Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30
Sep. 8th, 2021 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnIn which, despite the title, I would like to be told about the English Revolution, which is yet another casualty of my extremely poor history education :P :)
Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:
The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.
Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.
The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P
Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:
The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.
Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.
The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P
Re: The English Civil War: C2 - Most Famous Escape Story of the War
Date: 2021-09-10 12:59 pm (UTC)Also hoping to pick up the Pfeiffer research that I intended to do last weekend but couldn't because sciatica. (I also owe Mobster Author comments on a fic she finished writing for me last weekend!) Towards that end, Selena, help me out: what does the "Anz" in "Allg. litt. Anz." stand for, where that's the title of a book, most likely a bibliographical dictionary?
let me just say here hastily that a) you are AMAZING and b) C2 comes out pretty great here :D
Let me also say this hastily!
ETA: And speaking of weekend plans, this weekend I'm spot-checking digitized books before throwing out the pages, next weekend I'm spot-checking digitized books, and the following weekend I should be done (fingers crossed) and will be scanning the books that I found needed to be rescanned. That means in two weeks I'll probably be scanning Trench Warfare (which arrived yesterday) for you,
Re: The English Civil War: C2 - Most Famous Escape Story of the War
Date: 2021-09-11 12:47 am (UTC)what does the "Anz" in "Allg. litt. Anz." stand for, where that's the title of a book, most likely a bibliographical dictionary?
Help an American detective out?
Re: The English Civil War: C2 - Most Famous Escape Story of the War
Date: 2021-09-11 08:00 am (UTC)Re: The English Civil War: C2 - Most Famous Escape Story of the War
Date: 2021-09-11 08:20 am (UTC)Pfeiffer
Date: 2021-09-11 10:25 pm (UTC)I think I know what's going on with Pfeiffer's dates, will try to do a write-up soonish.
In other news, I've finished cobbling together passages from the various times we've talked about the MT marriage AU. I just want to organize them better and include some transitions, and then I'll post in Rheinsberg. I've only been meaning to do this for a year, and I've been chipping away at the post for a couple months now...
Re: Pfeiffer
Date: 2021-09-12 02:09 pm (UTC)Re: Pfeiffer
Date: 2021-09-12 07:03 pm (UTC)*phew*
MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-13 08:59 am (UTC)(I also would title it "Project" and not "AU", since to people not the salon nicknaming it thus, it signals more clearly we're not talking about fiction here. Except at the start and in the end. *g*)
Also of interest: noting down that none of our sources, let alone subsequent biographies or romantic fiction, twigged on the implication of all this, i.e. that unless Katte is lying in the interrogation on this point (a possibility we discarded as the least likely), Fritz point blank lied to Katte in order to finally get him on board with the escape. This is a salon original discovery. (Like your Pfeiffer deducting!)
Moving on from old discussions: what I hadn't known about when reading Hinrichs' trial and interrogation transcriptions was the bonkers Clement affair. Because if you recall, the con Clement sells FW on in 1718/1719, so thoroughly that FW will never quite completely disbelieve it, is that there was an evil Catholic conspiracy to kidnap/kill him and raise Fritz as a Catholic, and that Eugene was a primary mover in this on Team Vienna's behalf. FW actually believes this completely until Clement overreaches himself and also tries to frame Old Dessauer as involved, and afterwards always will have his doubts. (Not in terms of his bff Dessauer but in terms of Teams Vienna & Saxony.) Whereas in 1730, he doesn't believe for a moment that Seckendorff & Grumbkow (& Eugene, acting for the Emperor) would conspire to get Fritz to convert and marry him to MT. Now the Clement plot sounds way more outlandish than the one Fritz made up for Katte, and FW is given to paranoia in general, so what's the reason why he won't consider this for a heartbeat? The difference betweeen 1718 ("of course Catholics led by Eugene would want to kill me and raise my kid as one of theirs!") and 1730 ("what rubbish is this?")?
a) The fact that Katte and Fritz are contradicting each other on this point
b) In 1719, he still loved his son without hating him as well; by 1730, believing that when in doubt,
Fritz is to blame is way stronger than Distrust Of Catholics
c) Knowing Grumbkow & Seckendorff well enough to know they wouldn't pull this one, as it would make them
lose at once any influence they have on him
d) All of the above?
Lastly, what I also hadn't known about when reading Hinrichs was that one and a half generations later, when Charlotte's daughter Anna Amalia, Duchess of Weimar, is recently widowed and fighting to get the Weimar regency without having to share it with a representative of the Emperor (in the end, she'd share it with her father, which effectually meant not sharing it since her father remained at Braunschweig), there was an interlude where there was a rumor of an Evil Catholic Plot (tm) to kidnap baby Carl August and raise him, you guessed it, a Catholic in Vienna. Anna Amalia's mother Charlotte (daughter of FW) believed this completely. It didn't happen, but it caused a lot of panic for a while.
Add to this that Wilhelmine in her memoirs also reports the Clement plot as the genuine article, and it's hard not to conclude that FW must have raised his children with this impression. I bet a part of the nobility, like very Protestant Hans Heinrich, believed it as well, and consequently so did Hans Herrmann, which explains why Katte had no problem believing Fritz.
If anything, Fritz must have been surprised that neither Eugene nor Seckendorff nor anyone in Vienna seemed keen to take his bait and consider him as a prospect for MT and conversion material.
MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-13 07:39 pm (UTC)I'm loving these addenda and will incorporate them as well, probably this weekend. (Weekends are for Rheinsberg. ;)) Likewise your comment about Katte's possible motivations, which now that you mention it, I do remember.
Add to this that Wilhelmine in her memoirs also reports the Clement plot as the genuine article, and it's hard not to conclude that FW must have raised his children with this impression.
This all makes total sense.
If anything, Fritz must have been surprised that neither Eugene nor Seckendorff nor anyone in Vienna seemed keen to take his bait and consider him as a prospect for MT and conversion material.
OMG, I bet you're right!
a) The fact that Katte and Fritz are contradicting each other on this point
b) In 1719, he still loved his son without hating him as well; by 1730, believing that when in doubt, Fritz is to blame is way stronger than Distrust Of Catholics
c) Knowing Grumbkow & Seckendorff well enough to know they wouldn't pull this one, as it would make them lose at once any influence they have on him
d) All of the above?
All of the above, imo, especially b and c (but also Fritz denying it). Also note that in 1718/1719, it's hard even for FW to blame the 6-7 yo kid for conspiring with foreign powers, whereas 18-yo Fritz has been conspiring with foreign English powers (or trying to), so it must be all his fault.
Something I've wondered for a while now: did imprisoned Katte figure out that Fritz must have been lying, and how did he feel about that? If he did, it apparently didn't change his willingness to die with joy in his heart, but I wonder.
(I'm increasingly thinking about working this plot point into my much-plotted never-written fix-it AU, since in that one, the whole idea is that Fritz nominally converts to Catholicism so he can live happily ever after. *That's* going to make for some OMGWTF on Katte's part. And since he's not dead, Fritz can express some of his anger at Katte for the fact that Fritz *had* to lie to him to get him to help. (But then they make up because this is my happily ever after fic.))
Re: MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-14 10:01 am (UTC):) I'm just imaging: all his life he's heard the Imperials want nothing more than get their hands on the offspring of German Protestant nobility, convert them and rule through them, and there he is, practically volunteering himself, and yet what does he get? DO NOT WANT from Grumbkow and Seckendorff both.
did imprisoned Katte figure out that Fritz must have been lying, and how did he feel about that? If he did, it apparently didn't change his willingness to die with joy in his heart, but I wonder.
Honestly, I doubt he did. Yes, they interrogated him twice on this point, but he probably figured the interrogators wanted to trip him up by saying Fritz denied it. (To be fair, given FW ordered people to tell Fritz no one was asking after him and even his mother didn't want to hear about him anymore etc., it's not like such a tactic would have been out of the question.) And the interrogators were far more interested in how far the Brits had been involved anyway, interrogating him way longer about this. Not to mention that the more time passed, the more he saw he would die and thus had to keep it together, to which the idea that he was dying for his friend whom he'd tried his best to save and protect, not just from Dad but from scheming Catholics, was essential. So I don't think he realised. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. Otoh, I'm pretty sure that Fritz was keenly aware the whole time.
Otoh, a living Katte would have figured it out, and I'd love to read a conversation where both he and Fritz can voice their anger which the whole dying-for-you circumstances prevented and surpressed.
Re: MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-16 05:02 am (UTC)HEE.
Otoh, I'm pretty sure that Fritz was keenly aware the whole time.
Otoh, a living Katte would have figured it out, and I'd love to read a conversation where both he and Fritz can voice their anger which the whole dying-for-you circumstances prevented and surpressed.
Ouuuuuch. That is to say, I would read :P :) Break it differently indeed!
Re: MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-16 08:47 am (UTC)Now, if I wanted to break it differently, the whole "Fritz lied" part would be but one drop in an entirely different AU scenario, not one of them managing to escape in 1730, but of Katte surviving, being imprisoned as per the tribunal's sentence, and being freed at once in 1740 when Fritz succeeds FW. Joy! Except, well, not so much, in the long term. 10 years imprisonment is not easy if FW is the guy responsible for your conditions. (PrussianTrenck: Or Fritz! Read my memoirs!) Also, I suspect they wouldn't have found it much easier to bridge the new distance of a decade of vastly different experiences than Fritz and Peter did. That Fritz would still feel guilty and grateful and what not would not help, nor the chip on his shoulder to prove to everyone Dad had been wrong about him, he wouldn't be ruled by favourites. So I think Katte would get lots of presents and titles (like his Dad did in rl) and estate, and honorary membership in the Academy like Peter, but he would NOT join the army to go invade Silesia with Fritz. (BTW, I don't think Katte would have had any moral problems with invading Silesia per se. It's for the Silesians' own good, freeing them from Catholic tyranny! Also, go Fritz, have your rendezvous with fame!) And whether or not he'd want to go in the first place or be glad not having to go from being a prisoner to being a soldier with just a few months interlude, that would be yet another life changing experience they didn't share. Then, when Fritz is back, Katte gets treated to a really eerie sense of deja vu as Heinrich shapes up to be L'autre moi-meme and Fritz starts to play FW in that relationship. And that's not mentioning the emotional/romantic ties Fritz has created in the intervening decade. Most guys Fritz got close to one way or the other were a jealous bunch, after all.
=> They'd end up as estranged exes who had had an intense year together as young men but can't make it as their mature selves; Katte decides to move to England after all.
Re: MT Marriage Project
From:Re: MT Marriage Project
From:Re: MT Marriage Project
From:Salon original discoveries
Date: 2021-09-13 10:44 pm (UTC)Speaking of original historical discoveries that have been made in
1) Fredersdorf's exoneration + Pfeiffer's conviction.
2) Fritz lying to Katte and the MT marriage project.
3) Peter Keith's life story. The reason my oft-advertised post is taking so long is that I keep trying to write it at a journal-level quality rather than a Rheinsberg-level quality.
Additionally, we've made some contributions to Catt's sources, plus I think the field could use a reminder of what Koser said. I suspect I'll have a better idea of what would belong in an article, as well as hopefully some new ideas, once I switch to studying French and reread the diary and memoirs, plus some other French sources.
And it miiiight be worth laying out how we know that Fredersdorf didn't pretend to be ill and get married within 24 hours of getting permission, and what really happened, since enough authors, including recent ones, are still telling that story.
The reasons I haven't made more progress on turning any of these into proper articles:
* As a professor once described to me in a perfect analogy, research is like felling trees: quick and satisfying. Producing a peer-review quality academic papers, on the other hand, is like pulling up tree stumps: slow and tedious. Salon is so great precisely because we just fell trees all day long, and only occasionally have to pull up some tree stumps for Rheinsberg (like collating all those separate posts for the MT marriage project post), and even then we have far fewer stumps to pull up and we can stop whenever we want without feeling like irresponsible scholars.
* Multiply tree-stump pulling difficulty by 100 when the stumps are in a language I barely know. (See also the other reason why Peter's life story is taking forever.)
* No external motivation for pulling up these tree stumps. I'm not getting paid, no one is going, "When is this going to be done?", no one else cares.
* I haven't done and can't do a proper literature survey to see what's been said by recent researchers in journal articles: weak German, no paywall access, no university library access (or ability to use libraries due to pandemics plus back pain).
* As discussed in another thread today, we have limited ability to use the archives, due to: pandemic restrictions, lack of German (me), lack of French (all of us), lack of paleography skills (all of us except one person who rarely participates).
That said, if other people were also excited about the prospect of doing this, and turning our findings into publishable essays were more of a group project, I'd be more likely to knock out drafts for discussion. And by "knock out," given our collective lack of free time and my slowness with German, I mean "sometime in the next year? Maybe?" But any kind of external motivation would help me not drag my feet so much on the stump pulling.
So how do other people feel about publication? My motivation to turn research into papers is much greater if, for example,
Re: Salon original discoveries
Date: 2021-09-14 05:05 am (UTC)But also all the other ones too. Particularly Fritz lying to Katte was the sort of !! moment that I feel like should be more widely disseminated!
Re: Salon original discoveries
Date: 2021-09-14 11:22 pm (UTC)Can you tell the book digitizing project is almost done? Ha.
although I don't suppose I can contribute much except cheerleading
Look, guys. Given the sheer difficulty of these projects even compared to my normal research, nothing except maaaybe Peter Keith is happening without serious cheerleading and possibly fake-angry yelling. :P So this is a *major* contribution.
It's also great that of the top 3 priorities, 1 is the one I'm motivated to work on on my own, and the other 2 are the ones you're motivated to cheer me on about! Alchemy may come through for us again. :D
as a contributor to the Fredersdorf Defense Fund
Lol, well, I've been meaning to say that if you hadn't brought this up repeatedly and had Strong Indignant Feelings, I would never have gotten interested and would have just headcanoned the fake news of his dismissal! It was only you mentioning it over and over again that made it into an itch that I couldn't scratch.
Which I then, uh, scratched. :P (Emailed Buwert, emailed Fahlenkamp, emailed random dude named Fredersdorf, spent hours trying to trace down possible Wiki sources, bought random book sight unseen (aided by your contribution to the fund), got the address where Selena's currently staying...I went above and beyond, is what I'm saying.)
I also have been laughing ever since you sent me the Amazon gift card about what your face would have looked like if someone had asked you to contribute to the Fredersdorf Defense Fund in early 2019. "Fredersdorf who?" And now you're like "TAKE MY MONEY!" :DD
Salon is so great. I can't get over how great salon is.
Re: Salon original discoveries
Date: 2021-09-16 04:44 am (UTC)...which fic was written at least in part because we knew that Selena had written us both fics and felt that she should get one as well :D (I mean, we thought so anyway, Selena! But that sort of tipped me over into emailing mildred and being all "hey, let's do this thing!")
Salon!! <3
Re: Salon original discoveries
Date: 2021-09-14 08:51 am (UTC)This said, I'd be glad to help as before, of course. Also, I think you should not go for a single article but several. Firstly, I'd start with the Peter Keith life story, and this life story only. You have enough material for an essay there, it makes for a better focus, and anyone looking up Peter in the future will be profoundly grateful.
Secondly, I'm not sure whether in an academic context, you could speak of Fredersdorf's exoneration, because among ourselves, we can use "this doesn't feel likely" etc., for example, but one can't in an academic context. I would, however, say that it's worth putting all the (partially conflicting) Fredersdorf related quotes (up and including both Lehndorff and Henckel von Donnersberg in 1757, after Fredersdorf isn't in office anymore but before he has died, listing Glasow as one of the reasons for his retirement according to rumor they've heard, but NOT anything about an embezzlement) in an essay. However, this would also have to include Des Champs' claims for the prosecution, and between us not having read the letters from Formey to Des Champs (who might or might not contain any Fredersdorf related intel) and us not having read the letter of Fredersdorf's successor to Fredersdorf re: Glasow's wrongdoings, I would wait for any publication until someone, preferably
Which leaves me with suggesting the second essay, separate from the Keith essay, could contain the MT marriage project and Katte stuff, and a reminder of the sadly forgotten exposure of Henri de Catt by Koser, complete with our additional sources.
In summation: start with Peter Keith, and Peter Keith only.
Re: Salon original discoveries
Date: 2021-09-14 11:13 pm (UTC)Too bad, I'd love to have you get proper co-author credit! But this makes total sense. My boundaries are more permeable: I don't want prospective employers casually searching for my name to come up with Dreamwidth (which is why I don't want anyone using my extremely rare r/l name in DW, it *will* come up in searches for my name), but if someone's reading Dreamwidth and they can figure out my real name based on clues, or they're reading my academic papers and they find this Mildred person espousing a lot of the same opinions, I can live with that. But then, I'm in a different situation from you.
Also, I think you should not go for a single article but several
Agreed, I was never intending to do anything else. I guess I didn't spell that out because it seemed so obvious that each topic is its own article. I'm not even sure how'd you combine them. "Things my friends and I discovered about Fritz's boyfriends"? Not exactly going to impress an editor. ;)
Secondly, I'm not sure whether in an academic context, you could speak of Fredersdorf's exoneration
Having reread your comment several times, I *think* the confusion is because we're talking about different exonerations. I'm talking about the thing I thought we had agreed on: that we feel pretty good about him not having been dismissed for involvement in the Kiekemal affair. Des Champs is, if anything, vaguely supporting evidence, since 1) he discusses Fredersdorf's embezzlement without ever mentioning him being dismissed, 2) seems to be implying that Fritz is covering it up because if he admitted Fredersdorf embezzled, he'd have to start paying back owed money.
Whether or not Fredersdorf ever engaged in financial irregularities is not something we can decide. As we've discussed, the Kiekemal affair looks not totally aboveboard, but we don't know what his motives were. All we can say is that the claim that he died of a broken heart after being dismissed for the Kiekemal affair is based on a publication that doesn't cite sources, and we have some counterevidence, so people should stop repeating this claim until and unless they can produce evidence stronger than our counterevidence. (This is how epistemology works: your claims are only valid until someone produces stronger evidence against your claims.)
between us not having read the letters from Formey to Des Champs (who might or might not contain any Fredersdorf related intel) and us not having read the letter of Fredersdorf's successor to Fredersdorf re: Glasow's wrongdoings, I would wait for any publication until someone, preferably [personal profile] prinzsorgenfrei, can look up the original letters in the archives, check and get a transcription.
My plan has always been to hold off on publication until we can get the letter of the successor. That's top of the archive wishlist I mentioned! It's one letter, it's in German, we have a summary, and we know the exact archival reference to order it by.
I would consider the Des Champs letters a nice to have, unless you think they're likely to provide evidence that Fredersdorf was dismissed for his participation in the Kiekemal affair.
I'd also like to hold off on Peter Keith publications until we can get our hands on his letters from the archive, and possibly his marriage record, because Kloosterhuis gives two different months, but does cite the record location so that we can order it.
Conclusion: I'd leave out anything Fredersdorf related.
While I want to hold off on publication, the sooner I produce a draft of what we have, the better. My experience writing papers is that the stump-pulling consists largely of remembering where you read what you're claiming banging your head against knowing you read it *somewhere* and always having to drop one or two pieces of evidence because you can't turn up the source. Multiply by some large number if the sources are in a language you can't skim and half of them someone summarized for you anyway. So if I'm/we're doing this, I really want to start getting what we know down on paper before you and I forget where we read it. (See also why Peter is taking so long: I'm trying to reread the German sources and compile the facts plus citations in abbreviated note format, before producing readable paragraphs.)
could contain the MT marriage project and Katte stuff, and a reminder of the sadly forgotten exposure of Henri de Catt by Koser, complete with our additional sources.
I'm not really following how these are closely linked enough to be a single essay. My intention was for Catt to be an entirely separate essay analyzing the sources of his memoirs. Which I'm not remotely qualified to even draft yet, and will only do if I manage to get German to a stopping point, switch to French, and do a close reading of his diary, his memoirs, Voltaire's memoirs, Koser's preface, etc. Realistically, producing anything publishable about Catt is a stretch, since I'm still in the early research stages.
But what were you thinking in terms of combining them into a single essay? Maybe you have a good idea that hasn't occurred to me.
So what I'm proposing is:
Essay 1: Peter's life story.
Essay 2: The Kiekemal affair:
a) How sources claiming Fredersdorf was dismissed over it are derived from a source that doesn't support its claim with citations. The counterevidence to this claim.
b) How sources claiming Pfeiffer was found innocent are based on an unreliable source, and more reliable looking evidence indicates he was found guilty. How the story got changed over time.
Essay 3: Evidence that Fritz lied to Katte based on his willingness to embrace the marriage project just a few months later, and the fact that their stories agreed otherwise. I'd like to include your findings on how Fritz was probably very surprised the Austrians didn't take the bait, based on Wilhelmine's memoirs and Charlotte's reaction to a similar rumor.
Essay 4: IF I ever learn French and dedicate the research time, repeat Koser's evidence that Catt put words in Fritz's mouth, and supplement that with a source analysis of whatever we've been able to find. (I like the thought of including your point about Heinrich under the table and the POV.)
What do you guys think about
Essay 5: The true story of how Fredersdorf got engaged and married, and the history of the false version.
?
The problem is that it would likely be quite short, but if you guys think there's enough value, maybe we could find someone who accepts essays that are shorter than the norm. Some journals do.
In summation: start with Peter Keith, and Peter Keith only.
Peter's the only one I'm currently working on, but if we're even thinking about maybe publishing the others someday, I need to start creating drafts for them asap, while it's all front of mind (and while the motivation to do the stump-pulling is still strong). Yes, it has occurred to me that if I wait a year, skimming in German will be easier, but given my previous experience writing for publication, not remembering what I want to say and where I found it is problematic enough in English that I need to get down what I can while I can.
Re: Salon original discoveries
Date: 2021-09-16 04:53 am (UTC)My strong preference (given that I am not doing any of the stump-pulling) is for you to work on stump-pulling Essay 1-3. 4-5 if you have time as well (would love 5, I ship them a bunch), but those sound a little less like they have a path to a complete published article.
Re: Salon original discoveries
From:Re: Salon original discoveries
From:Re: Salon original discoveries
From:Re: Salon original discoveries
From:Re: MT Marriage Project
Date: 2021-09-16 05:00 am (UTC)b) In 1719, he still loved his son without hating him as well; by 1730, believing that when in doubt,
Fritz is to blame is way stronger than Distrust Of Catholics
:( I read this and was like "yeah, that must definitely have been part of it" and also "why is it that every time I start not taking FW quite as seriously something comes along and reminds me how AWFUL he was??"
FW awfulness reminder
Date: 2021-09-18 07:16 pm (UTC)Part the first:
In Hans Rosenberg’s judicious, perhaps even charitable, assessment, Frederick William was ‘a dangerous, uncouth, and irascible but shrewd psychoneurotic, haunted by delusions of grandeur, but nevertheless the most remarkable administrative reformer ever produced by the Hohenzollern family’.
I like how Blanning marks a description like that as charitable! (Note, though, that Fritz was by all accounts not as much of an administrative or military reformer as his father; he mostly used what his father gave him and made some adjustments. It was *how* he used it that was extraordinary. So I'm willing to grant FW most remarkable administrative reformer. I'm also willing to grant him dangerous, uncouth, irascible, and psychoneurotic! :P)
Part the second:
Intense piety went hand-in-hand with extreme brutality, as for example on the day when he first had an official found guilty of dereliction of duty garrotted in front of his office, with all senior and junior personnel forced to watch, and then received a group of religious refugees from Salzburg, with his entire court obliged to get down on their knees to give thanks for this deliverance of the Lord’s afflicted. When asked, on a visit to East Prussia, to confirm a sentence of imprisonment passed on Councillor von Schlabuth, Frederick William told the prisoner that he deserved to be hanged. Unwisely, von Schlabuth replied tartly that ‘one doesn’t hang a Prussian noble’. By way of reply, Frederick William had a gallows erected in the courtyard of von Schlabuth’s place of work [Mildred's note: Notice how his colleagues have to watch!] and had him hanged from it the following day–but not before going to church and weeping as he heard a sermon on the virtue of mercy (‘Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy’–Matthew 5:7).
I'm pretty sure I mentioned this when summarizing Lavisse, but not this much detail.
Source: The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815
Despite some wobbles, I'm enjoying it (the C1 as your role model arguably counts as an entertaining wobble!), but it's also 800 pages long, and along with my other several 800-page books plus various Kindle samples, is why I'm not done yet.
...Someone yell at me about German, I've been slacking on my 800 page book there. :/
Re: FW awfulness reminder
Date: 2021-09-19 04:51 pm (UTC)So I'm willing to grant FW most remarkable administrative reformer. I'm also willing to grant him dangerous, uncouth, irascible, and psychoneurotic! :P)
So say we all. Well, not Kloosterhuis and Göse, but other than them. :) Incidentally, the way Krockow phrases it as far as I recall was "in terms of pure interior politics most innovative and capable Prussian ruler", also coupled with the addendum about his terrible personality. Otoh he didn't say "Hohenzollern", which begs the interesting question: what about Bismarck? Chancellor, not monarch, true, but Wilhelm 1. was pretty clear on the fact who did the actual work and ruling there. (His grandson, otoh...)
The first garotting sounds vaguely familiar, though not in the combination with receiving the refugees from Salzburg. (The refugees form Salzburg story usually shows up in a way complimentary to FW, since they were religious refugees, and he gets praised for taking them in.) I didn't remember the von Schlabuth story, if I'd ever heard it, and certainly not him weeping on a sermon on the virtue of mercy later. Has Blanning mentioned Gundling yet?
C1 as your role model: I'm still puzzled on how that should work for anything but family life. (Since he was indisputably a devoted husband and father.) Incidentally,
Re: FW awfulness reminder
Date: 2021-09-19 06:00 pm (UTC)Two thirds of the way through Goldstone! And the Montefiore *is* the German book you're supposed to be yelling at me about. ;) (I made it about as far as I plan to read for now through his Romanovs book, i.e. through Paul, at the end of the 18th century. Which is the one I was reading in English.)
Additionally, I'm working through Massie's bio of Peter the Great (enjoying it!), and a non-salon book that I believe Cahn is also reading, or at least has on her reading list: Sapolsky's Behave.
Has Blanning mentioned Gundling yet?
Gundling is Sir Not Appearing in This Book, but since This Book is "European history for 168 years: discuss," that's more forgiveable than in a book or essay *about* FW.
But in general, yes, it is frustrating that Gundling doesn't get enough attention in the Fritz or FW books. I think he also doesn't make an appearance in Blanning's Fritz bio.
Incidentally, cahn, neither Nancy Goldstone nor Jude Morgan consider C1 a role model for monarchs. Henrietta Maria and Tim Blanning remain the sole people I've heard of who do.
Reading further on, I ran into more C2 dragging:
[The Stuarts] managed to blunder through one reign, only to be sent on their travels again when an even more stupid younger brother squandered the last remnants of goodwill.
He's not shy about his opinions.
Re: FW awfulness reminder
Date: 2021-09-22 05:30 am (UTC)Heeeee. It really... seems odd to take the guy who lost his kingdom and head as the role model over the guy who didn't...
Re: FW awfulness reminder
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Date: 2021-09-22 05:35 am (UTC)I have finished Faust (it took me a while to get started, and then I was riveted -- thank you for reccing that translation, Selena!) so... now I have to figure out whether to read Winter Queen or Maria Theresa first, any votes? (If Winter Queen, can you give me a text file rather than a PDF? It makes my life much easier...)
Also: FW UGH!
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