cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 36

Starting a couple of comments earlier than usual to mention there are a couple of new salon fics! These probably both need canon knowledge.

felis ficlets on siblings!

Siblings (541 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Summary:

Three Fills for the 2022 Three Sentence Ficathon.

Chapter One: Protective Action / Babysitting at Rheinsberg (Frederick/Fredersdorf, William+Henry+Ferdinand)
Chapter Two: Here Be Lions (Wilhelmine)

Unsent Letters fic by me:

Letters for a Dead King (1981 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen (1726-1802)
Characters: Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Love/Hate, Talking To Dead People, Canonical Character Death, Dysfunctional Family
Summary:

Just because one's king and brother is dead doesn't mean one has to stop writing to him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

selenak

Your ability to track down contemporary newspapers remains awesome. Say, the Saxon Queen Fritz is opening the ball with must be MT's cousin Josepha, right? The same one who defiantly remains in Dresden during the 7 Years War?

Speaking of AW's recent marriage and balls, since Catherine recalls dancing with Heinrich on all the marriage-celebrating balls that time, so he must have gone straight from there to becoming Fritz' AD and getting to be where the action was. This being before all the drama, and his first chance to prove himself, I suspect it was as happy a time for him as he ever had while in Fritz' shadow.

Also, not for the first time I find it frustrating that all the Heinrich-AW correspondance is lost to us (i.e. or has been deliberately lost, as I suspect Hohenzollern censorship, as with Heinrich's reputed memoirs).

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Your ability to track down contemporary newspapers remains awesome.

Seconding this! Always

felis with the newspaper findings. *applause*

Say, the Saxon Queen Fritz is opening the ball with must be MT's cousin Josepha, right?

Must be!

This being before all the drama, and his first chance to prove himself, I suspect it was as happy a time for him as he ever had while in Fritz' shadow.

Yeah, it sounds like it probably was. And we know how being out of Fritz's shadow worked out for him. Poor Heinrich.

From:

cahn

Seconding this!

Thirding this! :D

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Also, not for the first time I find it frustrating that all the Heinrich-AW correspondance is lost to us (i.e. or has been deliberately lost, as I suspect Hohenzollern censorship, as with Heinrich's reputed memoirs).

Same, and this reminds me that earlier this month I ran into a 19th century summary of Heinrich's and AW's respective accounts of the campaigns of 1756, and the author commented that that it was not improbable that more Heinrich memoirs from later in the war would turn up at some point. I was like, "WELL. 1757 is when Heinrich started to have inflammatory opinions, so I wouldn't count on it."

19th century author, btw, is predictably a Fritz fanboy and accordingly a Winterfeldt fanboy, which means he's not happy with AW's and Heinrich's criticism of the latter, and that's in 1756! He actually compares AW and Heinrich to Wilhelmine in being memoir writers biased by their emotions, and contrasts them to Fritz's UTTER OBJECTIVITY. He practically accuses Heinrich of being a hysterical female.

Also, as far as I can tell from skimming, the main reason to believe Winterfeldt was the greatest of all Fritz's contemporaries was that Fritz liked him and relied on him so much, and there can be no more important opinion than that of Fritz, the utterly objective military genius.

If this is how the 19th century reacted to criticism of Winterfeldt, I can only imagine how quickly the 1757-following materials were disappeared.

Edited Date: 2022-06-26 11:12 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

:( I want that correspondence and memoirs!! Poor Heinrich, I suppose it's just as well he didn't know they would get lost, and the most likely reason.

From:

selenak

I strongly suspect we might not have had the Heinrich to Ferdinand letters, either, if not for the general lack of attention paid to Ferdinand (who saved all of Heinrich's letters to him and thus provided us with all the juicy quotes from the 7 Years War). I might misrenember, but I seem to recall before the 20th century, no one bothered with Ferdinand's papers at all, and before Ziebura, the biographies didn't quote (extensively) from said letters. So the "Ferdinand Who?" reaction saved at least some of Heinrich's strong opinions for posterity.

From:

cahn

That's a great point, and even though I make fun of Ferdinand a lot, I'm glad being ignored meant we still have his stuff. (Although, okay, I also think it's kind of funny.) Also that he saved all of Heinrich's letters <3

From:

selenak

No kidding. I mean, ob course Heinrich wasn't any more objective than Fritz was, and if we did have his memoirs and letters to AW, I wouldn't trust him to deliver an unbiased estimation, either, but it would be invaluable to have his take on this to compare to the other sources.

BTW, how's that for a contemporary review: Goethe, recovering teenage Fritz fan turned more complicated emotions having man, thought Fritz' Histoire de mon temps did show his writerly skills... in manipulating all the sympathy away from MT not by accusing her of crimes, but by making her sound boring. Thus, any attempt to sympathize with his arch nemesis was prevented far more efficiently than if he had openly abused her in said book.

(Goethe definitely didn't think Fritz was objective in any of his writings, but then Goethe had been a target of De La Literature Allemande, so he wouldn't make that mistake anyway.)

I remember reading early 19th century writer Varnhagen declare that Zieten's criticism of Winterfeldt proved Zieten couldn't have been such a stand-up great guy as usually presented, because why else would he differ in his judgment on Winterfeldt so much from Fritz? It must have been jealousy!

Fontane, otoh, thought Winterfeldt did get exaggarated hostility in the 7 Years War but also that he got it for genuine faults - those of Fritz, whom no one could attack openly, so unconditional Fritz fan Winterfeldt made a good lightning rod.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I remember reading early 19th century writer Varnhagen declare that Zieten's criticism of Winterfeldt proved Zieten couldn't have been such a stand-up great guy as usually presented, because why else would he differ in his judgment on Winterfeldt so much from Fritz? It must have been jealousy!

Oh, lol, Varnhagen! Thank you for reminding me Varnhagen is on my list of authors to check out once my font is up to reading more than a few pages at a time (hence why I broke down and started skimming the article on Heinrich's and AW's Winterfeldt opinions), since he gets cited so much by later authors.

Fontane, otoh, thought Winterfeldt did get exaggarated hostility in the 7 Years War but also that he got it for genuine faults - those of Fritz, whom no one could attack openly, so unconditional Fritz fan Winterfeldt made a good lightning rod.

See, this I'll believe! Remember how Görtz got executed the moment Charles XII died, because no one else in Sweden wanted to keep fighting that war that Charles XII was dragging on for 20 years and sucking his country dry to fund, and Görtz was a foreigner and more importantly, not a royal, so he became the lightning rod for Charles' unpopular war and war-funding policies.

I can imagine if Fritz had died in 1761, Prussia had had to surrender a bunch of territory, and Winterfeldt was still alive and had been his right hand for all those years...if not execution, then some kind of backlash.

From:

cahn

:D

and if we did have his memoirs and letters to AW, I wouldn't trust him to deliver an unbiased estimation, either, but it would be invaluable to have his take on this to compare to the other sources.

Lol, no! I mean, the Ferdinand letters definitely aren't what one could call unbiased... I imagine they would be factually correct (at least to the extent his memory allowed, of course, which might be significant, and of course people's memories can be affected by their bias) but wildly biased in interpretation.

(Not saying Heinrich was like this, but I realized (and then had to add the conditionals above) I was thinking of my sister, who until recently had a reputation in our family for having an extremely good memory for factual things that happened -- if you were unsure, you consulted her, and her version was always what had always (factually) happened. Now, on the other hand, her interpretation of what had happened would often not agree with other people's!)

Goethe, recovering teenage Fritz fan turned more complicated emotions having man, thought Fritz' Histoire de mon temps did show his writerly skills... in manipulating all the sympathy away from MT not by accusing her of crimes, but by making her sound boring. Thus, any attempt to sympathize with his arch nemesis was prevented far more efficiently than if he had openly abused her in said book.

Heeee. That's great. ~~so what does he has to say about Fritz writing about Voltaire~~ (I know, that's different because he's the ex!)

Fontane, otoh, thought Winterfeldt did get exaggarated hostility in the 7 Years War but also that he got it for genuine faults - those of Fritz, whom no one could attack openly, so unconditional Fritz fan Winterfeldt made a good lightning rod.

That makes sense!

(btw, for almost all of July I'll be either traveling or getting ready for a another trip *sigh*; occasionally I may actually be able to comment in salon more, but mostly will probably mean that I'm not able to write very much.)

Edited Date: 2022-07-01 06:18 pm (UTC)

From:

felis

Well, to be fair, I only really had to track them down once, at least for the 1740s (minus 41 and 40, which still annoys me). ;)

Also, I belatedly realized why "Saxon Queen" felt wrong to write - because it is, Queen of Poland, not Saxony of course - although I don't know what the correct title would be here. Electress? It's not like she herself does any electing.
But yes, should be Maria Josepha. (Do we know anything about her relationship with MT?)

I suspect it was as happy a time for him as he ever had while in Fritz' shadow

Yeah. And as I mentioned recently, Fritz himself seems to have had quite a lot of praise for him during that time as well. Which reminds me of your guess that the trip to Aachen, which was also in 1742, might have been a "well done" reward.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

That reminds me, I ran into this Fritz quote in Anderson:

'So long as I breathe', he told Belleisle on 8 January, 'I will never allow a métairie [that is, a small farm] of Bohemia to be detached in favour of the King of Saxony [sic; the Elector Augustus was also king of Poland].'

I don't have a citation for it, it might be in the political correspondence, but apparently "King/Queen of Saxony" was a thing! This doesn't surprise me, as "King in Prussia" and "King of Prussia" were used interchangeably by contemporaries even in FW's time.

I was actually really pleased to see Fritz saying "King of Saxony" in Anderson, since that's the most natural phrasing for me too, and I had used it in fiction, and then realized it was technically incorrect, but since it was the most informative phrasing and anything else would require more explanation than the subject warranted for this fic...so yay for getting to just use it and be historically accurate at the same time. :D

ETA: Also, I do believe the official title for the elector's consort is "Electress"/"Électrice"/"Kurfürstin". It's what I see in my reading, what Wikipedia says, and what's in Trier.

Edited Date: 2022-06-27 08:13 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

As Mildred said elsewhere, "Electress" or "Kurfürstin", but since she was also Queen of Poland, she definitely would have been referred to as Queen, this being the higher rank. To refer to her as "the Electress", while technically correct, would have come across as doing something like the Prussians calling MT "Queen of Hungary" all the time instead of "Empress-Queen" or "The Empress". I mean, no one called Queen Caroline "The Electress of Hannover" when talking about G2's wife, did they? Though she was also that.

(Sidenote: In the few years FW's grandmother Sophie was officially Queen Anne's successor, she was still referred to as Kurfürstin/Electress, but I remember some relations teasingly referring to her as "our Princess of Wales" (a title cousin Anne never granted her, but since it usually went with the official successor territory, it wasn't out of this world.)

should be Maria Josepha. (Do we know anything about her relationship with MT?

I don't think they had one (a personal one, that is), as such, since as far as I recall the age gap was so large (Maria Josepha: born 1699, MT born 1717) that they didn't crow up anywhere near each other and Josepha was already married abroad by the time MT was out of the nursery. Presumably they had an official exchange of birthday greeting letters and the like, but unlike Maria Josepha's daughter-in-law Antonia, who did become MT's close correspondent (and later that of Fritz), they weren't pen pals, either.

And as I mentioned recently, Fritz himself seems to have had quite a lot of praise for him during that time as well. Which reminds me of your guess that the trip to Aachen, which was also in 1742, might have been a "well done" reward.

For all that I make fun of Ulrike's "you're such a wonderful father to us, brother!" letters to Fritz, I think he really did try as good as he could for the youngest siblings in the beginning, not just via educational programs but also by giving rewards. It's just that his fatherly role model and the similarities between himself and Heinrich all but guaranteed the developing mess...