cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 33

cahn

And, I mean, it doesn't have to be just 18th century characters, either!

(also, waiting for Yuletide!)

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From:

selenak

Good god. No wonder when Voltaire asked if FW had ever learned to appreciate Fritz, Fritz was like, "SO, he died like a hero and a stoic and a king."

Yes, that exchange from their letters came to my mind as well when reading this. Also Fritz dreaming of his father mid 7 Years War and still yearning for a "Well done, son" moment.

Seriously, though, given all of this, if I was Fritz I'd have told Wilhelmine to stay in Bayreuth, too! (Though given Wilhelmine probably yearned for a "Well done, daughter!" moment, too, and had not experienced the face to face joy of parental behaviour since her miserable 8 months in 1732/1734, it's also not surprising part of her wanted to go.)

Meanwhile, Pesne: paints rising sons, err, suns. Methinks he was probably feeling safe to do so because he was so famous a painter that if FW had kicked him out and had not died, he'd have easily found a place in Saxony or Austria or France.

From:

felis

Seriously, though, given all of this, if I was Fritz I'd have told Wilhelmine to stay in Bayreuth, too!

had not experienced the face to face joy of parental behaviour since her miserable 8 months in 1732/1734

Yeah. And it's the exact same thing Fritz says to her:

"I don't understand why, under the current circumstances, you have such a vivid desire to come here. The King is in a bad state, but life in Berlin is really not for you. You will act according to your own judgement, but if you regret it and experience sorrow here, don't hold me responsible. I'm predicting how things will go, there's nothing more I can do. You haven't been here in eight years, so maybe you forgot the hundred thousand little things which two days in Berlin will remind you of, to your detriment. I'm saying it with the bible: blessed are the absent or those who don't know what is happening here, because we often say: Mountains, cover us, Hills, fall over us!"

And in a letter to AW from Ruppin in April he writes:

"I was lucky to spend eight days in peaceful calm, without hearing of sickness and bad mood. [...] One scares me of Berlin a lot. The mood there is supposed to be unbearable and the water is rising into the abdomen. If that's true, it can't take more than six weeks, and I'm afraid the King and we will suffer a lot during that time. I wholeheartedly commiserate with all sufferers and am collecting a big supply of patience in advance."

Given that he had to suffer FW's outbursts and then apparently went and still tried to mitigate the worst of it for other people, he really did bring that patience it seems.

From:

cahn

"I don't understand why, under the current circumstances, you have such a vivid desire to come here. The King is in a bad state, but life in Berlin is really not for you. You will act according to your own judgement, but if you regret it and experience sorrow here, don't hold me responsible. I'm predicting how things will go, there's nothing more I can do. You haven't been here in eight years, so maybe you forgot the hundred thousand little things which two days in Berlin will remind you of, to your detriment. I'm saying it with the bible: blessed are the absent or those who don't know what is happening here, because we often say: Mountains, cover us, Hills, fall over us!"

Oh wow.

...Although I do have sympathy for Wilhelmine and totally see where she's coming from and why she yearned for validation from her parents, I... must admit that in this particular instance I have a certain amount of empathy for Fritz, as my sister and I have a bit of this dynamic (my parents are not really anything like FW or SD, thankfully, but validation is not really a thing one gets from them, and I think my sister might have figured that out, but it took her longer than it took me).

Also, this totally reminds me of Fritz telling Heinrich that it's a terrible idea to go to Dear Old Wusterhausen, heh. He was right then, too!

From:

selenak

He so was. :) Examples of Fritz being the emotionally wisest are so rare they are worth being remembered!

Mind you, towards non-family members, Fritz wasn't above prettifying their family life in retrospect, and I don't just mean the hilarious "at least we're nothing like the Hannover cousins with their family dysfunction, we're so harmonious" to Mitchell. You have all types of witnesses, up to and including Fritz second chamber hussar who was with him for the last decades of his life testifying that Fritz was a model son who never said an unkind word about Dad other than the occasional "great King, but wow, that temper". But that's a familiar psychological mechanism, too, isn't it, for abused children to close ranks against outsiders and insisting everything was fine except for some minor excentricities?

Re: Wusterhausen, it's far, far away, so I can say it, but if next autumn there's a fanfic challenge featuring ghost stories you particularly like, tell me and I will join so I may have the chance to write a story about old Heinrich at Wusterhausen encountering all types of family ghosts during the last years of his life while reading Wilhelmine's memoirs. With or without a flashback to the family reunion of doom there two decades earlier. Hey, the Hohenzollern have their very own family ghost - a White Lady, no less - they should get a ghost story!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

But that's a familiar psychological mechanism, too, isn't it, for abused children to close ranks against outsiders and insisting everything was fine except for some minor excentricities?

*nod* Very.

but if next autumn there's a fanfic challenge featuring ghost stories you particularly like

Oooh! I don't have a good track record of signing up for exchanges, but I hereby cheer for the writing of new stories featuring our favorite Hohenzollerns!

From:

cahn

Oh man, you can't do this to me, I've learned that doing Trick or Treat (my ghostly exchange of choice -- at least, I think it's the only one around right now, unless you know of another I don't?) and Yuletide is a lot! But this is an offer it would be hard for me to pass up :)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Fritz: Sometimes being the most abused pays off!

I have empathy for both of them. I read that passage reminded of how I used to be guilty of forgetting how bad my parents were (not as bad as FW and SD, I hasten to add!) between visits, looking forward to the holidays, and then going, "Oh. Right. This is why I don't visit more often," 48 hours into the visit. Visits became shorter and less frequent as this pattern started to sink in, until finally the big estrangement happened.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Seriously, though, given all of this, if I was Fritz I'd have told Wilhelmine to stay in Bayreuth, too! (Though given Wilhelmine probably yearned for a "Well done, daughter!" moment, too, and had not experienced the face to face joy of parental behaviour since her miserable 8 months in 1732/1734, it's also not surprising part of her wanted to go.)

Agreed on both counts. I can see exactly where both of them were coming from and sympathize with both of them in this situation.

Methinks he was probably feeling safe to do so because he was so famous a painter that if FW had kicked him out and had not died, he'd have easily found a place in Saxony or Austria or France.

Yes, this does make sense! Question, though: could FW have done anything worse than kick him out? Like lock him up or anything?