This is fascinating, thank you! It's so interesting to me that you see all the roots of these conflicts showing up much earlier.
One early and harmless illustration of disconnect that immediately stuck out to me was in September 1747: Fritz writes to AW from Sanssouci, in response to a letter in which AW said he'd be sad if he ended up like Moses and only got to see the beautiful vineyard and his brother from afar: I won't invite you to come here, nor will I send you fruit that you haven't picked yourself. You are old enough to do both and I told you often enough that nothing could delight me more than to see you. But I won't invite you. You will come when you want and go when you like. Brothers shouldn't be on flattery terms with each other ["nicht auf dem Komplimentierfuße stehen"]. I embrace you a thousand times.
It's on this fine line between sweet/playful and impatient/admonishing and where the relationship goes from there is quite open at that point, but turns into tragedy ten years later.
*nods* It could so easily have gone another way... but it didn't.
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Re: Fritz/AW Correspondence
One early and harmless illustration of disconnect that immediately stuck out to me was in September 1747: Fritz writes to AW from Sanssouci, in response to a letter in which AW said he'd be sad if he ended up like Moses and only got to see the beautiful vineyard and his brother from afar: I won't invite you to come here, nor will I send you fruit that you haven't picked yourself. You are old enough to do both and I told you often enough that nothing could delight me more than to see you. But I won't invite you. You will come when you want and go when you like. Brothers shouldn't be on flattery terms with each other ["nicht auf dem Komplimentierfuße stehen"]. I embrace you a thousand times.
It's on this fine line between sweet/playful and impatient/admonishing and where the relationship goes from there is quite open at that point, but turns into tragedy ten years later.
*nods* It could so easily have gone another way... but it didn't.