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!
Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - main review
*nods* As we've talked about before on your DW, purely progressive heroes in historical fic are... not what I want to read about. The Voltaire thing is neat! And in general it's interesting to contrast this one with Stade (especially since Stade finished it) and Stade's Gundling book, so I'm glad that you read them all and posted about them :)
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.
LOL! Poor AW. And hey, I have faith in Heinrich, he could pull off being regent as a... *double-checks dates, love that rheinsberg chronology* 21-year-old, right? :D (Okay, okay, I can't imagine Fritz thinking so even if Heinrich could have.)
I must say though that I did NOT see the Fredersdorf twist coming!!
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Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - main review
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!
Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - main review
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.
LOL! Poor AW. And hey, I have faith in Heinrich, he could pull off being regent as a... *double-checks dates, love that rheinsberg chronology* 21-year-old, right? :D (Okay, okay, I can't imagine Fritz thinking so even if Heinrich could have.)
I must say though that I did NOT see the Fredersdorf twist coming!!