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cahnAnd including Emperor Joseph II!
from Derek Beales: Joseph II, Volume 2: Against the World, 1780 - 1790:
Joseph's alleged comment to Mozart about the Entführung, "Too many notes", has been taken as evidence of his ignorance. But he probably said something like, "Too beautiful for our ears, and monstrous many notes." It is always necessary to bear in mind, when appraising the emperor's remarks, his peculiar brand of humor or sarcasm. He was usually getting at someone. And he did not use the royal "we". The ears in question were those of the Viennese audience, whom he was mocking for their limited appreciation of Mozart's elaborate music.
(though not gonna lie, I think it is a LOT of notes)
from Derek Beales: Joseph II, Volume 2: Against the World, 1780 - 1790:
Joseph's alleged comment to Mozart about the Entführung, "Too many notes", has been taken as evidence of his ignorance. But he probably said something like, "Too beautiful for our ears, and monstrous many notes." It is always necessary to bear in mind, when appraising the emperor's remarks, his peculiar brand of humor or sarcasm. He was usually getting at someone. And he did not use the royal "we". The ears in question were those of the Viennese audience, whom he was mocking for their limited appreciation of Mozart's elaborate music.
(though not gonna lie, I think it is a LOT of notes)
Re: Books about the Great Elector: until the death of Luise Henriette
Date: 2022-02-19 10:31 am (UTC)1.) Money, 2.) Standing Army, 3.) Respect #HohenzollernPriorities
Heee! On point. (Could one do "in this order" variants for the different kings? I'm undecided.)
I feel like "dead or a farmer" has hashtag potential as well. :P
Ludwig: I die tragically at age 20 without having ruled anything. And with Dad refusing to see me. Should have gone with cousin William.
You totally should have. I'm still not quite sure why the Elector was such a bad father for F1 and Ludwig - related to the chip on his shoulder I guess.
Tiny Terror Karl Emil
Well, I had no idea this was a thing, but it seems like a well-deserved moniker going by your list of incidents.
punished. Not with beatings, though.
Interesting! And also unexpected, given that even Wilhelmine got punished with a beating for accidentally hurting little Fritz.
Very entertaining write-up.
Re: Books about the Great Elector: until the death of Luise Henriette
Date: 2022-02-19 01:57 pm (UTC)Heee! On point. (Could one do "in this order" variants for the different kings? I'm undecided.)
I feel F1 and FW2 are outliers who also add "splendor" and "mistresses who love me" to the list, respectively, but otherwise, yeah.
I'm still not quite sure why the Elector was such a bad father for F1 and Ludwig - related to the chip on his shoulder I guess.
To be fair, he seems to have been doing okay being a father to them for as long as Karl Emil was still alive. I.e. there are no ambassadorial reports about snide remarks or put downs , and if he doesn't favor them, or show the intense interest he shows in Karl Emil and which his first wife showed in all the kids, he does see them regularly. Bear in mind, though, he had grown up without siblings, and separated from his parents for the most part. Even taking in mind that noble parents had less interactions with their children anymore, I don't think he had a model to fall back on when it came to grieving with them once his first wife had died. His own solution for the situation was to remarry as quickly as possible because he couldn't stand being alone - and apparantly a mistress was no option -, remember, and while Dorothea did try to win the stepkids before having children of her own, she did show less attention once her own pregnancies started. So you already have an enstrangement brewing that started with the death of Luise Henriette, though it's momentarily papered over, especially since Karl Emil is already a teenager and grown out of his wild phase, just the type of fuuture successor the Elector wants, and Karl Emil gets along very well with his younger brothers.
But once Karl Emil is dead, and F1 becomes Kurprinz, all the chickens come home to roost - the Elector is devastated, and he feels humiliated his new successor is the one with the physical handicap and the gentle, not-manly-enough nature, and seems to have gotten a "should have been you" blame game in his mind with the surviving kid. As for Ludwig, Ludwig is very close to F1 which seems to have tainted him by association. And finally: they made the Elector feel bad about himself. His new kids with Dorothea made him feel good. Bad feedback loop installed.
Well, I had no idea this was a thing, but it seems like a well-deserved moniker going by your list of incidents.
Quite. I suspect it was a combination of him venting his frustrations about the tight teaching schedule and the prince situation, i.e. the problem of him being of higher rank than his teachers and knowing it. There are no more such incidents mentioned once Karl Emil is past puberty, and he also notably never seems to have beaten up his younger brothers but behaved protectively towards them instead, so he's not exactly a replica of Tiny Terror FW. But certainly I would not have wanted to be in chargeof that kid!
No beatings: yes, I thought that was interesting. But then, we're probably looking at this from the wrong perspective - you could make a case that FW's children are the outliers here, because coming to think about it, most later 17th and then 18th century princes and princesses were not spanked or beaten. FW himself wasn't and, if Morgenstern is to be trusted, complained about this, seeing it as parental negligence. Allowing, nay, ordering physical punishment was probably part of his "my children should be raised like I imagine Christian bürgerliche Kinder are!" program.
Disciplinary methods for royal children
Date: 2022-02-20 06:13 pm (UTC)Through a coincidence of timing, my German reading in the last month has give me both an example of this generalization and a counterexample!
In a bio of Maria Carolina of Naples, the author told me that part of Spanish court etiquette (remember that Naples in this period is a Spanish secondogeniture, meaning it's ruled by the younger son of the Spanish king) was that the heir to the throne got a whipping boy. This was meant both to impress on the prince that his person was untouchable, and also that his subjects would pay for any of his misdeeds when he was king, so he should be a good king. (I have a feeling one of these lessons was learned a lot more readily than the other in most cases.)
These whipping boys were chosen from the lowest classes, and ugly, even handicapped children were chosen, so that when they weren't needed as whipping boys any more, they had a career waiting for them as court fools.
(Sigh.)
Ferdinand, who liked hanging out with the lower classes, became lifelong BFFs with his whipping boy, Gennaro. (It's not clear that he learned much about being a good king.)
But on the flip side, his contemporary and cousin, also named Ferdinand for extra confusion, the Duke of Parma*, was apparently brutally disciplined by his governors/tutors as a kid, getting yelled at and even hit and kicked. I read a whole monograph on his upbringing, which I will try to find time to summarize for salon, because I think you guys would find it interesting. (Spoiler: he didn't turn out the way his tutors wanted any more than Fritz turned out the way FW wanted; he just went *even more* in the opposite direction, while learning to be sneaky.)
* Younger brother of Isabella of Parma, future wife of Joseph II. She was his surrogate mother after their mom died, and apparently she had things to say about how being mean to your kids leads to them turning out bad, and being nice to them, which is currently out of fashion, would make them turn out much better. "Exhibit A: my brother" is probably the subtext, according to the author.
(If you're inclined to read it yourself while you wait for me to have time, it's 100 pages and it's the Elisabeth Badinter book,
Re: Disciplinary methods for royal children
Date: 2022-02-21 01:40 pm (UTC)Given Ferdinand's reign and the anecdote of him being asked in his old age to name a single good thing he did for his people, whereupon he was unable to name even one, I think it's safe to say he didn't learn anything. Re: whipping boy, famously the premise of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, and in fact I associate it not so much with the Spanish as with the Tudors and Stuarts, see also here, where the whipping boy of future Charles I. is identified as William Murray, apparantly also a later life long friend. Though as with Ferdinand, one can't help but conclude the practice did not teach young Charles how to be a good King. (Unless you're Tim Blanning or Henrietta Maria and convinced Charles I. was the best Stuart King ever.) Otoh, Murray got an earldom out of it, not a career as a court fool, so there was that.
ETA: Katte as FW's version of a whipping boy for Fritz, y/y?
Re: Disciplinary methods for royal children
Date: 2022-02-21 03:13 pm (UTC)Yep, I'm incapable of hearing "whipping boy" without thinking of this.
ETA: Katte as FW's version of a whipping boy for Fritz, y/y?
Y. My abandoned WIP where he gets life imprisonment in exchange for Fritz's good behavior is called "Whipping Boy." :)
Re: Books about the Great Elector: until the death of Luise Henriette
Date: 2022-02-24 01:15 am (UTC)This makes me wonder if Fritz was the product of an oral family tradition about how late and lamented Karl Emil was the best.
Re: Books about the Great Elector: until the death of Luise Henriette
Date: 2022-02-22 05:26 am (UTC)I agree!
Re: Books about the Great Elector: until the death of Luise Henriette
Date: 2022-02-24 01:14 am (UTC)