18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 37

[cahn]

More diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!

January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!

Comments

Re: Heinrich

[selenak]

I think it also has to do something with AW from early childhood onwards being treated as the mediator in the family, the one you adress when you want something from FW, and the child who manages to (mostly) keep a very volatile personality happy. All of the children would have been trained in behaving graciously in public at receptions and the like, that's par the course for royals, even if Dad violates these norms all the time, but AW had extra training in being a people pleaser, so to speak.

BTW, unless we find something else, and to answer Mildred's original question, my money is on Sophie von Voltz', nee Pannwitz' journals/memoirs as a primary cause for the Heinrich-the-cold-automaton image in Koser and Klepper, because before Lehndorff's diaries were pubished in the 20th century, hers were the go to source if you wanted a courtier's pov on three Prussian regimes.

Then again: Fontane wrote in the 19th century, and his Rheinsberg section from "Wanderungen in der Mark Brandenburg" doesn't come up with Heinrich-the-cold-fish, on the contrary, it can be summed up with: Heinrich was great, with the major misfortune of his life being that he had Fritz' gifts but was fourteen years younger, he's just been lacking historical fiction to make him properly popular until now", and he imagines a potential historical novel showing the arrival of Heinrich's favourite nephew Louis on a visit and Heinrich beaming at him, plus, of course, he gives us the whole saga of Heinrich's last boyfriend the Comte, and while he doesn't use the word "boyfriend", the "last beam of the setting sun warming Heinrich" phrasing is as explicit as you can geet as a 19th century Prussian writer under censorship. Now, maybe this is because young Fontane had the chance to interview the Comtesse in her old age as an excentric Rokoko cat lady making it into the stuffy 19th century, i.e he could talk to someone who actually had known Heinrich personally. But it proves both images must have existed, i.e. cold fish and otherwise.

Re: Heinrich

[cahn]

That makes sense! (And wow, yes to that extra training in keeping a volatile personality happy.) But also I could see there being some a priori element to their character as well. (Says the person who has one child who was able to act much more intrinsically charmingly than the other as even a very small child...)

That's a great point about Fontane <3

and he imagines a potential historical novel showing the arrival of Heinrich's favourite nephew Louis on a visit and Heinrich beaming at him

I love this idea!

the "last beam of the setting sun warming Heinrich" phrasing is as explicit as you can geet as a 19th century Prussian writer under censorship.

Aww, I remembered this phrasing, but not where it had come from. That's so sweet, it's making me smile :D