Martin Sabrow: Herr und Hanswurst. Das tragische Schicksal des Hofgelehrten Jacob Paul von Gundling from 2003 is the first proper non fiction Gundling biography in centuries, literally, and it is a really good one. The author is open from the start about the problems with the source material - the first biographical writings about Gundling were by his arch enemy David Fassmann and explicitly meant as attacks on him, the first "real" biography wasn't published until 50 years later, at which time the image of Gundling as the court fool was well set and most of the people who could have known him were dead, and the 19th century dealt with the problem that there's no way you can tell the Gundling story honestly and make FW come out well by declaring (up to and including the Hohenzollernjahrbuch in 1901) that it was really all Gundling's own fault by virtue of being a vain alcoholic, and the worst stories were clearly invented, because FW would never.
However, there is actually material to be found to work with and countercheck the anecdotal stories against. Gundling's own books, of course (not in the sense of containing autobiographical accounts but in terms of showing what he was working on at any given time, and also the dedications are interesting and telling), but also various uniiversity and clergy accounts, the "Berliner Adreß-Kalender" which shows when Gundling lived where, and the court news, which was what passed for a newspaper in FW's Berlin and are able to provide date and place for some of the most outrageous stories which one would have hoped to be invented or exaggarated, but weren't, such as the bears. There is also Gundling's brother Hieronymus who was a very respected Professor in Halle and of whom we have some letters and a last will, the records of the Academy through the FW years, and a few other statistical archive treasures. Unlike, say, the Maupertuis biographer, Sabrow manages to weave a compelling - and despite it actually offering some more minor victories for Gundling than "Der König und sein Naarr" does, heartrendering - tale out of all this. I'll limit myself to what was new to me or where he contradicts tradition.
Gundling was born the younger of two sons of a clergyman near Nuremberg. (As a commoner; the ennoblement laer happened courtesy of FW.) Unfortunately for him and his older brother Hieronymus, their parents died when they were still young, and their father didn't leave them enough money to study, which means they had to rely on sponsors. Hieronymus, the older, managed to that and having made Magister and Doctor ended up as a highly respected Professor in Halle for the rest of his life. Jacob Paul could afford uni only because he immatriculated together with a spawn of the local nobility, Tetzel, whom he was supposed to supervise and help out scholarly. When Tetzel decided he had enough of studying and wanted to do the grand tour, Gundling - with a choice that as Sabrow says was no choice at all, i.e. either continue to study without money to pay for it, or go with Tetzel on the Grand Tour and continue to be paid - did leave without getting his degree. (This is important in the long run.) Tetzel's Grand Tour included England, and Gundling may or may not have met the Archbishop of Canterbury there. (His enemy Faßmann claims he can't have done, as Gundling says they talked in Latin due to Gundling's bit of English learned en route not being up to a conversation, and, Faßmann says, it's impossible to talk with Brits in Latin because they pronounce it wrong. Sabrow is not mpressed with this argument, but says this doesn't mean Gundling actually met the guy. We just don't know. It's worth pointing out that his later wife spent some of her formative years in England, though, and that he'd been there for a while might have helped forming a connection between them.)
After Tetzel had finished his tour, he didn't return to university and dismissed Gundling, who finished the rest of his education in the do it yourself manner, but with results that produced a book about Prussian state history that was impressive enough to get him hired by F1's people. Leipniz himself thought young Gundling good enough to want him for the Academy, but the other members voted against it because Gundling had not finished his degree properly, and was only a Professor by royal appointment. Still, Gundling settled down in Berlin, started to do heraldic work (which was the job) and research for histories (what he wanted to do) and eventually write that fateful essay about commerce and manufacturing with reform ideas.
F1 dies, FW starts his austerity program. Here comes the first big divergence to tradition. Now, Faßmann claimed - and all subsequent biographers, including FW biographers like Förster -, followed him in this, that a fired and thus homeless Gundling settled down in one of the local taverns, got drunk and entertained people by reading the news to them, which alterted none other than Grumbkow to his existence, who was on the look out for a newsreader for FW, Gundling shows up, gets hired, and immediately gets humiliated. Sabrow demonstrates that this is telescoping and inventing from the pov of someone who only came into the King's orbit in 1726. Firstly, the tavern where Grumbkow supposedly spotted a drunken Gundling didn't exist yet in the year of FW's ascension and for several more years to come. Secondly, far from lodging in a tavern, the Berlin Address Book shows Gundling going from living at the Ritterakademie (the one in charge of the genealogiies which FW dissolved) to, after a year of interruption, living with Kammergerichtsrat Plarre in the Mittelstraße, Dorotheenstadt, where he'll stay for the next five years. Plarren had a first class library which Gundling actually managed to talk FW into acquiring for the Prussian State when Plarre died in 1717.
About the missing year: in Gundling's years later written and published detailed mapping of Brandenburg and Pomerania, he mentions, in the preface/dedication, having been sent to inspect Brandenburg manufacturing back then and have gotten the job through Gumbkow, to whom the volume is dedicated. Could this be a euphemism? Sure, except that the court news from September 30 1713 also mention Gundling in this context ("Der Herr Rath Gundling hat von Brandenburg referiret, daß er daselbst feine blaue Tücher zu 3 Taler wehrt fabricieret gefunden hätte" etc.), and what the court news notably don't report at this point are any of the later humiliations which will show up frequently in years to come in their reporting. Which is why Sabrow arrives at the conclusion that yes, Gundling, having lost his original job in Berlin, did get a new and respectable one from FW via Grumbkow by virtue of that reforms suggesting essay. What's more, it's also documented that he made the suggestion to discontinue allowing every little estate to brew their beer according to their own standards but to introduce a single state standard which the breweries had to adher to, which made a lot of nobility hate his gut because it essentially created both state control and a state monopoly on said quality control; FW, though, was delighted. But if the start was so promising, how did we get to the horrible tragedy to ensue? Sabrow finds the turning point in the late winter of 1714, which is when the first "prank" story shows up, the one with the ghosts.
Now to us it may sound relatively harmless compared to what's to come, but the key point here is that according to the court news Gundling hadn't just lectured the Tobacco Parliament on ghosts not existing but that he had "professed atheism". And then the gang managed to frighten him with fake ghosts. This wasn't just a loss of face; in a system where FW had made Manly Courage such a big standard to achieve, it marked Gundling as a coward, and resulted in an instant loss of respect from FW. What's more, the noblemen of the Tobacco College probably already either hated his gut for the beer issue or they resented a commoner upstart among them. That's when the court news starts to report he's been forced to drink, not just alcohol but purges, has been forced out of his clothes and into the court fools, and so on and so forth. Gundling then makes his first flight attempt (to his brother in Halle) in 1716, which doesn't last long. Halle is still Prussian territory, and brother Hieronymus fears for his own job. (He's also unhappily married and a father, which becomes a plot point much later.) So Gundling returns, and tries to avoid the court as much as he can, at one point even hiding with SD, who helps him. (!) "As the Queen was worried that the old comedy would be played with this man, she pretended he wasn't there but absent when he was sent for." Alas, though, FW sees through her. He appoints Gundling to Geheimer Rat on August 17 1716 and in September 1716 court news agent Ortgies reports FW ordering Gundling, who had tried to refuse joining a hunting expedition, to be beaten up with a hunting dagger. On October 10th 1716, the bears happen. The court news report that Gundling was led into a chamber "where the King keeps some young bears, and several fire crackers were thrown in through a window by which such beasts were irritated, so much so that the man had great trouble to defend himself against them and the crackers."
(This version is even worse than the one from Morgenstern, because of the additional fireworks to upset the bears.)
While the horror show you're already familiar with is going on, there's this weird parallel aspect Sabrow points out, i.e. that Gundling simultanously is the butt of everyone's jokes and seen as a person of influence. ON Johann Michael von Loen, who was a student of Gundling's brother Hieronymus and later spent the winter 1717/1718 in Berlin, notes both that "the King wanted to give his soldiers a scholar as a a spectacle" in order "for Gundling to be laughed at by the entire court", but also that "he often spends entire hours locked up alone with the King in his cabinet, writes and works when with him, so he can be useful to many and damaging to some." None other than Seckendorff in his reports to Prince Eugene agrees. (Not just early on. He writes as late as 1727 that "the well known Geheimrat Gundling sits both at the lunch table and in the evening in the Tobacco College and reads the newspapers for the table, and then there repeated sharp remarks about Hanover", which is useful to Seckendorff, of course. Which is why in addition to the usual bribery money for Gumbkow which was due, he wants from Eugene bribery material for Gundling, to wit: "Not a golden necklaces but an imperial medaillon set with diamonds, for they consider it a far greater honor here to distribute medaillons than to distribute necklaces, since the later are even given to ordinary couriers, whereas the former are given to people of some distinction."
Then there's the Preacher Freylinghausen, known to us because he observes kid AW begging for the life of a deserter as you might recall. On another occasion, when he visits Wusterhausen in 1727, he's seated at the table between Gundling on one side and Fritz on the other, while SD sits opposite them. Since Freylinghausen isn't a nobleman or a military m an, he has an entirely peaceful conversation with Gundling about the work of the theological faculty in Halle, reccomends a mathematician to Gundling as a candidate for the Academy and then they talk about what they're read about the coronation of G2 in England which happened that year. Freylingshausen's report contains nothing derogative about Gundling; he talks about him just as a scholar whom he has had a good conversation with. Sabrow constrasts this almost en famille picture with what happens in the same month when Gundling isn't a guest at a family meal but in the tobacco college where the other guests are all military: his wig is set on fire.
Love all of Sabrow's primary source research! Great and very interesting. (And I immediately put the Berliner Adreß-Kalender to good use.) But I would not have imagined that all the humiliations got reported in the yellow press court news. Damn.
at one point even hiding with SD, who helps him. (!)
! indeed! (What's the source for that one?) Also, one more data point showing the deliberateness on FW's part and how clear it was to others what was going on there.
Atheism is also ! Hm. I'm kind of wondering if there was some weird psychological thing going on where FW tormented Gundling because he also allowed him some influence despite looking down on him. I mean, yes, bad temper and cruelty, but both the relentlessness and the deliberateness, when he didn't have a personal investment like he did with Fritz for example, seems weird.
I would not have imagined that all the humiliations got reported in the yellow press court news. Damn.
The 18th century equivalent to being posted on twitter. Awful for Gundling, but at least good for the historians.
SD: that's from Ortgies the news agent as well. Clearly Our Man In Potsdam.
Atheism: with the caveat that a newspaper in FW's Berlin probably calls everything atheism which departs from orthodox Protestant Christianity (see Voltaire being constantly called an atheist when he really wasn't, and even good old Christian Wolff), so that for all we know, Gundling simply said something sounding slightly agnostic: it would have been pretty reckless to actually profess atheism in FW's face. Of course, this is before FW starts to torment him, so a drunken Gundling might have risked it. More likely, though, he said something unorthodox and that was enough to be deemed atheistic. (This said, when I read Stade's novel in which Gundlng actually is an atheist, I thought this was because it is a GDR novel. But it seems he does have some canon to base this on.
I'm kind of wondering if there was some weird psychological thing going on where FW tormented Gundling because he also allowed him some influence despite looking down on him. I mean, yes, bad temper and cruelty, but both the relentlessness and the deliberateness, when he didn't have a personal investment like he did with Fritz for example, seems weird.
It's also worth pointing out that for all that he taunted Gundling with possibly replacing him with David Fassmann in his last years, he never actually did until Gundling was dead. So it was Gundling, specifically. I mean, obviously the successors which quickly came and went until Morgenstern were also bullied, but not to the same degree, nor were they made head of the Academy etc. (Though he had the Academy pay their salaries, as Bielfeld indignantly notes later.)
As for what psychological weirdness was going on there: Jochen Klepper in Der Vater made a valiant attempt at an explanation. Now he did excuse FW a bit in that Gundling is already a self destructive alcoholic when they meet, and they have something of a Lear/Fool relationship, but here's the key passage which Sabrow also quotes from in his biography:
Es hatte, so kündete der Professor von dem neuesten Ergebnis seiner Forschungen, vor alanger Zeit ein Herrscher gelebt, so gewaltig, so groß und zornig wie der Zar. Der zog schwer an seinem entsetzlichen Geschick, daß alle, die er je mit seinen furchtbaren Händen angerührt hatte, dem Tode verfielen. Er hatte Mörderhände. Professor Gundling stellte es sehr dramatisch dar. (...) König Friedrich Wilhelm hörte zu. (...) Er selbst trank viel. Dem Professor wurde am reichlichsten und häufgisten eingeschenkt. (...) Er betrank sich bis zum Tierischen. Er redete wirr. (...) Und das wollte der König. Alles sollte ein lächerlicher Unfug sein, was der hemmungslose Säufer und Schwätzer je geplaudert hatte. Alles, alles sollte nur ein schlechter und gemeiner Witz, eine Zote für Trinker gewesen sein. Auch das sollte nichts gewesen sein als Wahnwitz, Torheit, Lüge; daß es einen Herrscher gegeben habe, der sich so vor seinen Händen fürchtete, daß er sich sich binden ließ. (...)Die Schatten unter den Augen des zechenden Königs waren faltige, schwere Säcke geworden. Seine Blicke gingen unstet hin und her. Und immer wieder: unbewußt, hafteten sie lange auf Gundling. Von den Gedanken zu Tode verwundet, begehrte der KÖnig nach dem Trost, daß die Weisheit dieser Welt gar nichts anderes sei als Zote und Narrheit; so munterte er die Offiziere auf, es mit dem trunkenen Professor schlimm zu treiben. Aber er selbst tat nicht mehr mit. Er sah auf das Bild: die Weisheit tropfte als Spechel der Betrunkenheit von den Lippen des Klügsten.
Stade, I thnk, wants to get at something similar when letting Gundling hallucinate that FW is holding a mirror between them in which Gundling sees his entire degredation but which also protects FW from having to look in the mirror himself.
And yet another use of Gundling later on was as an instrument to torment others with. Because according to Loen, this also happened:
Ja, die Sachen gingen gar so weit, daß es hies, Gundling solte Hofmeister von dem cronprinzen werden; zum wenigsten ängstigte der König seine vornehmste Ministers. Man glaubte es bey Hofe, und Gundling glaube es selst.
So basically to shock both his ministers and Fritz. Who presumably was horrified at the thought that instead of Duhan or Jourdan, he should be taught by someone his father had taught everyone to despise as the lowest of the low.
More likely, though, he said something unorthodox and that was enough to be deemed atheistic.
Agreed. If you look into the history of the term "atheism" throughout the centuries, it's a generic insult flung around at people whose beliefs or behavior you want to criticize. Popes have been called atheist on the grounds that if they behaved as badly as they did, they must not believe in a God who was going to punish them in the afterlife. This had nothing to do with a Pope preaching what we would call atheism today. ;)
This is great and I'm glad Sabrow wrote this (and did a respectable job, I'm always glad when you find someone who does their job well) and that you reported on it <3
the key point here is that according to the court news Gundling hadn't just lectured the Tobacco Parliament on ghosts not existing but that he had "professed atheism". And then the gang managed to frighten him with fake ghosts. This wasn't just a loss of face; in a system where FW had made Manly Courage such a big standard to achieve, it marked Gundling as a coward, and resulted in an instant loss of respect from FW.
This is very interesting, and I really appreciate this extra information about what would have made it quite so vicious. That atheism thing, like felis says! ...It sounds rather like Gundling just wasn't quite... good enough at dissimulating or disguising his unpopular opinions (like the atheism and the beer thing), in contrast perhaps to Morgenstern, and that turned on him in a really awful way, because FW.
(This version is even worse than the one from Morgenstern, because of the additional fireworks to upset the bears.)
OMG.
Freylingshausen's report contains nothing derogative about Gundling; he talks about him just as a scholar whom he has had a good conversation with. Sabrow constrasts this almost en famille picture with what happens in the same month when Gundling isn't a guest at a family meal but in the tobacco college where the other guests are all military: his wig is set on fire.
I JUST CAN'T EVEN. Poor Gundling, as always; in addition to being constantly humiliated and bullied (AND HIS WIG SET ON FIRE), it must have been a lot of whiplash to go from one to the other constantly. I imagine more mentally healthy people than him would have ended up insane by the end.
*nods* He never knew whether FW at any given point would want to torment him, would want actual advice, wanted to torment others through him or wanted others to torment Gundling. I wouldn't have been able to live like that for a week without snapping, that's for sure. Hey, remember how we jokeda bout Whodunits for Fritz long before Mildred wrote her story? How about a whodunit for FW? Everyone thinks it's either Fritz or SD, or (if the Clement affair is still on people's minds) foreign agents, but really, it's Gundling!
Oh, and Sabrow's book reminded me: in the famous painting of the Tobbacco Parliament (that shows Heinrich and Ferdinand coming in, and AW sitting among the adults) - you can see, on the other end of the table (i.e. opposite to the head where FW sits) a hare, who is meant to represent Gundling (the hare being the symbol of a fool and the symbol of a coward both).
How about a whodunit for FW? Everyone thinks it's either Fritz or SD, or (if the Clement affair is still on people's minds) foreign agents, but really, it's Gundling!
Sold!
Yeah, the hare in the tobacco parliament is immediately what I thought of when I saw the plaque. Poor Gundling.
Hang on, though, I just realised: the painting is from 1737, which means it can't be Gundling, it's Morgenstern. This said, maybe the painter did something like the painter who did a family portrait of Henry VIII with all his children (Mary, Edward, Elizabeth) and Jane Seymour though she was dead and had been since years when the painting was done? Depends on what FW asked for.
Right, rereading what you wrote, you said it represented Gundling specifically. I was thinking of it as a fool symbol. Good point about FW, though, and his quest to continue humiliating Gundling after death. It could go either way. Poor Gundling. AU where he offs FW!
Oh, you know that Agatha Christie book where the answer is *everyone* did it? We could come up with one like that for FW! (ETA: Deliberately not naming it or giving details in case someone hasn't read it.)
Can Hans Heinrich join, too? He has the impeccable loyal subject reputation and all those Prussian historians claiming he was okay with FW killing his son because law, but in the AU, that's just the cover while inwardly, he's lost his struggle to forgive.
And yes, I know which Christie book you mean. Everyone who doesn't, look away for my title suggestion for the AU is a spoiler:
Fritz SD Gundling Hans Heinrich (and stepmom--I haven't read the Christie in 20 years, but there's at least one married couple, right?) Potsdam Giant(s) Doris Ritter Rottembourg
Not G2, because while he'd love to, there's no way he'd keep it secret or would let go of the chance to do it mano a mano. Also, it occured to me that depending on how much of an AU we want to make it, there's the timing problem - Gundling dies in April 1731, at which point Doris Ritter is still locked up in Spandau. (And Fritz is in Küstrin.)
HOWEVER. Instead of Gundling, we could have his widow. Anne de Larrey lived until 1744, so in rl, she did have the pleasure of outlasting FW, and I like to think she cheered in 1740, too. And then I wondered what the ideal time and place would be. And who would be Poirot - i.e. the excentric foreigner who gets underestimated, solves the case yet because he understands the motive(s) doesn't present the true solution to the police. In order to have some suspense and make it believable that people like Fritz (the new King, after all!) and SD talk to this person instead of saying "begone, pleasant!", it would have to be someone whose testimony could not just be dismissed, should they uncover the truth. Someone of some social standing, in a word, which limits the choice severely. And it should be an occasion where there are a lot of people present in a limited space. This can't literally be a carriage, of course, and there are no trains. Are you guessing where I'm going with this?
....The time: 1732. The place: Fritz' engagement party to EC. Poirot: the visiting Duke of Lorraine, Franz Stephan, who technically is outranked by SD and Fritz, BUT since it's an open secret he's engaged to MT, it's also an open secret he's the Emperor's future son-in-law and likely the next Emperor himself. Also Fritz actually likes him. So it's believable that SD and Fritz would answer questions he asks (not truthfully at first, of course! but that they'd bother in the first place).
Doris Ritter spent two or three years in Spandau, I'm not sure which, but she could have been released on the occasion of the engagement party. She and Anne de Larrey could both be undercover as someone else - it's been many years since I read the book/saw a film version, but you're right about the husband and wife, but wasn't there also one who'd been the maid of the mother of the child and who had now a new identity? So anyway, no one pays much attention to maids and governesses, and I bet FW would have forgotten what Anne looked like since he probably didn't meet her often, if at all, and never met Doris Ritter.
Which reminds me: yet another possible murderer, or at least helper: Fräulein von Pannewitz! We could let the punching happen a year earlier.
(I thought of Voltaire as an alternate Poirot, but while he's certainly clever enough to solve the crime, and excentric enough, there's that power differential again!)
Hmm, yes, I was thinking of collecting everyone over the course of his reign in a semi-crackfic, but if we're trying to pin this down in time and make it a serious historical AU, then okay.
Is FS going to be okay with it, though? Because that's also a key plot point to the final resolution, as I recall. I feel like FW miiiight have an incentive to go..."No, ganging up on even your crazy abusive monarch is not okay."
Fräulein von Pannewitz! Yes, perfect!
but wasn't there also one who'd been the maid of the mother of the child and who had now a new identity?
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Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
However, there is actually material to be found to work with and countercheck the anecdotal stories against. Gundling's own books, of course (not in the sense of containing autobiographical accounts but in terms of showing what he was working on at any given time, and also the dedications are interesting and telling), but also various uniiversity and clergy accounts, the "Berliner Adreß-Kalender" which shows when Gundling lived where, and the court news, which was what passed for a newspaper in FW's Berlin and are able to provide date and place for some of the most outrageous stories which one would have hoped to be invented or exaggarated, but weren't, such as the bears. There is also Gundling's brother Hieronymus who was a very respected Professor in Halle and of whom we have some letters and a last will, the records of the Academy through the FW years, and a few other statistical archive treasures. Unlike, say, the Maupertuis biographer, Sabrow manages to weave a compelling - and despite it actually offering some more minor victories for Gundling than "Der König und sein Naarr" does, heartrendering - tale out of all this. I'll limit myself to what was new to me or where he contradicts tradition.
Gundling was born the younger of two sons of a clergyman near Nuremberg. (As a commoner; the ennoblement laer happened courtesy of FW.) Unfortunately for him and his older brother Hieronymus, their parents died when they were still young, and their father didn't leave them enough money to study, which means they had to rely on sponsors. Hieronymus, the older, managed to that and having made Magister and Doctor ended up as a highly respected Professor in Halle for the rest of his life. Jacob Paul could afford uni only because he immatriculated together with a spawn of the local nobility, Tetzel, whom he was supposed to supervise and help out scholarly. When Tetzel decided he had enough of studying and wanted to do the grand tour, Gundling - with a choice that as Sabrow says was no choice at all, i.e. either continue to study without money to pay for it, or go with Tetzel on the Grand Tour and continue to be paid - did leave without getting his degree. (This is important in the long run.) Tetzel's Grand Tour included England, and Gundling may or may not have met the Archbishop of Canterbury there. (His enemy Faßmann claims he can't have done, as Gundling says they talked in Latin due to Gundling's bit of English learned en route not being up to a conversation, and, Faßmann says, it's impossible to talk with Brits in Latin because they pronounce it wrong. Sabrow is not mpressed with this argument, but says this doesn't mean Gundling actually met the guy. We just don't know. It's worth pointing out that his later wife spent some of her formative years in England, though, and that he'd been there for a while might have helped forming a connection between them.)
After Tetzel had finished his tour, he didn't return to university and dismissed Gundling, who finished the rest of his education in the do it yourself manner, but with results that produced a book about Prussian state history that was impressive enough to get him hired by F1's people. Leipniz himself thought young Gundling good enough to want him for the Academy, but the other members voted against it because Gundling had not finished his degree properly, and was only a Professor by royal appointment. Still, Gundling settled down in Berlin, started to do heraldic work (which was the job) and research for histories (what he wanted to do) and eventually write that fateful essay about commerce and manufacturing with reform ideas.
F1 dies, FW starts his austerity program. Here comes the first big divergence to tradition. Now, Faßmann claimed - and all subsequent biographers, including FW biographers like Förster -, followed him in this, that a fired and thus homeless Gundling settled down in one of the local taverns, got drunk and entertained people by reading the news to them, which alterted none other than Grumbkow to his existence, who was on the look out for a newsreader for FW, Gundling shows up, gets hired, and immediately gets humiliated. Sabrow demonstrates that this is telescoping and inventing from the pov of someone who only came into the King's orbit in 1726. Firstly, the tavern where Grumbkow supposedly spotted a drunken Gundling didn't exist yet in the year of FW's ascension and for several more years to come. Secondly, far from lodging in a tavern, the Berlin Address Book shows Gundling going from living at the Ritterakademie (the one in charge of the genealogiies which FW dissolved) to, after a year of interruption, living with Kammergerichtsrat Plarre in the Mittelstraße, Dorotheenstadt, where he'll stay for the next five years. Plarren had a first class library which Gundling actually managed to talk FW into acquiring for the Prussian State when Plarre died in 1717.
About the missing year: in Gundling's years later written and published detailed mapping of Brandenburg and Pomerania, he mentions, in the preface/dedication, having been sent to inspect Brandenburg manufacturing back then and have gotten the job through Gumbkow, to whom the volume is dedicated. Could this be a euphemism? Sure, except that the court news from September 30 1713 also mention Gundling in this context ("Der Herr Rath Gundling hat von Brandenburg referiret, daß er daselbst feine blaue Tücher zu 3 Taler wehrt fabricieret gefunden hätte" etc.), and what the court news notably don't report at this point are any of the later humiliations which will show up frequently in years to come in their reporting. Which is why Sabrow arrives at the conclusion that yes, Gundling, having lost his original job in Berlin, did get a new and respectable one from FW via Grumbkow by virtue of that reforms suggesting essay. What's more, it's also documented that he made the suggestion to discontinue allowing every little estate to brew their beer according to their own standards but to introduce a single state standard which the breweries had to adher to, which made a lot of nobility hate his gut because it essentially created both state control and a state monopoly on said quality control; FW, though, was delighted. But if the start was so promising, how did we get to the horrible tragedy to ensue? Sabrow finds the turning point in the late winter of 1714, which is when the first "prank" story shows up, the one with the ghosts.
Now to us it may sound relatively harmless compared to what's to come, but the key point here is that according to the court news Gundling hadn't just lectured the Tobacco Parliament on ghosts not existing but that he had "professed atheism". And then the gang managed to frighten him with fake ghosts. This wasn't just a loss of face; in a system where FW had made Manly Courage such a big standard to achieve, it marked Gundling as a coward, and resulted in an instant loss of respect from FW. What's more, the noblemen of the Tobacco College probably already either hated his gut for the beer issue or they resented a commoner upstart among them. That's when the court news starts to report he's been forced to drink, not just alcohol but purges, has been forced out of his clothes and into the court fools, and so on and so forth. Gundling then makes his first flight attempt (to his brother in Halle) in 1716, which doesn't last long. Halle is still Prussian territory, and brother Hieronymus fears for his own job. (He's also unhappily married and a father, which becomes a plot point much later.) So Gundling returns, and tries to avoid the court as much as he can, at one point even hiding with SD, who helps him. (!) "As the Queen was worried that the old comedy would be played with this man, she pretended he wasn't there but absent when he was sent for." Alas, though, FW sees through her. He appoints Gundling to Geheimer Rat on August 17 1716 and in September 1716 court news agent Ortgies reports FW ordering Gundling, who had tried to refuse joining a hunting expedition, to be beaten up with a hunting dagger. On October 10th 1716, the bears happen. The court news report that Gundling was led into a chamber "where the King keeps some young bears, and several fire crackers were thrown in through a window by which such beasts were irritated, so much so that the man had great trouble to defend himself against them and the crackers."
(This version is even worse than the one from Morgenstern, because of the additional fireworks to upset the bears.)
While the horror show you're already familiar with is going on, there's this weird parallel aspect Sabrow points out, i.e. that Gundling simultanously is the butt of everyone's jokes and seen as a person of influence. ON Johann Michael von Loen, who was a student of Gundling's brother Hieronymus and later spent the winter 1717/1718 in Berlin, notes both that "the King wanted to give his soldiers a scholar as a a spectacle" in order "for Gundling to be laughed at by the entire court", but also that "he often spends entire hours locked up alone with the King in his cabinet, writes and works when with him, so he can be useful to many and damaging to some." None other than Seckendorff in his reports to Prince Eugene agrees. (Not just early on. He writes as late as 1727 that "the well known Geheimrat Gundling sits both at the lunch table and in the evening in the Tobacco College and reads the newspapers for the table, and then there repeated sharp remarks about Hanover", which is useful to Seckendorff, of course. Which is why in addition to the usual bribery money for Gumbkow which was due, he wants from Eugene bribery material for Gundling, to wit: "Not a golden necklaces but an imperial medaillon set with diamonds, for they consider it a far greater honor here to distribute medaillons than to distribute necklaces, since the later are even given to ordinary couriers, whereas the former are given to people of some distinction."
Then there's the Preacher Freylinghausen, known to us because he observes kid AW begging for the life of a deserter as you might recall. On another occasion, when he visits Wusterhausen in 1727, he's seated at the table between Gundling on one side and Fritz on the other, while SD sits opposite them. Since Freylinghausen isn't a nobleman or a military m an, he has an entirely peaceful conversation with Gundling about the work of the theological faculty in Halle, reccomends a mathematician to Gundling as a candidate for the Academy and then they talk about what they're read about the coronation of G2 in England which happened that year. Freylingshausen's report contains nothing derogative about Gundling; he talks about him just as a scholar whom he has had a good conversation with. Sabrow constrasts this almost en famille picture with what happens in the same month when Gundling isn't a guest at a family meal but in the tobacco college where the other guests are all military: his wig is set on fire.
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
yellow presscourt news. Damn.at one point even hiding with SD, who helps him. (!)
! indeed! (What's the source for that one?) Also, one more data point showing the deliberateness on FW's part and how clear it was to others what was going on there.
Atheism is also ! Hm. I'm kind of wondering if there was some weird psychological thing going on where FW tormented Gundling because he also allowed him some influence despite looking down on him. I mean, yes, bad temper and cruelty, but both the relentlessness and the deliberateness, when he didn't have a personal investment like he did with Fritz for example, seems weird.
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
The 18th century equivalent to being posted on twitter. Awful for Gundling, but at least good for the historians.
SD: that's from Ortgies the news agent as well. Clearly Our Man In Potsdam.
Atheism: with the caveat that a newspaper in FW's Berlin probably calls everything atheism which departs from orthodox Protestant Christianity (see Voltaire being constantly called an atheist when he really wasn't, and even good old Christian Wolff), so that for all we know, Gundling simply said something sounding slightly agnostic: it would have been pretty reckless to actually profess atheism in FW's face. Of course, this is before FW starts to torment him, so a drunken Gundling might have risked it. More likely, though, he said something unorthodox and that was enough to be deemed atheistic. (This said, when I read Stade's novel in which Gundlng actually is an atheist, I thought this was because it is a GDR novel. But it seems he does have some canon to base this on.
I'm kind of wondering if there was some weird psychological thing going on where FW tormented Gundling because he also allowed him some influence despite looking down on him. I mean, yes, bad temper and cruelty, but both the relentlessness and the deliberateness, when he didn't have a personal investment like he did with Fritz for example, seems weird.
It's also worth pointing out that for all that he taunted Gundling with possibly replacing him with David Fassmann in his last years, he never actually did until Gundling was dead. So it was Gundling, specifically. I mean, obviously the successors which quickly came and went until Morgenstern were also bullied, but not to the same degree, nor were they made head of the Academy etc. (Though he had the Academy pay their salaries, as Bielfeld indignantly notes later.)
As for what psychological weirdness was going on there: Jochen Klepper in Der Vater made a valiant attempt at an explanation. Now he did excuse FW a bit in that Gundling is already a self destructive alcoholic when they meet, and they have something of a Lear/Fool relationship, but here's the key passage which Sabrow also quotes from in his biography:
Es hatte, so kündete der Professor von dem neuesten Ergebnis seiner Forschungen, vor alanger Zeit ein Herrscher gelebt, so gewaltig, so groß und zornig wie der Zar. Der zog schwer an seinem entsetzlichen Geschick, daß alle, die er je mit seinen furchtbaren Händen angerührt hatte, dem Tode verfielen. Er hatte Mörderhände. Professor Gundling stellte es sehr dramatisch dar. (...) König Friedrich Wilhelm hörte zu. (...) Er selbst trank viel. Dem Professor wurde am reichlichsten und häufgisten eingeschenkt. (...) Er betrank sich bis zum Tierischen. Er redete wirr. (...) Und das wollte der König. Alles sollte ein lächerlicher Unfug sein, was der hemmungslose Säufer und Schwätzer je geplaudert hatte. Alles, alles sollte nur ein schlechter und gemeiner Witz, eine Zote für Trinker gewesen sein. Auch das sollte nichts gewesen sein als Wahnwitz, Torheit, Lüge; daß es einen Herrscher gegeben habe, der sich so vor seinen Händen fürchtete, daß er sich sich binden ließ. (...)Die Schatten unter den Augen des zechenden Königs waren faltige, schwere Säcke geworden. Seine Blicke gingen unstet hin und her. Und immer wieder: unbewußt, hafteten sie lange auf Gundling. Von den Gedanken zu Tode verwundet, begehrte der KÖnig nach dem Trost, daß die Weisheit dieser Welt gar nichts anderes sei als Zote und Narrheit; so munterte er die Offiziere auf, es mit dem trunkenen Professor schlimm zu treiben. Aber er selbst tat nicht mehr mit. Er sah auf das Bild: die Weisheit tropfte als Spechel der Betrunkenheit von den Lippen des Klügsten.
Stade, I thnk, wants to get at something similar when letting Gundling hallucinate that FW is holding a mirror between them in which Gundling sees his entire degredation but which also protects FW from having to look in the mirror himself.
And yet another use of Gundling later on was as an instrument to torment others with. Because according to Loen, this also happened:
Ja, die Sachen gingen gar so weit, daß es hies, Gundling solte Hofmeister von dem cronprinzen werden; zum wenigsten ängstigte der König seine vornehmste Ministers. Man glaubte es bey Hofe, und Gundling glaube es selst.
So basically to shock both his ministers and Fritz. Who presumably was horrified at the thought that instead of Duhan or Jourdan, he should be taught by someone his father had taught everyone to despise as the lowest of the low.
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Agreed. If you look into the history of the term "atheism" throughout the centuries, it's a generic insult flung around at people whose beliefs or behavior you want to criticize. Popes have been called atheist on the grounds that if they behaved as badly as they did, they must not believe in a God who was going to punish them in the afterlife. This had nothing to do with a Pope preaching what we would call atheism today. ;)
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
the key point here is that according to the court news Gundling hadn't just lectured the Tobacco Parliament on ghosts not existing but that he had "professed atheism". And then the gang managed to frighten him with fake ghosts. This wasn't just a loss of face; in a system where FW had made Manly Courage such a big standard to achieve, it marked Gundling as a coward, and resulted in an instant loss of respect from FW.
This is very interesting, and I really appreciate this extra information about what would have made it quite so vicious. That atheism thing, like
(This version is even worse than the one from Morgenstern, because of the additional fireworks to upset the bears.)
OMG.
Freylingshausen's report contains nothing derogative about Gundling; he talks about him just as a scholar whom he has had a good conversation with. Sabrow constrasts this almost en famille picture with what happens in the same month when Gundling isn't a guest at a family meal but in the tobacco college where the other guests are all military: his wig is set on fire.
I JUST CAN'T EVEN. Poor Gundling, as always; in addition to being constantly humiliated and bullied (AND HIS WIG SET ON FIRE), it must have been a lot of whiplash to go from one to the other constantly. I imagine more mentally healthy people than him would have ended up insane by the end.
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Oh, and Sabrow's book reminded me: in the famous painting of the Tobbacco Parliament (that shows Heinrich and Ferdinand coming in, and AW sitting among the adults) - you can see, on the other end of the table (i.e. opposite to the head where FW sits) a hare, who is meant to represent Gundling (the hare being the symbol of a fool and the symbol of a coward both).
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Sold!
Yeah, the hare in the tobacco parliament is immediately what I thought of when I saw the plaque. Poor Gundling.
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Oh, you know that Agatha Christie book where the answer is *everyone* did it? We could come up with one like that for FW! (ETA: Deliberately not naming it or giving details in case someone hasn't read it.)
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
And yes, I know which Christie book you mean. Everyone who doesn't, look away for my title suggestion for the AU is a spoiler:
.
.
.
Murder in the East Prussia Express Carriage?
FW Whodunit
Fritz
SD
Gundling
Hans Heinrich (and stepmom--I haven't read the Christie in 20 years, but there's at least one married couple, right?)
Potsdam Giant(s)
Doris Ritter
Rottembourg
Continue!
Re: FW Whodunit
HOWEVER. Instead of Gundling, we could have his widow. Anne de Larrey lived until 1744, so in rl, she did have the pleasure of outlasting FW, and I like to think she cheered in 1740, too. And then I wondered what the ideal time and place would be. And who would be Poirot - i.e. the excentric foreigner who gets underestimated, solves the case yet because he understands the motive(s) doesn't present the true solution to the police. In order to have some suspense and make it believable that people like Fritz (the new King, after all!) and SD talk to this person instead of saying "begone, pleasant!", it would have to be someone whose testimony could not just be dismissed, should they uncover the truth. Someone of some social standing, in a word, which limits the choice severely. And it should be an occasion where there are a lot of people present in a limited space. This can't literally be a carriage, of course, and there are no trains. Are you guessing where I'm going with this?
....The time: 1732. The place: Fritz' engagement party to EC. Poirot: the visiting Duke of Lorraine, Franz Stephan, who technically is outranked by SD and Fritz, BUT since it's an open secret he's engaged to MT, it's also an open secret he's the Emperor's future son-in-law and likely the next Emperor himself. Also Fritz actually likes him. So it's believable that SD and Fritz would answer questions he asks (not truthfully at first, of course! but that they'd bother in the first place).
Doris Ritter spent two or three years in Spandau, I'm not sure which, but she could have been released on the occasion of the engagement party. She and Anne de Larrey could both be undercover as someone else - it's been many years since I read the book/saw a film version, but you're right about the husband and wife, but wasn't there also one who'd been the maid of the mother of the child and who had now a new identity? So anyway, no one pays much attention to maids and governesses, and I bet FW would have forgotten what Anne looked like since he probably didn't meet her often, if at all, and never met Doris Ritter.
Which reminds me: yet another possible murderer, or at least helper: Fräulein von Pannewitz! We could let the punching happen a year earlier.
(I thought of Voltaire as an alternate Poirot, but while he's certainly clever enough to solve the crime, and excentric enough, there's that power differential again!)
Re: FW Whodunit
Is FS going to be okay with it, though? Because that's also a key plot point to the final resolution, as I recall. I feel like FW miiiight have an incentive to go..."No, ganging up on even your crazy abusive monarch is not okay."
Fräulein von Pannewitz! Yes, perfect!
but wasn't there also one who'd been the maid of the mother of the child and who had now a new identity?
I vaguely recall something like this, yes.