being old himself by then, and confusing two master builders, Diterich - who was dismissed - and Bouman - who was not and remained in office. (Back, Stade or both must have noticed Bouman wasn't driven away and hence made him a Frederdsorf ally rather than a Fredersdorf enemy. That they also made him a mediocre builder, well....) But it is interesting that his opinion for the reason for Diterich's replacement is purely negative (i.e. either Diterich didn't flatter Fredersdorf enough, or that other unnamed enemies schemed against him), whereas in the supposed Bouman case it's because Fredersdorf keeps strict order in his departments and Bouman doesn't want to be told what to do (i.e. the same problem Knobelsdorff had with Fritz). And don't forget the larger headline (i.e. people through whom Fritz interacted with the building staff when he was angry and didn't want to talk to them himself), which also allows for the possibility that Fredersdorf might have been the messenger. Since Manger himself was at the point of Fritz' death locked up courtesy of Fritz under a most likely wrong charge of embezzlement and only got released by FW2 recently at the point of writing his book, I suspect there might also be a case of deflection at work, i.e. Manger can't blame the King, but he can blame Fredersdorf for "not being flattered enough" and/or micromanaging. And, again, decades have passed.

In any event: my gusss is Back (and Stade?) found all of this too confusing and decided that since the novel was about Knobelsdorff, they'd give Fredersdorf the feud with Knobelsdorff instead and make him the closest thing the novel has to a villain who's not Fritz. (Who is more of a tragic antagonist.)

(Lastly: rereading the Manger section we have in the library also made me notice that right after Fredersdorf, he has a much shorter bio for Glasow as well: "Glasow, a fireworker's son from Berlin. His father later as a Zeugleutnant was transfered to Brieg in Silesia, took him along, and put him, presumably because he wasn't very obedient, into the garnison infantry regiment stationed there. There, King Friedrich spotted him in 1755, took him along to Potsdam where he made him a chamber hussar and distinguished him with a special red uniform. In the year 1756 shortly before the campaign, Fredersdorf was ill and the valet Anderson was in disgrace, so the King made Glasow valet, entrusted his purse to him from which at times money was sent to the building adminstration, and showed him great favor. But in the following year, 1757, he was imprisoned for proven treason and betrayal against the King and sent from Dresden to Spandau, where he died in 1758 already. No mention of any accomplices.)

From:

selenak

Now, on to the novel I mostly wanted to read: "Der König und sein Narr" by Martin Stade. (And no one else.) I then also saw the film version, and will write about both, because they're both excellent, though the book has a flaw the film version covers, whereas the film version lacks something that's really important in the book.

Book: harrowing. It's written in first person, narrated by Gundling who spends his last weeks of life writing this book trying to figure out why all this happened, how he got from scholar to dying court fool with a coffin in the guise of a big barrel of wine standing in his room in which he knows he'll be put. The first person perspective at one point means Stade has to cheat because he evidently wanted to include a scene with FW where Gundling doesn't show up, and he has Gundling imagine how it must have happened. But Gundling's argument - that by now he knows exactly how the King feels and thinks and as a professional historian can flesh these things out - is hard to refute.

The biggest difference to Der Meister of Sanssouci is that Gundling while being an incredibly tragic figure is written as being partly complicit in his terrible fate. Not in the sense of "he deserves this", absolutely not, but as he goes back to understand how his life turned out this way, he realises at several points where he still could have made other choices, where it hadn't been too late yet. Also, the novel, which starts with F1's death, lets Gundling - who is now jobless since FW immediately fire the entire heraldic and historic department as part of his austerity measures - actively seek out FW so he can keep a job at court and won't have to make the rounds at the universities and patrons outside Prussia again. After talking to FW's servant Creutz and hearing FW wants to encourage Prussian manufacturing, that he has no time for history and is all about commerce, Gundling he recalls he himself has written an essay about manufacturing and commerce and cajoles Creutz to bring this up with FW, and he writes a petition to FW, too. Since Gundling is victimized through the greater part of the novel, it's I think a good choice on Stade's part to let him have as much of an agenda as it's possible. It's also this, from the get go, that makes this novel work not just as a historical novel but as a general "intellectuals and power" book that is very evidently also reflecting the situation it's written in, i.e. in a dictatorship. Can you keep your integrity and your art while accomodating absolute power? Gundling has a mixture of selflish and selfless motives early on: he had liked his comfortable job with F1, he's near 40 and doesn't want to go back to becoming a jobless scholar, but he also, when he meets FW, realises that FW actually is serious about reform and realises this could put him in a position where he, Gundling, can help making a difference, can make the country better.

Stade is really good at making it understandable why Gundling initially finds FW a real chance and despite increasing warning signs sticks it out for a while, and he also lets FW initially be seriously impressed by Gundling (who points out a few useful things, such as, two thirds of Berlin lived directly or indirectly through the court (carpenters, artisans, washerwomen, tailors, every level of food delivery etc), so when there's no more court in that sense, you need to supply other employment quickly or they'll all leave before starving); FW doesn't start the relationship thinking he wants someone else to kick around. But there are also red flag signals about his capacity for cruelty, and each described session of the Tobacco Parliament also is terrific (and visceral to read) in how it depicts the group dynamics encouraging each other's cruelty and make it ever worse. Narrating Gundling realises he participated early on when he didn't have to - he was annoyed at the fool (the real, official fool), so he had a go at him; when a wife who was a professional snitch on deserters and her husband showed up to petition FW to grant them a divorce, and the tobacco college who finds it hilarious that the woman is fat and the man is thin goads and mocks them instead, and finally sets them at each other, with FW deciding that the one of them who manages to beat the other at dice can literally beat the other (as in hit, brutally) out of the room, Gundling the narrator muses that these two, who are outcasts and only have each other, could have been allies in their misery, could have escaped what was about to happen if only they'd refused to turn on each other, but instead they let the lords use them as their entertainment by venting their agrression and misery on each other, he also reflect that he himself could have protested, or left, or just remained silent, but after a while watching the two, he too, joined everyone else's laughter, unable to realise he was looking at his own future.

As the pranks against Gundling himself go from still passing as pranks (i.e. trying to frighten him with ghosts since he has said he doesn't believe in them) to physical assaults and vicious taunts, the number of titles and the salary FW heaps on him also rise, and they slide into a fatal dynamic where Gundling lives for those moments of "truth telling" where he makes clever remarks the King and his other companions can't find good rejoinders too, and those moments where he actually manages to change FW's mind on something; that's what he draws his ever more fragile sense of self worth from as much as the increasing amounts of alcohol, and in response FW grows ever more inventive with the "pranks", too, the more cutting the remarks become. Of Gundling's two escape attempts, only the second, longer one is described at full length. He first goes to Breslau but all teaching jobs available there demand that he converts to Catholicism, which he refuses to do. (Stade's Gundling isn't such a good Protestant, he's a secret atheist, but he's compromised so much already that he refuses to submit to Rome, too, after all the submissions to FW.) Instead, he hangs out with some rebellious students, which as it turns out makes for his last hours of freedom because Old Dessauer is there to kidnap him and bring him back to Prussia. (Sidenote: in Morgenstern's version, I think it was Derschau, which rank wise is more believable, but I can see Stade going for the better known guy.)

Gundling has just one more glimmer of light when he meets Anne de Larrey, and here's where I think the novel shows a flaw that the movie makes up for, because Stade's novel has the first encounter, then just the statement they got married and she was the only one who ever understood him, and much later he wonders why he wrote so much about FW and so litlte about her. Which imo is lampshading for: "I don't know how to write this character and this relationship." I'll get to how the film does it in a moment. But otherwise he's in free fall. There are two final steps of humiliation left, and both come after a seeming victory. Firstly, the Tobbacco Parliament has French ambassador Rottembourg as a guest when Gundling (who still has the reading the news job) reads out a short notice that Voltaire after his most recent stint in the Bastille has been brought to Calais with the permission to go to England and the strict interdiction to get closer than 50 miles to the French court. FW asks who this Voltaire is, Rottembourg says he had it coming, FW says if that's the French way of dealing with these things, well, in Brandenburg he has better methods to keep the country quiet. (This is also when Gundling realises that he's been kidding himself when clinging to the belief he could shame FW into doing the right thing now and then as a justification for staying around.) Gundling can't resist having a go at Rottembourg (who is written as a snobbish French aristocrat) with comments about how France fears the written and spoken word that clearly are meant for FW as well, and while Rottembourg loses the verbal duel, FW ends the encounter by saying he'll have to publish an edict against evil atheists like this Voltaire person (FW isn't into differentiation about Deism), and Gundling will write it for him.

Which Gundling is now too afraid not to do, and so he loses the last bit of his intellectual integrity he's been proud of. The other Pyrrhic victory is when FW presents him with David Fassmann as his potential sucessor, Fassmann (who has never met FW and wants the job) taunts Gundling and Gundling loses it and starts to beat on Fassmann. But now he's done just what all the others from the Tabagcie which he despised for being unable to answer verbal arguments except by brutal force has done, and that was the last moral differentiation he's been clinging to, and he's lost that as well. From this point onwards, all that's left is drinking himself to death. The last few pages are written in a hallucinatory style, with Gundling no longer able to tell what is reall and what isn't ("did I talk with the King about the Crown Prince?" is one of two Fritz mentions in this novel; the other is when Gundling briefly spots child Fritz and thinks he reminds him of a little caged bird), and where he comes up with an image summarizing everything: He sees the King who holds up a mirror to him, the mirror showing Gundling himself as he's now, in his entire degredation. But he also notices the King uses this mirror which shows Gundling like a shield, to avoid having to look at himself.

(Let me add here that one of the elements that make this book better than "Der Meister von Sanssouci" is that FW always feels like a character, one particular person, not someone who as an absolute monarch is bound to play a certain role by historic necessity. What FW does are his own actions; Gundling as the narrator never says, well, Kings, you, know, but progress marches on! That's what I mean by this novel not being orthodox.

Gundling's death is his final escape, when he is at least free of fear and pain and feels that curiosity again he had as a boy when he wanted to learn everything and wanted to understand and find out all the reasons, and when he understands that, he's free.

Now, the movie: script by Ulrich Plenzdorf, who wrote "Die neuen Leiden des jungen W.", the modern Werther novel which I read in school. There are, of course, a lot less characters (the novel even includes vivid cameos even by F1's ceremonial master von Besser, and by August the Strong when he's visiting Berlin), events like the bears do not happen (presumably because it would be way too dangerous to film that; also this is a German tv movie, and we don't have the budget for Hollywood trained stunt bears!) , the humiliation conga that Gundling observes and too late realises foreshadows his own is limited to just the female snitch showing up, not her husband (there are a few other examples in the novel); all these cuts are understandable, and they make room for fleshing out Anne de Larrey and her relationship with Gundling, which imo was really needed. So in the movie, we see how they connect, that she's kind and clever and that he's able to charm her by being witty without being cruel, and the marriage becomes the FW free space in his life, but alas too late to save him. As the movie is not told in the first person, we're in Anne's pov for the last section and at the funeral, where Fassmann holds the funeral speech. (The director and the actor didn't let Fassmann do this mockingly but suddenly fully aware he's next, and thus terrified.)

Another difference between movie and novel is something which I did miss, and that's letting Gundling actively work to get a job from FW. In the film, he gets fired after F1's death, he's on his way to leave Berlin when he's called back because FW has found out he's written that essay about manufactoring; there is no indication that Gundling tried to make this happen. Also, he doesn't laugh with the others early on in the Tobacco Parliament; he's thus presented entirely as an innocent there, and the way the evolving group dynamic happens is observed by him strictly from the outside, not form the inside. . (Plus where the novel has three different cases, of which the female snitch and her husband are but one, the movie has only the one, where, as I said, Gundling remains serious.) The film thus loses some complexity in its main character, though it has an invention later on to bring some of that back - the rebeillious students with whom Gundling has hung out in Breslau show up at his doorstep when he' married and has his own town residence, and he doesn't have the courage anymore to offer them sanctuary, not when his own welfare and that of Anne and her dead brother's children whom she has adopted are at stake. Still, not the same.

However, and it's a big however: the two leads are outstanding. Wolfgang Kieling as Gundling has a tragic dignity that goes with an increasing fragility despite not being a fragilly built man, a great voice and a way to convey so much with his acting of what's going on inside Gundling at any given point. And Götz George as FW is hands down the best FW I've yet seen on screen, which includes Günter Strack in Der Thronfolger. He feels like a living live wire, with an incredible energy barely hold in check and never falls into metaphorical moustache twirling or hammy acting, which makes scenes when FW goes from relatively harmless to doing something cruel way more effective. The script also trusts its audience to get the point without someone putting a sledge hammer on it as when FW on the one hand tells child!Fritz (in his one and only scene) that wars of agression are evil and on the other in the next breath goes on to bully people some more. That both novel and movie keep out the other Hohenzollerns as much as they can and focus on FW strictly in the context of his relationship with Gundling also makes the story as the absolutely perfect counterpoint to anyone pulling out the "well, 1730 and his relationship with his oldest son aside, he was really good!" argument. Both book and movie don't offer a final explanation as to why FW does what he does to Gundling - Gundling has an opinion about this, of course, but in the novel he's the pov character who offers this opinion, and in the film we only briefly see FW (twice) when Gundling isn't around, either). But what he does is the systematic destruction of a human being, that's made crystal clear in both versions (the film makes it even more literal in that the gigantic barrel of wine in which Gundling will later be buried is literally full of wine when it arrives so Gundling can drink himself do death on it, and does, while Anne is kept away from his bedroom by two soldiers), and that he does this is its own judgment on him.

Coming up when I can: screencaps!

Edited Date: 2021-03-16 01:02 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

And now for the screencaps. Because Wolfgang Keeling and Götz George have so many expressions, and also there is some really neat detail in there because Stade has read Morgenstern, and if you want to see the Potsdam Oboists, look no further.

Gundling at the start of the movie, when he just lost his job as F1's historian:

Gundling meets FW for the first time

FW without a wig

FW with a wig, later in the Tobacco College

Gundling and the court fool. Remember the costume of the fool, we'll see it again.

Gundling's first return after his first escape attempt. FW has just told him he gets another title, Gundling says "Ihr erhöht mich, um mich zu erniedrigen".

Remember, FW fired the court musicians except for orchestra leader Pepusch, then told him to train some Potsdam Giants to play. This is the result, and they're even playing Händel!

Another neat detail is that FW prays before he eats. They're not named in the movie, unlike in the novel where they are named, but those are Grumbkow and Seckendorff next to him:

FW and Grumbkow, whom Gundling in the novel characterizes as always having his eyes half closed and impossible to read.

Gundling's second escape attempt leads him to Breslau, and the library where his old study buddy works is so beautiful I had to include it:

But it's no use, he gets kidnapped back. BTW, I was wrong. The non fictional biography has arrived, and FW did indeed sent the Old Dessauer himself to retrieve him. Upon his return, FW makes Gundling Master of Ceremonies, an office that hadn't been fulfilled anymore since he fired Besser, and now Gundling has to wear this get up at court functions you'll see below. The first time the audience sees him in it, he meets his future wife, Anne de Larrey , for the first time. This is the moment when he first looks at her and she looks back and he is so sure he knows what she must think:

But Anne is a good observer and watches him being kind to one of the old footmen who had to stand all the time; Gundling uses his Master-of-Ceremonies title to order the old guy to sit down. This is Anne:

Here's a screenshot where you see the full get up as Gundling has to entertain FW and the rest:

Next we get the only scene in the movie where you see Hohenzollerns that are not FW. It's a family walk in the park Gundling gets invited to, featuring FW, pregnant SD, Fritz and Wilhelmine. Since Fritz and Wilhelmine as children keep running to and thro, it's hard to get them in the same shot, so here we go:

Gundling and Anne fall in love:

Which means for the first time since a loooong while, Gundling shows up at the tobacco parliament happy:

Naturally, it can't last. Here he is reading the "Voltaire off to England" news:

He uses that excuse to quote some Voltairian zingers at at guest Rottembourg (the one in white) that apply not just to French monarchies. The Tobacco Parliament is not amused:

Really not amused:

See above for how this ends for Gundling. Next time he is at the Hellfire Club, err, the tobbacco college, it's just him and FW at first. FW tells him he's found a good potential successor for Gundling:

Enter David Fassmann, trying to win FW by insulting Gundling.

Gundling loses it, takes the heating pan and starts to beat at Fassmann.

This is where he hits his final rock bottom. Afterwards, he starts to drink from all the bottles around.

Fassmann holds the FW penned mocking funeral speech:

Surprisingly, he doesn't look happy. It's just a small part, but the actor is good. Check how he conveys with his expression that it dawns on Fassmann just what kind of position it is that he has won:

The oboists play (btw, this is way more dignified than how the actual funeral went):

The barrel-coffin:

And the end (that's Anne and her niece and nephew standing there behind the Giants):

From:

felis

Fredersdorff as the big bad! That was surprising, hee. But I guess you are right about the streamlining/condensing of the tale. As for Bouman:

That they also made him a mediocre builder, well...

This is also because of Manger I'd say, because he reports that Knobelsdorff thought so: Knobelsdorff was his big antagonist, as mentioned earlier. He disapproved of everything that came from Bouman. Manger places the final Fritz/Knobelsdorff clash in 1753 as well and says that the comment that angered Fritz in the first place was another Bouman diss (the "as mentioned ealier"): Fritz supposedly asked Knobelsdorff if he'd seen the new Berlin Gate on his way in, built by "your stupid castellan Bouman" (stupid being what Knobelsdorff had called Bouman) and Knobelsdorff's response was "That must be the reason I didn't notice it." As you say, it's not like Manger was there for it, but either way, he seems to be the source for the Knobelsdorff vs. Bouman part.

(Bouman himself actually built the Dutch Quarter in Potsdam by the way, and seems to have been around before Dietrich, appointed by FW, but was so busy with the projects he already had that he didn't get to built anything new until 1744.)

Manger's chapter on all the builders, including Knobelsdorff and the above details, is here.

The Ditrich wiki quote is from the Sanssouci section much earlier in the book and right after the part you quoted it says that only a couple days later, Fritz himself sent a message saying that "Diterich should have nothing at all to do with my building in Potsdam". Fredersdorf the messenger or Fredersdorf the one to convince Fritz to reinforce the message a couple days later or Manger telling questionable anecdotes? No idea.

But re: Manger not blaming Fritz - well. In the builders chapter he also writes about himself at the end, in the third person, and closes with: He always had to fight poverty because he hadn't learned to be miserly, otherwise something more would have become of him. But the King and others thought he was rich, believing that someone involved with building must have a chance to enrich themselves. This error was his misfortune. I feel like he's generally quite critical of Fritz between the lines.

The chapter that starts with Fredersdorf is the one that follows the builders one and after Glasow, it lists all the other people that succeeded him as well - including Neumann at the end, but also Deesen! Manger almost makes it sound like the anonymous reports which accused him of wrongdoing might have been the result of the fact that Fritz favoured him so much and so quickly. Almost. (He also mentions an unsolved 15.000 thaler theft that happened in 1776, unrelated to Deesen, but I guess that's what Zimmermann then conflated.)

Edited Date: 2021-03-16 08:51 pm (UTC)

From:

felis

Book: harrowing.

Definitely sounds like it, yeah. I only knew bits and pieces and the general gist of Gundling's story, so a lot of the details were new to me, including the kidnapping by Old Dessauer and the burial circumstances. Damn.

From:

felis

Huh. George works surprisingly well as a young FW.

Was about to ask if "without a wig" was an actual thing but then I remembered that Fritz wore his own hair in Rheinsberg, if I remember correctly. Although that doesn't say anything about FW of course.

Golden Hats!?

Library! (Any idea where that was filmed?)

Grumbkow looks younger and maybe more obviously untrustworthy than I think he should? Hm. (I was reading about the 1725 Grumbkow/Dessauer duel(s) yesterday, and how FW was basically the one trying to get them to make peace and almost threw up his hands at various points because Old Dessauer was so stubborn and had such a temper and wouldn't listen to him, which was a bit hilarious, so reading your write-up today = quite the contrast.)

That kid playing Fritz on the other hand looks cuter than he has any right to be in that one screencap.

From:

selenak

Fritz supposedly asked Knobelsdorff if he'd seen the new Berlin Gate on his way in, built by "your stupid castellan Bouman" (stupid being what Knobelsdorff had called Bouman) and Knobelsdorff's response was "That must be the reason I didn't notice it." As you say, it's not like Manger was there for it, but either way, he seems to be the source for the Knobelsdorff vs. Bouman part.

Yes, that explains it. Thank you very much for the link! BTW, I was wondering about something else in the novel, and now that you've linked me to Manger's Knobelsdorff write up, I can see that this at least hails from our two authors' (most likely Back's) imagination, to wit: Fritz suggesting the satyrs on the Sanssouci facade and Knobelsdorff hating the idea (executed by Boumann because he refuses to have anything to do with it). Like I said, this isn't in Manger, so I'm tempted to suspect it's Back who hates on the satyrs. (What's wrong with the satyrs? I like them!)

ETA: Having read further in Manger, i.e. his write up of Bouman, I see that Knobelsdorf indeed hated the satyrs and that the line in the novel where he says they make the facade look like the seraglio of an Oriental potentate, not a Christian king, with lots of cut off heads put up for decoration is authentic. Man, those Fritz and Knobelsdorf arguments must have made everyone else in sight run for cover!/ETA

Miiiiiiiildred! The Knobelsdorff bio as given by Manger claims that not only did he meet Fritz at Küstrin because young Knobelsdorff, still doing military service, was a part of the Küstrin garnison, but that Knobelsdorff himself was the soldier who blew out, then reignited the candle. This story didn't make it in the novel (nor did a Küstrin first meeting; the novel starts when Fritz has just moved into Rheinsberg, and he and Knobelsdorff are already an item), and I suspect why: it's really not true. Manger himself says "I have heard from several people", not that he had it from the man himself. And when Lehnedorff visits Küstrin in the 1750s and hears the story of the soldier with the cancle, it's just an anonymous soldier. At this point, Knobelsdorff was already famous and of Europe wide renown, and Lehndorff most definitely knew who he was, so if it had been him, he'd probably have noticed!

I'll check out the post-Glasow write ups next, but the "Knobelsdorff was the candle reigniting soldier at Küstrin" bit was too good not to be shared immediately.

Edited Date: 2021-03-17 10:11 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

George works surprisingly well as a young FW.

Doesn't he just? The film is from 1981, so just before Schimanski, and way before he reinvented himself as a middle aged critically praised character actor. But like I said, he's fantastic in the part. Great job, casting people!

Was about to ask if "without a wig" was an actual thing but then I remembered that Fritz wore his own hair in Rheinsberg, if I remember correctly. Although that doesn't say anything about FW of course

I don't know about FW as a young King, either, but yes, Fritz as a young man - even as a young King - did go without a wig often enough for some envoys to include it in their "hot or not?" reports. And I think at least one of the reports on young MT mentions her, along with the simple dresses she wears on non-festive ways, not always donning a wig. It's always worth reminding that the way all these monarchs look on portraits, in full state robes and splendid get up, was not how they walked around on a day to day basis. And as long as you are young and still have your full hair, and are someone who works a lot, I imagine removing your wig now and then is a temptation. For FW in particular, since he scorned all the court ceremonies and splendor so much it could also be a statement, though I note in the movie he only has the wig off in intimate surroundings - in the first meeting scene, he, Gundling and Creutz are alone in FW's study and FW is working - and on whenever he's with a greater number of people.

Golden Hats!?

He. Even for his beloved Potsdam Giants, I doubt FW would have forked over the money. Maybe whichever material was used in the original uniforms didn't photograph well?

Grumbkow: Like I said, the movie doesn't identify him or give him any lines at all. I only know who this is supposed to be from the descriptions in the novel. (The movie cut down the speaking Tobacco College members to Forcade - who gets humiliated when FW is making read a petition out loud, which shows Forcade can barely read - and Old Dessauer (the one with the eyepatch).

The kid playing Fritz does look adorable. It's a shame that "Der Thronfolger" is no longer online, for the kid playing Fritz there in the first ten minutes does, too.

Old Dessauer: well, Seckendorff's late 18th century biographer is convinced he was the most evil, vile-tempered man of the century. *g* Whereas Grumbkow was accused of many things, but an unability to keep his temper was not one of them....

ETA: I forgot re: library - I don't know, but I suspect Prague. Because filming historical movies in Prague became a thing for Western producers in the 1980s, notably for Amadeus, of course, and that library looks very much like the one on the Hradschin.

Edited Date: 2021-03-17 06:45 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

Re: burial circumstances, having now read the non-fiction book on Gundling, I can tell you that this is another case - like Oncker with the Knyphausen-derived FW quote about Fritz - of 19th and early 20th century historians refusing to accept reality if it didn't fit with their idea of a character. For lo and behold, this happened:

David Fassmann in his Gundling-Mocking diatribe, among many other things: The King buried him in a barrel of wine.

Wilhelmine, in a letter to her sister Friederike (who was already married to Ansbach) from 1731: "The King had him buried in his beautiful robe and his gigantic wig in a barrel. He himself accompagnied the body till Borndstädt, where (Gundling) was buried."

Later Hohenzollern fan historians: Fassmann was a satirist and Wilhelmine is a Dad-hating liar. No way super Christian Protestant FW would have made a mockery of a funeral like that, having Gundling buried in in a wine barrel, letting his arch enemy hold the taunting burial speech. No way!

So we get from Louis Schneider, 1867, writing an essay "Ist Gundling in einem Weinfasse begraben worden?" to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (frequent wiki source, though not for the Gundling entry) from 1878 claiming that the doubts as to whether the mocking inscriptions on Gundlings coffin really were put there", to the Neue Deutsche Biographie from 1966 declaring that "especially the infamous burial of Gundling in a barrel of wine can't have happened in this form".

THEN, someone has the bright idea of checking for records of the people professionally concerned with burials, to wit, the clergy. And lo! In the archive of the Franckesche Stiftungen in Halle, there's a letter from Potsdam Reverend Johann Heinrich Schubert, written only five days after Gundling's burial. Which not only backs up the wine barrel tale 100% but also proves poor Gundling in his dying days knew FW wouldn't even let him be buried in peace. Writes Schubert: Poor Gundling has told me among many sighs and lamentations how he has been abused, and lamented especially that due to his distress over the fact he would be buried in a barrel with such an inscription could not properly collect himself. (For to face his death calmly, that is.) (Remember, that barrel with the inscription had to stand in the same room with the dying man.) Continues Reverend Schubert:

On the 8th of this month (April) I visited him, and departed from him rather sadly because of this matter. R(ex) learns of this and questions me on the 9th, why I went so sadly from Gundling? I replied that I regretted very much being unable to soothe the man's distress in his soul, and was begging R(ex) most humbly to have pity in the poor soul and give (Gundling) the assurance that he would be buried like other people. But alas! This petition has been received most uncharitably.

There are other documents from clergymen, too, because originally FW had demanded one of them hold the funeral. Five Lutheran Pastors (Gundling was originally from Nuremberg and thus not a Calvinist) teamed up, led by Pfarrer Schultze, Schubert the letter writer, and the preacher from St. Nikolai (which was the parish where Gundling would be buried), and decided to "rather suffer everything" than obey FW's instruction to participate in such a funeral. They told FW they'd be happy to bless and preach over Gundling's coffin as long as it was a proper coffin, as every Christian had a right to, not a wine barrel. FW then threatened that he'd get the Calvinist clergy to do it instead, but the Lutherans didn't back down, and so it turned out FW had bluffed, because the Calvinists refused to go along with this horrible mockery of a funeral, either. FW then had a colonel tell the clergymen "Wollen die Priester nicht mitgehen u(nd) haben Bedenken, so mögen sie zu hause bleiben."

Not having a preacher for the funeral rites, he then told Fassmann to do it.

Later historians: FW WOULD NEVER!

From:

felis

No way super Christian Protestant FW would have made a mockery of a funeral like that

To be honest, my thoughts took a similar direction - not as emphatically of course, but I did wonder how FW reconciled such a mockery of a funeral with his faith, going against all the preachers to boot. Schubert's report is just depressing in the relentlessness it depicts; or as you so chillingly put it: the "systematic destruction of a human being" until his last breath (and even after).

But hey, I had no idea Gundling was buried in Bornstedt! I've visited both the church and the graveyard and remember Lenné's grave for example, but not Grundling's. ... aha, googling tells me he was actually buried inside the church and I definitely missed the plate that was initially put over his grave and is now mounted on a wall.

And I see that Manger was buried there as well (outside), as was De Catt (whose grave doesn't exist anymore, so there's only a commemorative plaque).

From:

selenak

Ah, thank you for linking the plate! Sabrow (the biographer) mentions it, but the black and white photo in the book doesn't show it as well. The two figures on each side are a hare and Athena/Minerva, which sums up Gundling's double existence, for the hare is an allusion to the 18th century term "haselieren" for "playing the fool", while Minerva of course is the goddess of wisdom. Sabrow's book otherwise offers a bit more light for Gundling, in that he managed to continue his life as a scholar - he had an enormous output on books written during those years which is one of the reasons why Sabrow doubts his alcoholic input was actually more than what FW, Grumbkow and Seckendorff drank, because having read the books, he says they demanded an enormous amount on focus and concentration, as a great deal is original research work. And while FW made him head of the acedemy to humiliate the academy, Gundling took that job seriously, attended his first Academy session three days after FW appointed him and his last in 1730, i.e. months before his death. Sabrow says that since FW insisted on his presence whereever FW was, he couldn't attend on more than key sessions, i.e. whenn new members were suggested/appointed or when changes were made), but those he was always there for. And he initialized and pushed several projects through despite the minimum budget FW allowed for the Academy. (Which is why the Academy under Leipniz published only one volume, despite having a much, much larger budget, but two in the much shorter and minimum-budgeted Gundling era, to which he contributed several essays in one case and a preface in the other.) He couldn't realise his most ambitious project, which was a world geographical atlas, which was supposed to come about in a collaboration between different branches of scholars. (Gundling himself had mapped and written about Brandenburg and Pomerania in this detailed way.) But the point is, he took what was meant as a joke on FW's part and worked hard to make it something different, because the world of letters never ceased to mean something to him that survived all the put downs and degredations.

FW: Well, I felt reminded of him asking, in the same year, no less, the clergy wheather a man was entitled to force his daughter into marriage against her will and upon hearing that no, he wasn't, chose to ignore that. Then there was that time he frightened the preacher of the local church at Rheinsberg (not Dechamps, the local guy) to death by showing up unexpected and shaking his stick at him because he disagreed with the sermon. And let's not forget that predestination is actually standard for Calvinism, only for FW to decide that no, Luther was right on this point. Methinks if he had become King of England, he'd have taken that "supreme head of the church" title to mean that he could reorganize the Anglican church in his image.

For Sabrow, the bigger question is where this relentless persecution came from given that simultanously, FW spent hours alone with Gundling (in addition to the tobacco parliament sessions), and Seckendorff as late as the mid 1720s actually wrote to Prince Eugene that Gundling was one of the few who could get FW to change his mind on something, and that he was someone to win over if you wanted to get somewhere. Sabrow also makes a good case by presenting the relevant documents that the mocking and humiliating of Gundling doesn't start until about two years after Gundling has joined FW's service, that for the first two years, FW accepts Gundling's commercial suggestions and sends him on a cross country tour for the manufactoring cause. And yet he doesn't even have enough pity to let the man die in peace but torments him until the end and after.

This, btw, is why I think that as sad and unjust and terrible Katte's fate was, he was still within that tragedy fortunate in that he was the scion of a privileged family with a father whom FW respected. Because Gundling and Doris Ritter are examples of what happened to people whom no one championed, whom no one was interested in.

From:

felis

Old Dessauer (the one with the eyepatch)

Huh, so it seems they fictionalized his role completely in the movie, as opposed to the novel. Because I don't think he wore an eyepatch and IMDB actually calls the guy in question v. Hermsdorf, which is a name I've never heard. Strange decision, given Dessauer's prominence.

On the other hand, googling the non-existent eyepatch, I learned that Old Dessauer, against the wishes of his mother, married a non-noble who was the daughter of their court pharmacist and his childhood sweetheart. Did not expect that.

From:

felis

Man, those Fritz and Knobelsdorf arguments must have made everyone else in sight run for cover!

Hee. Fritz in his eulogy for him: M. de Knobelsdorff had a character of candor and probity which made him generally esteemed; he loved the truth, and convinced himself that it offended no one; he regarded courtesy as an inconvenience, and shunned anything that seemed to constrain his freedom; you had to know him well to fully appreciate his merit.

By the way, no mention of Küstrin at all, but he says that Knobelsdorff left the army as a captain in 1730. Wiki doesn't mention Küstrin either, on the contrary says that they met for the first time in 1732, due to FW even, and after Knobelsdorff befriended Pesne. No source given unfortunately, but I'd still say that Manger is off base and not just when it comes to candles. (Still kind of interesting that this was apparently a rumour at the time.) But now I'm also wondering if Manger is the sole source for some other details of their relationship and how reliable they are.