cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 38

Gonna go ahead and make this post even though Yuletide is coming...

But in the meantime, there has been some fic in the fandom posted!

Holding His Space (2503 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, 18th Century CE Frederician RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf/Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Characters: Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Protectiveness, Domestic, Character Study
Summary:

Five times Fredersdorf has to stay behind - and one time Friedrich doesn't leave.

Using People (3392 words) by prinzsorgenfrei
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Hans Hermann von Katte
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Hans Hermann von Katte
Additional Tags: Fluff, Idiots in Love, reading plays aloud while gazing into each others eyes
Summary:

Friedrich had started to talk to him because he had thought of him as a bit of a ditz.
And now here he was. Here he was months later, bundled up in this very same man’s blankets with a cup of hot coffee in front of him, its scent mixing with that of Katte’s French perfume.
_
Fluffy One Shot about one traitorous Crown Prince and the sycophant he accidentally fell for.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

selenak

I knew it! BTW, the price haggling and the selling is so FW. But wow, 3774 books. At age 18, and one has to consider he can’t have started to buy them until getting infected with the reading bug, which he wasn’t from the start according to himself and Wilhelmine. He really must have gone on a book shopping rampage in the last two years or so before the escape attempt.

From:

luzula

Wow, that must have cost a ton of money, considering how much books cost in those days. So did he have a large allowance, then, even if his father was harsh and abusive?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

No, he got into huge debt! That was one of the things FW had investigated during the trial. Fritz had already been in trouble earlier that year (and recent years, I think), when his enormous debts were discovered. FW issued an edict saying "No lending to royal princes!", meaning Fritz.

People of course continued to do it, so he had amassed a lot more debts by the time of the escape attempt. (Katte had loaned Fritz money too. When asked during his interrogation why he had done this contrary to the edict, all he could say was that Fritz had promised to pay him back. My comment was, "Katte. That's what a loan *is*. :P")

Plus Fritz got money from people like the British, who were willing to pay him good money not to escape, come to Britain, and start an international incident. (See also my example of that when you asked about Katte and blame.)

That's why my next to last sentence in this post was, "Also, I am not yet in debt, but at $71 for this apparently 50 page volume, I understand Fritz getting into debt for his library. ;)"

After Fritz got out of prison, he continued amassing debts by borrowing from foreign courts right up until the minute FW died. Some of those debts didn't get fully paid off until the 1770s. (His correspondence with envoys is delightful in that he refers to loan money in code as books, specifically "the life of Prince Eugene", which is a book he needs MANY MANY copies of, because all his friends are asking him for a copy. It's hilarious to read.)

In Fritz's defense, getting into debt was a thing most nobles of the time did; Katte was also in debt when he died. This was the exact kind of thing FW's austerity measures (his father had gotten Prussia into debt and left FW with those debts) were meant to avoid, and part of the reason he was so angry with Crown Prince Fritz. A crown prince who runs himself into debt over frivolities is going to turn into a king who runs the country into debt over frivolities, and that will ruin FW's life work. That's (one reason) it was SO VERY personal for FW when he hated on Fritz for not being exactly like him. It made him feel existentially threatened.

From:

selenak

Sometimes I'm morbidly curious as to what would have happened if FW had found out, as

felis discovered when reading the Volz edited Fritz/AW correspondence, that Fritz made AW get into debt on his behalf as well in FW's final years....

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Nothing good, I'm sure. Remember when tiny tot AW says he doesn't want to be an officer because FW cuts off his officers' heads, and even FW stan Stratemann says what happened next is best passed over in silence? :/

From:

luzula

I am amused at milking the ambassadors for money. *g*

Fritz: Ha! I told him double the amount I actually needed for my debts, so I could use the rest as running-away money. And I never promised not to run away if Dad did take me on the trip. Loophole FTW!
Hee!

To be fair, if I had a child, I too would be worried if they got themselves hugely into debt--although of course this does not excuse FW’s abusiveness.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I mean, me too, with my modern values! But part of the reason Fritz went so much in debt was FW's abusiveness in the first place: the things Fritz wanted were things that normal princes and nobles got as a matter of course, and instead of FW going, "Well, you can have them, but in small doses, because we have to save money," FW would repeatedly beat him if he caught Fritz doing any of these forbidden things, so Fritz doubled down in secret.

Ugh.

From:

cahn

Excellent deduction! and I share the "wow, 3774 books!!" reaction. Where did he keep them all?? (says the person who doesn't have that many because we don't have enough room!)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I thought we knew this in salon already, but apparently I was the only one who kept running into "more than 3000 books" and "thousands of books" in descriptions of the secret library and neglected to share it! My bad! I only shared it when I got an exact number, because I thought we had already discussed the approximate number.

Anyway! To answer your question, you're in luck, because fortunately for salon (unfortunately for Fritz), Katte included this exact information in his plea bargain: "in des H. Hofrath Peinen Hause gegen das Schloss."

In the house of Herr Councilor Peinen, opposite the palace.

Now, I was hoping to be able to give you more details on where this was! Alas, the Berlin address book for 1730 says that Hr. Julius von Pehnen, secret finance, war, domain, and also school councillor is living "auf der Freiheit" (

selenak?) in the chamber councilor Rost's house. The only Rost I can track down is an absent member of the Royal Medical-Surgical College who is living abroad (so no address is given). I don't *think* he's the same guy as the chamber councilor Rost, but if so, our Rost and his address are not mentioned.

So who was this Julius von Pehnen (also spelled Peinen, Pehne, Pehen, and Pechen, just to keep things interesting) and what happened to him after Fritz's secret library turned up in his possession? Guy-Dickens says a French sexton was banished for taking care of Fritz's library, but nothing about this guy?

His son Theodor Julius is more famous, unfortunately. I find Pehne Sr. dying August 13, 1731, but little else (aside from a few hits saying Fritz kept his library in his house). Given the timing, could he have died while imprisoned? Maybe!

Oh, interesting. One (non-contemporaneous) source says the house Fritz put his books in was *rented*. If Pehne was living in a different house and renting out this one (which makes sense of Cahn's question about where they found the space!), he could potentially claim that he had no idea that this was the Prince's illicit library, it was all a middleman who had deceived him!

Anyway, I will keep an eye out for this guy!

Edited Date: 2022-11-19 10:07 am (UTC)