Ahh, interesting! I knew that there was a transition, but not when it was.
I could be wrong, of course; googling tells me that the use of the fork among wider swathes of the population in Germany only happened near the end of the 17th century, though it was earlier used in court circles. Which could, in theory, mean that wanting-to-live-as-a-burgher FW could insist on his family using two pronged iron forks over three pronged silver forks thirty years later. But it still sounds a bit fake to me.
All my googling of random unreliable websites is telling me that the upper classes tried to introduce the three-tined fork, and then there was a lag of centuries before it caught on with everyone. But I'm getting wildly different dates on when the three tines caught on in Germany. Everyone agrees, though, that the farther north you go, the longer it took to catch on. It was a sign of Italian effeminacy for a long time. (In the British lower classes, apparently as late as 1897!)
Also, apparently forks were used for different purposes at different times, and using a fork the way we would use it, to put food on and stick in your mouth, rather than just stabbing your meat while carving, took much longer to catch on, and that the usage was tied to the number of tines.
One site claims, "As Ferdinand Braudel notes in The Structure of Everyday Life, around the beginning of the 18th century, Louis XIV forbade his children to eat with the forks that their tutor had encouraged them to use."
But I'm already questioning that, because by the early 18th century, Louis XIV's children had children who had children!
But yeah, since our source isn't even a dispatch by Rottembourg, but a memoir by Villars, I'm fully prepared for the story to have grown in the telling, even if Rottembourg said something completely different. And if Rottembourg did exaggerate, as you noted, he was no fan of FW!
So possibly true, possibly fake.
Which would also be easier to blame Fritz for, using FW type of logic, than which table wear he uses, because that's actually not a decision for fifteen years old Fritz to make. It's something decided by whoever is in charge of the household where he's staying, Wusterhausen, Potsdam and Monbijou alike.
This is the part I don't find totally convincing: FW is an abuser, and punishing people for things they weren't strictly responsible for is part of abuse. Even if you assume the account in Wilhelmine where she and Fritz got plates thrown at them for Friederike Luise's backtalk is an exaggeration, and Catt's account of how FW beat both the tutor and small child Fritz for Fritz learning Latin is Catt making things up, I'd be surprised if FW never hit Fritz for the adults having him do things FW didn't want him doing.
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Re: The other diplomatic revolution(s): Addendum
Date: 2021-06-19 02:44 pm (UTC)I could be wrong, of course; googling tells me that the use of the fork among wider swathes of the population in Germany only happened near the end of the 17th century, though it was earlier used in court circles. Which could, in theory, mean that wanting-to-live-as-a-burgher FW could insist on his family using two pronged iron forks over three pronged silver forks thirty years later. But it still sounds a bit fake to me.
All my googling of random unreliable websites is telling me that the upper classes tried to introduce the three-tined fork, and then there was a lag of centuries before it caught on with everyone. But I'm getting wildly different dates on when the three tines caught on in Germany. Everyone agrees, though, that the farther north you go, the longer it took to catch on. It was a sign of Italian effeminacy for a long time. (In the British lower classes, apparently as late as 1897!)
Also, apparently forks were used for different purposes at different times, and using a fork the way we would use it, to put food on and stick in your mouth, rather than just stabbing your meat while carving, took much longer to catch on, and that the usage was tied to the number of tines.
One site claims, "As Ferdinand Braudel notes in The Structure of Everyday Life, around the beginning of the 18th century, Louis XIV forbade his children to eat with the forks that their tutor had encouraged them to use."
But I'm already questioning that, because by the early 18th century, Louis XIV's children had children who had children!
But yeah, since our source isn't even a dispatch by Rottembourg, but a memoir by Villars, I'm fully prepared for the story to have grown in the telling, even if Rottembourg said something completely different. And if Rottembourg did exaggerate, as you noted, he was no fan of FW!
So possibly true, possibly fake.
Which would also be easier to blame Fritz for, using FW type of logic, than which table wear he uses, because that's actually not a decision for fifteen years old Fritz to make. It's something decided by whoever is in charge of the household where he's staying, Wusterhausen, Potsdam and Monbijou alike.
This is the part I don't find totally convincing: FW is an abuser, and punishing people for things they weren't strictly responsible for is part of abuse. Even if you assume the account in Wilhelmine where she and Fritz got plates thrown at them for Friederike Luise's backtalk is an exaggeration, and Catt's account of how FW beat both the tutor and small child Fritz for Fritz learning Latin is Catt making things up, I'd be surprised if FW never hit Fritz for the adults having him do things FW didn't want him doing.