To felis, who has always shown me friendship: okay, Fritz's will was HILARIOUS, especially given that, like, did Ferdinand ever say more than two words to him ever? (I know, selenak already talked about that :) ) LOL FOREVER at the burn to Heinrich.
(Also the Pesne is a nice painting! I also like it, although I know basically zero about painting.)
Concerts Georg, who lives at Sanssouci and attends 10,000 concerts a day, is an outlier who should not have been counted. ;)
LOL. Yeah, just cause he was only attending a couple of concerts a week doesn't mean he doesn't like music :P
Also D'Argens sounds lovely about her in a letter to Fritz: "For a scholar, it is not a little thing to have a good wife. Since three years, I would have died or gone mad ten times if I hadn't had the fortune to win mine." (written in 1762) (I also find it interesting that EC, whom you wouldn't think to be fond of either Fritz' free-thinking friends or their ex commoner ex ballet dancer wives, sounds as warmly in her reply to the Marquise's condolence letter. It bears repeating: I have always, my dear Marquise, distinguished your late husband as a a very estimable man, and above all by his attachment to the late King, my husband of glorious memory whose death plunges me into the most severe pain. Rest assured that I am very sensitive to the sympathy that you show and I will always be delighted that, having fulfilled all your duties towards your husband, you are rewarded by all the possible happiness.
Awwww D'Argens <3 Also, EC gets an A+ for that condolence letter (*cough* JUST SAYING, FRITZ)
Grumbkow & Seckendorf: We’re the incredibly dumb evil stooges of this play. The clever evil schemer is someone else, to wit:
FW’s valet Eversmann: Me!
WHAT
I thought Maria Theresia's dad made a much better Disney villain, and that's saying something!
G, S, E: Sire, Archduke Leopold the future Emperor is asking for your daughter’s hand!
Me: *blinks* I thought... there was this whole thing with the Pragmatic Sanction...? [personal profile] selenak: WHO? Me: Oh good, it's not me this time! Wikipedia and mildred, more or less in unison: Charles had a son Leopold who died at age SEVEN MONTHS.
...There was a lot of my eyebrows contorting rather a lot reading this, I will have you know! Although I think it is hilarious that the Potsdam Giants showed up, because I think it is meta-hilarious that LITERALLY EVERYONE IN THE WORLD EXCEPT FW thinks the Potsdam Giants are hilarious!
resumably the one publication Gutzkow must have read when doing research for this are Wilhelmine's memoirs. Can you imagine reading them and coming up with this plot?
MAN. I still don't know where Leopold came from, but as for the rest of it, the only thing I can think of is a) lots of alcohol b) Gutzkow must have desperately wanted Wilhelmine to have a happy ending and a happy marriage as I did by the time I was done with volume 1 (I still haven't finished Vol 2).
selenak: 1.) Zimmermann, as you may recall, is the planet's first Fritz/MT shipper and conspiracy theorist Me: Oh yeah, I remember that now, but mostly I know him as the guy who -- selenak: Of course, the part of Zimmermann's "Fragments" everyone talked about wasn't this, it was the "Fritz: psychologically impotent due to botched penis operation after youth of STD... Me: Yeah, that.
Heh, Nicolai is funny with his "nothing to see here, Herr von Z, move right along!" As well as what you say later about his whole "be nice to the ladies!!" thing.
Nicolai via selenak: He then, as Büsching did, prints signed testimony of the various guys involved to the effect Fritz had a completely normal piece of male equipment without any scarring tissue, meaning there can't have been any operation, botched or not, at any point. Me: Why the heck was everyone so obsessed with Fritz's penis, anyway? [Not words I ever thought I'd say.] Selenak: Because Nicolai is thorough, he also says readers (if they'd made it so far in this unsavoury subject) might wonder what the various people were doing checking Fritz' genitals close enough to look for scarring tissue. Me: ...I am not sure whether I'm impressed that he thought this might be something people would ask about, or sort of freaked out that he's going that far. I guess given that he answered my question, I'll lean towards the impressed side. Maybe.
Zimmermann was filled full of male tenderness (männliche Zärtlichkeit)
That is... really manly tenderness, all right. Wow.
I feel a bit cruel for mocking Zimmermann; it's clear he did adore Fritz and was deeply affected by having to watch someone he loved so extensively be painfully ill without being able to truly help.
Okay, yeah, that sounds rather unfortunate. But also, I mean, broken penis theory :P
and secondly, none of them has ever said a harsh word about the equally Swiss Catt, did they? On the contrary, see all the positive references to Henri de Catt in his and Büschings collections since they talked with him, too. But you see, Z, CATT would never!
(I laughed.) Oh Nicolai, if you only knew!
"Eine Canaille von einem Gott" is my new favourite contemporary Voltaire description.
"Der Mäzen der Aufklärung: Ernst Christoph von Manteuffel und das Netzwerk des Wolffianismus" was Johannes Bronisch's doctoral theses and reads like it - aimed at a strictly academic audience, long footnotes at times taking most of the page space etc - , while "Der Kampf um Kronprinz Friedrich: Wolff gegen Voltaire" is basically a canny Fritz-focused digested excerpt from it, repacked for a larger audience (though it's still clearly not for newbies who know nothing of the 18th century). Before I get into details, let me add what his dissertation is not, and doesn't claim to be: a biography of Mantteufel. The emphasis here is strictly on him in the context of his philosophical and literary networking from 1730 onwards (why 1730? Not for the reason you think), with his entire decades long life and career before that only summarized. This frustrated me a little, as I'd hoped for more of a complete life, but that's on me, the key is in the title(s), and also, I do know more about Manteuffel even before 1730 than I used to through the summarzing. (Also, courtesy of the footnotes, I know there is an early 20th century Manteuffel biography: Thea von Seydewitz: Ernst Christoph Graf von Manteuffel, Kabinettsminister Augusts des Starken. Persönlichkeit und Wirken (Aus Sachsens Vergangenheit 5), Dresden 1926, which Bronisch by and large approves of for its research but chides for its emphasis (on Manteuffel the politician) which he seeks to rectify by presenting Manteuffel the enlightenment networker and cultural beacon, though inevitably there are politics involved there, too.) (See other title.) Another thing: Bronish praises older Fritzian historians like Koser and Droysen for their never again matched knowledge of primary sources as well me might, but that also means he relies on them for the Prussian side of things, which means the occasional blip like poor Gundling still showing up as the court fool made head of the academy.
Sir not appearing in either volume at all (seriously, no single mention, not even in the footnotes): Suhm. Seriously, Bronisch not only apparantly had zero interest in the other Saxon envoy but doesn't think he's a factor in any way in his subject. (The titular fight from the canny repackage is carried out by French envoy La Chetardie and Voltaire as the main opponents.)
Okay, on to Mantteuffel. He was another case of an 18th century European noble - like Prince Eugene, Seckendorff, the Scottish Keiths or even Stratemann who ended up serving not in his country/state of birth but another country. Like Stratemann, he was actually born a Prussian subject, from Pommerania in his case with the first class education of a baroque nobleman that included visiting the university of Leipzig in neighboring Thuringia, and started out as a young noble at Grandpa F1's court but after some satiric verses on "one of hte King's mistresses" * (* as far as I know, F1 only had the one, the wife of one of the three Ws) blew up in his face prudently left Prussia for Saxony where he became bff with August the Strong and rose into office there. Unlike many a university visiting noble, he remained fluent in Latin (see Horace translations for the fun of it right into his old age), and united being an excellent courtier, witty, charming, with a genuine life long passion for literature and philosophy. According to none other than our Berlin Academy obituary writer Formey, whom I encountered here in another context - to wit, as a young Manteuffel acolyte who is both made a Wolffian by him and a member of the Manteuffel-founded Society of the Truth Lovers (Sociéte des Aletophiles) - , he remained a very handsome figure of a man into his old age, too. (So Formey writes not just immediately after Manteuffel died but also recalling him many years later.) In short, which isn't as Bronish puts it, when Crown Prince Fritz is on the prowl for sugar daddies in the 1730s, Manteuffel really was a great candidate.
Not least because he was also there, in Brandenburg, and not, I repeat, not as the official Saxon envoy. He's been the official Saxon envoy in earlier times, true, but after his recall (and Suhm's arrival, though as I said, Suhm is Sir Not Appearing In These Books) rose to cabinet minister in August the Strong's ministry, taking over one of his original patron Flemming's old jobs after Flemming's death. This is why Manteuffel in 1728 was in a position to found the Society Against Sobriety with August, FW, Grumbkow and Seckendorff when FW (and Fritz) visited Dresden in 1728. Which of course was less important for the drinking excesses of FW and August and more because of the Imperial Alliance networking of G, S and Mantteuffel, and Prince Eugene in Vienna. Bronisch argues that Manteuffel being Team Habsburg here isn't contradictory or shady in terms of him also being a Saxon government official, since the HRE still exists, and thus the Emperor does have claim on his top loyalty as German noble (especially since he's been made a Reichsgraf at this point). Manteuffel's idea of a policy for Saxony - pro-Emperor, in a close alliance with Prussia, anti France - is, however, dealt a big blow in 1730 when Karl Heinrich Graf von Hoym, until then Saxon anvoy at the Court of Versailles, manages to become the next big thing with August, filling the vaccuum Flemming left (which Manteuffel had not - he became a cabinet member, but not THE dominating minister the way Flemming had been). (Hoym, bw, as I was reminded recently wen reading through translation and excerpts of the interrogation protocols of Katte again, was also whom Fritz tried to contact and gt to help him at Zeithain.) Hoym was pro France, anti Habsburg, anti Prussia, and Manteuffel barely prevented getting fired by handing in his resignation on August 5 (Fritz is about to make his last escape attempt). However, Mantteuffel had seen where the wind was blowing for a while and thus had brought over thirty boxes filled with his secret correspondences with G & S as well as Eugene to his Pomeranian country estate, which means that when Hoym ordered a search of his vacated offices in Dresden, he found exactly nothing, whiile Manteuffel got a nice state pension of 12 000 Taler per annum and the continued use of his title of Cabinet Minister. Still, he was stuck in Pomerania for a while, cooling his heels. It's worth bearing in mind, though, that what Manteuffel does from this point onwards, and it's a lot, he does officially as a private citizen. He remains officially retired till the rest of his life.
(About the country seat: it's Kummerfrey, aka Sanssouci as the French writing Manteuffel always calls it, and Bronisch scoffs at Nicolai's anecdote as an explanation as to why Fritz called his own philosophical summer retreat the same name, pointing out that Manteuffel in a letter to Fritz even refers to his visitors as "his knights of Sanssouci" and that freaking FW visited for two days there in 1731, so there's no way Fritz was unaware of the precedent. To which I say, that doesn't mean he didn't mean the grave pun as well.)
Hoym in turn is toppled by Brühl and others and loses the top spot before 1731 has ended, ends up in Königstein accused of incest with his niece, and will commit suicide there in April 1736, with Manteuffel commenting on it in a letter to Fritz. Speaking of the letters: there is a severe problem for anyone studying the Fritz and Manteuffel relationship, to wit, most of the letters don't exist anymore. Of those which do exist, Preuss published nineteen letters from Fritz and twenty letters from Manteuffel in volume 16 and 25 of his gigantic edition. Except, says Bronisch, that not only was his textual basis for these letters lousy - Preuss didn't have originals but copies, and it's questionable even whether the copies were complete -, but Preuss misidentified several, with the last four letters from Fritz we today know for sure not to be addressed to Manteuffel while the last three letters from Manteuffel not addressed to Fritz, either. Simultanously to Preuss, one Karl von Weber published an additional eight letters from Fritz to Mantteufel and one from Manteuffel to Fritz from the Dresden State Archive, but didn't publish them completely, solely in excerpts. Guess what happened to the originals? WWII. And then in 1901 Curt Tröger managed to unearth a Manteuffel to Fritz letter from 1737. And that's it, while the correspondence by estimation of how many letters they mention in the ones which are preserved consisted of at least 200 letters. Which means that a lot of the takes on the Fritz/Manteuffel relationship can't come from their direct communication but from secondary sources, with history lucking out that Seckendorff Jr.s secret journal exists.
Manteuffel in 1733 (for chronology's sake: August the Strong dies, under August III. Saxony is now run by Sulkowski and below him Brühl, with Brühl working on becoming No.1) moves to Berlin, into a nice palais in Dorotheenstadt, the Landhaus Kameke, which had been built in 1712 by Andreas Schlüter and is described as a late baroque jewel, of which only remnants exist anymore (not because of WWII but because of subsequent rebuildings - parts of it ended up in today's Berlin Bode Museum). In Berlin, he's busy networking on both the political and philosophical front, becoming Wolff's most important patron (btw, the way he'll sell this to FW as an argument of how Wolff isn't, contrary to what Lange and the Pietists say, a man whose thoughts will lead to atheism is classic: he tells FW via Grumbkow that he, Manteuffel, used to have severe religious doubts until reading Wolff which showed him the light back to the Christian faith. FW is totally impressed and it's an argument that while not swaying him yet to reading the man's work himself does sway him to believe Wolff isn't an atheist in disguise but a good Christian), collecting promising young folk like Dechamps, Reinbek and Formey (even Jordan, though Jordan will ditch Manteuffel poste haste in Rheinsberg), and the bookseller Haude (whom we've met in Nicolai's anecdotes as holding back books for Fritz), and on the political front, as Private Citizen Manteuffel keeps reporting to both Vienna and nearly at the top Brühl back home in Saxony. He is, in short, an ideal candidate for a crown prince in search of an erastes.
On the subject of "How close were they when they were close?", Bronisch points out Manteuffel not just pitched Wolff at Fritz. (As proof one can be an enlightened philosopher and a Christian at the same time, among other things, but also because Manteuffel thought Fritz was a bright kid but that all this indiscriminate reading would have him end up in nihilism if he didn't get a philosophical guide line.) He also was responsible for the "little book" Fritz in his very first letter to Voltaire mentions including, the "Nouvelles Pièces", which consisted of an anti Wolff accusation by Wolff's main enemy Lang (chiefly responsible for FW kicking Wolff out of the country) and a pro Wolff defense. Not just responsible in the sense of enabling the print, Manteuffel had translated it into French, which wasn't noticed for a while, because the translator is only mentioned as being "un Q-t", which is a pseudonym using another nickname Manteuffel had adopted in his relationship with Fritz, "Quinze-Vingt".
(Explanation for nickname: it's complicated. French King Louis the Saint had founded a hospital for the blind called "les Quinze-Vingts" in the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. The name alludes to the 300 beds available in the old Latin number. 18th century readers were reminded of this historical factoid again when Voltaire wrote a short story called "Petite Digression". When Fritz approached Manteuffel with a "please become my erastes teacher?" request, Manteuffel, being an adroit courtier, replied he didn't know whether he had enough knowledge to teach such a great prince next to whom he rather resembled a poor blind Quinze-Vingt. How do we know this happened? Because a) good old Formey, becoming a Manteuffel protegé this very decade, mentions it decades later, and b) the nickname actually shows up in the correspondence, which Formey wasn't familiar with.)
Manteuffel from the get go didn't miss the obvious chance offering itself here, but Bronisch makes a good case that it wasn't all worldly ambition. After a life time in politics, Manteuffel didn't have a high opinion of the current crop of rulers and thought it really needed a good one. In a text he published anonymously in 1739, he wrote that nearly all the great ones in the world had a distorted view of the use of power, seeing it as a license for despotism and just follow their instincts, to hell with everyone else. In a letter to Christian Wolff himself from June 16th 1738, Manteuffel wrote that two thirds of the princes in the HRE had shown themselves to be worse than useless plagues of humanity and called them "prètendus Dieux terrestres", but thankfully, one could expect a good counterexample to ascend soon. (Guess whom?) And in an unpublished treatise on how to educate a prince, written in the later 1730s, he wrote that absolute monarchical power was subject to the "Loix de la Nature et de la raison", and the monarchs needed to respect the laws of nature and reason all the more because they were carrying the responsibility for "le bien de la societé"; only this provides in Manteuffel's unpublished opinion a legitimization to the institution of kings at all, "l'unique fin de leur institution".
The self education program Fritz started at Rheinsberg was, says Bronisch, based on Manteuffel's suggestions re: nearly every book in it. As an example for an earlier attempt by Mantteufel to teach a moral lesson without being FW like about it, he brings up Manteuffel bringing up the anecdote from Cassius Dio in a letter to Fritz from March 22nd 1736. (Short version: it's a huge crowd, Augustus is about to fell a bad sentence which could have resulted with him gaining a tyrant's reputation, Maecenas raises a writing tablet with the words "surge, carnifex!", Augustus sees it and desists) (The who is who casting is obvious without Manteuffel spelling it out.) Augustus didn't begrudge this and much later when Maecenas had died supposedly once said apropos a wrong decision that he wouldn't have made it if his trusted advisor was still around. The ability to stop, to reconsider yourself is a quintessential virtue of a good ruler.
And then, of course, Fritz writes to Voltaire. Bronisch admits that the double attack of Le Chetardie (the French envoy trying to steer the future King away from Vienna and to France) on the political and Voltaire on the pilosophical front wasn't the only reason why the Fritz/Manteuffel relationship started to get less close, then dissolve in later 1736 to 1737, he says Fritz probably became aware just how much Private Citizen Mantteuffel was involved with Team Habsburg, but he still thinks it's a key factor. Of course, Manteuffel didn't back off without a fight. Among other things, he financed the reprint in Prussia of not one but two anti-Voltaire pamphlets from Voltaire's arch enemies back home in France. This did not work as intended. Then there was the Pyrrhic victory of FW at long last coming around to not just tolerating but reading Wolff in 1739 (which took away from Wolff's remaining coolness in Fritz' eyes, though at that point he'd long since moved on in essence), of which the most blatant proof was in one of FW's hobby paintings from his last months of life. It shows Nossig, who Bronisch says was at that point one of Gundling's successor's as court fool (sigh, see above) and especially stupid. The painting depicts Nossic with asses ears and hung with bells reading various Pietist works, among them, prominently, several books by Joachim Lange, aka Wolff's arch enemy mainly responsible for his banishment, including Lang's "Exegese der Apostelbriefe" which had been printed on FW's orders just a few years earlier. (Manteuffel writes about this painting to Brühl.) However, as felis mentioned, at this point Manteuffel and the other Berlin Wolffians were actually not keen at all in the idea of FW doing the recalling and reinstating of Wolff, because the triumphant return of Wolff was supposed to happen on Fritz' orders, thereby associating Wolff as THE philosopher of the new regime, not some last moment note of grace for the old one. As FW had sent another "court fool" named Morgenstern (meaning: maybe he was a fool, maybe he was, like Gundling, a scholar with the bad luck of being treated like one; at any rate, FW had promotedim in 1735 to Vice President of the university of Frankfurt an der Oder, and ordered as Morgenstern's introduction a debate on the subject of "Scholars are Fools and Blabberboxes") ) to sound out Wolff. This, Morgenstern managed, and heard from Wolff over a shared cup of coffee that sure, he'd love nothing better than return to Halle, especially since his wife is heartily sick of exile and wants back to her old home, if only such and such minor impendiment didn't exist. Morgenstern goes back to Berlin to report this to FW.
Team Berlin Wolffians, mainly bookseller Haude, Reinbek and Manteuffel, do not like to hear this. Haude writes in umistakable terms to Wolff on 31st October 1739 that he should trust his true friends in Berlin, the Aletophiles, and not to a court fool, for God's sake, see attached also two letters from Manteuffel, your most influential patron, Wolff, remember? DO NOT ACCEPT FW'S OFFER. Mantteuffel's own argument is of the psychological type, using period sexism very effectively; if Wolff now attempts, one has to assume that he was "un homme absulement gouverné par sa femme et qui par consequent n'est grand Philosophe". That does it. Wolff says of course he's the boss in his marriage and yeah, no accepting of FW's offer, promise.
Other Manteuffel activities of the 1739 include preparing a translated into French volume of "Best of Wolff" extracts under the title Le Roi Philosophe, dedicated to the Crown Prince of Prussia. Fritz' reply when he gets the printed copy in 1740 a few days before FW's death, once more raises everyone's hopes (Gottsched, another new literary Manteuffel friend at this point) quickly translates into German and spreads it and made the Wolffians hope once more that the fight for Fritz wasn't all lost, as it's very gracious, on the notes that not only every citizen but every prince and king should read this and it is up to the wise of this world to teach princes etc etc., and he's studied this for a long time and is delighted, etc. Alas. Alack. History happens. Btw, to Fritz' credit, especially that he later catches a lot of deserved flack for his treatment of German writers, thinkers and scientists, once Wolff has made it back to Halle, he really does his best to make Wolff accept a membership of the Academy. Which Wolff absolutely won't. One of the main arguments is the langugage: Wolff says that while he can read French, he can't understand it when it's spoken out loud and so quickly (I emphatize), let alone speak it, and Fritz has just nixed the previous Academy language, which was Latin, and which Wolff could speak, and won't accept German. As for the other Academy members already called according to the papers, this Algarotti fellow (WTF Newton for Ladies?), Maupertuis (did he really compare exploring Lappland to exploring a woman's body ?!?) and Voltaire (Arggggggh), yeah, no. "I can't talk to them, and they don't understand me." He stays in Halle, thank you very much.
As for Manteuffel, he moves to Leipzig after Fritz kicks him out shortly before invading Silesia (on November 5th 1740). Even Bronisch admits this was a necessary and prudent measure, since Manteuffel after Grumbkow died in 1739 immediately wrote home to Dresden and asked for a budget raise to he could take over Grumbkow's spy network, which he got and which he did. Post successful Silesian invasion, the remaining Aletophiles in Berlin became splintered, as many were swayed to the Fritzian side. When Reinbek made the mistake of writing a "Silesia Fuck Yeah!" type of letter, Manteuffel fired off a reply that's also an evisceration of Fritz, rethorically asking there was either a legal by HRE law justification for the invasion, or one by natural law, or one on the basis of religion (which Reinbek had argued), i.e. Fritz needing to save the Silesian Protestants from Catholic MT? And his reply to each of these was no. Fritz has become a gangster with good PR just another despot and a robber donning the robes of monarch. So much for you, Alcibiades.
Still, Manteuffel keeps up the good networking work and continues to be an A plus encourager of writers and philosophers. The refounded Aletophiles in Leipzig even have a female member, Louise Gottsched (remember her? Émilie fan and translator?), who points out to him in a letter even before the Silesian invasion that this Roi Philosophe dedication to Fritz and the whole Roi Philosophe concept is a mistake because she knows of not a few princes who had a great education and knew damm well what they were doing and did it anyway. Philosophy does not keep them from this.
Meanwhile, the remaining Berlin Aletophiles, if they haven't changed sides like Haude or miraculously managed remain friendly to both like Formey, don't fare so well. Primary example: Dechamps. Manteuffel protegé Dechamps in 1736 managed to score a double employment - he became Fritz' official court preacher at Rheinsberg (if you're surprised Fritz had an official court preacher at Rheinsberg, remember FW being alive and making surprise visits) as well as teacher to Heinrich and Ferdinand. (How this worked out geographically, I don't know.) He pointedly addresses Wolffian themes in his preachings. In 1741, he attempts to strike out against Voltaire in a major way and gets busy writing Cours abrégé de la philosophie wolffiene en formé de lettres, in wihch he says that Voltaire was just a rude religion mocker with the ability of making some neat verses, and an ugly, grimacing dwarf of a man to boot. Also, the works of the great Wolff naturally can't be understood by such a creature. Dechamps dedicates this to his two students and sends a copy directly to Fritz as soon as it's printed. The reaction doesn't take long. On November 1742, a one act play gets performed in Charlottenburg, Le singe de la Mode, in which a stupid provincial nobleman is looking for books to feel the shelves of his new library with. He discovers that the volumes best suited for this purpose are hundreds of copies of Dechamps' Cours abregé, which he can get to a bargain price since no one wanted to buy or read them. The author of this play: Fritz. How does Dechamps find out? From little Ferdinand. Oh, and he doesn't get his salary for teaching Ferdinand and Heinrich, either, and Fritz appoints Bielfeld as competing teacher, and Dechamps doesn't get to be a member of the Royal Academy. In 1746, he's finally had it (why so late?) and leaves Berlin for The Hague and London.
Formey, otoh, gets asked by Voltaire whether he's one of those men paid to fool the people (Formey is a Calvinist clergyman) when first they meet, but he does get to be an academy member (and a good thing, too, or Mildred would never have read his obituary for Peter). His main work, other than obituaries, is the six volume philosophical novel "La Belle Wolffienne". In volume 2, which he works on in the early 1740s, he gets into a major spiritual crisis, which Manteuffel by mail manages to talk him through, so the rest of the magnum opus can be published. Manteuffel doesn't live long enough to witness the big Voltaire implosion, but he gets to see the first big Academy controversy from afar, see my write up of the Maupertuis biography. He also guides August III's son Christian August in his studies (Christian August, alas, will die in the same year his father will, in 1763), and dies a respected and admired private citizen (we swear!) in 1749.
As for Christian Wolff: in 1743, Fritz en route to Bayreuth stops in Halle. Wolff presents himself, but is told to wait in the antechambre and in the end is not received. This is of course on the same trip where Voltaire is with Fritz, visiting Wilhelmine, so Wolff notes in a letter to Manteuffel. Just to complete the humilation, in Histoire de mon temps, Fritz writes years later that there were only two German professors of genius ever: Only two men distinguish themselves through their genius and honor the nation: the great Leipniz and the learned Thomasius. I'm leaving Wolff aside. He just repeats Leipniz' system and repeats ramblingly what the later has written with fire and inspiration. Most German scholars were simple craftsmen, while the French ones were artists.
1790s German writer Boie, like many young men of the time a frustrated Fritz fan: I won't accept this.
Boie: writes RPF titled "Totengespräche", in which dead Fritz, with Voltaire at his side, meets dead Wolff in the underworld and tells Wolff he was the first one to make him think, the author of his soul and mind, everything he became as a thinker, he owes thus to Wolff. Wolff modestly says there's a much greater one he must present to Fritz and points to Lessing. Fritz and Wolff leave the unworthy shallow Voltaire behind and unite with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the Hereafter. Happy ending!
Bronisch: yeah, I know. Even the idea that Wolff would have admired Lessing doesn't fit, never mind Fritz. But I still wanted to tell you the story. One more thing: Fritz totally named Sanssouci after Manteuffel's Sanssouci, and it wasn't because he was looking for his grave, it was because he was pining for the happy time with his mentor in the mid 1730s. So there. The end.
Dantal (born 1759, death 1799) was Fritz' last reader and the one who actually got to read instead of being read to. Unlike all the others, he was a Prussian citizen from the local French colony, and also a French teacher at the Potsdam orphanage before getting the job as reader. He first met Fritz in October 1784 and started reading in November, usually in the evening / late afternoon and for up to three hours. The last session was on July 30th, 1786, because Fritz was in too much pain from then on.
His account was written and published in 1791, but he clearly based it on notes he took during his time with Fritz. The book is split into two parts: first a prose part that contains a general description of his job, Fritz' comments and/or short yay/nay reviews for each of the books, plus a few anecdotes; second a complete list of the books read with reading times, places, and dates. (So if you want to know which book and chapter he was reading to Fritz on any given day between November 1784 and July 1786, this is your source.)
General comments:
He reports that Fritz had a lot to say about pronunciation, kept correcting him and generally had his own ideas on the topic. If Fritz himself wasn't sure how to pronounce certain words, he tried to say them quietly to himself at first [...]. I was surprised that the King didn't let go of a wrong pronunciation of certain words once he'd settled on it, even though I told him my reasons with all the reverence I owed him. [...] Other mistakes, probably due to a failing memory, he never begrudged when pointed out to him; one day he even told me that a young man was allowed to correct an old one [Greis] if he was wrong.
Occasionally, Fritz did get annoyed and angry because of his own memory lapses, though. One of the few anecdotes is about this: he couldn't remember the author of a book he wanted to read, Dantal suggested the right one but Fritz didn't hear/register and therefore grumpily dismissed it, then sent Dantal, who didn't dare to mention it again, away to do research. Dantal had just reached the city gate, when he was called back because Fritz had remembered the name at last and all was right with the world: "Now he was completely content again and the gentle tone with which he said "c'est fort bien", gave me back the trust/confidence [Zutrauen], which the critical moment had taken away before."
Dantal also mentions the order that was kept in Fritz' libraries, and that they were sorted by content, not looks, i.e. without regard for different sizes next to each other, which some owners of libraries care for the most (ha). He describes the way the books were bound (with the letters on the covers - "S" for the New Palais (the Palace of Sanssouci) for example, and of course Sanssouci had a "V" because Fritz always called it Vignes) and also mentiones that nobody was allowed to move the books in Fritz' room.
Some reading details, chronologically:
1. Early on, they are reading a book of speeches by Isocrates and others and Fritz comments on and dissects the arguments in every speech; for example, he was never happy with the ones that were given before big events/undertakings, because he thought they just delayed the point where somebody took action. He also spent quite some time on the speech in which Isocrates is trying to convince Philippos to wage war against the barbarians [the Persians I think] to free Greece, and he didn't find Isocrates' reasons convincing enough. (I could not help but think of Crusader!Voltaire in this context, although there's no mention of Fritz doing the same.)
2. Fritz did crossreferencing - reading Tacitus and Sueton in parallel to compare their take on the same events - and read/commented on editor's notes. (:D)
3. In March 1785, Fritz got sick with fever and so they switched to less challenging and more entertaining stuff = Voltaire. Le Taureau Blanc and Candide on this occasion, both of which made him laugh a lot.
4. Fritz gets annoyed with Rollin for connecting everything to religion and Christ, quote: as if the heathens couldn't be just as virtuous as the Christians.
5. Fritz' very own theory on Socrates death: It's the sculptors' fault! They feared for their income because Socrates spoke against polytheism, so they accused him of various political offenses and got him killed.
6. Spring/Summer 1785: Because of frequent breaks during revue season, they read Moliere's comedies. No reading during a July week when Amelie and Charlotte were visiting.
7. Fritz returned from Silesia on August 30th; Dantal notes that he got sick and almost died on September 19th, because of an asthma attack (that's what "Steckfluss" is, right? I'm not sure how the fact that he got an emetic plays into it, though); the reading sessions continued September 24th.
8. On January 1st, 1786, they are in the middle of reading Bayle, an excerpt from the Dictionnaire that Fritz made himself [as in: he had the stuff he was interested in reprinted and bound in octave for his convenience] and this is where we get a favourite dog mention!
I want to include a short monologue, which the King adressed to his favourite dog, Arsinoé, whom he was holding on his lap at that point. Because when I read the following words - [about animals not being capable of reasoning] - the King turned to his favourite dog and said: "Do you hear, my mignonne, they are talking about you and claiming that you don't have reason [esprit], but you do have it, my little mignonne!"
So, favourite dog half a year before his death: Arsinoé, not Superbe. Doesn't have to mean that it was still Arsinoé when he died, but it's a data point. Also: we have a pet name he used, Mignonne, i.e. sweet, cute, lovely.
9. February 4th, 1786: While Dantal was reading about Turenne, Fritz fell into a deep sleep, which Dantal thinks was the start of his last and enduring illness, so I guess he observed that Fritz was consistently worse from that point on.
10. During the last months, they go back to a lot of Voltaire, mostly the history works (Louis XIV and XV), and Fritz', although pretty sick, has comments, for example, as late as July:
When I read the following words about the battle at Rossbach - "Friedrich, surrounded by so many enemies, decided to die with a weapon in his hand, in the middle of the army of the Prince of Soubise" - the King, as sick as he was that day, could not help but call out: "Oh, oh! There was no reason to die yet!"
11. During the last weeks, Fritz often fell asleep while Dantal was reading - by then, he would be wearing his nightclothes already so he could just stay asleep if he wanted - and Dantal therefore stayed until 10 at night, when he would quietly leave the room because he assumed that Fritz wouldn't want any more reading this late, even if he woke up again. Dantal also says that Fritz still read by himself during that last year: "His habit was to read out loud to himself, especially verse, and I believe to have noticed by the quiet voice with which he was often reading when I entered, that it exhausted him a lot."
Schöning: SECOND chamber hussar OMG SECOND: shaving Fritz, giving Fritz his medications, taking care of Fritz' enemas, otherwise "just like every other servant"'s duties
ROTFL SO VERY HARD
Also informative!
dressing him (?? - maybe once he was ill?)
Maybe handing him his clothes, hanging the sweat-soaked ones in front of the fire, etc.?
Zimmermann, who hears about Desen, can't resist improving on this because he's all about how misunderstood Fritz was really loving at heart, and says that Fritz was really sorry once the guy had shot himself and said maybe he shouldn't have been so harsh. Neumann, apparantly feeling the need to defend Fritz from this, too, which tells you something about Neumann, says NO HE DID NOT, he couldn't have cared less about Desen by then, he just said he hadn't thought Desen would have the courage.
Wow, that is really something. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Continuing with my glacial reread of the Suhm letters...
1. Tongue in cheek, but my gossipy sensationalist 21st century self has a hard time not reading this as gay for Fritz:
[Suhm waxes enthusiastic about how awesome Fritz is and how he's only getting better with each passing year.]
Excuse, My Lord, this digression — It has flowed so naturally from me, that may it be looked upon as the necessary effect of the union and harmony of a soul incessantly taken up in the contemplation of your Royal person, with a body ever ready to obey the impressions it receives from you, and always disposed to express its willingness.
Yeah, Diaphane, we all know about the impressions your body receives from Fritz and how willing it is. :P
2. In March 1736, Fritz is getting his first translations from Suhm and getting excited by the fact that he's now convinced he has an immortal soul; by November, he's already questioning Wolff:
I seem to see you again by my fire side, and hear you converse agreeably on subjects which neither of us comprehend too clearly, but which have nevertheless in your mouth an air of probability. Wolf undoubtedly says fine and good things, but they may, however, be combated, and as soon as we refer to first principles nothing remains to us but to confess our ignorance. We do not live long enough to become very able; moreover we have not capacity sufficient to examine matters to the bottom; and other wise there are objects which it seems the Creator has placed at a distance, that we may have but a slender knowledge of them.
3. While Suhm is still living in Berlin, I see them complaining about letters going astray because of poorly chosen messengers, of the "circuits" by which the letters have to travel, which lead to delays...it seems to me that, even when they're two topics of conversation are Wolff and "I love you more! No, I love you more!", they're still keeping their correspondence a secret. If FW doesn't even want them corresponding, it does make sense of why Suhm never goes to visit him and certainly not to live with him. :(
4. When Suhm is breaking the news to Fritz about having to move to St. Petersburg, he says that when they meet in person during the upcoming winter holidays in Berlin, he'll explain to Fritz why this was an offer he couldn't refuse:
I fear not but I shall then be able to make your Royal Highness approve of the reasons which have induced me not to refuse the employ which is offered to me; and your Royal Highness, will, I hope, be as easily persuaded, when you shall be informed of the whole, that my inviolable attachment to you, has at the bottom, a greater part therein than you have been able to imagine.
And the next thing we know, Suhm is carrying out commissions to get Fritz money, first from Vienna and then from St. Petersburg, commissions that everyone agrees were given orally, in Berlin.
...Did Suhm decide to go to St. Petersburg in part because it was a chance to play sugar daddy? Or was that just how he tried to reconcile Fritz to it? (Note that Fritz continues to try to get Suhm to come home even after the money starts coming in. That's how you know it's love.)
5. Remember how we gave MacDonogh a hard time for male Mimi? 1787 editor also translates "il" as "he"!
6. Hahaha, so Fritz, back when Suhm is looking for a job, says that he wouldn't wish to be king out of ambition, and the only thing that could make him want it is friendship, because then he could offer Suhm an income.
And now, when Suhm is saying it's going to be a while before he can answer Fritz's questions about Russia (remember, Voltaire wants to know!), because he has to learn more about Russia, and especially since he needs to find a safe way of sending his answers so that the Russians who read his mail don't get their hands on this one, he says,
I beseech your Royal Highness, to give me time only to inform myself well of all these things, and especially to let me chuse an occasion to send you my observations. I hope you will have the goodness to do this, as nothing is pressing. Would to God you had reasons to be more anxious in this respect!
I can only read this as, "I wish to God your dad had kicked the bucket already, and you were asking out of foreign policy reasons, because that would mean you were king and we could be together forever!"
7. Did Suhm take his kids to Russia? Maybe! There's a distinct lack of mention of his kids in his letters to Fritz except when he's dying and needs someone to take care of them, and while envoys do often take their kids, we had been unsure and decided that maybe he didn't take them all the way to St. Petersburg.
But then I found this passage. Suhm is describing the sheer horror of trying to get from Dresden to St. Petersburg in the 18th century:
Sometimes the sand, or the sea above the axle-tree; sometimes in a miserable shallop, in hard blowing weather, the sport of the winds and waves, at the mercy of the sea and rocks; afterwards passing on foot half frozen rivers, holding a child in each hand, and seeing myself at every step in danger of being swallowed up with them under the ice; finally overtaken by a frightful snow, which threatened to bury us in places where it was impossible to procure sledges; this is enough to give you some idea of the fatigue and anguish I suffered on my journey.
And his surviving kids at the turn of 1736/1737 would have been 8, 10, 11, 13, and 14 (no, I don't envy his poor wife), more than young enough for two of them to need their hands held when crossing a river.
So maybe our guess was wrong and the kids were there, and thus they were on that slow and painful journey back from St. Petersburg, watching Dad die slowly. :( At least they (and sister Hedwig) would have gotten to say goodbye, I guess.
But it's interesting because Suhm always refers to "I" and "my" in terms of the house where he lives in St. Petersburg, the house almost burning down, etc. So if he's got his family with him, then he is consciously avoiding talking about them with Fritz (who, in contrast, is more than happy to bitch about his brother showing up, for example), unless he needs them taken care of. Which Fritz is more than willing to do, and even the grandkids 50 years later. But apparently they do not form part of his relationship with Suhm when the latter's alive.
Unless there are other kids on the journey, and Suhm is just pitching in and helping out with the river crossing...idk. My first guess would be his kids, but then their absence during the two fires is *really* noticeable. It's not even "'we' could have died," it's "me, I," like he lives alone with some invisible servants.
8. 1787 editor includes the cipher by which Fritz and Suhm communicated about moneylending when Suhm was in Russia! If Preuss includes this, I haven't found it (admittedly I haven't looked very hard).
Every letter is assigned four numerical values, and the whole is presented as a mathematical problem. The details of the math problem(s) aren't included, but the letter-number mapping is.
Notice how 'a' starts at 15, then 'b' is 16, 'c' 17, and so on until 'z', then 'a' picks back up where 'z' left off, so each letter's four values are always 25 apart. 25 rather than 26 because 'i' and 'j' are the same letter, which was not uncommon in the past (though becoming increasingly uncommon in the 18th century). They were originally the same letter and only started to be distinguished in the Renaissance.
9. Per Suhm, East Russia is poorly understood geographically. Professors have been sent to explore it. It's probable that Russia joins America somewhere in the east. (!!)
I knew that Alaska was settled by Russia under Catherine the Great, but I didn't know that in 1737, they hadn't yet figured out that the Bering land bridge was no more! Per Wikipedia,
The first European vessel to reach Alaska is generally held to be the St. Gabriel under the authority of the surveyor M. S. Gvozdev and assistant navigator I. Fyodorov on August 21, 1732, during an expedition of Siberian cossack A. F. Shestakov and Russian explorer Dmitry Pavlutsky (1729–1735). Another European contact with Alaska occurred in 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia with sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia toward the Aleutian Islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784.
I guess the Bering Strait is about to be named!
10. Possibly the most interesting point so far is the one I just encountered last night. In a ciphered letter that Fritz sent to Suhm, without a signature and without a date, but probably late 1737, he writes,
If I can have fourteen thousand crowns in the month of April or May, they will be sufficient, and give me much satisfaction. I shall always have a great obligation to the Duke [of Courland] for them , and which I will endeavour to prove to him hereafter. Suffice it for the present that I am not ungrateful. If sureties be required, I offer one signed by my brother, without his knowing, as you may imagine, any thing of the business, in any manner whatsoever, or his being able to guess even at it. These are my affairs [cosa nostra? :P], and you may naturally suppose that I will use all possible prudence. If you do not think him necessary, so much the better; but it is only in case of my death that I propose his security. Adieu my dear Diaphane, it is midnight. Good night, I am, wholly your's [sic]
Two things here, aside from my snide mobster joke.
One, how do I put this...wow, this family. I know your father's put you in a shitty situation, Fritz, but way to pass it down the chain.
I wonder if AW ever figured out what was going on. Did Fritz forge his signature, or did he get trusting younger bro to sign a piece of paper without letting on what he was really signing up for?
Two, "my brother," unmarked, is AW. This makes me think that in 1736, it's AW who shows up at Ruppin and is more interested in eating than reading. I'm still happy to read a babysitting fic where it's Heinrich followed by Ferdinand, mind you!
ETA: I just settled down to read a few more pages, and what should I find but another editor footnote that I was !! at.
Specifically, Fritz rants for a page about how Seckendorff, THE WORST (except a good general, granted), has just been arrested, and "One thing is certain, and upon which you may rely, that his career is ended, and that the name of Seckendorf, will never more be heard spoken of." Then he says, "The Cardinal Nepote, has left Berlin, and is going to enter the service of Anspach." Then two more pages about Seckendorff.
I was like, "Oh, Cardinal Nepote must be Other Seckendorff, author of the secret journal and nephew of arch-schemer Seckendorff."
Then the editor writes, in a footnote, "It is not well known who this Cardinal Nepote is; it is believed to be a supposed name. There has never been at Berlin any cardinal but the Cardinal de Zinzendorf." I want to send a message back in time and tell him, we know who this is! And sure enough, I checked and Other Seckendorff's bio says it was in 1737 that he moved to Ansbach.
It's nice having access to people's secret diaries. :D
But also, 1787 editor, context! It's smack dab in the middle of a 3-page rant about Seckendorff, who do you think it is but a *Seckendorff* *nephew*?!
Also, I'm amused that, just as Seckendorff calls Fritz "Junior", Junior calls him in return "Cardinal Nepote". Not sure about the Cardinal; any guesses? (I doubt he's saying he's actually Seckendorff's son, which is how it usually worked with popes and their "nephews" who were made cardinals, which is how we got the word "nepotism". But that is the first thing that comes to mind for me when you juxtapose "cardinal" and "nephew".)
Because I forgot to mention this in the last post: 2 things that we know were happening circa August 1729.
1) FW and G2 were about to fight a duel over some hay and recruiting practices. 2) Ferdinand was conceived (born May 1730).
I remember that back when we were trying to reconstruct the sex life of FW and SD (now that's a sentence I never thought I would write :P), I did notice that Ferdinand was conceived around the time when matters were coming to a head between Hanover and Prussia, for whatever that's worth. At SD's age and with FW's health, as discussed, I'm reluctant to tie childbirth together too closely with an increase in sexual activity, but it's a data point.
Of course, at the time, I didn't know that the Hanover/Prussia squabbles nearly culminated in a duel between FW and his first cousin+brother-in-law! Hatesex? Appeasement sex as SD tries to win her husband back to the English marriage project? You decide!
He's just a soul whose intentions were good: Morgenstern on FW - A
Morgenstern's Über Friedrich Wilhelm I. was published postumously in 1793. He died in 1785, one year before Fritz, and it's not entirely clear when this memoir was written, but definitely after Fritz' "Histoire de la Maison de Brandenburg" was published, as it's referenced (as in, see how worthless F1 gets dissed by King Fritz in this great work, too!). I also think it must be after Pöllnitz' history of the four princes of Brandenburg at least was in circulation, because while Morgenstern disses Pöllnitz as a person as well, he tells one story where no one but FW and Pöllnitz are present and they have a lengthy dialoge which sounds to me as it was likely plagiarized from a Pöllnitz book. So it's worth keeping in mind that some of the stories could hail from either of those books (neither of which I've read, so I can't be sure.)
The preface tells me Morgenstern also claimed to have been a secret agent for FW who stopped a Prussian/British war in 1739 (though the book itself says that it was in 1737 that the author was in Britain on a mission for FW), and that even Fritz "used him, made him vice chancellor of Silesia yet recalled him to Potsdam in 1756, where he died later". Since I've never seen the claim that Morgenstern made peace between Britain and Prussia in the late 1730s anywhere else, including the two Mitchell dissertations with the summaries of the English-Prussian diplomatic backstory pre Mitchell, I am, shall we say, somewhat sceptical. The preface concludes that in his private life, Morgenstern distinguished himself by being a miser, stubborn, a cynic and through some excentricities as well as considerable scholarly knowledge, and that one could add some well known anecdotes about him but won't because de mortuis nihil nisi bene. Alas I can't see the editor's name somewhere.
As to the book proper. The first half certainly makes it sounds like Morgenstern is FW's Zimmermann. Not just because of all the praise for his high morals, dedication to work, and general geratness but the tinhat "this explains everything!" theory which Morgenstern's case is that young FW fell in love with young Caroline and never really got over it. Unlike Jochen Klepper in his novel, Morgenstern avoids saying whether or not he thinks she requited his feelings. But he is convinced that Carolline's rejection of FW's proposal was dictated to her by mean sarcastic grandma Sophie or by Sophie Charlotte, but more likely Sophie, wanting Caroline for future G2 instead. Why is he so sure? Because such an excellent woman as the late Queen Caroline surely, surely, would have let down FW gently instead of decisively and sarcastically which is what she apparently did. It's all Grandma's fault! Because Caroline never would have said a harsh word to FW otherwise.
(Lord Hervey, somewhere in the hereafter: *spit take*)
FW's life long pining for Caroline is also one of the reasons why he wasn't as good with his older children as he was with the younger ones. He still hadn't adjusted to his Caroline-less life then. HOWEVER, he was an utterly faithful husband to SD, despite being tempted as a young man. (But then he married the pretty castellan's daughter off post haste before he could be tempted some more.) Further proof that FW never had sex with anyone but SD in his life for Morgenstern is an exchange in the Tobacco College, where FW asked his fellow smokers after having been married to SD for decades already whether if a certain part of the female anatomy - "the source of all joy and procreation", as Morgenstern terms it - smells bad, this is a sign of bad hygiene, or whether this is true for all women. Another companion assures him that his wife Charlotte smells great there, and the poor lady from this point onwards is known as "Sweet Smelling Charlotte" in tout Berlin.
Now, always according to Morgensten, G2 ending up with Caroline instead is just one of the many, many things FW held against his cousin and brother-in-law. More serious is that G2 also ended up with three crowns he did not deserve and which FW should have gotten. (At this point, a vague memory made itself known, because yes, in one of the many books I've read this last year it did say William of Orange considered adopting FW as his heir for a while, in which case Britain would have gotten the Hohenzollern Friedrichs and Wilhelms instead of the Hannover Georges.) Morgenstern tells a dramatic tale of how kid FW, who in his twelfth year has been taken by Mother SC on a trip to the Netherlands, gets presented to William of Orange and is much liked by him, to the point where the King wants to kidnap him and take him to Britain, only to be talked out of it in the last minute. FW keeps thinking he missed his destiny there.
"If only I'd been King William, he could have made a great man out of me", (...) The Holsteiner interrupted him with a smile: "But you are a great King, how could being King William have made you greater?" The Master returned with some indignation: "You talk as you know it. Of course he could have gotten me elected as Stateholder, he could have taught me the craft to command the armies of Europe, do you know anything greater?"
Since FW has the same amount of British royal blood in him as G2 does (they're both great-grandsons of Elizabeth Stuart the Winter Queen), it's really not fair that stupd G2 got Britain AND Caroline. Grrr. Argh. Morgenstern also claims that when he was on his secret mission in Britain in 1737, he checked the files and saw that the Scots wanted FW rather than the Hannover gang as well in Queen Anne's time.
Morgenstern also reports the FW-G2 fight when they were kids in Hannover, only in his version it was after they had started to learn to fence, so it was an almost duel already. And the wonderful story of FW on his deathbed telling SD she can write to her brother that he, FW, forgives him. But only after he's dead.
Oh, and then there's this: in 1738 while inspecting Wesel, FW meets the current Prince of Orange, who's married to G2's and Caroline's oldest daughter Anne, and Anne herself. Anne leaves an impression, for FW, returning to Berlin, tells SD: "Fiekchen, if you die, I'm going to remarry within the family. I'm going to marry your brother's daughter. Luckily, she's not like her father at all. She takes after her mother, only she's not pretty.")
(This stuff is all over the book, I'm just putting it thematically together.)
Now, here's the odd thing. While the first half is unrelenting praise for FW, and defense against the various charges against him, including cruelty, the second half offers actually various examples of FW being cruel. I'm not sure whether that means the author hadn't finished working on the manuscript or whether he's not aware there is a contradiction there or what.
I also mentioned earlier that the hostility towards both of FW's parents is pretty unrelenting. SC is at fault for spoiling him. The anecdote illustrating this is that once when Tiny Terror FW beat up his cousin and name sake Friedrich Wilhelm of Kurland, has the kid under him and both hands in his hair when in comes Mom, but instead - so says Morgenstern FW told the tale - of either punishing him or at least saving the other kid from him, she just says, distraught: "Mon cher fils! Que faites-vous!" Ergo, he had to learn all about childraising himself, since Dad didn't give him any discipline, either, which proves Dad didn't care. Dad was only into kingship, and provided FW with servants but not Christian education, and also he murdered little baby Friedrich Ludwig with his stupid salute shooting, and then he married for a third time when there really was no need, because FW was on the job. Dad F1 was the worst King who ever existed, and our current King says the same thing, readers, so it must be true.
When Morgenstern gets to how FW had so seek out his own friends because his parents court was just, ugh, we get this gem of a quote:
So he had to create himself friends, and he found them among all who got to know him, partly through his honesty, partly through his benevolence. And as he was modest in his claims and requests, he did not insist to have his friendship returned in an exemplary manner, to find a Hephaistion as Alexander had done; for he knew how his ancestors had behaved with their Hephaistions.
I am very hard trying to take this solely as referring to Hephaistion as an example of a "good" favourite here, but you're not making it easy, Morgenstern.
No, he was content if others understood half a word from him; if they took a hint through a glance; if they could entertain him, especially in an honest and just fashion.
Morgenstern, as mentioned, defends FW against the charge of cruelty, a misunderstanding which arose, says he, because "of the beatings, because of the recruitment excesses and because of the strict executions". But look, says he: he needed the army in order to get Prussia on a good footing again, executions were for discipline and also to deterr thieves (FW using the death penalty for thieves wasn't a given in German states, unlike in England), and anyway, the poof that FW wasn't a sadist (of course Morgenstern doesn't use this word, the Marquis de Sade is his contemporary, after all, but it's what he means) is that such people delight in watching others suffer, and FW never did that.
"No one can deny that the late King has been the most compassionate towards the victims of his rage."
He always forgave any sinnner who repented. And okay, so he got angry a few times at his family, BUT he didn't get physical except for what Morgenstern refers to as The Great Incident. (Yep, Morgenstern is definitely Klepper's source for postponing FW being abusive to Fritz until 1730.) Also? "When the Crown Prince was at Küstrin, his father in order to keep him occupied had him review all cirminal trials for either confirmation or rejection of the judgment. How could a suppoosedly so cruel master let go of the opportunity to torment via the law, to make life miserable and to shed blood?"
Now, at this point I thought I had Morgenstern's number, but he will surprise us, gentle readers, somewhat later when he comes to... but that's a surprise.
Keep in mind Morgenstern only knew FW during the last four years of his life, too. Everything else he describes, he describes from hearsay. But what he writes about FW's daily routine and personnel in his last years, for example, I guess we can take at face value, and since it's the obvious model and yet a contrast to Fritz' daily routine, here you go:
Friedrich Wilhelm limited himself to two, at most three pages who both served him at the table and followed him everwhere on horseback, and had to live from ten Reichstaler per month. After three or four years, he made them Lieutenants with the equipage coming with that state and a hundred ducats. (...) For his nursing and care, the King had five footmen and one hunter, who did the same servicen when the master got dressed or by sleeping in front of his bed as those who received postmaster offices or other benevolences so they could l ive well with a salary of 400 Reichstaler. When he died, these were:
1.) Abt, who then died twice. 2.) Bramdhorst, who followed Eversmann as Chatelain in Berlin. 3.) Wiedekin, who received the post office in Minden. 4.) Müller (Morgenstern tells a story of him using the opportunity of having to deliver a thank you present from FW to Cardinal Fleury to high tail it out of Prussia) 5.) Hammerstein, who also became a postmaster and 6.) Meyer, who became Oberforstmeister in Torgelow, Upper Pomerania.
Moreover eight chamber footmen, and the same number of hunters, who served at the table in the antechambre and at the King's sickness carriage (Kranken-Wagen, perhaps the wheelchair, perhaps an actual wagon necessary to transport him in his final year), for eight Reichstaler a month, and who were given offices at city halls or at tax offices, or at profitable hunting grounds.
Speaking of money. Let's talk about household expenses:
In order not to need a budget for his and his family's wardrobe, nor for his hunting, he told the Queen, whom he had left her considerable heritage for free use, that she would have to finance from the annual 8000 Reichstaler the following:
- linnen for herself, the princesses, the princes and the King - also everyone's wardrobe - powder and bullets for the hunting at Wusterhausen and Mackenow in autumn; in recompense, she was to have any feathery game that didn't get eaten right away
In order to be galant, he did present the Queen and each of the princesess with at least one winter dress each year; but he would not agree to have this put in the contract for which the Queen needed a legal advisor, as (...) in anger against his brother-in-law, he hadn't even wanted to sign it as her marital curator.
Day in the life: Morning starts with a prayer (of course it does), washing, cabinet secretaries show up and report about the incoming mail, note down the King's orders/replies. While they're doing this, FW drinks his coffee and gets dressed (by servants). The resolutions from the previous day are read through and signed while FW gets into his boots. After five to six hours administrative work, he's off to soldiering (i.e. inspections, parades), though he combines that with meeting envoys and foreign visitors. Lunch with up to 30 people, for two hours, with a guest getting one or one and a have bottles of wine on avarage. When in Berlin, FW also receives the envoys here as well, which means more wine. If he's in a good mood, the wine flows until he says stop. After lunch: riding with the pages and a few servants; this is when he talks to any subjects trying to meet him directly. If FW can't ride because either his health isn't up to it or the weather is too bad, he paints, with a painter who is Morgenstern's arch enemy. The painter, Johann Adelfing, nickname "Hänsgen" (= little Hans, because Johann) gets 100 Reichstaler per annum, and because of the colors used a Gulden for every day they paint together. "...but for every stroke with the paintbrush which the King didn't manage well, Hänsgen got a rich share of pushes and slaps. The results of these painting lessons weren't much to look at, though the student easily did as well as the master."
So, FW's theatre taste according to Morgenstern: He had liked French comedy during his campaigns in Brabant, but lost the taste for them when he had it staged once and the next day heard the children call each other by the names of the play, especially the youngest son, then 6 or 7 years old, calling himself Policinello. German comedy used to be very bawdy in those days, and so he thought it was too dangerous for the youngsters. Of Italian comedy, he liked slapstick, but he was ready to admit that this was not to everyone's taste.
Puppet play, he regarded justly as childish, but when it was presented at the tavern in Wusterhausen and he heard from his people about the burlesque they were presenting, he ordered it performed in front of the entire court, and the master could never recall the entire performance without laughing heartily.
And now we get to the surprise, i.e. where Morgenstern suddenly sounds... dowright FW critical. What's the occasion? Well....
The Master liked the custom of the Germans of the times of old to have court fools; but he didn't understand it correctly. For instead of looking for those who would tell him and his entourage the truth in a jest at the right time, when no one else would, he sought clowns and acrobats. If he found them, they were given to supervisors who treated the poor fellows so harshly that they became depressed instead of becoming funny, bright and cheerful. Like one from Siebenbürgen, named Eisenbläser, whom the King nicknamed Cucumene, (...)who'd been put under the supervision of Wachtmeister Lieutenant Buzlaf. He was trashed daily by the later, was given iron balls attached to his feet like the eagles running around the palace, and was tormented to the core, of which the result was that he was found hanged in the attic.
(Result: distinct lack of court fool volunteers.)
The source of all this was: when he had to be in Berlin while being Crown Prince, he was at war with time. In order to kill it, he rode on his pages and footmen and beat them out of the room. Once he was on the throne, this princely pleasure had to be forsaken, and so he assembled his officers in the evening to the tabbaco college instead. But what little knowledge they possessed together was soon exhausted. The reading of newspapers, too, was soon over, and to investigate the likelihood of the reported was something this assembly knew as little about as about cause and effect of a given incident. So the gentlemen smoked and yawned at each other. Despite the marvelous conclusion that everyone who knew something had to be a fool had already been reached, the King decided that they needed someone like this, to tell them stories and give them causes to speak. Everyone suggested a candidate, among them Paul Gundling, who was a member of the Academy which was on the decline then, and it was praised that he was good at talking. (...)Now the assembly had enough to listen to, for this man was a scholar. As at first no one had a competing comment to make, the King started to respect the man. But as a just precaution against the admiration growing too much, it was decided that the man should be tempted. This temptation consisted of drowning him in titles, forcing him to drink until he'd grown a taste for it and even tank the rest of the glasses and mugs after a meal had finished, and once he was drunk, he was treated evilly in words and deeds. At one time, there was a wall built in front of his door, so that when he was looking for his room in the evening, he couldn't find it and had to spend the night searching for it; at another time, young bears (of which many declawed ones were walking around at Wusterhausen and and Potsdam in the court yards) were put into his bed, which welcomed him in their way when he returned drunken and crawling from the tobacco parliament in the night. Because he started to complain about it, it was said he wasn't just a fool, he was a Poltron. (?) Despite of him having surrendered completely to drink, all these evil doings grew too wild for him, and once he ran away, but only to his brother Hieronymus, who was a Professor in Halle. From there, he was brought back like a criminal under guard. There was a debate on how to punish him. But one noted through his unusual silence that he had been brought to depression and that at least his talking at the table and at the tobacco college would be over, which meant they'd be back where they started from, and he wasn't supposed to kill himself, either; so the decision was made that the entire tobacco parliament should go smoking and drinking to him, led by the King, and praise him, tell hm that there never was a greater scholar. So the poor man was won around again, was made to drink again, and now was treated thusly that everyone had their fun with him but his life and his health weren't endangered anymore, and the bears were left out of it from now on. (...) At last, he was buried in a barrel of wine as a coffin in the church at Bornstadt, and a succcessor sought everywhere. Those who accepted either knew not as much as he had done and so disappeared again, or they started to scheme instead, and thus coped better than the dear departed. Others who were put into the position avoided drink, arrogance and cowardice. Moreover, the knowledge of the King and his company had grown, so he now wanted more of the useful conversations and its entertainment than the crude pranks, and he grew fonder of a truth told as a jest, or a story in context than by grimaces and beatings, especially since the Master had now tasted philosophy.
Meaning: of course, I wasn't treat this way, reader! But I will admit thinking about my predecessor makes me a bit queasy.
While I almost can't believe the above reported story was written without awareness of how this makes FW sound, I am, sad to say, sure Morgenstern thought this bit of 18th century antisemitism was just jolly, too: FW after hunting sent the killed boars to the Jews who had to buy them at five Reichstaler a piece.
Morgenstern claims SD has promised him protection because he managed on two evenings in a row to be examined by FW about the family without having taken anyone's party or talked badly about anyone. He also reports that Old Desssauer faked the smoking, as mentioned in other books, and confirms FW liked oboists from the military. (Fredersdorf, watch out!)
Not in Morgenstern: back in the day, FW in his earliest instructions to his son's governors and teachers wanted SD to be the disciplining parent. They were never supposed to threaten little Fritz with him, only with his mother. I knew this, but what I hadn't known was that FW kept this up with the younger kids as well, at least according to Morgenstern, who writes:
Yes, even if the sons were already officers and in uniform with him, and if they'd been noughty, he led the criminal himself to be punished by the mother. Since he had never learned to punish or reward the children, his favourites weren't better treated than the other children, and he didn't distinguish one from the other by special surprises or treats. In my time, the favourites were the princes Wilhelm and Ferdinand, and Princess Ulrike. But since they all didn't get anything than friendly looks, addresses, sometimes kisses, and cheek stroking; so the author dares to claim due to the sheer number of such loving yet unprofitable caresses, the last one named was the one most loved, yes, even esteemed for her firm mind, and because she never showed discontentment or mocking laughter, and if she'd been a son, she'd have been preferred.
But FW believed in the superiority of the male sex too much to make a girl the overall favourite. Money heritage for the boys, btw:
52 000 Reichstaler for Prince Wilhelm 26 000 for Heinrich and Ferdinand each.
In 1737, there was talk of marrying Wilhelm to a Danish princess which since she had only one brother would have given him a shot on the throne. FW was all for it until there was a report that the girl was a dwarf, at which point the marriage was cancelled.
FW and the fight against superstition: stopped the last witch trials state, thought alchemy was rubbish, was in two minds about ghosts; mostly he didn't think they existed, but he wasn't sure about the White Lady ( the appearance of whom supposedly spelled Hohenzollern doom).
Let's see, what else: ah, yes, travel. Mom and Grandmom and Dad all took him along on journeys to the Netherlands when he grew up, and he was very positively impressed, not least by the hygiene. Morgenstern says FW surpassed the Muslims with their five daily washings, and was really very much into cleanlinesss. (Had an obvious reasult with Fritz and hygiene.) Alas the Netherlands lost their holiday trip allure for him when he once at at an inn, the innkeeper lady recognized him and without improving the quality of the food still when later presenting the bill demanded a kingly price from him, over 1000 Taler. When he gave her 30 ducats instead, she screamed after him that he was stiffing her and made a big scandal by clinging to the carriage. And FW never visited the Netherlands again. Otoh, he enjoyed his travellers from afar: Peter the Great was certainly a favourite. And speaking of Peter: look, says Mr. Morgenstern, Peter may get praise now, but in his day he was hated and called a tyrant by a great many of his subjects, too. Also he gave them more cause than FW. I'm sure FW's reputation will go the way of Peter's and rise through subsequent generations, though!
Thanks to Mildred unearthing Leineweber's disseratation about Samuel Jakob Morgenstern's FW book so quickly, and it being pretty short, I can now deliver the biographer's biography in short points. As Mildred said, Leineweber doesn't know who wrote the preface to Morgenstern's book, either, nor who had the idea of publishing it to begin with, several years after his death. Most of the biographical claims in the preface are wrong, though. As for when Morgenstern wrote the book, probably over the years because there are references to events and people from 1780 - to 1782 in it, which would put it really late in Morgenstern's life, but then again there are references to the 7 Years War as recent and to someone who died in 1766 as having died "recently" which could indicate he at least started writing around 1770ish. Or, Leineweber allows, he might have done as old people can do and telescoped the decades when writing in the early 1780s.
So, Morgenstern: born a Saxon in 1706. studied in Leipzig where he achieved Magister, started to lecture there, not many people showed up, so he went to Halle. He wasn't much more successful there; student attendence to his lectures was low. In order to win the students around, he started a newspaper reading and explaining seminar twice a week, which was a bit more of a success, not least because it was combined with smoking, and debates got so loud that a neighbor complained. These newspaper readings prodcued Morgenstern's first original work, according to Nicolai an imperfect attempt at gathering statistics. Leineweber can't judge it because he couldn't track it down, but he's not impressed with Morgenstern's next publication, which is a total copy-and-paste job on Russia (i.e. it plagiarizes a lot of articles printed at the time) combined with lots of flattery of the Czarina (Anna Ivanova). This was because not just Morgenstern but other German scholars hoped to get jobs in Russia because of Anna employing Germans and German being basically the court language due to her lover. It worked in that Morgenstern got 100 Rubel and an offer to teach history in a Moscow school. He set off but when he came to Potsdam, the guards didn't understand the title "Magister legens" and so he ended up interrogated by Captain Nettelhorst, who was impressed by his cheeky replies and told FW about this fellow. FW, as we saw in Stratemann's report, had had a hard time replacing Gundling, with several candidates choosing flight over humiliation. He pounced. Morgenstern got a job offer from him of 500 Reichstaler per annum and free lodgings as well as the title of Hofrat. Probably figuring that this sounded better than teaching kids in Moscow, Morgenstern accepted.
While Morgenstern had enough bite to diss the members of the tobacco college back when they dissed him, he still didn't escape the FW brand of humiliation entirely. Notoriously on that occasion when FW had him lecture and debate in November 1737 on "Scholars are fools" at the university of Frankfurt an der Oder. Said lecture got published later and is Leineweber's exhibit a) for his theory that Morgenstern's FW biography employs Antony's rethorical funeral speech technique from "Julius Caesar" because it shows him capable of subsersivness. Now, the intention on FW's part had been another scholar humiliation. Morgenstern had to wear a parody of the usual university professor get up, blue velvet with read threads and a red waistcoat, a gigantic periwig that went across his entire backside, and instead of the sword which professors then still carried, he wore a fox tail at his side. On royal order, all local professors had to attend. Now, as I said, Morgenstern later, that very same year, published the lecture. It starts with a big whopper, that "Narr" - fool" - hails from the Latin word "narrare", storyteling, and you can feel all the listening professors cringe. The basic theses of the lecture is that every man has his share of wrong opinions leading him to foolish behavior. The world is full of fools, from the simple shephard to priests. Morgenstern goes on about particular exhibits of foolery in all kinds of positions and tries to divide them by national characteristics. ("The foolishness of the British people consists of their longing for innovation beyond any measure or goal, simply because it is new, and thus they are able to betray their king and make themselves footstools to rebels and slaves.") Morgenstern has a go at the princes of this world as well, especially at those ruling small principalities, "who see their country, which can be viewed in its entirety when standing on an ants' hill, as a one big game park and want to do nothing but hunting". Leineweber says this is an obvious diss of FW's pal the Old Dessauer. Kings, too, are fools for "imagining the weight of their subjects' sins lay on their shoulders by the tons, and are pushing them into the abyss". Leineweber sees this as meaning FW. Only then in the last part of the lecture does he address what FW had ordered to be his subject, i.e. scholars as fools. Here Morgenstern has a go at the pietists for not understanding philosophers (allusion to Wolff) and at the theologians only studying in the hope of a rich income. And finally, he justifies his own fool get up and says that he who has been put by life in this position resembles "the first Roman mayor" Brutus, playing the fool when the Tarquinian Kings were still reigning. "As little as sensible clothing can make a fool wise, foolish clothing can confuse a sensible man."
This lecture was a big success with the students who cheered a lot, and with FW, too. Leineweber doubts he made Morgenstern vice chancellor of the university, but thinks he did give him a job there.
As to Agent Morgenstern's various secret missions:
1). England. According to Leineweber, happened neither in 1739 as the preface writer claims nor in 1737 as Morgenstern claims in his books, but in 1738. How do we know this? Because there's a cabinet order from Feburary 4th 1738 in which Morgenstern is ordered to go there, observe everything (but NOT do scholarly stuff), country and people, and then report to FW about his impressions. Under no circumstances was he to say that he was in Prussian service; he was supposed to travel under an alias and keep a diary noting down all he sees and hears. While Leineweber grants this proves Morgenstern had gained a measure of FW's trust and respect, he doubts thrifty FW financed Morgenstern a trip to Britain just to get a travelogue from him, and speculates that it might have been because in 1738, the eternal Jülich-Berg question came up again as the current title holder was suspected of kicking the bucket any time soon and FW might have wanted to find out what the mood in Britain was re: Prussia. His reason to suspect this is that the Prussian representative in London had similar orders, i.e. he was supposed to tell people that in the interest of the Protestant cause, Britain/Hannover should support FW's claim on Jülich and Berg.
2.) Christian Wolff. This, I covered in my Manteuffel write up. It's pretty well documented because of Wolff himself describing the encounter in letters to Manteuffel and Haude after they sent their "WTF? Do not accept!" letters. It does show Morgenstern could be pretty persuasive. Which is presumably why the next thing happened.
3.) Breslau. This is the most fascinating by far. Because it's after FW's death. Morgenstern knew of course that there was no chance Fritz would keep him on the pay roll as a fool/scholar. So he must have offered to work as a secret agent, and the amazing thing is, Fritz accepted and sent him to Breslau. Now, Breslau while Silesia belonged to MT had enjoyed huge privileges. On January 2nd 1741, victorious invader Fritz concluded a neutrality treaty with the city of Breslau, promising not to block any trade, to respect the city privileges and not to put any troops into Breslau. In exchange, he wanted to buy food for his troops at market price and be granted room for troop storage in the suburbs.
However, the lreading city councillor, Gutzmar, was a Habsburg loyalist and anti Prussian, and kept sending loyalty messages to MT, declaring that she was the true ruler of Silesia and always would be etc. This would not do. So Morgenstern was sent into the city of Breslau under the alias of Dr. Freyer, with the double mission of turning the mood around. He hit the coffee houses and spread anti-Habsburg, pro-Prussia propaganda. On May 17th, he sent a report to Fritz on the city situation where he strongly advises arresting Gutzmar. That Fritz actually listened to Morgenstern over Podewils, who argued against an arrest of Gutzmar, is fascinating.
Morgenstern's activities didn't go unnoticed; a few months after his arrival the city council complained about the "demogogery" of a Prussian agent colling himself Dr. Freyer but really being called Morgenstern. This had happened: on June 13, the citizens of Breslau were asked to give 500 000 Reichstaler to Fritz' war effort. The citizens protested, in a protest written by the city council but signed by a lot of important Breslau citizens, pointing to the neutrality treaty. On July 10th, the sum was lessened to 106 000 Gulden. Citiy of Breslau: But neutrality treaty! Morgenstern: Guys, this is just the punishment from Fritz for your city council's anti-Prussia rethoric. However, I can help you. If you withdraw your signatures from the protest, Fritz won't want any money from you AT ALL, and only your Habsburg loyal city council will have to pay. Win! Breslau citiizens: *withdraw signatures* Fritz: Well, since clearly there are some pro-Prussia citizens in this city, who are in incredibly danger from evil Habsburg loyalists, I must reward their touching faith in me by annexing Breslau to protect them.
Fritz: *annexes Breslau on August 10th, and orders the city of Breslau to pay Morgenstern a life long pension of 500 Reichstaler per annum*
Morgenstern remained in Breslau and made the most of his new reputation as someone who has the ear of their new Prussian Overlord. He also threw his weight around; for example, when an Abbot of one of the largest monasteries died, he told the monks he'd get them all sent to Spandau if they didn't vote for a new pro-Prussia abbot. And then, he got greedy. The years passed, and he wanted more and more money for doing Breslau favours with Fritz, until at last the game was up, courtesy of Chancellor Cocceji (Barbarina's father-in-law). Morgenstern was ordered to leave Breslau and Silesia and return to Potsdam and settle down there. Which he did, and where he lived for the rest of his long life. Why Potsdam? Leineweber wonders whether Fritz wanted to keep an eye on him (well, let others keep an eye on him), due to all Morgenstern knew, at least about the taking of the Silesian capital. (Lest we forget, the official story was that the glorious conqueror was greeted with enthusiasm and joy by all the grateful Silesians, especially the Protestant ones, for saving them from Habsburg tyranny.)
Morgenstern's later years must have been pretty lonely; supposedly, he didn't even clean up the spiders in his room because he liked their company. When Niicolai visited him in 1779, ever hunting for stories, he thought Morgenstern came across as a smart man, if excentric. He went out now and then to play chess, but that was it, and otherwise he lived in his rooms with his books, and wrote the FW manuscript.
Leineweber is a good doctoral thesis writer and compares it with the FW biographies which had appeared until Morgenstern's death, like Mauvillons, but suspects he might not have read them, as the political-biographical backstory on FW's youth is either Fritz-derived (F1) or just plain wrong (FW learning the art of war directly from Wlliam of Orange, who was dead by the time FW could have done so). Morgenstern also has some evidently wrong conclusions about what he observes. So, the fact that FW while making a point of speaking German was in fact fluent in French (when La Chetardie introduced his successor Valory to him, FW talked to them entirely in French for an hour) made Morgenstern assume he must have learned his good French as a young man when campaigning in Brabant. This was nonsense; FW learned it as a child mainly from his governess Madame de Roucoulles, it was in fact his first language; he made himself adopt German as a primary language later, but, says Leineweber, you can tell from some phrases even in the 1730s cabinet orders that he must have been thinking in French because the expressions and word orders he uses are direct literal translations, not how you'd naturally phrase it in German.
Speaking of Madame de Roucoulles; Leineweber points out that the fact FW appointed his own governess as Fritz' governess demonstrates that his opinion of the education he received can't have been as negative as Morgenstern claims it was. As for SC not interfering in Tiny Terror FW's terrorism: one of her few surviving letters to her confidant Fräulein von Pöllnitiz is all about that. And of course, that is why F1 appointed the strict Calvinist teacher who gave FW such a lasting impression of hellfire and predestination. Far from hating his Dad, says Leineweber, aside from his own affectionate letters (and those of F1 to him) we have the written at the time testiomony of other observers showing him being incredibly supportive through F1's final illness, crying about him, and beating up (naturally) an officer who dared to suggest that hey, at least soon FW will be able to make all those changes he wants to make.
Caroline: Morgenstern is the sole biographer to report that story. Leineweber also can't imagine that either Pöllnitz or Wilhelmine would have left it out of their respective memoirs if if the tale of FW's youthful and lasting love had been making the court gossip round. (Then again: it's always possible FW told Morgenstern after deciding to trust him and hadn't told anyone else.)
F1 to blame for baby Friedrich Ludwig dying and baby Friedrich Wilhelm dying as well (the former due to loud canon salutes, the later due to being treated by F1's bad doctor: Leineweber points out that the supposedly bad doctor was in fact one of the very very few F1 officials to not only survive into FW's era but to actually get a PAY RAISE from FW. This definitely argues against FW holding him responsible for the death of his baby son.
FW illegitimate? Nonsense, says Leineweber for pretty much my reasons. Firstly, SC would not have said this to her son, and secondly, FW, even drunk, would not have said it to his generals. This was really an incredibly touchy issue for 18th century royals. (Which is why the story of Heinrich and Ferdinand saying they wouldn't handwave their claim on the succession for a bastard is at least plausible, and why Catherine's son Paul was so majorly invested into demonstrating he was, in fact, (P)Russian Pete's son.)
F1 marrying unnessarily for a third time (as per Fritz and Morgenstern): not true, says Leineweber, since at the time of F1's last marriage the two baby boys had died, FW was without male issue, and F1 definitely did NOT want his Schwedt half brothers, sons of poisoning stepmom, to inherit his new kingdom.
Contradiction between on the one hand claiming FW was the best, and on the other hand including anecdotes in which he's the worst: Leineweber, as mentioned, thinks this was entirely intentional on Morgenstern's part. He's sitting in his Potsdam rooms, being lonely and bitter, but also aware that Fritz' official position on his father is to honor and praise him. So he writes a biography which ostensibly does just that but also delivers plenty of digs and anti-FW material, just like he'd been ordered to talk about scholars being idiots and ended up talking about everyone being fools. And course he was a practiced double talker and spy.
So: FW hagiography or FW critiqute? Both, says Leineweber.
Thea von Seydewitz' Manteuffel biography filled in those gaps about Manteuffel's political career, for the first explained to me where the weird "that time Grumbkow was in a scheme to assassinate FW" story from Wilhelmine's memoirs hails from, actually mentions Suhm a couple of times, and does a good job presenting a picture of its subject based on the sources available at the time (which include Other Seckendorff's diary, since this was published in 1926).
On the downside, there's that early 20th century... everything. She's not as nationalistic as, say, Richter, and thankfully there isn't an anti semitic remark in sight, but between describing the German nobility's habit of raising their kids bilingual, with French as the dominating language, which is described as "unfortunate" at the beginning and in her final "Manteuffel: Pros and Cons" summary listing as a pro that he tried to wrest Fritz out of the arms of the perfidious French (that's one way of putting it...), you definitely get the impression she didn't care for our neighbour across the Rhine. (Not withstanding presenting all the longer quotes in French and translating only the shorter ones in to German, which means I still haven't worked my way through the longer quotes.) She also while noting Manteuffel had a pretty good idea of the genius that was Fritz regrets he didn't quite realize the genius that was misunderstood FW, allowing the Tall Guys fetish and some of the "rougher" attitudes to blind Manteuffel for his true greatness.
Oh, and then there's this bit which made me go ????.
Seydewitz: Wilhelmine says Manteuffel and Frau von Blaspiel were lovers, but her memoirs aren't always reliable, and also Wilhelmine is a malicious gossip.
Self: Okay?
Seydewitz: Though Manteuffel was totally in love with Blaspiel. In fact, she may have been the only woman he truly loved, as evidenced in this lengthy French passage from a letter of his to Flemming which I'll now quote. All his other relationships with women were shallow or, like his marriage, for money and continuation of the family, but he was really into this one.
Self: So what is the malicious gossip part of Wilhelmine's take on the relationship again?
(Probable reason, though I'm speculating here in letting our author reply: Seydewitz: Sex. Just because he loved her and she loved him, there's no proof they ever had it. They were both married, after all. Wilhelmine says they were lovers, thus insinuating they had sex.=
With this advance warning and with an emphasis on the parts of Manteuffel's life not already covered by Bronisch (i.e. no Wolff saga, he had that investigated much more thoroughly than Seydewitz does here), let's have a look and the life and times of Le Diable: the political side.
So, here were go again. Born a Pomeranian noble with thirteen siblings, most of which died as babies, and none of whom actually played a role in his life. His last sibling, a sister, dies when he's the Saxon envoy in Berlin, and Flemming basically congratulates him that he now gets all his father's money in the "condolence" letter. (Fritz: no longer the worst condolence letter writer of the 18th century!) Manteuffel forms a couple of long lasting relationships through his life and proves to be a good friend capable of loyalty and strong affections, and also while being a lousy husband he'll be a good father to his daughters, but as far as his parents and the siblings were concerned, there seems to have been just polite respect.
(Seydewitz: Also, let me generalize here about Pomeranians, who are down to earth, honest folk incapable of deception as a rule. Manteuffel traded on that reputation when winning FW around despite being not a military guy (he never, not even for a hot second, served in any army) and being very much into culture. FW bought that "honest Pomeranian" image, too, but look, most Pomeranians are like that!
Self: Hang on. Even leaving aside that assigning characteristics to provinces is nonsense, let's have a look at some 18th century examples. Wasn't Grumbkow from Pomerania, too? Also, of course, Fredersdorf. I'll give you "down to earth", possibly, though there's the alchemy interest, but look, the guy did lead Fritz' spy ring.)
Young Manteuffel studies and gets his degree in Leipzig. This leaves him with a lasting fondness for the academic life and sciences far beyond the fashionable interest of his era. When he moves back to Leipzig for his final years, he'll celebrate his 50 years degree anniversary at his alma mater by re-enrolling and attending lectures. Then he goes on the Grand Tour, which in his case means the Netherlands, including a term at Utrecht, Belgium and France. He stays in Paris in a year, perfecting his French to Parisian levels. Like Fritz, his life long love for the French language and for (some) French literature won't mean he doesn't see France the political entity as an enemy. Unlike Fritz, it also won't mean he won't read and befriend German writing Germans authors, notably Wolff and both Gottscheds.
Once he's back in Prussia, Dad gets him a job at F1's court as Kammerjunker. Alas young Manteuffel blows this by unwise satire on the Countess Wartenberg, wife of one of the three Ws and mistress to F1 (because a King has to have one). The Wartenbergs sue, and the ongoing trial - which lasts until Count Wartenberg is toppled from favour by Crown Prince FW - has one very inconvenient condition - Dad Manteuffel promises he won't support cheeky son Manteuffel financially until it's over. This means young Diable shows up in Saxony basically broke. However, in a stroke of luck, he meets and impresses the current most powerful minister in August the Strong's cabinet, Flemming, who takes him on as a protegé. Manteuffel learns all about politics from him, including the unsavoury parts, but as opposed to to many a mentor/protegé relationship in politics which ends up with the protegé turning against the mentor or even replacing him, Manteuffel will remain loyal to Flemming for the rest of Flemming's life, even when he doesn't need him anymore. Not Seydewitz but yours truly is tempted to speculate that Flemming is the actual father figure in Manteuffel's life.)
Flemming gets Manteuffel his first diplomatic appointment, at the Danish court.
(Seydewitz: Let me make here a style critique. Manteuffel's reports and letters are informative and contain good anecdotes, but the manly to the point brevity of a Suhm is beyond him, and he even admits in a letter he tends to ramble. This is the first mention of Suhm in this book, but not the last.)
Rambling aside, Manteuffel has other problems. Because after some brief splendid years as King of Poland, August the Strong is currently reduced to being just Prince Elector of Saxony again courtesy of the double whammy of the French backing Stanislas Lecysnski (not for the last time) and Charles of Sweden invading and treating Saxony as his backyard. Being the young envoy of a defeated prince isn't fun, not to mention Manteuffel doesn't get his salary for the longest time. In a very 18th century noble way, he complains about his money woes in his report home by painting a picture of his creditors now wanting to pawn his underwear from his laundress, his wardrobe from his tailor and his carriage from his table. After he has to sell the kitchen silver, money finally arrives. And he goes on to prove he's worth it; he manages to talk the Danish King around to a neutrality treaty with Saxony, with the long term goal of making this neutrality treaty a friendship and alliance treaty, which since Denmark is next door to Sweden has obvious implications. This achievement is celebrated in Dresden, and Manteuffel's literal and metaphorical credit both in Saxony and in Denmark rises.
Seydewitz: A word about bribery here. To us, accepting any money sounds skeevy, but in terms of the 18th century, Manteuffel actually shows ethics when writing to Flemming he's decided that taking money from foreign governments is cool, as long as you never fleece and rob your own, not least because he'll stick to that.
Alas, Manteuffel's second stint as envoy in Denmark is not as successful, not least because his greater confidence means he makes the mistake of lecturing the Danish King ("Denmark is a truly Christian country, since the Danish administration seems to believe God will do all the necessary work"), who basically kicks him out.
Seydewitz: Just before that, he writes another untranslated lengthy French passage to Flemming which makes him sound like a French revolutionary about how absolute monarchy sucks. I could not believe my eyes the first time I read that, both because Manteuffel wrote it and because whom he wrote it to - Flemming, a life long career courtier and enabler of an absolute monarch, who doesn't seem to disagree much. Guys, if you thought that way, why didn't you say so out loud? Okay, I understand, it would have been career suicide, but still. It would have been manly and noble.
Flemming and August don't blame Manteuffel for this, though, not least because what he lectured King Christian on was the truth, and since the three Ws are out of power by now (with Grandpa Wartensleben the sole one not disgraced), Manteuffel gets a really plum asiggnment as envoy next: Berlin! F1 is still King, and he and Manteuffel now hit it off famously. Then he dies, much to Manteuffel's initial regret, FW becomes King, and Manteuffel for the first time proves how good he really can be when challenged: despite not being into FW for a whole variety of reasons - the cheapness, the military fetish, the tall guys, the drinking - Manteuffel actually isn't a natural born drinker, but both FW and August are, so whenever he's with them, he has to fake it - , the rudeness - and despite being an unpromising candidate aside from being tall (not a soldier, never has been! Into culture and hedonism!), he manages to win FW over not just to himself as Saxon envoy, but to himself. He does this partly through altering his public persona somewhat - as mentioned earlier, he suddenly plays up his Pomeranian origins, and retunes his conversation to less culture, more jokes, and partly by becoming buddies with Grumbkow.
Seydewitz: Let me observe here that in his reports to Flemming, he was honestly impressed with some of FW's traits, the workoholism and some of the reforms, though regretably he did not recognize FW's true greatness. Also, as an example of how our standards for Kings have altered, look no further than Manteuffel never getting over his dislike for FW's cheapness, err, thriftiness, while never once complaining about August's gigantic waste of money.
Self: August was his boss, complaining about that to Flemming who enabled the expenses would have been counterproductive, but I still see your point. Baroque and Rokoko folk expected Kings to be generous and throw money around, and one reason why FW was regarded as such a freak was that he didn't.
Manteuffel also won over Frau von Baspiel, SD's lady-in-waiting, wife to FW's pre Grumbkow minister of war, Baspiel, for the Saxon cause, not just to his own personal charms. From this point onwards, she'll correspond not just with him but with Flemming, which becomes a pot point. As mentioned, he confesses to Flemming of being actually in love with her. She's beautiful, she's smart, cultured, and when SD is made regent by FW during his first lengthy absence, she, acting on Manteuffel's suggestion, talks SD into demanding protocols for every council session, protocols which Frau von Baspiel then shares with her lover and Flemming, so they really know exactly what's going on.
(Seydewitz: Though the claim that they were lovers, just because they were in love, is malicious gossip on Wilhelmine's part.)
Needless to say, this all makes Flemming & August very happy with Manteuffel indeed, and Manteuffel gets a promotion, from envoy to minister of the interior in August's cabinet. About the last thing he has to do as Saxony's envoy in Berlin, though, is carrying out Flemming's instructions to have FW arrest Countess Cosel in exchange for some tall deserters (which will end up in Cosel being imprisoned for the rest of her life).
Manteuffel to Flemming: I know she's your arch enemy and thus also mine, and she sure as hell didn't do anything for me while she was still in favour, but nonetheless, this seems a bit harsh, no?
Seydewitz: Look, I'm not uncritically fond of you, but waxing on sentimentally about something you participate in is cheap.
Self: I'm with you on that one.
Hanging out with August directly means more drinking, so it's a good thing Manteuffel is FW-trained by now. It also means not handing over a note from one of August's many one night stands to August when he's in the company of the current Maitresse en titre, Countess Dönhoff. And it means working towards an ever closer Saxony-Prussia-Austria alliance within the HRE, a long term goal which sufferes a temporary heavy blow when the Clement Affair happens in 1719. Which is when I get my explanation as to where Wilhelmine got her story about a near FW assassination from. Not, as I guessed, from Mom, or not only; most likely, she got it from Dad. How so? Well, brace yourself. It's going to be wild ride...
Michael Klement or Clement: I'm an Hungarian conman in training. For some reason, a 19th century publication will call me Jakob, but my first name as listed by the Secret Prussian State Archive is Michael, so Michael it shall be. Anyway, after selling out my first boss Prince Racocsky to Prince Eugene, I get to work for Eugene for a while, long enough to get the hang of his writing, because I'm also a gifted forger. Unfortunately, Eugene just refused to make me his right hand man, so before he could fire me, which he eventually did, I kept an eye out for other opportunities, and became a spy for Flemming for a while. Flemming, like Eugene, was first impressed and then less so, probably because my spy tells tended to be a bit on the colorful and less on the factual side. So Flemming fired me as well, but not before I didn't get a good hard look on the who is who of his spy network. Which came in handy, because by now I was pissed off and wanted REVENGE. So I went to FW.
FW: In the autumn of 1718, I'm less paranoid than I will be, but this will now change, because Honest Clement, a Hungarian who is NOT a Catholic, tells me a terrible tale. Prince Eugene, Grumbkow and others at my court have hatched a plot to kill me, and via controlling my Schwedt cousin become regent for my son, little Fritz, who will be raised A CATHOLIC and a tool of Rome. I'm now only sleeping with pistols at my side for a while. Those letters from Eugene Clement presented were declared really Eugene's handwriting by other courtiers who know it. I'm now ordering everyone's letters to be opened, which is how I discover that Frau von Baspiel is corresponding with Manteuffel and Fleming. Not only is she clearly a traitorous WHORE, she dares to compare me to Tiberius, and even though I hated my Latin and ancient history lessons, I know that wasn't a compliment. I'm sending her to Spandau and firing her husband. Wait, Clement says there's more?
Clement: This is where I make my mistake. I claim Old Dessauer is part of the conspiracy as well.
FW and Old Dessauer: *have a scene of manly tears where old Dessauer says if FW believes this of him, he should kill him right away. Take up your sword again or take up me!*
FW: *takes up Dessauer*
Old Dessauer: I can't stand Grumbkow, or Flemming, or Manteuffel, and I'm gonna slap that whore Baspiel, literally, but maybe you should demand an explanation from Vienna and Dresden before proceding any further?
Prince Eugene: Oh, FFS. Listen, FW, if the boss says to make war on you, I will, but I'm not going to plot your assassination. And no one wants to make your kid a Catholic. Why do I have an inkling this subject might come up again in my life? Anyway, you know me from Malplaquet. I give you my word as a fellow soldier.
Flemming: Fuck, fuck, fuck. This will set us back decades.
Manteuffel: But we're innocent?
Flemming: Regarding assassination and conversion plans, sure, but we did spy on him via Baspiel. He won't forgive that.
Manteuffel: We'll see about that. Concentrate on denying what we can honestly deny for now. In fact, take the initiative. Let's demand that our good name gets cleared by FW personally! That will impress him, I tell you.
Clement: I get interrogated three times. The third time, I get shown instruments of torture, which is when I confess all.
FW: I don't think threatening torture to find out the truth is a good idea. Poor Clement clearly spoke out of fear. I'm now going to visit him every day in prison, because I still believe there's a conspiracy against me to put my kid on the throne. Thiwill become a fixed idea for me from this point onwards. My scepticism regarding the use of torture or the threat of torture as a truth finding instrument will not come up again in 1730, though.
Grumbkow: Doesn't the bond of manly comrades count anymore? Do I look like a regicide to you? Just read Eugene's letter, boss.
FW: ...Okay. You're innocent. Eugene is, too. BUT SOMEONE CONSPIRED AGAINST ME, I JUST KNOW IT. Just look at Vienna and Dresden insisting that Clement be punished. That just smells like a patsy to me.
Clement: I get poked with glowing iron and then hanged, but because FW really feels sorry for me, the hangman strangles me before having a go with the glowing iron. A plus compassionate ruler, FW! My last speech will emphasize that, and also that while I did con you, I did it because I wanted you to be alert to all the CATHOLIC skeeviness going on in Vienna and Saxony.
Flemming & Manteuffel: We're both Protestants. Also, we're still demanding FW clears our good name.
SD: And I demand you release my favourite lady-in-waiting from Spandau.
FW: *releases Frau von Baspiel in early 1719 from Spandau, but banishes her and her husband to Kleve*
Seydewitz: I know Wilhelmine says she ended up as governess of the younger princesses, but that won't happen until Fritz comes to the throne, which is when he'll do his mother the favour of recalling and reinstalling her.
Grumbkow: Let me phrase the name clearing for you in a subtle way that satisfy their demands so we can go back to politics as usual yet also make it sound as if you're still not convinced, Sire.
Official FW letter to August in June 1719: "I, FW, declare to bear no grudge against Manteuffel and Flemming, and to respect them in the way their qualities deserve"
Manteuffel: That was...amazingly subtle for him. Still. It's a start. Let some time pass and let me work on reconstructing the relationship network, and he'll come around.
Self: Incidentally, aren't the intervening years when Suhm is Saxon envoy and FW hates his guts?
Manteuffel: works his magic, so that when FW and Fritz visit Dresden in 1728, they actually stay at his house. (Fritz' first preserved letter to Wilhelmine, which contains a "hot or not?" report on August, was written there.) This is also when the "Society against Sobriety" is founded, with Grumbkow as President, August as "patron", FW as "compatron" , and Manteuffel as, what else, Le Diable. At this point, FW likes him so much again that he writes him in French. (!) (Seydewitz quotes a letter dated December 23rd 1729 from Wusterhausen from, sic, "Votre tres Affectionne Amy FW". (Fritz came by his spelling honestly.) And FW borrows him 5000 Reichstaler so Manteuffel can attend and shop at the Leipzig Book Fair, for ten years without interest. Manteuffel-concerning letters to the Prussian envoy in Dresden sound thusly (in January 1730): "Dites de Ma part au Diable qu'il change de vie, touchant le bouteille, ou il souccombera, quel malheur pour la cause commune, et tres fidele serviteur du Patron et ami du Compatron."
Good to know for Manteuffel, because as mentioned in Bronisch's books, 1730 is when his career takes a turn for the worse and officially ends because Flemming is dead and Hoym has taken over. Flemming died in 1728, and from 1728 to 1730, Manteuffel was also cabinet minister for Foreign Affairs. As a reminder, the main point of clash between Manteuffel and Hoym was that Manteuffel was favouring a Saxony-Prussia-Austria alliance, now also including Russia, wile Hoym had no time for the HRE and thought Saxony should ally for France and Hannover/Britain instead. (Manteuffel correctly thought France would push Stanislas' Lescyinski's claim for the Polish throne again as soon as August the Strong died and so definitely saw it as the main enemy.) So between 1728 and 1730, Mantteuffel was in a struggle with Hoym about whose ideas would prevail with August. And then this happened:
Summer of 1729: FW and G2 have their almost-duel, Prussia and England growl at each other.
Manteuffel: Excellent. If August offers to support FW militarily, not only will FW remain our ally but Hoym's idea of alliances with France and Britain is shot down, since France, for a breahttaking change, is currently on the same page as England in this matter.
Suhm in Berlin: FW, August could totally negotiate between you and Hannover and reconcile you with your brother-in-law.
Manteuffel: WTF, Suhm? WTF?
Seydewitz doesn't say so, she just says he was indignant, but I think the timing works: this is when Suhm is recalled as envoy.
Manteuffel: goes to Berlin himself in September, at least that's the intention
Manteuffel: unfortunately also gets sick in Breslau, en route; by the time he has recovered, FW has calmed down, and neither a duel or a war happen, without August having had the chance to support FW militarily.
Manteuffel: Grr. Argh. Okay, if that's the case: look, FW, Saxony has gotten on a war footing because of you. We had expenses. Please pay same?
FW: Nope, but good try, and I still like you. Pray keep up the good work against Team France!
Manteuffel: I don't think so. I can see where the wind is blowing. Starting to evacuate my papers to Pomerania now, will hand in my resignation in the summer.
Since, however, even a retired to Pomerania Manteuffel has a correct instinct as to whom to befriend, he becomes buddies with young Brühl, which means, as reported elsewhere, that when Hoym falls, he's in contact with an up and coming power again. As Bronisch told as well, in 1733, Private Citizen Manteuffel moves to Berlin and gets lots of invites from FW.
FW: But you're not again in service, are you?
M: Nope. Total private citizen, me.
FW: I'm glad, because I couldn't talk to you as frankly as I do if you were still working for Saxony. But now we're just honest countrymen!
(Manteuffel in 1733: was instrumental in Brühl's campaign to bribe enough Poles to get August III. elected as King of Poland, due to his old connections with the Polish nobility.)
Seydewitz offers more details for how Mantteufel got into Fritz' circle. FW had one of his serious illnesses where everyone predicted his death in 1734. Now Manteuffel had known Fritz before, of course - as mentioned, FW and Fritz were guests in his Dresden palace during the 1728 trip - , but he hadn't sought out a relationship with him earlier, not least because he hadn't been in Berlin during the 1720s when Fritz was getting old enough to have a relationship with, Suhm was. Now, however, it was another matter.
Seydewitz: Manteuffel's letters to Brühl through the 1730 offer a great look at the goings on of the Berlin court, and it's a shame they haven't been published so far, except in excerpts in Weber's two essays. Note that Manteuffel doesn't just write what the Saxonian court would love to hear; if FW is disgruntled with August III., he says so, and also when a Saxon action is perceived badly by other influential people. He also had a better idea than Brühl of how powerful Saxony was and wasn't, to wit, that there was no way it could go to war with Prussia and win anymore, so being allies and friends was quintessential, and tried to hammer that down. This, Seydewitz approves of, but she strongly disapproves of initially sinister ways Manteuffel uses to get from Team FW to Team Fritz. For starters, he asks Brühl for money to buy presents for various ladies (!) who could win Fritz' favour and/or have influential husbands, and for the various young men around Fritz who look like they could have lasting power. Then, he mentions le Chetardie and he are after the same prostitute ("grisette") whom Fritz supposedly visited in Ruppin and who could be a really useful channel, and anyway, it's prostitutes in general, not ladies in general.
Now, since Manteuffel later will have no doubt Fitz doesn't swing that way ("Hadrian"), it's interesting that at this point, when his knowledge is that of an avarage good courtier but not yet intimate, he sees Fritz as someone into women enough that this could work as an in. And of course it actually fits with all the stories of young Fritz "debauching" himself with prostitutes. The girls don't pay off, but the various gents in Fritz' social circle do. (Seydewitz doesn't name names, but I'm eyeing young Wartensleben.) FW shows he's not dying yet after all, but Manteuffel now has his in and Seydewitz is relieved that "we're breathing cleaner air again" in the reports, i.e. no more prostitutes on the payroll, instead, it's philosophical and cultural debate time, and she's also glad Manteuffel sounds honestly impressed.
Bronisch covered the rest. Three things in Seydewitz which he either didn't mention, or not in detail, or I skipped re: the Manteuffel/Fritz breakup in the fall of 1736:
1.) Formey in his write up of Manteuffel says Old Dessauer (who disliked him of old) scored a point with Fritz by saying how ridiculous it looked for a prince at Fritz' age to still need a teacher to guide him.
2.) Other Seckendorff's secret journal contains this bit: "The Devil confided in me that Suhm has talked to him about Junior, and that (Junior) said to Suhm he'd heard during his journey through East Prussia news of the Devil's" troublemaking and thus has ended the correspondence in order not to have trouble inflicted on him."
(Side note: this is probably the less euphemistically put same explanation Suhm gives in his write-up of Fritz to Brühl later. BTW, it also shows that despite the 1729 clash, there wasn't long term animosity between Suhm and Manteuffel.)
3.) The matter with the painting of Manteuffel by Matthieu. This in itself was an unusual portrait for a German nobleman because it doesn't show him in official wardrobe but in a dressing gown, sans wig, and with alll the surroundings coding him as a scholar rather than a noble. The trouble, though, is that the painting shows the letter Manteuffel is writing starting with "Monseigneur". (It's not readable anymore.) Seydewitz says the painting today (1926) hangs in the book-loaning hall of the university of Leipzig. Who knows whether it's still there, but given that Manteuffel remained connected to his alma mater all his life, I wouldn't be surprised if he left it to them. Anyway, neither Fritz nor FW were amused when they learned of this "through an indiscretion of the painter" (i.e. Matthieu), though Seydewitz doesn't source this info to an original document but to Gurlitt's "Beschreibende Darstellung der Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler".
FW's reaction, btw, reminds me of something in Bronisch which I forgot to mention in my write up there: FW, like his son with the Sanssouci tableround, liked the fantasy that in the tobacco parliament, he could be relaxed among friends without any formality, so as opposed to everywhere else, people did not have to rise for the King if he entered or left. Now, remember how we found out that as late as1739, there was yet another FW/Fritz crisis, along with speculation about a change of the succession? I think I found a reason. Bronisch said that in 1739, FW invited Fritz to the Tobacco Parliament again. Fritz enters. Everyone rises.
FW: *death glare at all his tobacco chums*
FW: *does not visit the tobacco college ever again*
FW: *does not forgive if people give him the impression they are ditching him for the rising sun, not ever*
Oh, one more Seydewitz trivia: she claims Manteuffel was nominated by Fritz of Wales to the Royal Society in the 1740s. I'm going to trust the latest Andrew Mitchell dissertation has done its homework on this and that it was Andrew M., not Fritz of Wales. At any event, she says this does show that while Manteuffel was not a power factor anymore in the 1740s, he had become a name in the world of letters and scholars. Also, while a lousy husband, he had his daughters (his sole son didn't survive; the title went to a distant relation he adopted) educated very well and the surviving letters show he enjoyed debating with them on a high level. Basically, Manteuffel in his silver fox years comes across as good with young people in general (see also Formey still being starry eyed about him decades later), only with Fritz he'd bitten off more than he could chew.
Have finally finished the reread of the Suhm letters.
1. I found entirely endearing this part where Fritz sends Suhm an ode (because of course he does; I'm only surprised he didn't send more), and Suhm replies firstly that he loved it and not just because Fritz wrote it (but I suspect only because Fritz wrote it :P), and secondly that he doesn't write poetry but wants to send Fritz some poetry in return for his nice ode. So he, Suhm, is borrowing some poetry for the purpose and enclosing it, but he won't lie and pretend it's his.
But also, he writes, "I will not deceive you by giving them to you as my own, as the Latin Poet formerly deceived the Augustus of his time."
Which Latin poet? Do you know, selenak? It might ring a bell if you tell me, but I'm not recalling any Augustan poetry plagiarism scandals off the top of my head.
Also, I notice Suhm is casting Fritz as Augustus here.
2. I was right about Suhm getting a cut from the fundraising! Not until 1739, so two years into it. And I was wrong about the ring; that was a simple gift with Fritz's portrait in 1740, but in 1739, Fritz tells Suhm he can take a 10% cut, and Suhm seems pleased.
3. There's a 6-month gap in their correspondence in the spring and summer of 1738. Suhm apparently wrote a very long letter explaining in detail why he was so busy, which the 1787 editor says he cut out (in general, he says he cuts out a lot whenever Suhm starts to get boring), and since Trier has nothing that the 1787 translation doesn't, apparently Preuss silently cut too!
(Carlyle complains about the letters being boring, though I don't know what edition he might be referring to.)
4. Suhm joins the ranks of people who can't do vivid pen portraits when he depicts Duke Anton Ulrich, whom he portrays in generically positive terms. The only detail that was interesting to me is that Anton has read all of Wolff's works more than once, which "have, without doubt, a little contributed to form his mind, and strengthen his character." My reaction was: read all the philosophy you can now, Anton, you're going to need it!
Oh! cahn, Anton Ulrich is EC's brother who marries into the Russian royal family (Anna Leopoldovna, who had an affair with Saxon envoy Lynar), fathers Ivan VI, ends up imprisoned with his family in remote Russia, and refuses to leave his daughters even when he's given the chance. It was in 1739 that he married Anna, which is why Suhm is doing the pen portrait now: he's telling Fritz what he thinks of his brother-in-law (whom Fritz will later recommend be locked away in the remotest corners of the world).
So I hope all that Wolffian philosophy was helpful!
5. In February 1740, Fritz tells Suhm he's awaiting the events that will allow him to summon Suhm and "perform promises." This makes sense of Suhm's decision to take for granted in June that Fritz wants him and submit his resignation without waiting for a formal invitation.
Also, Fritz is apparently still unsure that it's reciprocated, because his next sentence is: "I hope you are always in the same sentiments in which I have known you, and that you have not forgotten the agreement made the night of our separation." That's why, when he *doesn't* hear anything from Suhm on the subject in June, he gets worried.
This is also when he sends the ring with his portrait to Suhm.
6. Apparently Suhm was in Warsaw not just on his route back, but because he was required to report there for his formal, in-person removal as envoy. But by the time he got there, was so sick that he was exempted from making an appearance at court. :/
7. Remember how the Hohenzollerns didn't use regnal numbers, and so everyone was confused by Friedrich Wilhelm? And that's how Fritz ended up being called Friedrich III, with FW as F2? 1787 editor has him as William I!
8. The editor omits two of the last letters Suhm ever wrote and Fritz's replies, when he's on his way from St. Petersburg. Thank goodness for Preuss!
9. Suhm's last letter but one congratulates Fritz on the death of Charles VI 8 days before:
The warm interest which I take, Sire, in the splendour and felicity of a reign which you promise to your dear subjects, does not permit me to speak of that event, without previously felicitating your Majesty on these great conjectures which will give you an opportunity of augmenting your glory, by endeavoring to promote the interest and happiness of your states.
The editor footnotes this with an observation that the event is the emperor's death, and the conjectures without doubt refer to the claims to Silesia that Fritz is now going to advance.
I thought that was interesting *before* this morning's salon, when we found hints that Suhm's politics might leaned in the anti-Imperial direction. Putting these two together, I'm now even more convinced!
So apparently Suhm, who in his 1740 character portrait said that Fritz cared more about fame than anything, and who in the 1720s was apparently trying to reconcile FW with G2 and may or may not have been hanging around with the English envoy Dubourgay, is now saying that Charles' death will be a great opportunity for Fritz to achieve glory by advancing the interests of his state.
Yeah, so apparently Suhm would have been 100% behind the Silesian invasion. Since he's leaving Saxon service and becoming a Prussian (and turning his kids into Prussians), making his loyalties pretty darn clear, I'm not *sure* how he would have felt about how Fritz treated Saxony in the first Silesian wars (badly enough that it contributed to Saxony switching sides between the first and second), but since neither anywhere near as bad as the Third Silesian War, Suhm might not have had the Algarotti and Maupertuis experience had he lived. Those two both had the expectation that it was going to be Enlightened Academy Times only, and were twiddling their thumbs and getting increasingly frustrated by the sudden emphasis on war (and in one case, captured by Austrians).
Whereas Suhm might have been in for *some* surprises at how Fritz with absolute power turned out, it seems that he would have been less surprised and disappointed than people who knew him less well (Algarotti, Voltaire, etc.). "Go Fritz, invade Silesia! Greatest of all kings! Free those Protestants! :P"
By 1756, the year of the great Saxony invasion and start of the war crime-ridden exploitative occupation, Suhm would have been 65 and, well, we have to assume *much* better health for him to have made it that long, as opposed to the one year of extra health he would have needed in order to witness the whiplash that much of Europe (but not Manteuffel or Superville!) got from Fritz. But I do have to assume that the bombing of Dresden, whether for strategic motives or just spite, would have been a WTF moment even for Suhm.
Note, though, that all his sons were in the Prussian army, and might well have been involved in the occupation. I guess one hopes that they did live in St. Petersburg during the 1736-1740 period, because then they were born in Prussia, raised in Prussia (because even after Suhm stopped being envoy, he remained on a pension in Berlin, presumably with his family, unless he decided to be extra cautious about FW's hanging tendencies), with at most occasional visits to Dresden, and then spent a few years abroad in Russia, so the transition back to Berlin and then into the Prussian army was hopefully not surprising or unusually traumatic (as opposed to the normal traumas of war).
I mean, going native is a thing for envoys. Hoym, long-time Saxon envoy to France, was accused of it when he returned (and thus his pro-France foreign policy surprises me not at all). For all that Suhm didn't fit in very well with FW, after 10 years in Berlin, he clearly went native as a Prussian (hence choosing to stay in Berlin for 6 years as a private citizen, until he needed money, which can't have all been a desire to stay near a Fritz he barely saw).
Whereas Rottembourg was ambassador to Prussia on 3 separate occasions, because every single time he was like, "I need to get the fuck out of here. I mean totally for health reasons! Please recall me before I strangle FW and cause an international incident to a better climate!" :P
It is known that the Catholic Church was against cremation, largely successfully as archaeological evidence indicates. At least it is customary to assume that abandoning cremation in Nordic burial places as well as the introduction of items with Christian symbols in the graves, is a sign of Christianisation.
However, there were other funerary customs viewed by the Church as irreverent and cruel abuses that it attempted to ban in the Later Middle Ages. Especially among dignitaries dying far from home, it was customary to disembowel the cadaver, dismember and cook it so that the bones were dissevered from the flesh. The bones could then be easily transported and interred. This practice was known as “embalming more teutonico,” an originally German custom that became widespread by the thirteenth century. Indeed, the bodies of certain saints such as Saint Louis XI [sic; typo for IX] of France (1214–1270) and Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) were treated this way. It came, however, to be vehemently opposed by the papacy...This abomination was considered impious both in the eyes of the Divine Majesty as in those of humans, and the body thus treated would be denied Christian burial.
Even though the rubric only applied to the cutting up and boiling of bodies, it also encompassed the “dispersed burials,” cutting up, eviscerating and division of corpses and the burial of various body parts (such as the heart, entrails and body) at different locations. Thus, dispersed burials were also banned by the papacy. However, papal dispensations are known to have been granted to persons of influence so that instead of abolishing the custom, it became an even more desirable status indicator of the highest echelons of medieval society.
I would add that the French kings had had their hearts and other organs buried separately for centuries in St. Denis, which is why we have Louis XVII's heart (which was removed after his death, per royal tradition), but not his body, which was lost during the Revolution.
To quote again from the article,
Considering that important royal dynasties persisted in disembowelling their dead members, this ban seems to have largely disregarded among the elite, even without special authorisation or fear of excommunication. Moreover, another important motive for chopping up bodies was naturally related to a central tenet of Christian doctrine, namely, the cult of saints. The trade in relics, severed body parts of saints, had been initiated in late Antiquity and continued throughout the Middle Ages and caused the Church fathers to debate the possibility of resurrection in these cases. For example, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) considered resurrections as “the reassemblage” of all the bits and pieces of the body. Yet, judging by Roman legislation and Christian sermons banning the chopping up of and commerce in body parts, the trade in relics started to grow in the latter half of the fourth century. It continued to flourish in the Middle Ages, and the boiling of dead potential saints was necessary to have “the bones […] more quickly available for distribution.”
Mildred wanted me to check out "Rituals of Retribution" by Richard J. Evans, which is a heavy volume, covering centuries of capital punishment in Germany. 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. Now bear in mind that courtesy of felis, we found out that the state edict by Fritz he quotes re: sodomy in the full text clearly deals with sodomy in the sense of "viehische Vermischung", i.e. bestiality, not m/m sex. However, felis demonstrated that sodomy in the sense of homosexuality was also a term used in 18th century German (whereas in modern German it usually means strictly bestiality). So I can't say whether the poor guy Evans mentions as being burned for "sodomy" in FW's time had had gay sex, or whether he had a go at the sheep. Anyway, here are the relevant passages:
The eighteenth century saw the phasing-out, then the abandonment of torture in virtually every German state. Already in the second half of the seventeenth century, torure began to be less widely applied, with its incidence in Munich falling from 44 per cent of criminal cases in 1650 to merely 16 per cent forty years later. In Prussia King Friedrich I. already required all cases where torture was proposed to be referred to him for advance approval. It was limited to cases of murder and treason by order of Friedrich II. in 1740, then abolished formally by him on 4 August 1754. Other German states followed suit in the second half of the eighteenth century, dropping torture in practice even before it was abandoned by law. Torture was last used in Würtemberg in 1778, and it was formally abolished there in 1809.
(The author lists the various German states and their documented use of torture vs the formal abolishment. Guess which one was the last? Hannover. Last use in 1818; it gets formally declared illegal in 1822. Bear in mind here Hannover is still ruled by Britain, as it will be until Victoria ascends to the throne. Bear also in mind how certain authors even today, like, say, David O. the Émilie and Voltaire biographer, go on about how much more barbaric the German states, especially Prussia, were compared to England in the 18th Century.)
One factor: the increasing use of prisons not just as a temporary hold until the penalty for the criminal was executed (i.e. killing them, torturing them, cutting off limbs) but instead as its own punishment:
The decline of public corporal and capital punishment in Weimar, for example, began with the construction of the penitentiary (Zuchthaus) in 1719. It was some time before this development really took hold. Ironically, the wave of prison foundations that swept the German states in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was part of a general crackdown on crime and deviance that also included a number of draconian extensions of the death penalty. In 1725, King Friedrich Wilhelm I. of Prussia issued an edict declaring that all gypsies found within the boundaries of his kingdom were to be strangled, while sodomites would be burned alive. In 1736 the same monarch threatened to hang thieves in Berlin from gallows erected in front of the houses which they had burgled. (...)
However, this development was relatively short-lived. Not only was it being gradually undermined by the increasing availability of imprisonment as an alternative to these draconian physical sanctions, it was also threatened by the growth of order and stability in German society in the eighteenth century. Recent studies have shown that a long-term decline in crimes of volence began in the late seventeenth century, and continued well into the twentieth. Far from representing a shift from crimes against the person to crimes against property, as used to be thought, this was part of a long-term reduction in overall crime rates which went hand in hand with the growing control of the stae over its citizens. (....) The neding of the great wars of religion that devastated Europe for a century and a half after the Reformation left European society searching for peace and order in an altered world. In a depopulated Germany, in particular, the competition for land and researches had become markedly less severe in the wake of the Thirty Years War. And the end of the 'seventeenth-century crisis', the improvement in climatic condotion with the gradual ending of the 'little ice age', and the start of a prolonged period of growth and prosperity in agriculture, meant a slow improvement in living standards which also played its part in the transformation of social attitudes. The eighteenth century was an era of relative social peace after the upheavals of the previous two hundred years. In the long run, this was bound to have an effect on the way that penal sanctions operated.
While long-term developments in the history of the law, the state and society all undoubtedly underlay the trend towards milder punishments that begain in Germany towards the middle of the eighteenth century, it remains the case that the power over penal policy lay in the hands of the princes, and that legislation to restrict and abolish torture and to do away with the more baroque forms of public punishment was enacted by individual monarchs. Here the crucial figure was Friedrich II (known to his English admirers as Frederick the Great), who succeeded to the Prussian throne in 1740. Like many eighteenth-century monarchs, he was on extremely bad terms with his father, and determined to reverse many of his policies when he became king. (...) Friedrich II paid particular attention to the legal system. 'Princes are born to be judges of the people,' he wrote; 'everything that makes them great has its origin in the administration of justice.' He found the confusion of Germanic and Roman law, the variety of local practice and custom, the prevalence of corruption and delay (...) both irrational and unproductive. He apointed a series of leading jurists to advise him, especially Samuel Cocceji (1697-1751), Johann Heinrich von Carmer (1721 - 1801), and Carl Gottlieb Svarez (1746 - 98). Their ideas on the civil and criminal law were shaped by the doctrines of the French philosophes. In 1740 they undertook a comprehensive programme of judical reforms, including the effective abolition of torture, as all as the replacement of drowning in a sack with beheading as the punishment for infanticide. A characteristic example of the Prussian monarch's attitude towards penal sanctions and their purpose can be seen in his attitude to the punishment laid down by his father for the crime of unnatural sexual intercourse. Ten years before Friedrich II. came to the throne, in 1730, Andreas Lepsch had been burned at the state in Potsdam for sodomy. In 1746, Friedrich II. critisized this procedure on the grounds of its effects on the public, remarking:
"It is undeniable that through frightful public capital punishments, many young and innocent spirits, who naturally want to know the reason for such a terrible executio, especially if they are also unaware of the finer sentiments (just as the criminal is), will be scandalized rather than improved, and it is even possible that evil tendencies may be awakened in them, tendencies of which they previously had no inkling."
He ordered therefore that the practice should stop. Nor was this the only example of the new attitude to penal policy. The Prussian monarch issued a similar decree in 1749 concerning the punishment of breaking with the wheel. The objective was 'not to torment the criminal but rather to make a frightful example of him in order to arouse repugnance in others'. Friedrich commanded therefore that, providing the offender's crime was not of 'such enormity' that a 'completely abhorrent example' was necessary, 'the criminal should be strangled by the hangman before being broken by the wheel, but secretly, and without it coming to the special attention of the assembled spectators, and then his execution with the wheel can proceed'. Nothing could express more clearly the monarch's understanding of the purpose of punishment. It did not matter in the least that the malefactor was actually dead when the sentence was carried out, or that a deliberate deception was being played on the public. For the rationalistic Friedrich II., the execution was a kind of pedagical theatre, drawing its purposes and its methods from the model of baroque tragedy. Its purpose was not to inflict suffering, but to deter by making an example of the offender. And it had to awaken feelings of revulsion in the onlooker. Anything that seemed likely to frustrate this purpose was to be avoided. This included the infliction of pain to such a degree that the sympathy of the crowd might be evoked. Apart from this obvious policial purpose, it is also important to note that Friedrich did in the end consider that excesssive suffering was if possible to be avoided. The degree of pain was to be calculated precisely, in rational terms. Along with these measures, Fredrich II. and his advisoers also issued new procedures to speed up the administration of justice and remove abuses. The King throught that if there were fewer executions, each one would constitute a more impressive spectacle. The point was not to kill offenders but to educate the public. A crucial step was taken in 1743, when Friedrich II. removed the death penalty for theft. Where he considered that education would be effective with offenders as well as with the public, he encouraged a switch from capital and corporal punishment to imprisonment. The prison, as a Berlin judge wrote in 1770, should be 'a place not only of punishment but also of improvement'. The prosons and workhouses which were now constructed reflected the widespread eighteenth century belief that poverty, crime and vagrancy were chiefly the result of an idle and disorderly lifestyle. Hard work and submission to the prison rules were intended to encourage a change of attitude on the part of the prisoners and centration on public punishment as a theatrical demonstration designed to make the public abhor the criminal was part, in other words, of a broader concentration on the educative and deterrent function of punishment.
The next big change in Prussia re: capital punishment comes in 1795 and is therefore out of the scope of our era. 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. An English reader would automatically assume it did, I guess, due to the different way the term is used today in English and in German.
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!
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.)
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.
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):
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.
Sabrow sees Gundling marrying Anne de Larray - who is the daughter of another historian (who lived in England for years) - in 1720 as Gundling managing to create something of a parallel world for himself to escape in. The wedding itself is one of the few time where he gets the better of his tormentors, who had prepared a laxative for him to drink on his wedding night so he wouldn't get off the loo. He evidently by now had seen something like this coming and thus avoided it happening by simply playing sick two days before and on short notice getting special permission to marry Anne in his bedroom, which meant they had the wedding, and the wedding without the awful society that would have awaited them if everything had gone as planned. How do we know this actually happened? Because in this case, not only do both Fassmann and Loen report it but the book of marriages of the French Community (Anne was a Huguenot from the French Colony) notes down as well that the marriage has been concluded "en chambre" before it was supposed to happen. The Berlin Address Book shows Gundling had his own house by how, and the court registers that those titles FW kept heaping on him actually came with salaries and money. And then there was that stupendous output on books during the 1720s, which are part of Sabrow's element that Gundling can't have been the non-stop alcoholic of legend. He says of course he drank, but doubts it was more than FW and Gumbkow did, not just because writing those books demands a great deal of focus and concentration (in addition to which Gundling actually did his job as Head of the Academy, as much as that was meant to be a humliation on FW's part, but he threw himself into it, initialilzing projects, publishing anthologies with essays from the members) , but also because Gundling had an autopsy. According to Wilhelmine's letter to her sister Friederike in April 1731, the autopsy showed Gundling died of "an ulcer and a hole in the stomach". Now, later 18th century writers interpreted that to mean he drank so much that his stomach burst, but that's scientific nonsense, says Sabrow. Perforation of he stomach usually happens if an ulcer isn't treated in time and eats its way through the various layers of the stomach. Basically, he thinks Gundling was undoubtedly a heavy drinker in our terms, but like FW himself (and Grumbkow, and Seckendorff) evidently not to a degree where it would have incapacitated him from working. Which he did, till the end. One of the projects he wrote about was btw something we'll see again later with Fritz and Fredersdorf - trying to foster a Brandenburg silk industry by growing mulberry trees in Brandenburg.
As I said elsewhere, he took that position that was supposed to be FW's ultimate joke on scholars seriously. Three days afterthe appointment, he called the Academy council together for a "session extraordinaire" as it says in the protocol in order to find out what had become of Leipniz' correspondence, and how far the translation projects of the society had come. Writes Sabrow: If Gundling was in Berlin - as opposed to Potsdam or Wusterhausen - he showed up regularly at the council sessions, not just in the first time of his presidency. That he didn't take his presidential duties seriously anymore after the beginning is a far spread assumption, but it doesn't hold up next to the careful protocols of the Academy Sessions: the last council session presided over by Gundling took place on August 16th 1730 and agreed on two suggestions the President made for new members of the Academy. The majority of the routine sessions did happen without the President, who came in person when the acceptance or refusal of new members were debated, or important decisions about projects were made. However, like his predecessor Leipniz he supervised the work of the society during the time of his absence via letters from Potsdam and Wusterhausen, letters through which he at times completely dominated the council sessions, aas an example from the year 1725 demonstrates: "Secretary reads from President Gundling's two writings of May 5th and May 7th in which the later talks about payment of the seal for the medical surgical college, for the building of the society courtyard, because of the changes of the handymen, because of the materials for the print of Neumann's work at Potsdam needed, and what the change of Mr. Schütz and the replacement of his position in the obervatory can be reported, and demands to know what of the above has been done, and replied do."
All this, of course, doesn't change the fact that to most people, the idea that the King's favourite chew toy now held of the office of the great Leipniz was, depending on whether they were more FW or more Fritz minded, either the ultimate joke on scholars or an unbearable humiliation of science and learning. There were still some scholars taking him seriously, but usually they were the ones living far from Prussia and only knowing Gundling via his books. To most, and certainly to all who joined the Academy in Fritz' time, he was FW's fool and joke on scholarship. And for all the times when he was treated like a guest, sitting at the King's table with his family, there were ten times when he was abused in the most horrible way. Including, sadly, his time of dying, as I wrote and translated before. But before that happened, something else did, which also forms a part of Sabrow's argument that Gundling was both compos mentis and at least partially successful in carving out an FW free parallel existence for himself: when his brother Hieronymous died in 1729, Hieronymus' last will named Gundling as the guardian for his children and executer of his last will. Now, Hieronymus, as mentioned, had been unhappily married and trying to get a separation from his wife Augusta, who supposedly openly cheated on him and was living in Berlin. Surely, asks Sabrow, if Jacob Paul in 1729 had been the non-stop drinker of legend, his brother - who had a great many friends and colleages in Halle whom he could have asked to become guardians -, would not have entrusted either the children nor the family fortune for safekeeping to him? Augusta (who had left her husband and children two years earlier which she could since she was the niece of one of the most influential Prussian trademen) sued, at which point her brother-in-law demonstrated that fool or not, he actually could wield what influence he had on FW in a devastating way in this one very personal matter. Augusta was arrested in November 1729 for loose living (remember FW's NO WHORES doctrine?) and put into Spandau. Gundling punching downward or just fuflfilling his brother's last will? You decide. In any event, Augusta remained in Spandau where she died a year after her brother-in-law.
Sabrow ends the biography with a pointed comparison of FW/Gundling to Fritz/Voltaire, complete with the quote from Fritz from November 1740 when he's haggling about Voltaire's travel expenses, along the lines of "rarely has a fool been paid so well", and a 1753 quote from Fritz where he again uses the term fool - "how much noise a fool can make in good society!" I partly agree and have written about some eerie parallels elsewhere, though of course a key difference between the two pairings is that Voltaire didn't need Fritz, not financially (because he had money himself), and not professionally. (That Gundling didn't have a "proper" university degree automatically limited the professional possiblities to him outside of Prussia even before FW destroyed his reputation.) This gave him a confidence that Gundling didn't have, and the ability to go tit for tat in the battle of pamphlets and insults. And as humiliating and frightening as the entire Frankfurt episode must have been, it was an episode, which Voltaire got out of to be Voltaire for decades more, his reputation unchanged. (I.e. if you admired him before, you admired him afterwards, and if you hated him before, well, you certainly didn't feel sorry now.) Moreover, no matter how often Fritz would rail about Voltaire being the scum of the earth as a human being, he never put down Voltaire's work, he kept his admiration for it from first to last. That's simply a different foundation than FW being at best impressed by the manfuctoring suggestions and maybe by Gundling's greater knowledge of the world (since he had travelled in foreign countries) and ability to read and interpret the world's news for him, but having nothing but contempt for the core of what was important to Gundling, his work as a scholar.
In conclusion: still a harrowing tale, and infuriating in that for such a long time, it was written off as mildly embarrassing to FW at best, not as the testimony to cruelty it is.
Not long ago, we found out that Fritz kept a pack of 40-50 whippets at the palace of Potsdam and at Jägerhof. Much entertainment was had in my imagination until felis confirmed my guess that this was the Jägerhof at Potsdam, not Berlin, and identified it with the Jägertor I had found.
Now, you all know me: I love checking out maps and getting a modern-day look at historical sites. (I spend a lot of time in street view, but will spare you that.)
Here is a map showing where Fritz's dogs were in relation to Sanssouci, and as I found when I was snapshotting this, the modern-day Voltaireweg! I know he had an apartment in town that he spent a lot of time in, both because he and Fritz were driving each other crazy and, at least according to Davidson, because there weren't enough women at Sanssouci for our heterosexual Voltaire's tastes. But I don't know where this apartment was or whether it has any relation to the Voltaireweg. I like, though, how you can view the Voltaireweg as leading toward Sanssouci or away from it. :)
cahn, I'm sorry about the lack of scales. :P From the Voltaireweg oval to the Sanssouci oval is 750 m or a 10-minute walk. Does that help?
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Various late responses
(Also the Pesne is a nice painting! I also like it, although I know basically zero about painting.)
Concerts Georg, who lives at Sanssouci and attends 10,000 concerts a day, is an outlier who should not have been counted. ;)
LOL. Yeah, just cause he was only attending a couple of concerts a week doesn't mean he doesn't like music :P
Also D'Argens sounds lovely about her in a letter to Fritz: "For a scholar, it is not a little thing to have a good wife. Since three years, I would have died or gone mad ten times if I hadn't had the fortune to win mine." (written in 1762) (I also find it interesting that EC, whom you wouldn't think to be fond of either Fritz' free-thinking friends or their ex commoner ex ballet dancer wives, sounds as warmly in her reply to the Marquise's condolence letter. It bears repeating: I have always, my dear Marquise, distinguished your late husband as a a very estimable man, and above all by his attachment to the late King, my husband of glorious memory whose death plunges me into the most severe pain. Rest assured that I am very sensitive to the sympathy that you show and I will always be delighted that, having fulfilled all your duties towards your husband, you are rewarded by all the possible happiness.
Awwww D'Argens <3 Also, EC gets an A+ for that condolence letter (*cough* JUST SAYING, FRITZ)
Re: Various late responses
Reply to the RomCom
FW’s valet Eversmann: Me!
WHAT
I thought Maria Theresia's dad made a much better Disney villain, and that's saying something!
G, S, E: Sire, Archduke Leopold the future Emperor is asking for your daughter’s hand!
Me: *blinks* I thought... there was this whole thing with the Pragmatic Sanction...?
[personal profile] selenak: WHO?
Me: Oh good, it's not me this time!
Wikipedia and mildred, more or less in unison: Charles had a son Leopold who died at age SEVEN MONTHS.
...There was a lot of my eyebrows contorting rather a lot reading this, I will have you know! Although I think it is hilarious that the Potsdam Giants showed up, because I think it is meta-hilarious that LITERALLY EVERYONE IN THE WORLD EXCEPT FW thinks the Potsdam Giants are hilarious!
resumably the one publication Gutzkow must have read when doing research for this are Wilhelmine's memoirs. Can you imagine reading them and coming up with this plot?
MAN. I still don't know where Leopold came from, but as for the rest of it, the only thing I can think of is a) lots of alcohol b) Gutzkow must have desperately wanted Wilhelmine to have a happy ending and a happy marriage as I did by the time I was done with volume 1 (I still haven't finished Vol 2).
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Dresden
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Re: Nicolai vs Zimmermann and Zimmermann
Me: Oh yeah, I remember that now, but mostly I know him as the guy who --
selenak: Of course, the part of Zimmermann's "Fragments" everyone talked about wasn't this, it was the "Fritz: psychologically impotent due to botched penis operation after youth of STD...
Me: Yeah, that.
Heh, Nicolai is funny with his "nothing to see here, Herr von Z, move right along!" As well as what you say later about his whole "be nice to the ladies!!" thing.
Nicolai via selenak: He then, as Büsching did, prints signed testimony of the various guys involved to the effect Fritz had a completely normal piece of male equipment without any scarring tissue, meaning there can't have been any operation, botched or not, at any point.
Me: Why the heck was everyone so obsessed with Fritz's penis, anyway? [Not words I ever thought I'd say.]
Selenak: Because Nicolai is thorough, he also says readers (if they'd made it so far in this unsavoury subject) might wonder what the various people were doing checking Fritz' genitals close enough to look for scarring tissue.
Me: ...I am not sure whether I'm impressed that he thought this might be something people would ask about, or sort of freaked out that he's going that far. I guess given that he answered my question, I'll lean towards the impressed side. Maybe.
Zimmermann was filled full of male tenderness (männliche Zärtlichkeit)
That is... really manly tenderness, all right. Wow.
I feel a bit cruel for mocking Zimmermann; it's clear he did adore Fritz and was deeply affected by having to watch someone he loved so extensively be painfully ill without being able to truly help.
Okay, yeah, that sounds rather unfortunate. But also, I mean, broken penis theory :P
and secondly, none of them has ever said a harsh word about the equally Swiss Catt, did they? On the contrary, see all the positive references to Henri de Catt in his and Büschings collections since they talked with him, too. But you see, Z, CATT would never!
(I laughed.) Oh Nicolai, if you only knew!
"Eine Canaille von einem Gott" is my new favourite contemporary Voltaire description.
That is pretty awesome :D
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His name is Diable. Le Diable: Good Times
Sir not appearing in either volume at all (seriously, no single mention, not even in the footnotes): Suhm. Seriously, Bronisch not only apparantly had zero interest in the other Saxon envoy but doesn't think he's a factor in any way in his subject. (The titular fight from the canny repackage is carried out by French envoy La Chetardie and Voltaire as the main opponents.)
Okay, on to Mantteuffel. He was another case of an 18th century European noble - like Prince Eugene, Seckendorff, the Scottish Keiths or even Stratemann who ended up serving not in his country/state of birth but another country. Like Stratemann, he was actually born a Prussian subject, from Pommerania in his case with the first class education of a baroque nobleman that included visiting the university of Leipzig in neighboring Thuringia, and started out as a young noble at Grandpa F1's court but after some satiric verses on "one of hte King's mistresses" * (* as far as I know, F1 only had the one, the wife of one of the three Ws) blew up in his face prudently left Prussia for Saxony where he became bff with August the Strong and rose into office there. Unlike many a university visiting noble, he remained fluent in Latin (see Horace translations for the fun of it right into his old age), and united being an excellent courtier, witty, charming, with a genuine life long passion for literature and philosophy. According to none other than our Berlin Academy obituary writer Formey, whom I encountered here in another context - to wit, as a young Manteuffel acolyte who is both made a Wolffian by him and a member of the Manteuffel-founded Society of the Truth Lovers (Sociéte des Aletophiles) - , he remained a very handsome figure of a man into his old age, too. (So Formey writes not just immediately after Manteuffel died but also recalling him many years later.) In short, which isn't as Bronish puts it, when Crown Prince Fritz is on the prowl for sugar daddies in the 1730s, Manteuffel really was a great candidate.
Not least because he was also there, in Brandenburg, and not, I repeat, not as the official Saxon envoy. He's been the official Saxon envoy in earlier times, true, but after his recall (and Suhm's arrival, though as I said, Suhm is Sir Not Appearing In These Books) rose to cabinet minister in August the Strong's ministry, taking over one of his original patron Flemming's old jobs after Flemming's death. This is why Manteuffel in 1728 was in a position to found the Society Against Sobriety with August, FW, Grumbkow and Seckendorff when FW (and Fritz) visited Dresden in 1728. Which of course was less important for the drinking excesses of FW and August and more because of the Imperial Alliance networking of G, S and Mantteuffel, and Prince Eugene in Vienna. Bronisch argues that Manteuffel being Team Habsburg here isn't contradictory or shady in terms of him also being a Saxon government official, since the HRE still exists, and thus the Emperor does have claim on his top loyalty as German noble (especially since he's been made a Reichsgraf at this point). Manteuffel's idea of a policy for Saxony - pro-Emperor, in a close alliance with Prussia, anti France - is, however, dealt a big blow in 1730 when Karl Heinrich Graf von Hoym, until then Saxon anvoy at the Court of Versailles, manages to become the next big thing with August, filling the vaccuum Flemming left (which Manteuffel had not - he became a cabinet member, but not THE dominating minister the way Flemming had been). (Hoym, bw, as I was reminded recently wen reading through translation and excerpts of the interrogation protocols of Katte again, was also whom Fritz tried to contact and gt to help him at Zeithain.) Hoym was pro France, anti Habsburg, anti Prussia, and Manteuffel barely prevented getting fired by handing in his resignation on August 5 (Fritz is about to make his last escape attempt). However, Mantteuffel had seen where the wind was blowing for a while and thus had brought over thirty boxes filled with his secret correspondences with G & S as well as Eugene to his Pomeranian country estate, which means that when Hoym ordered a search of his vacated offices in Dresden, he found exactly nothing, whiile Manteuffel got a nice state pension of 12 000 Taler per annum and the continued use of his title of Cabinet Minister. Still, he was stuck in Pomerania for a while, cooling his heels. It's worth bearing in mind, though, that what Manteuffel does from this point onwards, and it's a lot, he does officially as a private citizen. He remains officially retired till the rest of his life.
(About the country seat: it's Kummerfrey, aka Sanssouci as the French writing Manteuffel always calls it, and Bronisch scoffs at Nicolai's anecdote as an explanation as to why Fritz called his own philosophical summer retreat the same name, pointing out that Manteuffel in a letter to Fritz even refers to his visitors as "his knights of Sanssouci" and that freaking FW visited for two days there in 1731, so there's no way Fritz was unaware of the precedent. To which I say, that doesn't mean he didn't mean the grave pun as well.)
Hoym in turn is toppled by Brühl and others and loses the top spot before 1731 has ended, ends up in Königstein accused of incest with his niece, and will commit suicide there in April 1736, with Manteuffel commenting on it in a letter to Fritz. Speaking of the letters: there is a severe problem for anyone studying the Fritz and Manteuffel relationship, to wit, most of the letters don't exist anymore. Of those which do exist, Preuss published nineteen letters from Fritz and twenty letters from Manteuffel in volume 16 and 25 of his gigantic edition. Except, says Bronisch, that not only was his textual basis for these letters lousy - Preuss didn't have originals but copies, and it's questionable even whether the copies were complete -, but Preuss misidentified several, with the last four letters from Fritz we today know for sure not to be addressed to Manteuffel while the last three letters from Manteuffel not addressed to Fritz, either. Simultanously to Preuss, one Karl von Weber published an additional eight letters from Fritz to Mantteufel and one from Manteuffel to Fritz from the Dresden State Archive, but didn't publish them completely, solely in excerpts. Guess what happened to the originals? WWII. And then in 1901 Curt Tröger managed to unearth a Manteuffel to Fritz letter from 1737. And that's it, while the correspondence by estimation of how many letters they mention in the ones which are preserved consisted of at least 200 letters. Which means that a lot of the takes on the Fritz/Manteuffel relationship can't come from their direct communication but from secondary sources, with history lucking out that Seckendorff Jr.s secret journal exists.
Manteuffel in 1733 (for chronology's sake: August the Strong dies, under August III. Saxony is now run by Sulkowski and below him Brühl, with Brühl working on becoming No.1) moves to Berlin, into a nice palais in Dorotheenstadt, the Landhaus Kameke, which had been built in 1712 by Andreas Schlüter and is described as a late baroque jewel, of which only remnants exist anymore (not because of WWII but because of subsequent rebuildings - parts of it ended up in today's Berlin Bode Museum). In Berlin, he's busy networking on both the political and philosophical front, becoming Wolff's most important patron (btw, the way he'll sell this to FW as an argument of how Wolff isn't, contrary to what Lange and the Pietists say, a man whose thoughts will lead to atheism is classic: he tells FW via Grumbkow that he, Manteuffel, used to have severe religious doubts until reading Wolff which showed him the light back to the Christian faith. FW is totally impressed and it's an argument that while not swaying him yet to reading the man's work himself does sway him to believe Wolff isn't an atheist in disguise but a good Christian), collecting promising young folk like Dechamps, Reinbek and Formey (even Jordan, though Jordan will ditch Manteuffel poste haste in Rheinsberg), and the bookseller Haude (whom we've met in Nicolai's anecdotes as holding back books for Fritz), and on the political front, as Private Citizen Manteuffel keeps reporting to both Vienna and nearly at the top Brühl back home in Saxony. He is, in short, an ideal candidate for a crown prince in search of an erastes.
On the subject of "How close were they when they were close?", Bronisch points out Manteuffel not just pitched Wolff at Fritz. (As proof one can be an enlightened philosopher and a Christian at the same time, among other things, but also because Manteuffel thought Fritz was a bright kid but that all this indiscriminate reading would have him end up in nihilism if he didn't get a philosophical guide line.) He also was responsible for the "little book" Fritz in his very first letter to Voltaire mentions including, the "Nouvelles Pièces", which consisted of an anti Wolff accusation by Wolff's main enemy Lang (chiefly responsible for FW kicking Wolff out of the country) and a pro Wolff defense. Not just responsible in the sense of enabling the print, Manteuffel had translated it into French, which wasn't noticed for a while, because the translator is only mentioned as being "un Q-t", which is a pseudonym using another nickname Manteuffel had adopted in his relationship with Fritz, "Quinze-Vingt".
(Explanation for nickname: it's complicated. French King Louis the Saint had founded a hospital for the blind called "les Quinze-Vingts" in the Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. The name alludes to the 300 beds available in the old Latin number. 18th century readers were reminded of this historical factoid again when Voltaire wrote a short story called "Petite Digression". When Fritz approached Manteuffel with a "please become my
erastesteacher?" request, Manteuffel, being an adroit courtier, replied he didn't know whether he had enough knowledge to teach such a great prince next to whom he rather resembled a poor blind Quinze-Vingt. How do we know this happened? Because a) good old Formey, becoming a Manteuffel protegé this very decade, mentions it decades later, and b) the nickname actually shows up in the correspondence, which Formey wasn't familiar with.)Manteuffel from the get go didn't miss the obvious chance offering itself here, but Bronisch makes a good case that it wasn't all worldly ambition. After a life time in politics, Manteuffel didn't have a high opinion of the current crop of rulers and thought it really needed a good one. In a text he published anonymously in 1739, he wrote that nearly all the great ones in the world had a distorted view of the use of power, seeing it as a license for despotism and just follow their instincts, to hell with everyone else. In a letter to Christian Wolff himself from June 16th 1738, Manteuffel wrote that two thirds of the princes in the HRE had shown themselves to be worse than useless plagues of humanity and called them "prètendus Dieux terrestres", but thankfully, one could expect a good counterexample to ascend soon. (Guess whom?) And in an unpublished treatise on how to educate a prince, written in the later 1730s, he wrote that absolute monarchical power was subject to the "Loix de la Nature et de la raison", and the monarchs needed to respect the laws of nature and reason all the more because they were carrying the responsibility for "le bien de la societé"; only this provides in Manteuffel's unpublished opinion a legitimization to the institution of kings at all, "l'unique fin de leur institution".
The self education program Fritz started at Rheinsberg was, says Bronisch, based on Manteuffel's suggestions re: nearly every book in it. As an example for an earlier attempt by Mantteufel to teach a moral lesson without being FW like about it, he brings up Manteuffel bringing up the anecdote from Cassius Dio in a letter to Fritz from March 22nd 1736. (Short version: it's a huge crowd, Augustus is about to fell a bad sentence which could have resulted with him gaining a tyrant's reputation, Maecenas raises a writing tablet with the words "surge, carnifex!", Augustus sees it and desists) (The who is who casting is obvious without Manteuffel spelling it out.) Augustus didn't begrudge this and much later when Maecenas had died supposedly once said apropos a wrong decision that he wouldn't have made it if his trusted advisor was still around. The ability to stop, to reconsider yourself is a quintessential virtue of a good ruler.
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His Name is Diable. Le Diable: Bad Times
Team Berlin Wolffians, mainly bookseller Haude, Reinbek and Manteuffel, do not like to hear this. Haude writes in umistakable terms to Wolff on 31st October 1739 that he should trust his true friends in Berlin, the Aletophiles, and not to a court fool, for God's sake, see attached also two letters from Manteuffel, your most influential patron, Wolff, remember? DO NOT ACCEPT FW'S OFFER. Mantteuffel's own argument is of the psychological type, using period sexism very effectively; if Wolff now attempts, one has to assume that he was "un homme absulement gouverné par sa femme et qui par consequent n'est grand Philosophe". That does it. Wolff says of course he's the boss in his marriage and yeah, no accepting of FW's offer, promise.
Other Manteuffel activities of the 1739 include preparing a translated into French volume of "Best of Wolff" extracts under the title Le Roi Philosophe, dedicated to the Crown Prince of Prussia. Fritz' reply when he gets the printed copy in 1740 a few days before FW's death, once more raises everyone's hopes (Gottsched, another new literary Manteuffel friend at this point) quickly translates into German and spreads it and made the Wolffians hope once more that the fight for Fritz wasn't all lost, as it's very gracious, on the notes that not only every citizen but every prince and king should read this and it is up to the wise of this world to teach princes etc etc., and he's studied this for a long time and is delighted, etc. Alas. Alack. History happens. Btw, to Fritz' credit, especially that he later catches a lot of deserved flack for his treatment of German writers, thinkers and scientists, once Wolff has made it back to Halle, he really does his best to make Wolff accept a membership of the Academy. Which Wolff absolutely won't. One of the main arguments is the langugage: Wolff says that while he can read French, he can't understand it when it's spoken out loud and so quickly (I emphatize), let alone speak it, and Fritz has just nixed the previous Academy language, which was Latin, and which Wolff could speak, and won't accept German. As for the other Academy members already called according to the papers, this Algarotti fellow (WTF Newton for Ladies?), Maupertuis (did he really compare exploring Lappland to exploring a woman's body ?!?) and Voltaire (Arggggggh), yeah, no. "I can't talk to them, and they don't understand me." He stays in Halle, thank you very much.
As for Manteuffel, he moves to Leipzig after Fritz kicks him out shortly before invading Silesia (on November 5th 1740). Even Bronisch admits this was a necessary and prudent measure, since Manteuffel after Grumbkow died in 1739 immediately wrote home to Dresden and asked for a budget raise to he could take over Grumbkow's spy network, which he got and which he did. Post successful Silesian invasion, the remaining Aletophiles in Berlin became splintered, as many were swayed to the Fritzian side. When Reinbek made the mistake of writing a "Silesia Fuck Yeah!" type of letter, Manteuffel fired off a reply that's also an evisceration of Fritz, rethorically asking there was either a legal by HRE law justification for the invasion, or one by natural law, or one on the basis of religion (which Reinbek had argued), i.e. Fritz needing to save the Silesian Protestants from Catholic MT? And his reply to each of these was no. Fritz has become
a gangster with good PRjust another despot and a robber donning the robes of monarch. So much for you, Alcibiades.Still, Manteuffel keeps up the good networking work and continues to be an A plus encourager of writers and philosophers. The refounded Aletophiles in Leipzig even have a female member, Louise Gottsched (remember her? Émilie fan and translator?), who points out to him in a letter even before the Silesian invasion that this Roi Philosophe dedication to Fritz and the whole Roi Philosophe concept is a mistake because she knows of not a few princes who had a great education and knew damm well what they were doing and did it anyway. Philosophy does not keep them from this.
Meanwhile, the remaining Berlin Aletophiles, if they haven't changed sides like Haude or miraculously managed remain friendly to both like Formey, don't fare so well. Primary example: Dechamps. Manteuffel protegé Dechamps in 1736 managed to score a double employment - he became Fritz' official court preacher at Rheinsberg (if you're surprised Fritz had an official court preacher at Rheinsberg, remember FW being alive and making surprise visits) as well as teacher to Heinrich and Ferdinand. (How this worked out geographically, I don't know.) He pointedly addresses Wolffian themes in his preachings. In 1741, he attempts to strike out against Voltaire in a major way and gets busy writing Cours abrégé de la philosophie wolffiene en formé de lettres, in wihch he says that Voltaire was just a rude religion mocker with the ability of making some neat verses, and an ugly, grimacing dwarf of a man to boot. Also, the works of the great Wolff naturally can't be understood by such a creature. Dechamps dedicates this to his two students and sends a copy directly to Fritz as soon as it's printed. The reaction doesn't take long. On November 1742, a one act play gets performed in Charlottenburg, Le singe de la Mode, in which a stupid provincial nobleman is looking for books to feel the shelves of his new library with. He discovers that the volumes best suited for this purpose are hundreds of copies of Dechamps' Cours abregé, which he can get to a bargain price since no one wanted to buy or read them. The author of this play: Fritz. How does Dechamps find out? From little Ferdinand. Oh, and he doesn't get his salary for teaching Ferdinand and Heinrich, either, and Fritz appoints Bielfeld as competing teacher, and Dechamps doesn't get to be a member of the Royal Academy. In 1746, he's finally had it (why so late?) and leaves Berlin for The Hague and London.
Formey, otoh, gets asked by Voltaire whether he's one of those men paid to fool the people (Formey is a Calvinist clergyman) when first they meet, but he does get to be an academy member (and a good thing, too, or Mildred would never have read his obituary for Peter). His main work, other than obituaries, is the six volume philosophical novel "La Belle Wolffienne". In volume 2, which he works on in the early 1740s, he gets into a major spiritual crisis, which Manteuffel by mail manages to talk him through, so the rest of the magnum opus can be published. Manteuffel doesn't live long enough to witness the big Voltaire implosion, but he gets to see the first big Academy controversy from afar, see my write up of the Maupertuis biography. He also guides August III's son Christian August in his studies (Christian August, alas, will die in the same year his father will, in 1763), and dies a respected and admired private citizen (we swear!) in 1749.
As for Christian Wolff: in 1743, Fritz en route to Bayreuth stops in Halle. Wolff presents himself, but is told to wait in the antechambre and in the end is not received. This is of course on the same trip where Voltaire is with Fritz, visiting Wilhelmine, so Wolff notes in a letter to Manteuffel. Just to complete the humilation, in Histoire de mon temps, Fritz writes years later that there were only two German professors of genius ever: Only two men distinguish themselves through their genius and honor the nation: the great Leipniz and the learned Thomasius. I'm leaving Wolff aside. He just repeats Leipniz' system and repeats ramblingly what the later has written with fire and inspiration. Most German scholars were simple craftsmen, while the French ones were artists.
1790s German writer Boie, like many young men of the time a frustrated Fritz fan: I won't accept this.
Boie: writes RPF titled "Totengespräche", in which dead Fritz, with Voltaire at his side, meets dead Wolff in the underworld and tells Wolff he was the first one to make him think, the author of his soul and mind, everything he became as a thinker, he owes thus to Wolff. Wolff modestly says there's a much greater one he must present to Fritz and points to Lessing. Fritz and Wolff leave the unworthy shallow Voltaire behind and unite with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in the Hereafter. Happy ending!
Bronisch: yeah, I know. Even the idea that Wolff would have admired Lessing doesn't fit, never mind Fritz. But I still wanted to tell you the story. One more thing: Fritz totally named Sanssouci after Manteuffel's Sanssouci, and it wasn't because he was looking for his grave, it was because he was pining for the happy time with his mentor in the mid 1730s. So there. The end.
Re: His Name is Diable. Le Diable: Bad Times
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Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Friedrich der Einzige in seinen Privat- und besonders literarischen Stunden betrachtet by Charles Dantal (original French: Les délassements littéraires, ou Heures de lecture de Frédéric II)
ETA: Oh, hey, I only just realized that the German translator added "der Einzige" to the title. *facepalm*
Dantal (born 1759, death 1799) was Fritz' last reader and the one who actually got to read instead of being read to. Unlike all the others, he was a Prussian citizen from the local French colony, and also a French teacher at the Potsdam orphanage before getting the job as reader. He first met Fritz in October 1784 and started reading in November, usually in the evening / late afternoon and for up to three hours. The last session was on July 30th, 1786, because Fritz was in too much pain from then on.
His account was written and published in 1791, but he clearly based it on notes he took during his time with Fritz. The book is split into two parts: first a prose part that contains a general description of his job, Fritz' comments and/or short yay/nay reviews for each of the books, plus a few anecdotes; second a complete list of the books read with reading times, places, and dates. (So if you want to know which book and chapter he was reading to Fritz on any given day between November 1784 and July 1786, this is your source.)
General comments:
He reports that Fritz had a lot to say about pronunciation, kept correcting him and generally had his own ideas on the topic. If Fritz himself wasn't sure how to pronounce certain words, he tried to say them quietly to himself at first [...]. I was surprised that the King didn't let go of a wrong pronunciation of certain words once he'd settled on it, even though I told him my reasons with all the reverence I owed him. [...] Other mistakes, probably due to a failing memory, he never begrudged when pointed out to him; one day he even told me that a young man was allowed to correct an old one [Greis] if he was wrong.
Occasionally, Fritz did get annoyed and angry because of his own memory lapses, though. One of the few anecdotes is about this: he couldn't remember the author of a book he wanted to read, Dantal suggested the right one but Fritz didn't hear/register and therefore grumpily dismissed it, then sent Dantal, who didn't dare to mention it again, away to do research. Dantal had just reached the city gate, when he was called back because Fritz had remembered the name at last and all was right with the world: "Now he was completely content again and the gentle tone with which he said "c'est fort bien", gave me back the trust/confidence [Zutrauen], which the critical moment had taken away before."
Dantal also mentions the order that was kept in Fritz' libraries, and that they were sorted by content, not looks, i.e. without regard for different sizes next to each other, which some owners of libraries care for the most (ha). He describes the way the books were bound (with the letters on the covers - "S" for the New Palais (the Palace of Sanssouci) for example, and of course Sanssouci had a "V" because Fritz always called it Vignes) and also mentiones that nobody was allowed to move the books in Fritz' room.
Some reading details, chronologically:
1. Early on, they are reading a book of speeches by Isocrates and others and Fritz comments on and dissects the arguments in every speech; for example, he was never happy with the ones that were given before big events/undertakings, because he thought they just delayed the point where somebody took action. He also spent quite some time on the speech in which Isocrates is trying to convince Philippos to wage war against the barbarians [the Persians I think] to free Greece, and he didn't find Isocrates' reasons convincing enough. (I could not help but think of Crusader!Voltaire in this context, although there's no mention of Fritz doing the same.)
2. Fritz did crossreferencing - reading Tacitus and Sueton in parallel to compare their take on the same events - and read/commented on editor's notes. (:D)
3. In March 1785, Fritz got sick with fever and so they switched to less challenging and more entertaining stuff = Voltaire. Le Taureau Blanc and Candide on this occasion, both of which made him laugh a lot.
4. Fritz gets annoyed with Rollin for connecting everything to religion and Christ, quote: as if the heathens couldn't be just as virtuous as the Christians.
5. Fritz' very own theory on Socrates death: It's the sculptors' fault! They feared for their income because Socrates spoke against polytheism, so they accused him of various political offenses and got him killed.
6. Spring/Summer 1785: Because of frequent breaks during revue season, they read Moliere's comedies. No reading during a July week when Amelie and Charlotte were visiting.
7. Fritz returned from Silesia on August 30th; Dantal notes that he got sick and almost died on September 19th, because of an asthma attack (that's what "Steckfluss" is, right? I'm not sure how the fact that he got an emetic plays into it, though); the reading sessions continued September 24th.
8. On January 1st, 1786, they are in the middle of reading Bayle, an excerpt from the Dictionnaire that Fritz made himself [as in: he had the stuff he was interested in reprinted and bound in octave for his convenience] and this is where we get a favourite dog mention!
I want to include a short monologue, which the King adressed to his favourite dog, Arsinoé, whom he was holding on his lap at that point. Because when I read the following words - [about animals not being capable of reasoning] - the King turned to his favourite dog and said: "Do you hear, my mignonne, they are talking about you and claiming that you don't have reason [esprit], but you do have it, my little mignonne!"
So, favourite dog half a year before his death: Arsinoé, not Superbe. Doesn't have to mean that it was still Arsinoé when he died, but it's a data point.
Also: we have a pet name he used, Mignonne, i.e. sweet, cute, lovely.
9. February 4th, 1786: While Dantal was reading about Turenne, Fritz fell into a deep sleep, which Dantal thinks was the start of his last and enduring illness, so I guess he observed that Fritz was consistently worse from that point on.
10. During the last months, they go back to a lot of Voltaire, mostly the history works (Louis XIV and XV), and Fritz', although pretty sick, has comments, for example, as late as July:
When I read the following words about the battle at Rossbach - "Friedrich, surrounded by so many enemies, decided to die with a weapon in his hand, in the middle of the army of the Prince of Soubise" - the King, as sick as he was that day, could not help but call out: "Oh, oh! There was no reason to die yet!"
11. During the last weeks, Fritz often fell asleep while Dantal was reading - by then, he would be wearing his nightclothes already so he could just stay asleep if he wanted - and Dantal therefore stayed until 10 at night, when he would quietly leave the room because he assumed that Fritz wouldn't want any more reading this late, even if he woke up again. Dantal also says that Fritz still read by himself during that last year: "His habit was to read out loud to himself, especially verse, and I believe to have noticed by the quiet voice with which he was often reading when I entered, that it exhausted him a lot."
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
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Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Maecenas
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Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Book sorting
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
Re: Dantal: Dog Name, Reading, and other Details (1784-86)
FIRST and SECOND Chamber Hussars
ROTFL SO VERY HARD
Also informative!
dressing him (?? - maybe once he was ill?)
Maybe handing him his clothes, hanging the sweat-soaked ones in front of the fire, etc.?
Zimmermann, who hears about Desen, can't resist improving on this because he's all about how misunderstood Fritz was really loving at heart, and says that Fritz was really sorry once the guy had shot himself and said maybe he shouldn't have been so harsh. Neumann, apparantly feeling the need to defend Fritz from this, too, which tells you something about Neumann, says NO HE DID NOT, he couldn't have cared less about Desen by then, he just said he hadn't thought Desen would have the courage.
Wow, that is really something. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Suhm letters II
1. Tongue in cheek, but my gossipy sensationalist 21st century self has a hard time not reading this as gay for Fritz:
[Suhm waxes enthusiastic about how awesome Fritz is and how he's only getting better with each passing year.]
Excuse, My Lord, this digression — It has flowed so naturally from me, that may it be looked upon as the necessary effect of the union and harmony of a soul incessantly taken up in the contemplation of your Royal person, with a body ever ready to obey the impressions it receives from you, and always disposed to express its willingness.
Yeah, Diaphane, we all know about the impressions your body receives from Fritz and how willing it is. :P
2. In March 1736, Fritz is getting his first translations from Suhm and getting excited by the fact that he's now convinced he has an immortal soul; by November, he's already questioning Wolff:
I seem to see you again by my fire side, and hear you converse agreeably on subjects which neither of us comprehend too clearly, but which have nevertheless in your mouth an air of probability. Wolf undoubtedly says fine and good things, but they may, however, be combated, and as soon as we refer to first principles nothing remains to us but to confess our ignorance. We do not live long enough to become very able; moreover we have not capacity sufficient to examine matters to the bottom; and other wise there are objects which it seems the Creator has placed at a distance, that we may have but a slender knowledge of them.
3. While Suhm is still living in Berlin, I see them complaining about letters going astray because of poorly chosen messengers, of the "circuits" by which the letters have to travel, which lead to delays...it seems to me that, even when they're two topics of conversation are Wolff and "I love you more! No, I love you more!", they're still keeping their correspondence a secret. If FW doesn't even want them corresponding, it does make sense of why Suhm never goes to visit him and certainly not to live with him. :(
4. When Suhm is breaking the news to Fritz about having to move to St. Petersburg, he says that when they meet in person during the upcoming winter holidays in Berlin, he'll explain to Fritz why this was an offer he couldn't refuse:
I fear not but I shall then be able to make your Royal Highness approve of the reasons which have induced me not to refuse the employ which is offered to me; and your Royal Highness, will, I hope, be as easily persuaded, when you shall be informed of the whole, that my inviolable attachment to you, has at the bottom, a greater part therein than you have been able to imagine.
And the next thing we know, Suhm is carrying out commissions to get Fritz money, first from Vienna and then from St. Petersburg, commissions that everyone agrees were given orally, in Berlin.
...Did Suhm decide to go to St. Petersburg in part because it was a chance to play sugar daddy? Or was that just how he tried to reconcile Fritz to it? (Note that Fritz continues to try to get Suhm to come home even after the money starts coming in. That's how you know it's love.)
5. Remember how we gave MacDonogh a hard time for male Mimi? 1787 editor also translates "il" as "he"!
6. Hahaha, so Fritz, back when Suhm is looking for a job, says that he wouldn't wish to be king out of ambition, and the only thing that could make him want it is friendship, because then he could offer Suhm an income.
And now, when Suhm is saying it's going to be a while before he can answer Fritz's questions about Russia (remember, Voltaire wants to know!), because he has to learn more about Russia, and especially since he needs to find a safe way of sending his answers so that the Russians who read his mail don't get their hands on this one, he says,
I beseech your Royal Highness, to give me time only to inform myself well of all these things, and especially to let me chuse an occasion to send you my observations. I hope you will have the goodness to do this, as nothing is pressing. Would to God you had reasons to be more anxious in this respect!
I can only read this as, "I wish to God your dad had kicked the bucket already, and you were asking out of foreign policy reasons, because that would mean you were king and we could be together forever!"
7. Did Suhm take his kids to Russia? Maybe! There's a distinct lack of mention of his kids in his letters to Fritz except when he's dying and needs someone to take care of them, and while envoys do often take their kids, we had been unsure and decided that maybe he didn't take them all the way to St. Petersburg.
But then I found this passage. Suhm is describing the sheer horror of trying to get from Dresden to St. Petersburg in the 18th century:
Sometimes the sand, or the sea above the axle-tree; sometimes in a miserable shallop, in hard blowing weather, the sport of the winds and waves, at the mercy of the sea and rocks; afterwards passing on foot half frozen rivers, holding a child in each hand, and seeing myself at every step in danger of being swallowed up with them under the ice; finally overtaken by a frightful snow, which threatened to bury us in places where it was impossible to procure sledges; this is enough to give you some idea of the fatigue and anguish I suffered on my journey.
And his surviving kids at the turn of 1736/1737 would have been 8, 10, 11, 13, and 14 (no, I don't envy his poor wife), more than young enough for two of them to need their hands held when crossing a river.
So maybe our guess was wrong and the kids were there, and thus they were on that slow and painful journey back from St. Petersburg, watching Dad die slowly. :( At least they (and sister Hedwig) would have gotten to say goodbye, I guess.
But it's interesting because Suhm always refers to "I" and "my" in terms of the house where he lives in St. Petersburg, the house almost burning down, etc. So if he's got his family with him, then he is consciously avoiding talking about them with Fritz (who, in contrast, is more than happy to bitch about his brother showing up, for example), unless he needs them taken care of. Which Fritz is more than willing to do, and even the grandkids 50 years later. But apparently they do not form part of his relationship with Suhm when the latter's alive.
Unless there are other kids on the journey, and Suhm is just pitching in and helping out with the river crossing...idk. My first guess would be his kids, but then their absence during the two fires is *really* noticeable. It's not even "'we' could have died," it's "me, I," like he lives alone with some invisible servants.
8. 1787 editor includes the cipher by which Fritz and Suhm communicated about moneylending when Suhm was in Russia! If Preuss includes this, I haven't found it (admittedly I haven't looked very hard).
Every letter is assigned four numerical values, and the whole is presented as a mathematical problem. The details of the math problem(s) aren't included, but the letter-number mapping is.
Notice how 'a' starts at 15, then 'b' is 16, 'c' 17, and so on until 'z', then 'a' picks back up where 'z' left off, so each letter's four values are always 25 apart. 25 rather than 26 because 'i' and 'j' are the same letter, which was not uncommon in the past (though becoming increasingly uncommon in the 18th century). They were originally the same letter and only started to be distinguished in the Renaissance.
9. Per Suhm, East Russia is poorly understood geographically. Professors have been sent to explore it. It's probable that Russia joins America somewhere in the east. (!!)
I knew that Alaska was settled by Russia under Catherine the Great, but I didn't know that in 1737, they hadn't yet figured out that the Bering land bridge was no more! Per Wikipedia,
The first European vessel to reach Alaska is generally held to be the St. Gabriel under the authority of the surveyor M. S. Gvozdev and assistant navigator I. Fyodorov on August 21, 1732, during an expedition of Siberian cossack A. F. Shestakov and Russian explorer Dmitry Pavlutsky (1729–1735). Another European contact with Alaska occurred in 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia with sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia toward the Aleutian Islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784.
I guess the Bering Strait is about to be named!
10. Possibly the most interesting point so far is the one I just encountered last night. In a ciphered letter that Fritz sent to Suhm, without a signature and without a date, but probably late 1737, he writes,
If I can have fourteen thousand crowns in the month of April or May, they will be sufficient, and give me much satisfaction. I shall always have a great obligation to the Duke [of Courland] for them , and which I will endeavour to prove to him hereafter. Suffice it for the present that I am not ungrateful. If sureties be required, I offer one signed by my brother, without his knowing, as you may imagine, any thing of the business, in any manner whatsoever, or his being able to guess even at it. These are my affairs [cosa nostra? :P], and you may naturally suppose that I will use all possible prudence. If you do not think him necessary, so much the better; but it is only in case of my death that I propose his security. Adieu my dear Diaphane, it is midnight. Good night, I am, wholly your's [sic]
Two things here, aside from my snide mobster joke.
One, how do I put this...wow, this family. I know your father's put you in a shitty situation, Fritz, but way to pass it down the chain.
I wonder if AW ever figured out what was going on. Did Fritz forge his signature, or did he get trusting younger bro to sign a piece of paper without letting on what he was really signing up for?
Two, "my brother," unmarked, is AW. This makes me think that in 1736, it's AW who shows up at Ruppin and is more interested in eating than reading. I'm still happy to read a babysitting fic where it's Heinrich followed by Ferdinand, mind you!
ETA: I just settled down to read a few more pages, and what should I find but another editor footnote that I was !! at.
Specifically, Fritz rants for a page about how Seckendorff, THE WORST (except a good general, granted), has just been arrested, and "One thing is certain, and upon which you may rely, that his career is ended, and that the name of Seckendorf, will never more be heard spoken of." Then he says, "The Cardinal Nepote, has left Berlin, and is going to enter the service of Anspach." Then two more pages about Seckendorff.
I was like, "Oh, Cardinal Nepote must be Other Seckendorff, author of the secret journal and nephew of arch-schemer Seckendorff."
Then the editor writes, in a footnote, "It is not well known who this Cardinal Nepote is; it is believed to be a supposed name. There has never been at Berlin any cardinal but the Cardinal de Zinzendorf." I want to send a message back in time and tell him, we know who this is! And sure enough, I checked and Other Seckendorff's bio says it was in 1737 that he moved to Ansbach.
It's nice having access to people's secret diaries. :D
But also, 1787 editor, context! It's smack dab in the middle of a 3-page rant about Seckendorff, who do you think it is but a *Seckendorff* *nephew*?!
Also, I'm amused that, just as Seckendorff calls Fritz "Junior", Junior calls him in return "Cardinal Nepote". Not sure about the Cardinal; any guesses? (I doubt he's saying he's actually Seckendorff's son, which is how it usually worked with popes and their "nephews" who were made cardinals, which is how we got the word "nepotism". But that is the first thing that comes to mind for me when you juxtapose "cardinal" and "nephew".)
Re: Suhm letters II
Re: Suhm letters II
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August 1729
1) FW and G2 were about to fight a duel over some hay and recruiting practices.
2) Ferdinand was conceived (born May 1730).
I remember that back when we were trying to reconstruct the sex life of FW and SD (now that's a sentence I never thought I would write :P), I did notice that Ferdinand was conceived around the time when matters were coming to a head between Hanover and Prussia, for whatever that's worth. At SD's age and with FW's health, as discussed, I'm reluctant to tie childbirth together too closely with an increase in sexual activity, but it's a data point.
Of course, at the time, I didn't know that the Hanover/Prussia squabbles nearly culminated in a duel between FW and his first cousin+brother-in-law! Hatesex? Appeasement sex as SD tries to win her husband back to the English marriage project? You decide!
He's just a soul whose intentions were good: Morgenstern on FW - A
The preface tells me Morgenstern also claimed to have been a secret agent for FW who stopped a Prussian/British war in 1739 (though the book itself says that it was in 1737 that the author was in Britain on a mission for FW), and that even Fritz "used him, made him vice chancellor of Silesia yet recalled him to Potsdam in 1756, where he died later". Since I've never seen the claim that Morgenstern made peace between Britain and Prussia in the late 1730s anywhere else, including the two Mitchell dissertations with the summaries of the English-Prussian diplomatic backstory pre Mitchell, I am, shall we say, somewhat sceptical. The preface concludes that in his private life, Morgenstern distinguished himself by being a miser, stubborn, a cynic and through some excentricities as well as considerable scholarly knowledge, and that one could add some well known anecdotes about him but won't because de mortuis nihil nisi bene. Alas I can't see the editor's name somewhere.
As to the book proper. The first half certainly makes it sounds like Morgenstern is FW's Zimmermann. Not just because of all the praise for his high morals, dedication to work, and general geratness but the tinhat "this explains everything!" theory which Morgenstern's case is that young FW fell in love with young Caroline and never really got over it. Unlike Jochen Klepper in his novel, Morgenstern avoids saying whether or not he thinks she requited his feelings. But he is convinced that Carolline's rejection of FW's proposal was dictated to her by mean sarcastic grandma Sophie or by Sophie Charlotte, but more likely Sophie, wanting Caroline for future G2 instead. Why is he so sure? Because such an excellent woman as the late Queen Caroline surely, surely, would have let down FW gently instead of decisively and sarcastically which is what she apparently did. It's all Grandma's fault! Because Caroline never would have said a harsh word to FW otherwise.
(Lord Hervey, somewhere in the hereafter: *spit take*)
FW's life long pining for Caroline is also one of the reasons why he wasn't as good with his older children as he was with the younger ones. He still hadn't adjusted to his Caroline-less life then. HOWEVER, he was an utterly faithful husband to SD, despite being tempted as a young man. (But then he married the pretty castellan's daughter off post haste before he could be tempted some more.) Further proof that FW never had sex with anyone but SD in his life for Morgenstern is an exchange in the Tobacco College, where FW asked his fellow smokers after having been married to SD for decades already whether if a certain part of the female anatomy - "the source of all joy and procreation", as Morgenstern terms it - smells bad, this is a sign of bad hygiene, or whether this is true for all women. Another companion assures him that his wife Charlotte smells great there, and the poor lady from this point onwards is known as "Sweet Smelling Charlotte" in tout Berlin.
Now, always according to Morgensten, G2 ending up with Caroline instead is just one of the many, many things FW held against his cousin and brother-in-law. More serious is that G2 also ended up with three crowns he did not deserve and which FW should have gotten. (At this point, a vague memory made itself known, because yes, in one of the many books I've read this last year it did say William of Orange considered adopting FW as his heir for a while, in which case Britain would have gotten the Hohenzollern Friedrichs and Wilhelms instead of the Hannover Georges.) Morgenstern tells a dramatic tale of how kid FW, who in his twelfth year has been taken by Mother SC on a trip to the Netherlands, gets presented to William of Orange and is much liked by him, to the point where the King wants to kidnap him and take him to Britain, only to be talked out of it in the last minute. FW keeps thinking he missed his destiny there.
"If only I'd been King William, he could have made a great man out of me", (...) The Holsteiner interrupted him with a smile: "But you are a great King, how could being King William have made you greater?" The Master returned with some indignation: "You talk as you know it. Of course he could have gotten me elected as Stateholder, he could have taught me the craft to command the armies of Europe, do you know anything greater?"
Since FW has the same amount of British royal blood in him as G2 does (they're both great-grandsons of Elizabeth Stuart the Winter Queen), it's really not fair that stupd G2 got Britain AND Caroline. Grrr. Argh. Morgenstern also claims that when he was on his secret mission in Britain in 1737, he checked the files and saw that the Scots wanted FW rather than the Hannover gang as well in Queen Anne's time.
Morgenstern also reports the FW-G2 fight when they were kids in Hannover, only in his version it was after they had started to learn to fence, so it was an almost duel already. And the wonderful story of FW on his deathbed telling SD she can write to her brother that he, FW, forgives him. But only after he's dead.
Oh, and then there's this: in 1738 while inspecting Wesel, FW meets the current Prince of Orange, who's married to G2's and Caroline's oldest daughter Anne, and Anne herself. Anne leaves an impression, for FW, returning to Berlin, tells SD: "Fiekchen, if you die, I'm going to remarry within the family. I'm going to marry your brother's daughter. Luckily, she's not like her father at all. She takes after her mother, only she's not pretty.")
(This stuff is all over the book, I'm just putting it thematically together.)
Now, here's the odd thing. While the first half is unrelenting praise for FW, and defense against the various charges against him, including cruelty, the second half offers actually various examples of FW being cruel. I'm not sure whether that means the author hadn't finished working on the manuscript or whether he's not aware there is a contradiction there or what.
I also mentioned earlier that the hostility towards both of FW's parents is pretty unrelenting. SC is at fault for spoiling him. The anecdote illustrating this is that once when Tiny Terror FW beat up his cousin and name sake Friedrich Wilhelm of Kurland, has the kid under him and both hands in his hair when in comes Mom, but instead - so says Morgenstern FW told the tale - of either punishing him or at least saving the other kid from him, she just says, distraught: "Mon cher fils! Que faites-vous!" Ergo, he had to learn all about childraising himself, since Dad didn't give him any discipline, either, which proves Dad didn't care. Dad was only into kingship, and provided FW with servants but not Christian education, and also he murdered little baby Friedrich Ludwig with his stupid salute shooting, and then he married for a third time when there really was no need, because FW was on the job. Dad F1 was the worst King who ever existed, and our current King says the same thing, readers, so it must be true.
When Morgenstern gets to how FW had so seek out his own friends because his parents court was just, ugh, we get this gem of a quote:
So he had to create himself friends, and he found them among all who got to know him, partly through his honesty, partly through his benevolence. And as he was modest in his claims and requests, he did not insist to have his friendship returned in an exemplary manner, to find a Hephaistion as Alexander had done; for he knew how his ancestors had behaved with their Hephaistions.
I am very hard trying to take this solely as referring to Hephaistion as an example of a "good" favourite here, but you're not making it easy, Morgenstern.
No, he was content if others understood half a word from him; if they took a hint through a glance; if they could entertain him, especially in an honest and just fashion.
Morgenstern, as mentioned, defends FW against the charge of cruelty, a misunderstanding which arose, says he, because "of the beatings, because of the recruitment excesses and because of the strict executions". But look, says he: he needed the army in order to get Prussia on a good footing again, executions were for discipline and also to deterr thieves (FW using the death penalty for thieves wasn't a given in German states, unlike in England), and anyway, the poof that FW wasn't a sadist (of course Morgenstern doesn't use this word, the Marquis de Sade is his contemporary, after all, but it's what he means) is that such people delight in watching others suffer, and FW never did that.
"No one can deny that the late King has been the most compassionate towards the victims of his rage."
He always forgave any sinnner who repented. And okay, so he got angry a few times at his family, BUT he didn't get physical except for what Morgenstern refers to as The Great Incident. (Yep, Morgenstern is definitely Klepper's source for postponing FW being abusive to Fritz until 1730.) Also? "When the Crown Prince was at Küstrin, his father in order to keep him occupied had him review all cirminal trials for either confirmation or rejection of the judgment. How could a suppoosedly so cruel master let go of the opportunity to torment via the law, to make life miserable and to shed blood?"
Now, at this point I thought I had Morgenstern's number, but he will surprise us, gentle readers, somewhat later when he comes to... but that's a surprise.
Keep in mind Morgenstern only knew FW during the last four years of his life, too. Everything else he describes, he describes from hearsay. But what he writes about FW's daily routine and personnel in his last years, for example, I guess we can take at face value, and since it's the obvious model and yet a contrast to Fritz' daily routine, here you go:
Friedrich Wilhelm limited himself to two, at most three pages who both served him at the table and followed him everwhere on horseback, and had to live from ten Reichstaler per month. After three or four years, he made them Lieutenants with the equipage coming with that state and a hundred ducats. (...) For his nursing and care, the King had five footmen and one hunter, who did the same servicen when the master got dressed or by sleeping in front of his bed as those who received postmaster offices or other benevolences so they could l ive well with a salary of 400 Reichstaler. When he died, these were:
1.) Abt, who then died twice.
2.) Bramdhorst, who followed Eversmann as Chatelain in Berlin.
3.) Wiedekin, who received the post office in Minden.
4.) Müller (Morgenstern tells a story of him using the opportunity of having to deliver a thank you present from FW to Cardinal Fleury to high tail it out of Prussia)
5.) Hammerstein, who also became a postmaster and
6.) Meyer, who became Oberforstmeister in Torgelow, Upper Pomerania.
Moreover eight chamber footmen, and the same number of hunters, who served at the table in the antechambre and at the King's sickness carriage (Kranken-Wagen, perhaps the wheelchair, perhaps an actual wagon necessary to transport him in his final year), for eight Reichstaler a month, and who were given offices at city halls or at tax offices, or at profitable hunting grounds.
Speaking of money. Let's talk about household expenses:
In order not to need a budget for his and his family's wardrobe, nor for his hunting, he told the Queen, whom he had left her considerable heritage for free use, that she would have to finance from the annual 8000 Reichstaler the following:
- linnen for herself, the princesses, the princes and the King
- also everyone's wardrobe
- powder and bullets for the hunting at Wusterhausen and Mackenow in autumn; in recompense, she was to have any feathery game that didn't get eaten right away
In order to be galant, he did present the Queen and each of the princesess with at least one winter dress each year; but he would not agree to have this put in the contract for which the Queen needed a legal advisor, as (...) in anger against his brother-in-law, he hadn't even wanted to sign it as her marital curator.
Day in the life:
Morning starts with a prayer (of course it does), washing, cabinet secretaries show up and report about the incoming mail, note down the King's orders/replies. While they're doing this, FW drinks his coffee and gets dressed (by servants). The resolutions from the previous day are read through and signed while FW gets into his boots. After five to six hours administrative work, he's off to soldiering (i.e. inspections, parades), though he combines that with meeting envoys and foreign visitors. Lunch with up to 30 people, for two hours, with a guest getting one or one and a have bottles of wine on avarage. When in Berlin, FW also receives the envoys here as well, which means more wine. If he's in a good mood, the wine flows until he says stop. After lunch: riding with the pages and a few servants; this is when he talks to any subjects trying to meet him directly. If FW can't ride because either his health isn't up to it or the weather is too bad, he paints, with a painter who is Morgenstern's arch enemy. The painter, Johann Adelfing, nickname "Hänsgen" (= little Hans, because Johann) gets 100 Reichstaler per annum, and because of the colors used a Gulden for every day they paint together. "...but for every stroke with the paintbrush which the King didn't manage well, Hänsgen got a rich share of pushes and slaps. The results of these painting lessons weren't much to look at, though the student easily did as well as the master."
So, FW's theatre taste according to Morgenstern: He had liked French comedy during his campaigns in Brabant, but lost the taste for them when he had it staged once and the next day heard the children call each other by the names of the play, especially the youngest son, then 6 or 7 years old, calling himself Policinello. German comedy used to be very bawdy in those days, and so he thought it was too dangerous for the youngsters. Of Italian comedy, he liked slapstick, but he was ready to admit that this was not to everyone's taste.
Puppet play, he regarded justly as childish, but when it was presented at the tavern in Wusterhausen and he heard from his people about the burlesque they were presenting, he ordered it performed in front of the entire court, and the master could never recall the entire performance without laughing heartily.
And now we get to the surprise, i.e. where Morgenstern suddenly sounds... dowright FW critical. What's the occasion? Well....
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(Result: distinct lack of court fool volunteers.)
The source of all this was: when he had to be in Berlin while being Crown Prince, he was at war with time. In order to kill it, he rode on his pages and footmen and beat them out of the room. Once he was on the throne, this princely pleasure had to be forsaken, and so he assembled his officers in the evening to the tabbaco college instead. But what little knowledge they possessed together was soon exhausted. The reading of newspapers, too, was soon over, and to investigate the likelihood of the reported was something this assembly knew as little about as about cause and effect of a given incident. So the gentlemen smoked and yawned at each other. Despite the marvelous conclusion that everyone who knew something had to be a fool had already been reached, the King decided that they needed someone like this, to tell them stories and give them causes to speak. Everyone suggested a candidate, among them Paul Gundling, who was a member of the Academy which was on the decline then, and it was praised that he was good at talking. (...)Now the assembly had enough to listen to, for this man was a scholar. As at first no one had a competing comment to make, the King started to respect the man. But as a just precaution against the admiration growing too much, it was decided that the man should be tempted. This temptation consisted of drowning him in titles, forcing him to drink until he'd grown a taste for it and even tank the rest of the glasses and mugs after a meal had finished, and once he was drunk, he was treated evilly in words and deeds. At one time, there was a wall built in front of his door, so that when he was looking for his room in the evening, he couldn't find it and had to spend the night searching for it; at another time, young bears (of which many declawed ones were walking around at Wusterhausen and and Potsdam in the court yards) were put into his bed, which welcomed him in their way when he returned drunken and crawling from the tobacco parliament in the night. Because he started to complain about it, it was said he wasn't just a fool, he was a Poltron. (?) Despite of him having surrendered completely to drink, all these evil doings grew too wild for him, and once he ran away, but only to his brother Hieronymus, who was a Professor in Halle. From there, he was brought back like a criminal under guard. There was a debate on how to punish him. But one noted through his unusual silence that he had been brought to depression and that at least his talking at the table and at the tobacco college would be over, which meant they'd be back where they started from, and he wasn't supposed to kill himself, either; so the decision was made that the entire tobacco parliament should go smoking and drinking to him, led by the King, and praise him, tell hm that there never was a greater scholar. So the poor man was won around again, was made to drink again, and now was treated thusly that everyone had their fun with him but his life and his health weren't endangered anymore, and the bears were left out of it from now on. (...) At last, he was buried in a barrel of wine as a coffin in the church at Bornstadt, and a succcessor sought everywhere. Those who accepted either knew not as much as he had done and so disappeared again, or they started to scheme instead, and thus coped better than the dear departed. Others who were put into the position avoided drink, arrogance and cowardice. Moreover, the knowledge of the King and his company had grown, so he now wanted more of the useful conversations and its entertainment than the crude pranks, and he grew fonder of a truth told as a jest, or a story in context than by grimaces and beatings, especially since the Master had now tasted philosophy.
Meaning: of course, I wasn't treat this way, reader! But I will admit thinking about my predecessor makes me a bit queasy.
While I almost can't believe the above reported story was written without awareness of how this makes FW sound, I am, sad to say, sure Morgenstern thought this bit of 18th century antisemitism was just jolly, too: FW after hunting sent the killed boars to the Jews who had to buy them at five Reichstaler a piece.
Morgenstern claims SD has promised him protection because he managed on two evenings in a row to be examined by FW about the family without having taken anyone's party or talked badly about anyone. He also reports that Old Desssauer faked the smoking, as mentioned in other books, and confirms FW liked oboists from the military. (Fredersdorf, watch out!)
Not in Morgenstern: back in the day, FW in his earliest instructions to his son's governors and teachers wanted SD to be the disciplining parent. They were never supposed to threaten little Fritz with him, only with his mother. I knew this, but what I hadn't known was that FW kept this up with the younger kids as well, at least according to Morgenstern, who writes:
Yes, even if the sons were already officers and in uniform with him, and if they'd been noughty, he led the criminal himself to be punished by the mother. Since he had never learned to punish or reward the children, his favourites weren't better treated than the other children, and he didn't distinguish one from the other by special surprises or treats. In my time, the favourites were the princes Wilhelm and Ferdinand, and Princess Ulrike. But since they all didn't get anything than friendly looks, addresses, sometimes kisses, and cheek stroking; so the author dares to claim due to the sheer number of such loving yet unprofitable caresses, the last one named was the one most loved, yes, even esteemed for her firm mind, and because she never showed discontentment or mocking laughter, and if she'd been a son, she'd have been preferred.
But FW believed in the superiority of the male sex too much to make a girl the overall favourite. Money heritage for the boys, btw:
52 000 Reichstaler for Prince Wilhelm
26 000 for Heinrich and Ferdinand each.
In 1737, there was talk of marrying Wilhelm to a Danish princess which since she had only one brother would have given him a shot on the throne. FW was all for it until there was a report that the girl was a dwarf, at which point the marriage was cancelled.
FW and the fight against superstition: stopped the last witch trials state, thought alchemy was rubbish, was in two minds about ghosts; mostly he didn't think they existed, but he wasn't sure about the White Lady ( the appearance of whom supposedly spelled Hohenzollern doom).
Let's see, what else: ah, yes, travel. Mom and Grandmom and Dad all took him along on journeys to the Netherlands when he grew up, and he was very positively impressed, not least by the hygiene. Morgenstern says FW surpassed the Muslims with their five daily washings, and was really very much into cleanlinesss. (Had an obvious reasult with Fritz and hygiene.) Alas the Netherlands lost their holiday trip allure for him when he once at at an inn, the innkeeper lady recognized him and without improving the quality of the food still when later presenting the bill demanded a kingly price from him, over 1000 Taler. When he gave her 30 ducats instead, she screamed after him that he was stiffing her and made a big scandal by clinging to the carriage. And FW never visited the Netherlands again. Otoh, he enjoyed his travellers from afar: Peter the Great was certainly a favourite. And speaking of Peter: look, says Mr. Morgenstern, Peter may get praise now, but in his day he was hated and called a tyrant by a great many of his subjects, too. Also he gave them more cause than FW. I'm sure FW's reputation will go the way of Peter's and rise through subsequent generations, though!
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The Life and Times of Samuel Jakob Morgenstern
So, Morgenstern: born a Saxon in 1706. studied in Leipzig where he achieved Magister, started to lecture there, not many people showed up, so he went to Halle. He wasn't much more successful there; student attendence to his lectures was low. In order to win the students around, he started a newspaper reading and explaining seminar twice a week, which was a bit more of a success, not least because it was combined with smoking, and debates got so loud that a neighbor complained. These newspaper readings prodcued Morgenstern's first original work, according to Nicolai an imperfect attempt at gathering statistics. Leineweber can't judge it because he couldn't track it down, but he's not impressed with Morgenstern's next publication, which is a total copy-and-paste job on Russia (i.e. it plagiarizes a lot of articles printed at the time) combined with lots of flattery of the Czarina (Anna Ivanova). This was because not just Morgenstern but other German scholars hoped to get jobs in Russia because of Anna employing Germans and German being basically the court language due to her lover. It worked in that Morgenstern got 100 Rubel and an offer to teach history in a Moscow school. He set off but when he came to Potsdam, the guards didn't understand the title "Magister legens" and so he ended up interrogated by Captain Nettelhorst, who was impressed by his cheeky replies and told FW about this fellow. FW, as we saw in Stratemann's report, had had a hard time replacing Gundling, with several candidates choosing flight over humiliation. He pounced. Morgenstern got a job offer from him of 500 Reichstaler per annum and free lodgings as well as the title of Hofrat. Probably figuring that this sounded better than teaching kids in Moscow, Morgenstern accepted.
While Morgenstern had enough bite to diss the members of the tobacco college back when they dissed him, he still didn't escape the FW brand of humiliation entirely. Notoriously on that occasion when FW had him lecture and debate in November 1737 on "Scholars are fools" at the university of Frankfurt an der Oder. Said lecture got published later and is Leineweber's exhibit a) for his theory that Morgenstern's FW biography employs Antony's rethorical funeral speech technique from "Julius Caesar" because it shows him capable of subsersivness. Now, the intention on FW's part had been another scholar humiliation. Morgenstern had to wear a parody of the usual university professor get up, blue velvet with read threads and a red waistcoat, a gigantic periwig that went across his entire backside, and instead of the sword which professors then still carried, he wore a fox tail at his side. On royal order, all local professors had to attend. Now, as I said, Morgenstern later, that very same year, published the lecture. It starts with a big whopper, that "Narr" - fool" - hails from the Latin word "narrare", storyteling, and you can feel all the listening professors cringe. The basic theses of the lecture is that every man has his share of wrong opinions leading him to foolish behavior. The world is full of fools, from the simple shephard to priests. Morgenstern goes on about particular exhibits of foolery in all kinds of positions and tries to divide them by national characteristics. ("The foolishness of the British people consists of their longing for innovation beyond any measure or goal, simply because it is new, and thus they are able to betray their king and make themselves footstools to rebels and slaves.") Morgenstern has a go at the princes of this world as well, especially at those ruling small principalities, "who see their country, which can be viewed in its entirety when standing on an ants' hill, as a one big game park and want to do nothing but hunting". Leineweber says this is an obvious diss of FW's pal the Old Dessauer. Kings, too, are fools for "imagining the weight of their subjects' sins lay on their shoulders by the tons, and are pushing them into the abyss". Leineweber sees this as meaning FW. Only then in the last part of the lecture does he address what FW had ordered to be his subject, i.e. scholars as fools. Here Morgenstern has a go at the pietists for not understanding philosophers (allusion to Wolff) and at the theologians only studying in the hope of a rich income. And finally, he justifies his own fool get up and says that he who has been put by life in this position resembles "the first Roman mayor" Brutus, playing the fool when the Tarquinian Kings were still reigning. "As little as sensible clothing can make a fool wise, foolish clothing can confuse a sensible man."
This lecture was a big success with the students who cheered a lot, and with FW, too. Leineweber doubts he made Morgenstern vice chancellor of the university, but thinks he did give him a job there.
As to Agent Morgenstern's various secret missions:
1). England. According to Leineweber, happened neither in 1739 as the preface writer claims nor in 1737 as Morgenstern claims in his books, but in 1738. How do we know this? Because there's a cabinet order from Feburary 4th 1738 in which Morgenstern is ordered to go there, observe everything (but NOT do scholarly stuff), country and people, and then report to FW about his impressions. Under no circumstances was he to say that he was in Prussian service; he was supposed to travel under an alias and keep a diary noting down all he sees and hears. While Leineweber grants this proves Morgenstern had gained a measure of FW's trust and respect, he doubts thrifty FW financed Morgenstern a trip to Britain just to get a travelogue from him, and speculates that it might have been because in 1738, the eternal Jülich-Berg question came up again as the current title holder was suspected of kicking the bucket any time soon and FW might have wanted to find out what the mood in Britain was re: Prussia. His reason to suspect this is that the Prussian representative in London had similar orders, i.e. he was supposed to tell people that in the interest of the Protestant cause, Britain/Hannover should support FW's claim on Jülich and Berg.
2.) Christian Wolff. This, I covered in my Manteuffel write up. It's pretty well documented because of Wolff himself describing the encounter in letters to Manteuffel and Haude after they sent their "WTF? Do not accept!" letters. It does show Morgenstern could be pretty persuasive. Which is presumably why the next thing happened.
3.) Breslau. This is the most fascinating by far. Because it's after FW's death. Morgenstern knew of course that there was no chance Fritz would keep him on the pay roll as a fool/scholar. So he must have offered to work as a secret agent, and the amazing thing is, Fritz accepted and sent him to Breslau. Now, Breslau while Silesia belonged to MT had enjoyed huge privileges. On January 2nd 1741, victorious invader Fritz concluded a neutrality treaty with the city of Breslau, promising not to block any trade, to respect the city privileges and not to put any troops into Breslau. In exchange, he wanted to buy food for his troops at market price and be granted room for troop storage in the suburbs.
However, the lreading city councillor, Gutzmar, was a Habsburg loyalist and anti Prussian, and kept sending loyalty messages to MT, declaring that she was the true ruler of Silesia and always would be etc. This would not do. So Morgenstern was sent into the city of Breslau under the alias of Dr. Freyer, with the double mission of turning the mood around. He hit the coffee houses and spread anti-Habsburg, pro-Prussia propaganda. On May 17th, he sent a report to Fritz on the city situation where he strongly advises arresting Gutzmar. That Fritz actually listened to Morgenstern over Podewils, who argued against an arrest of Gutzmar, is fascinating.
Morgenstern's activities didn't go unnoticed; a few months after his arrival the city council complained about the "demogogery" of a Prussian agent colling himself Dr. Freyer but really being called Morgenstern. This had happened: on June 13, the citizens of Breslau were asked to give 500 000 Reichstaler to Fritz' war effort. The citizens protested, in a protest written by the city council but signed by a lot of important Breslau citizens, pointing to the neutrality treaty. On July 10th, the sum was lessened to 106 000 Gulden.
Citiy of Breslau: But neutrality treaty!
Morgenstern: Guys, this is just the punishment from Fritz for your city council's anti-Prussia rethoric. However, I can help you. If you withdraw your signatures from the protest, Fritz won't want any money from you AT ALL, and only your Habsburg loyal city council will have to pay. Win!
Breslau citiizens: *withdraw signatures*
Fritz: Well, since clearly there are some pro-Prussia citizens in this city, who are in incredibly danger from evil Habsburg loyalists, I must reward their touching faith in me by annexing Breslau to protect them.
Fritz: *annexes Breslau on August 10th, and orders the city of Breslau to pay Morgenstern a life long pension of 500 Reichstaler per annum*
Morgenstern remained in Breslau and made the most of his new reputation as someone who has the ear of their new Prussian Overlord. He also threw his weight around; for example, when an Abbot of one of the largest monasteries died, he told the monks he'd get them all sent to Spandau if they didn't vote for a new pro-Prussia abbot. And then, he got greedy. The years passed, and he wanted more and more money for doing Breslau favours with Fritz, until at last the game was up, courtesy of Chancellor Cocceji (Barbarina's father-in-law). Morgenstern was ordered to leave Breslau and Silesia and return to Potsdam and settle down there. Which he did, and where he lived for the rest of his long life. Why Potsdam? Leineweber wonders whether Fritz wanted to keep an eye on him (well, let others keep an eye on him), due to all Morgenstern knew, at least about the taking of the Silesian capital. (Lest we forget, the official story was that the glorious conqueror was greeted with enthusiasm and joy by all the grateful Silesians, especially the Protestant ones, for saving them from Habsburg tyranny.)
Morgenstern's later years must have been pretty lonely; supposedly, he didn't even clean up the spiders in his room because he liked their company. When Niicolai visited him in 1779, ever hunting for stories, he thought Morgenstern came across as a smart man, if excentric. He went out now and then to play chess, but that was it, and otherwise he lived in his rooms with his books, and wrote the FW manuscript.
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Leineweber's critique on Morgenstern's FW biography:
Speaking of Madame de Roucoulles; Leineweber points out that the fact FW appointed his own governess as Fritz' governess demonstrates that his opinion of the education he received can't have been as negative as Morgenstern claims it was. As for SC not interfering in Tiny Terror FW's terrorism: one of her few surviving letters to her confidant Fräulein von Pöllnitiz is all about that. And of course, that is why F1 appointed the strict Calvinist teacher who gave FW such a lasting impression of hellfire and predestination. Far from hating his Dad, says Leineweber, aside from his own affectionate letters (and those of F1 to him) we have the written at the time testiomony of other observers showing him being incredibly supportive through F1's final illness, crying about him, and beating up (naturally) an officer who dared to suggest that hey, at least soon FW will be able to make all those changes he wants to make.
Caroline: Morgenstern is the sole biographer to report that story. Leineweber also can't imagine that either Pöllnitz or Wilhelmine would have left it out of their respective memoirs if if the tale of FW's youthful and lasting love had been making the court gossip round. (Then again: it's always possible FW told Morgenstern after deciding to trust him and hadn't told anyone else.)
F1 to blame for baby Friedrich Ludwig dying and baby Friedrich Wilhelm dying as well (the former due to loud canon salutes, the later due to being treated by F1's bad doctor: Leineweber points out that the supposedly bad doctor was in fact one of the very very few F1 officials to not only survive into FW's era but to actually get a PAY RAISE from FW. This definitely argues against FW holding him responsible for the death of his baby son.
FW illegitimate? Nonsense, says Leineweber for pretty much my reasons. Firstly, SC would not have said this to her son, and secondly, FW, even drunk, would not have said it to his generals. This was really an incredibly touchy issue for 18th century royals. (Which is why the story of Heinrich and Ferdinand saying they wouldn't handwave their claim on the succession for a bastard is at least plausible, and why Catherine's son Paul was so majorly invested into demonstrating he was, in fact, (P)Russian Pete's son.)
F1 marrying unnessarily for a third time (as per Fritz and Morgenstern): not true, says Leineweber, since at the time of F1's last marriage the two baby boys had died, FW was without male issue, and F1 definitely did NOT want his Schwedt half brothers, sons of poisoning stepmom, to inherit his new kingdom.
Contradiction between on the one hand claiming FW was the best, and on the other hand including anecdotes in which he's the worst: Leineweber, as mentioned, thinks this was entirely intentional on Morgenstern's part. He's sitting in his Potsdam rooms, being lonely and bitter, but also aware that Fritz' official position on his father is to honor and praise him. So he writes a biography which ostensibly does just that but also delivers plenty of digs and anti-FW material, just like he'd been ordered to talk about scholars being idiots and ended up talking about everyone being fools. And course he was a practiced double talker and spy.
So: FW hagiography or FW critiqute? Both, says Leineweber.
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Le Diable: The Political Biography - A
On the downside, there's that early 20th century... everything. She's not as nationalistic as, say, Richter, and thankfully there isn't an anti semitic remark in sight, but between describing the German nobility's habit of raising their kids bilingual, with French as the dominating language, which is described as "unfortunate" at the beginning and in her final "Manteuffel: Pros and Cons" summary listing as a pro that he tried to wrest Fritz out of the arms of the perfidious French (that's one way of putting it...), you definitely get the impression she didn't care for our neighbour across the Rhine. (Not withstanding presenting all the longer quotes in French and translating only the shorter ones in to German, which means I still haven't worked my way through the longer quotes.) She also while noting Manteuffel had a pretty good idea of the genius that was Fritz regrets he didn't quite realize the genius that was misunderstood FW, allowing the Tall Guys fetish and some of the "rougher" attitudes to blind Manteuffel for his true greatness.
Oh, and then there's this bit which made me go ????.
Seydewitz: Wilhelmine says Manteuffel and Frau von Blaspiel were lovers, but her memoirs aren't always reliable, and also Wilhelmine is a malicious gossip.
Self: Okay?
Seydewitz: Though Manteuffel was totally in love with Blaspiel. In fact, she may have been the only woman he truly loved, as evidenced in this lengthy French passage from a letter of his to Flemming which I'll now quote. All his other relationships with women were shallow or, like his marriage, for money and continuation of the family, but he was really into this one.
Self: So what is the malicious gossip part of Wilhelmine's take on the relationship again?
(Probable reason, though I'm speculating here in letting our author reply: Seydewitz: Sex. Just because he loved her and she loved him, there's no proof they ever had it. They were both married, after all. Wilhelmine says they were lovers, thus insinuating they had sex.=
With this advance warning and with an emphasis on the parts of Manteuffel's life not already covered by Bronisch (i.e. no Wolff saga, he had that investigated much more thoroughly than Seydewitz does here), let's have a look and the life and times of Le Diable: the political side.
So, here were go again. Born a Pomeranian noble with thirteen siblings, most of which died as babies, and none of whom actually played a role in his life. His last sibling, a sister, dies when he's the Saxon envoy in Berlin, and Flemming basically congratulates him that he now gets all his father's money in the "condolence" letter. (Fritz: no longer the worst condolence letter writer of the 18th century!) Manteuffel forms a couple of long lasting relationships through his life and proves to be a good friend capable of loyalty and strong affections, and also while being a lousy husband he'll be a good father to his daughters, but as far as his parents and the siblings were concerned, there seems to have been just polite respect.
(Seydewitz: Also, let me generalize here about Pomeranians, who are down to earth, honest folk incapable of deception as a rule. Manteuffel traded on that reputation when winning FW around despite being not a military guy (he never, not even for a hot second, served in any army) and being very much into culture. FW bought that "honest Pomeranian" image, too, but look, most Pomeranians are like that!
Self: Hang on. Even leaving aside that assigning characteristics to provinces is nonsense, let's have a look at some 18th century examples. Wasn't Grumbkow from Pomerania, too? Also, of course, Fredersdorf. I'll give you "down to earth", possibly, though there's the alchemy interest, but look, the guy did lead Fritz' spy ring.)
Young Manteuffel studies and gets his degree in Leipzig. This leaves him with a lasting fondness for the academic life and sciences far beyond the fashionable interest of his era. When he moves back to Leipzig for his final years, he'll celebrate his 50 years degree anniversary at his alma mater by re-enrolling and attending lectures. Then he goes on the Grand Tour, which in his case means the Netherlands, including a term at Utrecht, Belgium and France. He stays in Paris in a year, perfecting his French to Parisian levels. Like Fritz, his life long love for the French language and for (some) French literature won't mean he doesn't see France the political entity as an enemy. Unlike Fritz, it also won't mean he won't read and befriend German writing Germans authors, notably Wolff and both Gottscheds.
Once he's back in Prussia, Dad gets him a job at F1's court as Kammerjunker. Alas young Manteuffel blows this by unwise satire on the Countess Wartenberg, wife of one of the three Ws and mistress to F1 (because a King has to have one). The Wartenbergs sue, and the ongoing trial - which lasts until Count Wartenberg is toppled from favour by Crown Prince FW - has one very inconvenient condition - Dad Manteuffel promises he won't support cheeky son Manteuffel financially until it's over. This means young Diable shows up in Saxony basically broke. However, in a stroke of luck, he meets and impresses the current most powerful minister in August the Strong's cabinet, Flemming, who takes him on as a protegé. Manteuffel learns all about politics from him, including the unsavoury parts, but as opposed to to many a mentor/protegé relationship in politics which ends up with the protegé turning against the mentor or even replacing him, Manteuffel will remain loyal to Flemming for the rest of Flemming's life, even when he doesn't need him anymore. Not Seydewitz but yours truly is tempted to speculate that Flemming is the actual father figure in Manteuffel's life.)
Flemming gets Manteuffel his first diplomatic appointment, at the Danish court.
(Seydewitz: Let me make here a style critique. Manteuffel's reports and letters are informative and contain good anecdotes, but the manly to the point brevity of a Suhm is beyond him, and he even admits in a letter he tends to ramble. This is the first mention of Suhm in this book, but not the last.)
Rambling aside, Manteuffel has other problems. Because after some brief splendid years as King of Poland, August the Strong is currently reduced to being just Prince Elector of Saxony again courtesy of the double whammy of the French backing Stanislas Lecysnski (not for the last time) and Charles of Sweden invading and treating Saxony as his backyard. Being the young envoy of a defeated prince isn't fun, not to mention Manteuffel doesn't get his salary for the longest time. In a very 18th century noble way, he complains about his money woes in his report home by painting a picture of his creditors now wanting to pawn his underwear from his laundress, his wardrobe from his tailor and his carriage from his table. After he has to sell the kitchen silver, money finally arrives. And he goes on to prove he's worth it; he manages to talk the Danish King around to a neutrality treaty with Saxony, with the long term goal of making this neutrality treaty a friendship and alliance treaty, which since Denmark is next door to Sweden has obvious implications. This achievement is celebrated in Dresden, and Manteuffel's literal and metaphorical credit both in Saxony and in Denmark rises.
Seydewitz: A word about bribery here. To us, accepting any money sounds skeevy, but in terms of the 18th century, Manteuffel actually shows ethics when writing to Flemming he's decided that taking money from foreign governments is cool, as long as you never fleece and rob your own, not least because he'll stick to that.
Alas, Manteuffel's second stint as envoy in Denmark is not as successful, not least because his greater confidence means he makes the mistake of lecturing the Danish King ("Denmark is a truly Christian country, since the Danish administration seems to believe God will do all the necessary work"), who basically kicks him out.
Seydewitz: Just before that, he writes another untranslated lengthy French passage to Flemming which makes him sound like a French revolutionary about how absolute monarchy sucks. I could not believe my eyes the first time I read that, both because Manteuffel wrote it and because whom he wrote it to - Flemming, a life long career courtier and enabler of an absolute monarch, who doesn't seem to disagree much. Guys, if you thought that way, why didn't you say so out loud? Okay, I understand, it would have been career suicide, but still. It would have been manly and noble.
Flemming and August don't blame Manteuffel for this, though, not least because what he lectured King Christian on was the truth, and since the three Ws are out of power by now (with Grandpa Wartensleben the sole one not disgraced), Manteuffel gets a really plum asiggnment as envoy next: Berlin! F1 is still King, and he and Manteuffel now hit it off famously. Then he dies, much to Manteuffel's initial regret, FW becomes King, and Manteuffel for the first time proves how good he really can be when challenged: despite not being into FW for a whole variety of reasons - the cheapness, the military fetish, the tall guys, the drinking - Manteuffel actually isn't a natural born drinker, but both FW and August are, so whenever he's with them, he has to fake it - , the rudeness - and despite being an unpromising candidate aside from being tall (not a soldier, never has been! Into culture and hedonism!), he manages to win FW over not just to himself as Saxon envoy, but to himself. He does this partly through altering his public persona somewhat - as mentioned earlier, he suddenly plays up his Pomeranian origins, and retunes his conversation to less culture, more jokes, and partly by becoming buddies with Grumbkow.
Seydewitz: Let me observe here that in his reports to Flemming, he was honestly impressed with some of FW's traits, the workoholism and some of the reforms, though regretably he did not recognize FW's true greatness. Also, as an example of how our standards for Kings have altered, look no further than Manteuffel never getting over his dislike for FW's cheapness, err, thriftiness, while never once complaining about August's gigantic waste of money.
Self: August was his boss, complaining about that to Flemming who enabled the expenses would have been counterproductive, but I still see your point. Baroque and Rokoko folk expected Kings to be generous and throw money around, and one reason why FW was regarded as such a freak was that he didn't.
Manteuffel also won over Frau von Baspiel, SD's lady-in-waiting, wife to FW's pre Grumbkow minister of war, Baspiel, for the Saxon cause, not just to his own personal charms. From this point onwards, she'll correspond not just with him but with Flemming, which becomes a pot point. As mentioned, he confesses to Flemming of being actually in love with her. She's beautiful, she's smart, cultured, and when SD is made regent by FW during his first lengthy absence, she, acting on Manteuffel's suggestion, talks SD into demanding protocols for every council session, protocols which Frau von Baspiel then shares with her lover and Flemming, so they really know exactly what's going on.
(Seydewitz: Though the claim that they were lovers, just because they were in love, is malicious gossip on Wilhelmine's part.)
Needless to say, this all makes Flemming & August very happy with Manteuffel indeed, and Manteuffel gets a promotion, from envoy to minister of the interior in August's cabinet. About the last thing he has to do as Saxony's envoy in Berlin, though, is carrying out Flemming's instructions to have FW arrest Countess Cosel in exchange for some tall deserters (which will end up in Cosel being imprisoned for the rest of her life).
Manteuffel to Flemming: I know she's your arch enemy and thus also mine, and she sure as hell didn't do anything for me while she was still in favour, but nonetheless, this seems a bit harsh, no?
Seydewitz: Look, I'm not uncritically fond of you, but waxing on sentimentally about something you participate in is cheap.
Self: I'm with you on that one.
Hanging out with August directly means more drinking, so it's a good thing Manteuffel is FW-trained by now. It also means not handing over a note from one of August's many one night stands to August when he's in the company of the current Maitresse en titre, Countess Dönhoff. And it means working towards an ever closer Saxony-Prussia-Austria alliance within the HRE, a long term goal which sufferes a temporary heavy blow when the Clement Affair happens in 1719. Which is when I get my explanation as to where Wilhelmine got her story about a near FW assassination from. Not, as I guessed, from Mom, or not only; most likely, she got it from Dad. How so? Well, brace yourself. It's going to be wild ride...
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FW: In the autumn of 1718, I'm less paranoid than I will be, but this will now change, because Honest Clement, a Hungarian who is NOT a Catholic, tells me a terrible tale. Prince Eugene, Grumbkow and others at my court have hatched a plot to kill me, and via controlling my Schwedt cousin become regent for my son, little Fritz, who will be raised A CATHOLIC and a tool of Rome. I'm now only sleeping with pistols at my side for a while. Those letters from Eugene Clement presented were declared really Eugene's handwriting by other courtiers who know it. I'm now ordering everyone's letters to be opened, which is how I discover that Frau von Baspiel is corresponding with Manteuffel and Fleming. Not only is she clearly a traitorous WHORE, she dares to compare me to Tiberius, and even though I hated my Latin and ancient history lessons, I know that wasn't a compliment. I'm sending her to Spandau and firing her husband. Wait, Clement says there's more?
Clement: This is where I make my mistake. I claim Old Dessauer is part of the conspiracy as well.
FW and Old Dessauer: *have a scene of manly tears where old Dessauer says if FW believes this of him, he should kill him right away. Take up your sword again or take up me!*
FW: *takes up Dessauer*
Old Dessauer: I can't stand Grumbkow, or Flemming, or Manteuffel, and I'm gonna slap that whore Baspiel, literally, but maybe you should demand an explanation from Vienna and Dresden before proceding any further?
Prince Eugene: Oh, FFS. Listen, FW, if the boss says to make war on you, I will, but I'm not going to plot your assassination. And no one wants to make your kid a Catholic. Why do I have an inkling this subject might come up again in my life? Anyway, you know me from Malplaquet. I give you my word as a fellow soldier.
Flemming: Fuck, fuck, fuck. This will set us back decades.
Manteuffel: But we're innocent?
Flemming: Regarding assassination and conversion plans, sure, but we did spy on him via Baspiel. He won't forgive that.
Manteuffel: We'll see about that. Concentrate on denying what we can honestly deny for now. In fact, take the initiative. Let's demand that our good name gets cleared by FW personally! That will impress him, I tell you.
Clement: I get interrogated three times. The third time, I get shown instruments of torture, which is when I confess all.
FW: I don't think threatening torture to find out the truth is a good idea. Poor Clement clearly spoke out of fear. I'm now going to visit him every day in prison, because I still believe there's a conspiracy against me to put my kid on the throne. Thiwill become a fixed idea for me from this point onwards. My scepticism regarding the use of torture or the threat of torture as a truth finding instrument will not come up again in 1730, though.
Grumbkow: Doesn't the bond of manly comrades count anymore? Do I look like a regicide to you? Just read Eugene's letter, boss.
FW: ...Okay. You're innocent. Eugene is, too. BUT SOMEONE CONSPIRED AGAINST ME, I JUST KNOW IT. Just look at Vienna and Dresden insisting that Clement be punished. That just smells like a patsy to me.
Clement: I get poked with glowing iron and then hanged, but because FW really feels sorry for me, the hangman strangles me before having a go with the glowing iron. A plus compassionate ruler, FW! My last speech will emphasize that, and also that while I did con you, I did it because I wanted you to be alert to all the CATHOLIC skeeviness going on in Vienna and Saxony.
Flemming & Manteuffel: We're both Protestants. Also, we're still demanding FW clears our good name.
SD: And I demand you release my favourite lady-in-waiting from Spandau.
FW: *releases Frau von Baspiel in early 1719 from Spandau, but banishes her and her husband to Kleve*
Seydewitz: I know Wilhelmine says she ended up as governess of the younger princesses, but that won't happen until Fritz comes to the throne, which is when he'll do his mother the favour of recalling and reinstalling her.
Grumbkow: Let me phrase the name clearing for you in a subtle way that satisfy their demands so we can go back to politics as usual yet also make it sound as if you're still not convinced, Sire.
Official FW letter to August in June 1719: "I, FW, declare to bear no grudge against Manteuffel and Flemming, and to respect them in the way their qualities deserve"
Manteuffel: That was...amazingly subtle for him. Still. It's a start. Let some time pass and let me work on reconstructing the relationship network, and he'll come around.
Self: Incidentally, aren't the intervening years when Suhm is Saxon envoy and FW hates his guts?
Manteuffel: works his magic, so that when FW and Fritz visit Dresden in 1728, they actually stay at his house. (Fritz' first preserved letter to Wilhelmine, which contains a "hot or not?" report on August, was written there.) This is also when the "Society against Sobriety" is founded, with Grumbkow as President, August as "patron", FW as "compatron" , and Manteuffel as, what else, Le Diable. At this point, FW likes him so much again that he writes him in French. (!) (Seydewitz quotes a letter dated December 23rd 1729 from Wusterhausen from, sic, "Votre tres Affectionne Amy FW". (Fritz came by his spelling honestly.) And FW borrows him 5000 Reichstaler so Manteuffel can attend and shop at the Leipzig Book Fair, for ten years without interest. Manteuffel-concerning letters to the Prussian envoy in Dresden sound thusly (in January 1730): "Dites de Ma part au Diable qu'il change de vie, touchant le bouteille, ou il souccombera, quel malheur pour la cause commune, et tres fidele serviteur du Patron et ami du Compatron."
Good to know for Manteuffel, because as mentioned in Bronisch's books, 1730 is when his career takes a turn for the worse and officially ends because Flemming is dead and Hoym has taken over. Flemming died in 1728, and from 1728 to 1730, Manteuffel was also cabinet minister for Foreign Affairs. As a reminder, the main point of clash between Manteuffel and Hoym was that Manteuffel was favouring a Saxony-Prussia-Austria alliance, now also including Russia, wile Hoym had no time for the HRE and thought Saxony should ally for France and Hannover/Britain instead. (Manteuffel correctly thought France would push Stanislas' Lescyinski's claim for the Polish throne again as soon as August the Strong died and so definitely saw it as the main enemy.) So between 1728 and 1730, Mantteuffel was in a struggle with Hoym about whose ideas would prevail with August. And then this happened:
Summer of 1729: FW and G2 have their almost-duel, Prussia and England growl at each other.
Manteuffel: Excellent. If August offers to support FW militarily, not only will FW remain our ally but Hoym's idea of alliances with France and Britain is shot down, since France, for a breahttaking change, is currently on the same page as England in this matter.
Suhm in Berlin: FW, August could totally negotiate between you and Hannover and reconcile you with your brother-in-law.
Manteuffel: WTF, Suhm? WTF?
Seydewitz doesn't say so, she just says he was indignant, but I think the timing works: this is when Suhm is recalled as envoy.
Manteuffel: goes to Berlin himself in September, at least that's the intention
Manteuffel: unfortunately also gets sick in Breslau, en route; by the time he has recovered, FW has calmed down, and neither a duel or a war happen, without August having had the chance to support FW militarily.
Manteuffel: Grr. Argh. Okay, if that's the case: look, FW, Saxony has gotten on a war footing because of you. We had expenses. Please pay same?
FW: Nope, but good try, and I still like you. Pray keep up the good work against Team France!
Manteuffel: I don't think so. I can see where the wind is blowing. Starting to evacuate my papers to Pomerania now, will hand in my resignation in the summer.
Since, however, even a retired to Pomerania Manteuffel has a correct instinct as to whom to befriend, he becomes buddies with young Brühl, which means, as reported elsewhere, that when Hoym falls, he's in contact with an up and coming power again. As Bronisch told as well, in 1733, Private Citizen Manteuffel moves to Berlin and gets lots of invites from FW.
FW: But you're not again in service, are you?
M: Nope. Total private citizen, me.
FW: I'm glad, because I couldn't talk to you as frankly as I do if you were still working for Saxony. But now we're just honest countrymen!
(Manteuffel in 1733: was instrumental in Brühl's campaign to bribe enough Poles to get August III. elected as King of Poland, due to his old connections with the Polish nobility.)
Seydewitz offers more details for how Mantteufel got into Fritz' circle. FW had one of his serious illnesses where everyone predicted his death in 1734. Now Manteuffel had known Fritz before, of course - as mentioned, FW and Fritz were guests in his Dresden palace during the 1728 trip - , but he hadn't sought out a relationship with him earlier, not least because he hadn't been in Berlin during the 1720s when Fritz was getting old enough to have a relationship with, Suhm was. Now, however, it was another matter.
Seydewitz: Manteuffel's letters to Brühl through the 1730 offer a great look at the goings on of the Berlin court, and it's a shame they haven't been published so far, except in excerpts in Weber's two essays. Note that Manteuffel doesn't just write what the Saxonian court would love to hear; if FW is disgruntled with August III., he says so, and also when a Saxon action is perceived badly by other influential people. He also had a better idea than Brühl of how powerful Saxony was and wasn't, to wit, that there was no way it could go to war with Prussia and win anymore, so being allies and friends was quintessential, and tried to hammer that down. This, Seydewitz approves of, but she strongly disapproves of initially sinister ways Manteuffel uses to get from Team FW to Team Fritz. For starters, he asks Brühl for money to buy presents for various ladies (!) who could win Fritz' favour and/or have influential husbands, and for the various young men around Fritz who look like they could have lasting power. Then, he mentions le Chetardie and he are after the same prostitute ("grisette") whom Fritz supposedly visited in Ruppin and who could be a really useful channel, and anyway, it's prostitutes in general, not ladies in general.
Now, since Manteuffel later will have no doubt Fitz doesn't swing that way ("Hadrian"), it's interesting that at this point, when his knowledge is that of an avarage good courtier but not yet intimate, he sees Fritz as someone into women enough that this could work as an in. And of course it actually fits with all the stories of young Fritz "debauching" himself with prostitutes. The girls don't pay off, but the various gents in Fritz' social circle do. (Seydewitz doesn't name names, but I'm eyeing young Wartensleben.) FW shows he's not dying yet after all, but Manteuffel now has his in and Seydewitz is relieved that "we're breathing cleaner air again" in the reports, i.e. no more prostitutes on the payroll, instead, it's philosophical and cultural debate time, and she's also glad Manteuffel sounds honestly impressed.
Bronisch covered the rest. Three things in Seydewitz which he either didn't mention, or not in detail, or I skipped re: the Manteuffel/Fritz breakup in the fall of 1736:
1.) Formey in his write up of Manteuffel says Old Dessauer (who disliked him of old) scored a point with Fritz by saying how ridiculous it looked for a prince at Fritz' age to still need a teacher to guide him.
2.) Other Seckendorff's secret journal contains this bit: "The Devil confided in me that Suhm has talked to him about Junior, and that (Junior) said to Suhm he'd heard during his journey through East Prussia news of the Devil's" troublemaking and thus has ended the correspondence in order not to have trouble inflicted on him."
(Side note: this is probably the less euphemistically put same explanation Suhm gives in his write-up of Fritz to Brühl later. BTW, it also shows that despite the 1729 clash, there wasn't long term animosity between Suhm and Manteuffel.)
3.) The matter with the painting of Manteuffel by Matthieu. This in itself was an unusual portrait for a German nobleman because it doesn't show him in official wardrobe but in a dressing gown, sans wig, and with alll the surroundings coding him as a scholar rather than a noble. The trouble, though, is that the painting shows the letter Manteuffel is writing starting with "Monseigneur". (It's not readable anymore.) Seydewitz says the painting today (1926) hangs in the book-loaning hall of the university of Leipzig. Who knows whether it's still there, but given that Manteuffel remained connected to his alma mater all his life, I wouldn't be surprised if he left it to them. Anyway, neither Fritz nor FW were amused when they learned of this "through an indiscretion of the painter" (i.e. Matthieu), though Seydewitz doesn't source this info to an original document but to Gurlitt's "Beschreibende Darstellung der Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler".
FW's reaction, btw, reminds me of something in Bronisch which I forgot to mention in my write up there: FW, like his son with the Sanssouci tableround, liked the fantasy that in the tobacco parliament, he could be relaxed among friends without any formality, so as opposed to everywhere else, people did not have to rise for the King if he entered or left. Now, remember how we found out that as late as1739, there was yet another FW/Fritz crisis, along with speculation about a change of the succession? I think I found a reason. Bronisch said that in 1739, FW invited Fritz to the Tobacco Parliament again. Fritz enters. Everyone rises.
FW: *death glare at all his tobacco chums*
FW: *does not visit the tobacco college ever again*
FW: *does not forgive if people give him the impression they are ditching him for the rising sun, not ever*
Oh, one more Seydewitz trivia: she claims Manteuffel was nominated by Fritz of Wales to the Royal Society in the 1740s. I'm going to trust the latest Andrew Mitchell dissertation has done its homework on this and that it was Andrew M., not Fritz of Wales. At any event, she says this does show that while Manteuffel was not a power factor anymore in the 1740s, he had become a name in the world of letters and scholars. Also, while a lousy husband, he had his daughters (his sole son didn't survive; the title went to a distant relation he adopted) educated very well and the surviving letters show he enjoyed debating with them on a high level. Basically, Manteuffel in his silver fox years comes across as good with young people in general (see also Formey still being starry eyed about him decades later), only with Fritz he'd bitten off more than he could chew.
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English marriage intrigues
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Suhm letters III
1. I found entirely endearing this part where Fritz sends Suhm an ode (because of course he does; I'm only surprised he didn't send more), and Suhm replies firstly that he loved it and not just because Fritz wrote it (but I suspect only because Fritz wrote it :P), and secondly that he doesn't write poetry but wants to send Fritz some poetry in return for his nice ode. So he, Suhm, is borrowing some poetry for the purpose and enclosing it, but he won't lie and pretend it's his.
But also, he writes, "I will not deceive you by giving them to you as my own, as the Latin Poet formerly deceived the Augustus of his time."
Which Latin poet? Do you know,
Also, I notice Suhm is casting Fritz as Augustus here.
2. I was right about Suhm getting a cut from the fundraising! Not until 1739, so two years into it. And I was wrong about the ring; that was a simple gift with Fritz's portrait in 1740, but in 1739, Fritz tells Suhm he can take a 10% cut, and Suhm seems pleased.
3. There's a 6-month gap in their correspondence in the spring and summer of 1738. Suhm apparently wrote a very long letter explaining in detail why he was so busy, which the 1787 editor says he cut out (in general, he says he cuts out a lot whenever Suhm starts to get boring), and since Trier has nothing that the 1787 translation doesn't, apparently Preuss silently cut too!
(Carlyle complains about the letters being boring, though I don't know what edition he might be referring to.)
4. Suhm joins the ranks of people who can't do vivid pen portraits when he depicts Duke Anton Ulrich, whom he portrays in generically positive terms. The only detail that was interesting to me is that Anton has read all of Wolff's works more than once, which "have, without doubt, a little contributed to form his mind, and strengthen his character." My reaction was: read all the philosophy you can now, Anton, you're going to need it!
Oh!
So I hope all that Wolffian philosophy was helpful!
5. In February 1740, Fritz tells Suhm he's awaiting the events that will allow him to summon Suhm and "perform promises." This makes sense of Suhm's decision to take for granted in June that Fritz wants him and submit his resignation without waiting for a formal invitation.
Also, Fritz is apparently still unsure that it's reciprocated, because his next sentence is: "I hope you are always in the same sentiments in which I have known you, and that you have not forgotten the agreement made the night of our separation." That's why, when he *doesn't* hear anything from Suhm on the subject in June, he gets worried.
This is also when he sends the ring with his portrait to Suhm.
6. Apparently Suhm was in Warsaw not just on his route back, but because he was required to report there for his formal, in-person removal as envoy. But by the time he got there, was so sick that he was exempted from making an appearance at court. :/
7. Remember how the Hohenzollerns didn't use regnal numbers, and so everyone was confused by Friedrich Wilhelm? And that's how Fritz ended up being called Friedrich III, with FW as F2? 1787 editor has him as William I!
8. The editor omits two of the last letters Suhm ever wrote and Fritz's replies, when he's on his way from St. Petersburg. Thank goodness for Preuss!
9. Suhm's last letter but one congratulates Fritz on the death of Charles VI 8 days before:
The warm interest which I take, Sire, in the splendour and felicity of a reign which you promise to your dear subjects, does not permit me to speak of that event, without previously felicitating your Majesty on these great conjectures which will give you an opportunity of augmenting your glory, by endeavoring to promote the interest and happiness of your states.
The editor footnotes this with an observation that the event is the emperor's death, and the conjectures without doubt refer to the claims to Silesia that Fritz is now going to advance.
I thought that was interesting *before* this morning's salon, when we found hints that Suhm's politics might leaned in the anti-Imperial direction. Putting these two together, I'm now even more convinced!
So apparently Suhm, who in his 1740 character portrait said that Fritz cared more about fame than anything, and who in the 1720s was apparently trying to reconcile FW with G2 and may or may not have been hanging around with the English envoy Dubourgay, is now saying that Charles' death will be a great opportunity for Fritz to achieve glory by advancing the interests of his state.
Yeah, so apparently Suhm would have been 100% behind the Silesian invasion. Since he's leaving Saxon service and becoming a Prussian (and turning his kids into Prussians), making his loyalties pretty darn clear, I'm not *sure* how he would have felt about how Fritz treated Saxony in the first Silesian wars (badly enough that it contributed to Saxony switching sides between the first and second), but since neither anywhere near as bad as the Third Silesian War, Suhm might not have had the Algarotti and Maupertuis experience had he lived. Those two both had the expectation that it was going to be Enlightened Academy Times only, and were twiddling their thumbs and getting increasingly frustrated by the sudden emphasis on war (and in one case, captured by Austrians).
Whereas Suhm might have been in for *some* surprises at how Fritz with absolute power turned out, it seems that he would have been less surprised and disappointed than people who knew him less well (Algarotti, Voltaire, etc.). "Go Fritz, invade Silesia! Greatest of all kings! Free those Protestants! :P"
By 1756, the year of the great Saxony invasion and start of the war crime-ridden exploitative occupation, Suhm would have been 65 and, well, we have to assume *much* better health for him to have made it that long, as opposed to the one year of extra health he would have needed in order to witness the whiplash that much of Europe (but not Manteuffel or Superville!) got from Fritz. But I do have to assume that the bombing of Dresden, whether for strategic motives or just spite, would have been a WTF moment even for Suhm.
Note, though, that all his sons were in the Prussian army, and might well have been involved in the occupation. I guess one hopes that they did live in St. Petersburg during the 1736-1740 period, because then they were born in Prussia, raised in Prussia (because even after Suhm stopped being envoy, he remained on a pension in Berlin, presumably with his family, unless he decided to be extra cautious about FW's hanging tendencies), with at most occasional visits to Dresden, and then spent a few years abroad in Russia, so the transition back to Berlin and then into the Prussian army was hopefully not surprising or unusually traumatic (as opposed to the normal traumas of war).
I mean, going native is a thing for envoys. Hoym, long-time Saxon envoy to France, was accused of it when he returned (and thus his pro-France foreign policy surprises me not at all). For all that Suhm didn't fit in very well with FW, after 10 years in Berlin, he clearly went native as a Prussian (hence choosing to stay in Berlin for 6 years as a private citizen, until he needed money, which can't have all been a desire to stay near a Fritz he barely saw).
Whereas Rottembourg was ambassador to Prussia on 3 separate occasions, because every single time he was like, "I need to get the fuck out of here. I mean totally for health reasons! Please recall me
before I strangle FW and cause an international incidentto a better climate!" :PSaxon envoys and Russian threesomes
Re: Saxon envoys and Russian threesomes
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Re: Saxon envoys and Russian threesomes
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Re: Suhm letters III
Re: Suhm letters III
Re: Suhm letters III
Re: Suhm letters III
Burial methods
To quote from an article,
It is known that the Catholic Church was against cremation, largely successfully as archaeological evidence indicates. At least it is customary to assume that abandoning cremation in Nordic burial places as well as the introduction of items with Christian symbols in the graves, is a sign of Christianisation.
However, there were other funerary customs viewed by the Church as irreverent and cruel abuses that it attempted to ban in the Later Middle Ages. Especially among dignitaries dying far from home, it was customary to disembowel the cadaver, dismember and cook it so that the bones were dissevered from the flesh. The bones could then be easily transported and interred. This practice was known as “embalming more teutonico,” an originally German custom that became widespread by the thirteenth century. Indeed, the bodies of certain saints such as Saint Louis XI [sic; typo for IX] of France (1214–1270) and Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) were treated this way. It came, however, to be vehemently opposed by the papacy...This abomination was considered impious both in the eyes of the Divine Majesty as in those of humans, and the body thus treated would be denied Christian burial.
Even though the rubric only applied to the cutting up and boiling of bodies, it also encompassed the “dispersed burials,” cutting up, eviscerating and division of corpses and the burial of various body parts (such as the heart, entrails and body) at different locations. Thus, dispersed burials were also banned by the papacy. However, papal dispensations are known to have been granted to persons of influence so that instead of abolishing the custom, it became an even more desirable status indicator of the highest echelons of medieval society.
I would add that the French kings had had their hearts and other organs buried separately for centuries in St. Denis, which is why we have Louis XVII's heart (which was removed after his death, per royal tradition), but not his body, which was lost during the Revolution.
To quote again from the article,
Considering that important royal dynasties persisted in disembowelling their dead members, this ban seems to have largely disregarded among the elite, even without special authorisation or fear of excommunication. Moreover, another important motive for chopping up bodies was naturally related to a central tenet of Christian doctrine, namely, the cult of saints. The trade in relics, severed body parts of saints, had been initiated in late Antiquity and continued throughout the Middle Ages and caused the Church fathers to debate the possibility of resurrection in these cases. For example, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) considered resurrections as “the reassemblage” of all the bits and pieces of the body. Yet, judging by Roman legislation and Christian sermons banning the chopping up of and commerce in body parts, the trade in relics started to grow in the latter half of the fourth century. It continued to flourish in the Middle Ages, and the boiling of dead potential saints was necessary to have “the bones […] more quickly available for distribution.”
Re: Burial methods
Torture and capital punishment in 18th Century Prussia
The eighteenth century saw the phasing-out, then the abandonment of torture in virtually every German state. Already in the second half of the seventeenth century, torure began to be less widely applied, with its incidence in Munich falling from 44 per cent of criminal cases in 1650 to merely 16 per cent forty years later. In Prussia King Friedrich I. already required all cases where torture was proposed to be referred to him for advance approval. It was limited to cases of murder and treason by order of Friedrich II. in 1740, then abolished formally by him on 4 August 1754. Other German states followed suit in the second half of the eighteenth century, dropping torture in practice even before it was abandoned by law. Torture was last used in Würtemberg in 1778, and it was formally abolished there in 1809.
(The author lists the various German states and their documented use of torture vs the formal abolishment. Guess which one was the last? Hannover. Last use in 1818; it gets formally declared illegal in 1822. Bear in mind here Hannover is still ruled by Britain, as it will be until Victoria ascends to the throne. Bear also in mind how certain authors even today, like, say, David O. the Émilie and Voltaire biographer, go on about how much more barbaric the German states, especially Prussia, were compared to England in the 18th Century.)
One factor: the increasing use of prisons not just as a temporary hold until the penalty for the criminal was executed (i.e. killing them, torturing them, cutting off limbs) but instead as its own punishment:
The decline of public corporal and capital punishment in Weimar, for example, began with the construction of the penitentiary (Zuchthaus) in 1719. It was some time before this development really took hold. Ironically, the wave of prison foundations that swept the German states in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was part of a general crackdown on crime and deviance that also included a number of draconian extensions of the death penalty. In 1725, King Friedrich Wilhelm I. of Prussia issued an edict declaring that all gypsies found within the boundaries of his kingdom were to be strangled, while sodomites would be burned alive. In 1736 the same monarch threatened to hang thieves in Berlin from gallows erected in front of the houses which they had burgled. (...)
However, this development was relatively short-lived. Not only was it being gradually undermined by the increasing availability of imprisonment as an alternative to these draconian physical sanctions, it was also threatened by the growth of order and stability in German society in the eighteenth century. Recent studies have shown that a long-term decline in crimes of volence began in the late seventeenth century, and continued well into the twentieth. Far from representing a shift from crimes against the person to crimes against property, as used to be thought, this was part of a long-term reduction in overall crime rates which went hand in hand with the growing control of the stae over its citizens. (....) The neding of the great wars of religion that devastated Europe for a century and a half after the Reformation left European society searching for peace and order in an altered world. In a depopulated Germany, in particular, the competition for land and researches had become markedly less severe in the wake of the Thirty Years War. And the end of the 'seventeenth-century crisis', the improvement in climatic condotion with the gradual ending of the 'little ice age', and the start of a prolonged period of growth and prosperity in agriculture, meant a slow improvement in living standards which also played its part in the transformation of social attitudes. The eighteenth century was an era of relative social peace after the upheavals of the previous two hundred years. In the long run, this was bound to have an effect on the way that penal sanctions operated.
While long-term developments in the history of the law, the state and society all undoubtedly underlay the trend towards milder punishments that begain in Germany towards the middle of the eighteenth century, it remains the case that the power over penal policy lay in the hands of the princes, and that legislation to restrict and abolish torture and to do away with the more baroque forms of public punishment was enacted by individual monarchs. Here the crucial figure was Friedrich II (known to his English admirers as Frederick the Great), who succeeded to the Prussian throne in 1740. Like many eighteenth-century monarchs, he was on extremely bad terms with his father, and determined to reverse many of his policies when he became king. (...)
Friedrich II paid particular attention to the legal system. 'Princes are born to be judges of the people,' he wrote; 'everything that makes them great has its origin in the administration of justice.' He found the confusion of Germanic and Roman law, the variety of local practice and custom, the prevalence of corruption and delay (...) both irrational and unproductive. He apointed a series of leading jurists to advise him, especially Samuel Cocceji (1697-1751), Johann Heinrich von Carmer (1721 - 1801), and Carl Gottlieb Svarez (1746 - 98). Their ideas on the civil and criminal law were shaped by the doctrines of the French philosophes. In 1740 they undertook a comprehensive programme of judical reforms, including the effective abolition of torture, as all as the replacement of drowning in a sack with beheading as the punishment for infanticide. A characteristic example of the Prussian monarch's attitude towards penal sanctions and their purpose can be seen in his attitude to the punishment laid down by his father for the crime of unnatural sexual intercourse. Ten years before Friedrich II. came to the throne, in 1730, Andreas Lepsch had been burned at the state in Potsdam for sodomy. In 1746, Friedrich II. critisized this procedure on the grounds of its effects on the public, remarking:
"It is undeniable that through frightful public capital punishments, many young and innocent spirits, who naturally want to know the reason for such a terrible executio, especially if they are also unaware of the finer sentiments (just as the criminal is), will be scandalized rather than improved, and it is even possible that evil tendencies may be awakened in them, tendencies of which they previously had no inkling."
He ordered therefore that the practice should stop. Nor was this the only example of the new attitude to penal policy. The Prussian monarch issued a similar decree in 1749 concerning the punishment of breaking with the wheel. The objective was 'not to torment the criminal but rather to make a frightful example of him in order to arouse repugnance in others'. Friedrich commanded therefore that, providing the offender's crime was not of 'such enormity' that a 'completely abhorrent example' was necessary, 'the criminal should be strangled by the hangman before being broken by the wheel, but secretly, and without it coming to the special attention of the assembled spectators, and then his execution with the wheel can proceed'. Nothing could express more clearly the monarch's understanding of the purpose of punishment. It did not matter in the least that the malefactor was actually dead when the sentence was carried out, or that a deliberate deception was being played on the public. For the rationalistic Friedrich II., the execution was a kind of pedagical theatre, drawing its purposes and its methods from the model of baroque tragedy. Its purpose was not to inflict suffering, but to deter by making an example of the offender. And it had to awaken feelings of revulsion in the onlooker. Anything that seemed likely to frustrate this purpose was to be avoided. This included the infliction of pain to such a degree that the sympathy of the crowd might be evoked. Apart from this obvious policial purpose, it is also important to note that Friedrich did in the end consider that excesssive suffering was if possible to be avoided. The degree of pain was to be calculated precisely, in rational terms.
Along with these measures, Fredrich II. and his advisoers also issued new procedures to speed up the administration of justice and remove abuses. The King throught that if there were fewer executions, each one would constitute a more impressive spectacle. The point was not to kill offenders but to educate the public. A crucial step was taken in 1743, when Friedrich II. removed the death penalty for theft. Where he considered that education would be effective with offenders as well as with the public, he encouraged a switch from capital and corporal punishment to imprisonment. The prison, as a Berlin judge wrote in 1770, should be 'a place not only of punishment but also of improvement'. The prosons and workhouses which were now constructed reflected the widespread eighteenth century belief that poverty, crime and vagrancy were chiefly the result of an idle and disorderly lifestyle. Hard work and submission to the prison rules were intended to encourage a change of attitude on the part of the prisoners and centration on public punishment as a theatrical demonstration designed to make the public abhor the criminal was part, in other words, of a broader concentration on the educative and deterrent function of punishment.
The next big change in Prussia re: capital punishment comes in 1795 and is therefore out of the scope of our era. 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. An English reader would automatically assume it did, I guess, due to the different way the term is used today in English and in German.
Re: Torture and capital punishment in 18th Century Prussia
Re: Torture and capital punishment in 18th Century Prussia
Re: Torture and capital punishment in 18th Century Prussia
Re: Torture and capital punishment in 18th Century Prussia
Re: Torture and capital punishment in 18th Century Prussia
Re: Torture and capital punishment in 18th Century Prussia
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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
Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
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.)
Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
Manger, Knobelsdorff - and Peter Keith!
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Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
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Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
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Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
Re: Book review I: Der Meister von Sanssouci - Fredersdorf and historical footnotes
Music diss
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Bach and Zelter
Re: Bach and Zelter
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Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
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!
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Der König und sein Narr: Screencaps
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):
Re: Der König und sein Narr: Screencaps
Re: Der König und sein Narr: Screencaps
Re: Der König und sein Narr: Screencaps
Re: Der König und sein Narr: Screencaps
Re: Der König und sein Narr: Screencaps
Re: Der König und sein Narr: Screencaps
Re: Der König und sein Narr: Screencaps
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
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: I
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Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
As I said elsewhere, he took that position that was supposed to be FW's ultimate joke on scholars seriously. Three days afterthe appointment, he called the Academy council together for a "session extraordinaire" as it says in the protocol in order to find out what had become of Leipniz' correspondence, and how far the translation projects of the society had come. Writes Sabrow: If Gundling was in Berlin - as opposed to Potsdam or Wusterhausen - he showed up regularly at the council sessions, not just in the first time of his presidency. That he didn't take his presidential duties seriously anymore after the beginning is a far spread assumption, but it doesn't hold up next to the careful protocols of the Academy Sessions: the last council session presided over by Gundling took place on August 16th 1730 and agreed on two suggestions the President made for new members of the Academy. The majority of the routine sessions did happen without the President, who came in person when the acceptance or refusal of new members were debated, or important decisions about projects were made. However, like his predecessor Leipniz he supervised the work of the society during the time of his absence via letters from Potsdam and Wusterhausen, letters through which he at times completely dominated the council sessions, aas an example from the year 1725 demonstrates: "Secretary reads from President Gundling's two writings of May 5th and May 7th in which the later talks about payment of the seal for the medical surgical college, for the building of the society courtyard, because of the changes of the handymen, because of the materials for the print of Neumann's work at Potsdam needed, and what the change of Mr. Schütz and the replacement of his position in the obervatory can be reported, and demands to know what of the above has been done, and replied do."
All this, of course, doesn't change the fact that to most people, the idea that the King's favourite chew toy now held of the office of the great Leipniz was, depending on whether they were more FW or more Fritz minded, either the ultimate joke on scholars or an unbearable humiliation of science and learning. There were still some scholars taking him seriously, but usually they were the ones living far from Prussia and only knowing Gundling via his books. To most, and certainly to all who joined the Academy in Fritz' time, he was FW's fool and joke on scholarship. And for all the times when he was treated like a guest, sitting at the King's table with his family, there were ten times when he was abused in the most horrible way. Including, sadly, his time of dying, as I wrote and translated before. But before that happened, something else did, which also forms a part of Sabrow's argument that Gundling was both compos mentis and at least partially successful in carving out an FW free parallel existence for himself: when his brother Hieronymous died in 1729, Hieronymus' last will named Gundling as the guardian for his children and executer of his last will. Now, Hieronymus, as mentioned, had been unhappily married and trying to get a separation from his wife Augusta, who supposedly openly cheated on him and was living in Berlin. Surely, asks Sabrow, if Jacob Paul in 1729 had been the non-stop drinker of legend, his brother - who had a great many friends and colleages in Halle whom he could have asked to become guardians -, would not have entrusted either the children nor the family fortune for safekeeping to him? Augusta (who had left her husband and children two years earlier which she could since she was the niece of one of the most influential Prussian trademen) sued, at which point her brother-in-law demonstrated that fool or not, he actually could wield what influence he had on FW in a devastating way in this one very personal matter. Augusta was arrested in November 1729 for loose living (remember FW's NO WHORES doctrine?) and put into Spandau. Gundling punching downward or just fuflfilling his brother's last will? You decide. In any event, Augusta remained in Spandau where she died a year after her brother-in-law.
Sabrow ends the biography with a pointed comparison of FW/Gundling to Fritz/Voltaire, complete with the quote from Fritz from November 1740 when he's haggling about Voltaire's travel expenses, along the lines of "rarely has a fool been paid so well", and a 1753 quote from Fritz where he again uses the term fool - "how much noise a fool can make in good society!" I partly agree and have written about some eerie parallels elsewhere, though of course a key difference between the two pairings is that Voltaire didn't need Fritz, not financially (because he had money himself), and not professionally. (That Gundling didn't have a "proper" university degree automatically limited the professional possiblities to him outside of Prussia even before FW destroyed his reputation.) This gave him a confidence that Gundling didn't have, and the ability to go tit for tat in the battle of pamphlets and insults. And as humiliating and frightening as the entire Frankfurt episode must have been, it was an episode, which Voltaire got out of to be Voltaire for decades more, his reputation unchanged. (I.e. if you admired him before, you admired him afterwards, and if you hated him before, well, you certainly didn't feel sorry now.) Moreover, no matter how often Fritz would rail about Voltaire being the scum of the earth as a human being, he never put down Voltaire's work, he kept his admiration for it from first to last. That's simply a different foundation than FW being at best impressed by the manfuctoring suggestions and maybe by Gundling's greater knowledge of the world (since he had travelled in foreign countries) and ability to read and interpret the world's news for him, but having nothing but contempt for the core of what was important to Gundling, his work as a scholar.
In conclusion: still a harrowing tale, and infuriating in that for such a long time, it was written off as mildly embarrassing to FW at best, not as the testimony to cruelty it is.
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
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Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
The other Jägerhof
Now, you all know me: I love checking out maps and getting a modern-day look at historical sites. (I spend a lot of time in street view, but will spare you that.)
Here is a map showing where Fritz's dogs were in relation to Sanssouci, and as I found when I was snapshotting this, the modern-day Voltaireweg! I know he had an apartment in town that he spent a lot of time in, both because he and Fritz were driving each other crazy and, at least according to Davidson, because there weren't enough women at Sanssouci for our heterosexual Voltaire's tastes. But I don't know where this apartment was or whether it has any relation to the Voltaireweg. I like, though, how you can view the Voltaireweg as leading toward Sanssouci or away from it. :)
Re: The other Jägerhof
Re: The other Jägerhof
Re: The other Jägerhof
Re: The other Jägerhof
Re: The other Jägerhof
Re: The other Jägerhof
Re: The other Jägerhof
Re: The other Jägerhof