I have to admit, his "geringe Heirat" is a point in his favour in my eyes
Oh absolutely. It's a very sympathetic deed. In Keppler's Der Vater, FW at one point realises his buddy essentially lives his own dream life - married for love with a woman who loves him back, not one who regards herself blatantly superior to him, sons who adore him and are close to him (and don't complain about their miserable education but are happy about it because they love the manly pursuits of soldiering and hunting and beer etc.), and everyone is a good Christian, too. Leaving fictionalized FW aside, I'm sure given the sheer number of bad marriages, a great many snobs were secretly envious of Old Dessauer having a good one because he'd done the radical thing of marrying the woman he loved regardless of her status.
..Otoh: even if he'd married the bluest of blue blooded ladies, I imagine Liselotte would still have objected of him fantasizing about killing her son! And she has a point re: the cruelty. All those gruesome disciplinary punishments in the Prussian army we've heard and read about, Old Dessauer mostly invented. Even if one justifies this with "well, he created the best army on the continent like that": he had no scruples dragging poor Gundling back to be abused for many years more, either, which wasn't justified by any raison d'état, just by FW's own cruelty (and I'm sure Old Dessauer joined in when the Tabacgie had their regular go at Gundling).
Karl May: I knew he'd done it, because my Dad owns the 72 volumes 1950s/1960s edition from when the Karl May Verlag had moded to Bamberg and started to republish. But I haven't yet read that particular volume in which all the stories are collected (titled,unsurprisingly: Der Alte Dessauer).
Heeee. Love it. Same is true for German, though! Which means she might have preferred Fritz's French after all.
Sure - French was in a very real sense his mother tongue! Re his thug of a father, though, I'm not sure how much of this she had heard. I mean, the first time she hears something about FW, it's when her beloved aunt Sophie writes about how adorable the kid danced ballet! Though clearly by the time of the old Dessauer letter, FW's reputation along with Dessauer's must be making the international rounds, even for old ladies in France, at least to some degree.
Liselotte's own German is of course extravagantly spelled (this being centuries before Duden) and way more informal than her very rare French, and it's hard to get that dimension across in an English translation, though it's part of the charm of her letters. Here she is when Sophie of Hannover has died, writing to her sister Louise again, on July 1st 1714:
(I)ich weiß selbst nicht recht, was ich Euch geschrieben habe, so sehr setzt mich diß abscheuliche Unglück außer mir selber. Diese liebe Churfürstin hat mich durch gero gnädige Schreiben aus mancher Betrübnis und Herzeleydt gezogen, so ich mir hir im land empfunden(...). Ach gott, mir selber hat ma tante oft geschrieben, biß sie einen schleunigen Todt für den besten halte, und dass es eine schlegte sach seye, wenn man im im bett stirbt, den Pater oder Prister auf einer Seydt hatt und den Docktor auf der anderen Seydten und können doch nicht helffen; sie woll es so machen, daß sie dies spectacle nicht geben wolle, hat leyder nur zu wahr gesagt! Ma tante war mein einziger trost in all den Widerwertigkeytten hir, sie machte mir mit ihren lustiggen briefen alles leicht, was mich auch am betrübsten gedaugt hatt, sie hatt mir dadurch bißher dass leben erhalten.
Sophie had died of a stroke while walking through the garden of Herrenhausen, renember. A lighter passage demonstrating Liselotte's baroque German is about her son, not yet a regent, January 1715:
Mein Sohn ist Gott seye danck in vollkommener Gesundheit nun, daß er gestern 5 partien im Ballhaus gespilt hat; daß er ohnmächtig wardt, kam nur darher, daß er, nachdem er sich so dick gefressen wie ein Schindersteff und hernach in einer gar warmen cammer bey dem camin eingeschlaffen war, mit einem gar starcken husten und schnuppen. Wir sind nun gottlob beyde gar woll, und mein Sohn hat mir versprochen, hinfüro geyscheydter zu sein und nicht mehr so abscheulich zu freßen.
Re: War of the Spanish Succession: Bleinheim - Gossipy Sexuality Debate
Oh absolutely. It's a very sympathetic deed. In Keppler's Der Vater, FW at one point realises his buddy essentially lives his own dream life - married for love with a woman who loves him back, not one who regards herself blatantly superior to him, sons who adore him and are close to him (and don't complain about their miserable education but are happy about it because they love the manly pursuits of soldiering and hunting and beer etc.), and everyone is a good Christian, too. Leaving fictionalized FW aside, I'm sure given the sheer number of bad marriages, a great many snobs were secretly envious of Old Dessauer having a good one because he'd done the radical thing of marrying the woman he loved regardless of her status.
..Otoh: even if he'd married the bluest of blue blooded ladies, I imagine Liselotte would still have objected of him fantasizing about killing her son! And she has a point re: the cruelty. All those gruesome disciplinary punishments in the Prussian army we've heard and read about, Old Dessauer mostly invented. Even if one justifies this with "well, he created the best army on the continent like that": he had no scruples dragging poor Gundling back to be abused for many years more, either, which wasn't justified by any raison d'état, just by FW's own cruelty (and I'm sure Old Dessauer joined in when the Tabacgie had their regular go at Gundling).
Karl May: I knew he'd done it, because my Dad owns the 72 volumes 1950s/1960s edition from when the Karl May Verlag had moded to Bamberg and started to republish. But I haven't yet read that particular volume in which all the stories are collected (titled,unsurprisingly: Der Alte Dessauer).
Heeee. Love it. Same is true for German, though! Which means she might have preferred Fritz's French after all.
Sure - French was in a very real sense his mother tongue! Re his thug of a father, though, I'm not sure how much of this she had heard. I mean, the first time she hears something about FW, it's when her beloved aunt Sophie writes about how adorable the kid danced ballet! Though clearly by the time of the old Dessauer letter, FW's reputation along with Dessauer's must be making the international rounds, even for old ladies in France, at least to some degree.
Liselotte's own German is of course extravagantly spelled (this being centuries before Duden) and way more informal than her very rare French, and it's hard to get that dimension across in an English translation, though it's part of the charm of her letters. Here she is when Sophie of Hannover has died, writing to her sister Louise again, on July 1st 1714:
(I)ich weiß selbst nicht recht, was ich Euch geschrieben habe, so sehr setzt mich diß abscheuliche Unglück außer mir selber. Diese liebe Churfürstin hat mich durch gero gnädige Schreiben aus mancher Betrübnis und Herzeleydt gezogen, so ich mir hir im land empfunden(...). Ach gott, mir selber hat ma tante oft geschrieben, biß sie einen schleunigen Todt für den besten halte, und dass es eine schlegte sach seye, wenn man im im bett stirbt, den Pater oder Prister auf einer Seydt hatt und den Docktor auf der anderen Seydten und können doch nicht helffen; sie woll es so machen, daß sie dies spectacle nicht geben wolle, hat leyder nur zu wahr gesagt! Ma tante war mein einziger trost in all den Widerwertigkeytten hir, sie machte mir mit ihren lustiggen briefen alles leicht, was mich auch am betrübsten gedaugt hatt, sie hatt mir dadurch bißher dass leben erhalten.
Sophie had died of a stroke while walking through the garden of Herrenhausen, renember. A lighter passage demonstrating Liselotte's baroque German is about her son, not yet a regent, January 1715:
Mein Sohn ist Gott seye danck in vollkommener Gesundheit nun, daß er gestern 5 partien im Ballhaus gespilt hat; daß er ohnmächtig wardt, kam nur darher, daß er, nachdem er sich so dick gefressen wie ein Schindersteff und hernach in einer gar warmen cammer bey dem camin eingeschlaffen war, mit einem gar starcken husten und schnuppen. Wir sind nun gottlob beyde gar woll, und mein Sohn hat mir versprochen, hinfüro geyscheydter zu sein und nicht mehr so abscheulich zu freßen.