As usual, thank you for the write-up, and as usual, far less than I actually want to say:
a King's gotta do what a King's gotta do, and FW acted by the law.
I really, really hope "The tyrant demands blood" is a genuine quote. It seems like it probably is, but we can't be sure. Anyway. I want Katte to have known exactly who the problem here was, even if he couldn't say so publicly.
Is the Murder on the Wusterhausen Express scenario still on?
As to the quote, the chances are reasonably good it's genuine as we discussed back then!
I found another literary footnote: a really long novel about Prince Eugene from the 1950s, written by Louise Eisler (divorced wife of composer Hanns Eisler) and her next husband Ernst Fischer. They were both Marxists. Hanns Eisler, who'd composed the songs for Brecht's play Die Maßnahme and had gone into exile, had fallen foul of the HUAC once the war was over, and ended up in the GDR, composing the East German national anthem. Louise after divorcing him ended up in Austria again, marrying Fischer. And that's really all I know about her; she had befriended my doctoral thesis subject Lion Feuchtwanger while in Exile and he wrote an epilogue for her Eugene novel, which is how I came across it. So the novel is in some way Eugene: The Communist View. It's also written entirely in dialogue, like a stage play, but at novel length, starting in Versailles after young Eugene is refused a job by Louis one time too often and ending shortly after his death and funeral in Vienna.
Characterisation: young Eugene does want fame and a job, and picks Team Habsburg/Austria precisely because they're about to hit rock bottom and a seemingly hopeless cause (all the more impressive if he can make a career there), but he also has an inner idealist waiting to get out pretty soon, falling in love with not the HRE but Austria and the people (naturally), with the jealeaous nobility (intruder alert) hating his guts and the clergy ditto. (Evil Jesuits about.) Soon his goals shift and he basically fights with a reformed, modern Austrian state as the endgame in mind. His tragedy is that he's stuck with three mediocre Emperors in a row who do figure out they need him but are incapable to realize the greater vision, and all too prone to listening to his enemies. His larger tragedy is, as two female characters tell him, that he's fighting for the wrong cause; instead of defeating Racoczky, he should have joined forces with him and fought for Hungarian independence, for starters. (At which point I checked, and Louise Eisler Fischer was born Louise Goztony.) But also while he's doing his best for the people under his command, he doesn't realise you can't reform a rotten system from above.
On the less doctrinaire side, the book actually has its share of interesting relationships and characters. Mind you, it's a early 1950s publication, which means no, no one is openly gay. In the opening Versailles scene, one courtier tells another courtier who has spotted Eugene in the waiting room and wonders who he is that Lselotte has said about him that, and here the direction goes "she whispers the rest in his ear", and that's it. Eugene later has a platonic soulmate relationship with the Countess Eleonore Batthany, nee Strattmann, but while she is unambigiously in love with him, he at least sexually is not in love with her (or anyone else), though he cares deeply for her. We get two scenes with Queen Anne, one with Sarah, one with Abigail, and you can read it as just capricious bored monarch and (platonic) favourite or as subtextual ("nasty rumors" are mentioned). But that's it in terms of hints that not everyone may be straight. Otoh, Eugene is given a "my best enemy" relationship with Villars, who also shows up already in the Versailles introduction scene, and the two keep running into each other through the years before Malplaquet, always respecting the hell out of each other. This makes Villars one of two competent and sympathetic male aristos who aren't Eugene. The other one is Marlborough. (All other male aristocrats are either incompetent, malicious, or both. The female characters are more more layered; even those working against Eugene, like MT's Dad's Spanish mistress, are given sympathetic or even noble motives.) Since he's really working for Britain, not Anne, like Eugene is working for Austra, not his three Emperors, their bffness is assured. (Marlborough feels as if he hails directly from Winston Churchill's characterisation of him. The novel also likes his wife a lot and is definitely pro-Sarah and anti-Abigail; so much so that when Marlborough mentions some of what Britain has gained at the end of the war, Sarah is sincerely shocked that this includes slave trading rights and is basically Britain's first anti-slavery-aristocrat, giving her husband a "how could you?" (He points out that since he's out of a job now, what's he supposed to do about it?)
In addition to the historical upper class characters, we also get servants, soldiers, engineers and farmers. The most prominent of whom is Ursula, who starts out in Eugene's service, like her brother, and Eugene okay with her wearing men's clothing and basically running his first estate, until some stupid and evil Austrian aristocrats show up who want to provoke the (absent) Eugene by running havoc with his estate. One of them tries to rape Ursula who because she has a pistol can fight him off, but this is it for her; she changes sides and joins the Hungarian rebellion, and once that's defeated doesn't return into Eugene's service anymore, either, unlike her brother Martin who keeps serving him as a soldier. Ursula hold Eugene responsible because he has the insight to understand what's necessary and has managed to achieve genuine power, but he still won't join the revolution overthrow the rotten system instead of stabilizing it.
This is also the criticism of Eleonore, who argues with him a lot - not least because he infuriates her by always seeing his enemy's pov as well, even if said enemies are courtiers scheming against him, EXCEPT in the case of Racoczky and FREE HUNGARY NOW - but also adores him and is the novel's uncontested heroine who gets the last but one word on Eugene once he's dead. (The very last word is given to the people passing his coffin, saying the man in it is "more than the Emperor - one could almost say he's Austria".
The novel's interpretation of Eugene at Philippsburg is that he's not senile, he's just become sick of war and especially sees no point in this particular one. He gets a big scene with Crown Prince Fritz who is indeed One Dangerous Young Man, during which Eugene demonstrates he could still come up with brilliant attack plans if he wanted to, but he doesn't want to. He can see a bit of his thirsting for glory youngest self in Fritz, but what's missing in Fritz is any kind of consideration for his people whatsoever (cue the quote from a letter to Voltaire during Silesia 1 about how war is like Europe having a fever with the inevitable bloodletting). He says he wants a battle like Malplaquet and Eugene gets more appalled by the second. This is definitely a Fritz written post WWII. (And, I suspect, influenced by Lavisse mainly.) Team Eisler & Fischer really have done their research, though, since earlier when eveyone is discussing possible husbands for MT, one of the ministers says "what about the Crown Prince of Prussia, he has SAID he wants to!" and Eugene cuttingly replies that Fritz clearly just wanted to make trouble between Berlin and Vienna when springing that proposal on Grumbkow, pay attention, will you, and no way should it be considered as serious. MT herself also gets two in person cameos as a strong willed and clearly brighter than Dad, Uncle and Granddad girl, but Fritz isn't mentioned in either of them.
Let's see, what else: this Eugene isn't obsessed with avenging himself on Louis (though his mother, who gets one single scene, definitely is), and gets over the "I'll show him" part of his motivation pretty quickly because he starts to bond with the Austrian people. Our authors mention Ligne in the footnotes, thus are ware the memoir is a fake. Otoh, he has a blind spot about Racoczky (see above), and is prone to idealize England until Marlborough and Sarah present him with the downsides during his visit. The one scene with his mother has the implication tht his inability to let anyone get closer than "friendship" level despite being increasingly lonely hails from being regarded as the also ran even before she left. While he mostly is depicted outwitting his opponenets, he's shown to make mistakes as well, at times with devastating consequences for other people (i.e.the servants who get abused by his rivals at court), and, in the end, despite wanting the best Tragically On The Wrong Side of history.
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Re: Fritz as written by Emil Ludwig
a King's gotta do what a King's gotta do, and FW acted by the law.
I really, really hope "The tyrant demands blood" is a genuine quote. It seems like it probably is, but we can't be sure. Anyway. I want Katte to have known exactly who the problem here was, even if he couldn't say so publicly.
I bet Doris Ritter didEugene as written by Two Marxists
Is the Murder on the Wusterhausen Express scenario still on?As to the quote, the chances are reasonably good it's genuine as we discussed back then!
I found another literary footnote: a really long novel about Prince Eugene from the 1950s, written by Louise Eisler (divorced wife of composer Hanns Eisler) and her next husband Ernst Fischer. They were both Marxists. Hanns Eisler, who'd composed the songs for Brecht's play Die Maßnahme and had gone into exile, had fallen foul of the HUAC once the war was over, and ended up in the GDR, composing the East German national anthem. Louise after divorcing him ended up in Austria again, marrying Fischer. And that's really all I know about her; she had befriended my doctoral thesis subject Lion Feuchtwanger while in Exile and he wrote an epilogue for her Eugene novel, which is how I came across it. So the novel is in some way Eugene: The Communist View. It's also written entirely in dialogue, like a stage play, but at novel length, starting in Versailles after young Eugene is refused a job by Louis one time too often and ending shortly after his death and funeral in Vienna.
Characterisation: young Eugene does want fame and a job, and picks Team Habsburg/Austria precisely because they're about to hit rock bottom and a seemingly hopeless cause (all the more impressive if he can make a career there), but he also has an inner idealist waiting to get out pretty soon, falling in love with not the HRE but Austria and the people (naturally), with the jealeaous nobility (intruder alert) hating his guts and the clergy ditto. (Evil Jesuits about.) Soon his goals shift and he basically fights with a reformed, modern Austrian state as the endgame in mind. His tragedy is that he's stuck with three mediocre Emperors in a row who do figure out they need him but are incapable to realize the greater vision, and all too prone to listening to his enemies. His larger tragedy is, as two female characters tell him, that he's fighting for the wrong cause; instead of defeating Racoczky, he should have joined forces with him and fought for Hungarian independence, for starters. (At which point I checked, and Louise Eisler Fischer was born Louise Goztony.) But also while he's doing his best for the people under his command, he doesn't realise you can't reform a rotten system from above.
On the less doctrinaire side, the book actually has its share of interesting relationships and characters. Mind you, it's a early 1950s publication, which means no, no one is openly gay. In the opening Versailles scene, one courtier tells another courtier who has spotted Eugene in the waiting room and wonders who he is that Lselotte has said about him that, and here the direction goes "she whispers the rest in his ear", and that's it. Eugene later has a platonic soulmate relationship with the Countess Eleonore Batthany, nee Strattmann, but while she is unambigiously in love with him, he at least sexually is not in love with her (or anyone else), though he cares deeply for her. We get two scenes with Queen Anne, one with Sarah, one with Abigail, and you can read it as just capricious bored monarch and (platonic) favourite or as subtextual ("nasty rumors" are mentioned). But that's it in terms of hints that not everyone may be straight. Otoh,
Eugene is given a "my best enemy" relationship with Villars, who also shows up already in the Versailles introduction scene, and the two keep running into each other through the years before Malplaquet, always respecting the hell out of each other. This makes Villars one of two competent and sympathetic male aristos who aren't Eugene. The other one is Marlborough. (All other male aristocrats are either incompetent, malicious, or both. The female characters are more more layered; even those working against Eugene, like MT's Dad's Spanish mistress, are given sympathetic or even noble motives.) Since he's really working for Britain, not Anne, like Eugene is working for Austra, not his three Emperors, their bffness is assured. (Marlborough feels as if he hails directly from Winston Churchill's characterisation of him. The novel also likes his wife a lot and is definitely pro-Sarah and anti-Abigail; so much so that when Marlborough mentions some of what Britain has gained at the end of the war, Sarah is sincerely shocked that this includes slave trading rights and is basically Britain's first anti-slavery-aristocrat, giving her husband a "how could you?" (He points out that since he's out of a job now, what's he supposed to do about it?)
In addition to the historical upper class characters, we also get servants, soldiers, engineers and farmers. The most prominent of whom is Ursula, who starts out in Eugene's service, like her brother, and Eugene okay with her wearing men's clothing and basically running his first estate, until some stupid and evil Austrian aristocrats show up who want to provoke the (absent) Eugene by running havoc with his estate. One of them tries to rape Ursula who because she has a pistol can fight him off, but this is it for her; she changes sides and joins the Hungarian rebellion, and once that's defeated doesn't return into Eugene's service anymore, either, unlike her brother Martin who keeps serving him as a soldier. Ursula hold Eugene responsible because he has the insight to understand what's necessary and has managed to achieve genuine power, but he still won't
join the revolutionoverthrow the rotten system instead of stabilizing it.This is also the criticism of Eleonore, who argues with him a lot - not least because he infuriates her by always seeing his enemy's pov as well, even if said enemies are courtiers scheming against him, EXCEPT in the case of Racoczky and FREE HUNGARY NOW - but also adores him and is the novel's uncontested heroine who gets the last but one word on Eugene once he's dead. (The very last word is given to the people passing his coffin, saying the man in it is "more than the Emperor - one could almost say he's Austria".
The novel's interpretation of Eugene at Philippsburg is that he's not senile, he's just become sick of war and especially sees no point in this particular one. He gets a big scene with Crown Prince Fritz who is indeed One Dangerous Young Man, during which Eugene demonstrates he could still come up with brilliant attack plans if he wanted to, but he doesn't want to. He can see a bit of his thirsting for glory youngest self in Fritz, but what's missing in Fritz is any kind of consideration for his people whatsoever (cue the quote from a letter to Voltaire during Silesia 1 about how war is like Europe having a fever with the inevitable bloodletting). He says he wants a battle like Malplaquet and Eugene gets more appalled by the second. This is definitely a Fritz written post WWII. (And, I suspect, influenced by Lavisse mainly.) Team Eisler & Fischer really have done their research, though, since earlier when eveyone is discussing possible husbands for MT, one of the ministers says "what about the Crown Prince of Prussia, he has SAID he wants to!" and Eugene cuttingly replies that Fritz clearly just wanted to make trouble between Berlin and Vienna when springing that proposal on Grumbkow, pay attention, will you, and no way should it be considered as serious. MT herself also gets two in person cameos as a strong willed and clearly brighter than Dad, Uncle and Granddad girl, but Fritz isn't mentioned in either of them.
Let's see, what else: this Eugene isn't obsessed with avenging himself on Louis (though his mother, who gets one single scene, definitely is), and gets over the "I'll show him" part of his motivation pretty quickly because he starts to bond with the Austrian people. Our authors mention Ligne in the footnotes, thus are ware the memoir is a fake. Otoh, he has a blind spot about Racoczky (see above), and is prone to idealize England until Marlborough and Sarah present him with the downsides during his visit. The one scene with his mother has the implication tht his inability to let anyone get closer than "friendship" level despite being increasingly lonely hails from being regarded as the also ran even before she left. While he mostly is depicted outwitting his opponenets, he's shown to make mistakes as well, at times with devastating consequences for other people (i.e.the servants who get abused by his rivals at court), and, in the end, despite wanting the best Tragically On The Wrong Side of history.