cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 39

Last post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)

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From:

cahn

hahahaha well as the resident ignorant American, I mean, I'm going to stick up for my fellow Fry-as-the-resident-ignorant-person and say I know where he is coming from! Like, I'd be the last person not to know about the Reformation and Martin Luther, but before salon I had sort of this understanding that there was this Thing called the Holy Roman Empire, which was Catholic (it's in the name! Holy Roman!), and then this Thing called the Reformation, with Martin Luther -- but I didn't know anything about Princes Elector or how these two things interacted! Also didn't know anything about the Thirty Years War.

I mean obviously if I'd ever thought about it for a little bit I guess I'd have had to realize that it wasn't like the Reformation overthrew all the existing political establishments. But you have to realize that the way it's presented to an American Lutheran is sort of "...and here is where Martin Luther Nailed His Theses! and changed the world! and Spoke Truth to the Holy Roman Empire!" and so on, without really a whole lot of context.

But if the actual expert people are not correcting this, as

felis says, that's another thing entirely.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

before salon I had sort of this understanding that there was this Thing called the Holy Roman Empire, which was Catholic (it's in the name! Holy Roman!)

You know, if I squint, I could see how you could think there was a Reformation in Germany but also no Protestant princes: there were Catholics in England but no Catholic monarchs. I could see seeing Protestantism as a tolerated minority in Germany ~~if I hadn't made a skit about the Peace of Westphalia~~.

I myself knew this before salon, but only because I made a special point of researching the 18th century for my novel in high school, which no one else I knew did. I am reminded that when I was in Munich for a conference in grad school, I was doing a tour of Nymphenburg Palace with some English professors, and we were reading plaques and signs, and I was trying to explain what an elector was to two professors who'd never heard of electors.

Me: The electors got to vote on the Holy Roman Emp...er...or... *voice trails off*
Prof: On his council?
Me: No...on who got to be emperor...except I thought it was hereditary in the Habsburg family...so I guess I don't remember this as well as I thought I did. But I could have sworn there were a handful of princes in the empire who got to vote on the next emperor, and that they were called electors. Darnit, I used to know this!

I'm pretty sure one prof was either British or American, but I know the other was Bulgarian, because she was my advisor. Now, maybe behind the Iron Curtain they were too busy covering Marxist takes on history to go over what an elector was, but she'd clearly never heard of them and I was doing my level best to be expert in the group, i.e., the only one of us who'd ever heard of electors. Pretty sure nobody could have commented on their religious affiliations, and I would probably have done the same thing of dredging up a correct thing from memory but with a lot of hesitation and second guessing and "never mind"s.

From:

cahn

You know, if I squint, I could see how you could think there was a Reformation in Germany but also no Protestant princes: there were Catholics in England but no Catholic monarchs. I could see seeing Protestantism as a tolerated minority in Germany if I hadn't made a skit about the Peace of Westphalia.

Oh hahaha noooo. If anything, what was in my pre-2019 head was that Germany must have basically seceded from the Holy Roman Empire, so, like, sure, I guess there could be Protestant princes! Just they wouldn't have been affiliated with the Holy Roman Empire in any way, because those were the wicked Catholics and of course you couldn't have anything to do with them! Definitely I wouldn't have thought they were electors, if I'd known what an elector was.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, just to be clear, I meant "you" = "one", not "you" = "Cahn". I could see how someone could have that picture in their heads! I could also see how you, Cahn, could get Germany seceding from the Holy Roman Empire! (Although I could not have, not even if I'd learned nothing outside of school, we covered the German unification in too much depth for that.)

Just they wouldn't have been affiliated with the Holy Roman Empire in any way, because those were the wicked Catholics and of course you couldn't have anything to do with them!

Hahha, that's funny and also makes sense!

(I also want to point out that the only teacher I had who officially taught me any European history insisted that James VI/I was Catholic and could not be swayed by endless arguments from yours truly! So that's an entire classful of American students who walked away believing that. Fortunately (?) I'm sure they all forgot who he even was once the exam was over.)

From:

cahn

You covered the German unification in school?? In anything resembling depth??

To be fair, I skipped world history in middle school when I skipped a grade, and then I never took European history in high school, so it's possible they covered it and I just didn't know.

From:

selenak

You two make me feel old. School? I lived through German reunification (at uni).

Here‘s a trivia addendum to the term Holy Roman Empire, owed to the fact Dirk covers it in his History of the Germans podcast, in one of the Barbarossa episodes:

Friedrich I. „Barbarossa“ of Hohenstaufen: I and my intellectual sidekick coined that term. Earlier Emperors did not use it. You see, by the time I made it to the top, we Emperors had a tough deal. Gone were the times when we invested bishops and appointed abbots and were looked at as the leaders of Christendom due to the fact the Popes were, well, that‘s where the term Pornocracy came in. Hence my long time predecessors able to install even Popes. Instead, by my day, Popes were handing out excommunications of monarchs left, right and center, investing bishops was out, and let‘s not even get into all the trouble with my secular German princes and all those uppity Italian cities. Basically, I needed something to invest me with numinous authority that wasn‘t the Pope. And that‘s when my scribes rediscovered Justinian‘s codified laws - wow, those were awesome! - and hit upon the glorious idea which I, and even more my grandson would follow: it‘s the Empire itself that is - and here the wording is important - sacrum. Not sanctus. Sanctus being specifically coded ecclesiastical. Sacrum Imperium, in a straight tradition from the Romans preceding Christianity. Ergo, I, Fredericus semper Augustus, was legitimized by the fact I was leading in the tradition of Augustus and leading an entity which by itself was something divine. The famous quip of your friend Voltaire not withstanding, it was Roman, holy, and an Empire. I mean, sure - I started a seventeen years long schism by installing an Antipope because bloody Alexander IIII didn‘t see it my way, and let‘s not even get into all the quarrels my grandson, Selena‘s problematic fave, had with several Popes. But the term I coined stuck! Till 1806! Sacrum Imperium fuck yeah!“ *shuffles off to the Kyffhäuser*

Edited Date: 2022-12-15 03:53 am (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

UNification, Selena, not REunification! Bismarck! Wilhelm I! Realpolitik! Which I don't think you're old enough to remember, unless you're hiding something from us. ;)

Also Garibaldi and Risorgimento, we covered the two developments in conjunction.

That's what I mean by I had to learn at least something about the Holy Roman Empire: given the amount of time my teacher spent on UNification, it would have been hard to not to get at least a sense of things like the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire, Austria-Hungary, Prussia, and Germany. I suspect (?) that you can teach REunification without covering the Holy Roman Empire in enough depth that a teenager will remember it 20 years later.

But no, we never covered REunification in school. Although we technically could have, as I was only 5-6 when it happened, history in school as it was taught to me never made it past WWI or WWII. *One* time, in 11th grade American history class in preparation for a nationwide exam, we had a teacher disciplined enough to get us up to the 1960s so we could pass the (AP) exam.

But mostly my teachers got bogged down in 19th century detail--the 10th grade European history teacher on 1848 - German unification - Risorgimento, the 8th grade American history teacher (who had been in the army) in loving military history detail of the battles of the Civil War. We spent 3 days on the Battle of Gettysburg, which took 3 days to fight in real life! (And no, alas, 8th grade was 2 years before I discovered my interest in military history, so I did not benefit.)

But you're still old for remembering REunification. ;) I had just turned 6 when the Berlin Wall came down, and I doubt I even knew that there was such a thing as a Germany, much less two Germanies.

But my wife, who is almost exactly your age, was absolutely riveted in Brazil following the news as it was playing out in Germany, and she had a friend (cousin?) who was present when the wall came down, and that is why in my living room today there is a piece of the Berlin Wall on display.

The Soviet Union breakup in late 1991 was one of the first world events I remember being aware of as it happened, in that one teacher rushed into my third-grade classroom to dramatically announce that the Soviet Union had broken up. She was all "!!!!" My teacher said, "Wow, they're going to have to change all the maps." And my reaction was that there was this thing I had never heard of that no longer existed that the adults seemed very worked up about.

And the first event I remember actually having explained to me to where I understood it was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, because my dad was active duty US military, and my parents had to explain that he might get sent into combat and where and why. (He did not.)

Edited Date: 2022-12-15 11:27 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

UNification, Selena, not REunification! Bismarck! Wilhelm I! Realpolitik!

Riiiiight. Then I'm doubly impressed you learned about it in school, because we sure as hell learned next to nothing about the US Civil War, other than: "it happened, because slavery. These are the dates."

I should add that otoh, we did learn far more extensively about the US Civil Rights movement and Vietnam, but not in history class, in Sozialkunde (subsection: democratic protest movements).

From:

mildred_of_midgard

we did learn far more extensively about the US Civil Rights movement and Vietnam

Ironically, then you were ahead of me in this game, because we never covered Vietnam, and the Civil Rights movement only once, due to the date cutoffs I mentioned. But we did get quizzed on how to spell and define "Realpolitik", because 19th century!

From:

cahn

UNification, Selena, not REunification! Bismarck! Wilhelm I! Realpolitik! Which I don't think you're old enough to remember, unless you're hiding something from us. ;)

Oh, thank goodness. I was sitting here going "I know I often have really mistaken ideas, but I thought we were talking about the Holy Roman Empire and I didn't think that was a major consideration in the 1980's?"

Haha, I am VERY FAMILIAR with never getting past WWI/WWII! (For American history.) Often we never really made it past Reconstruction. In AP American History we in theory made it to the 1960's, but that was also the class where we were told that the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis were the same thing, so, uh, never mind that.

As I am between your age and Selena's age, I do remember German reunification, and the Berlin wall coming down, being a super big deal. I actually remember saving the Time magazine with the news article in it for years because it was an Important Thing. (Though I was in middle school, so I didn't follow it in any sort of great detail.)

(The first world event I remember being aware of as it happened was the Challenger explosion. There were probably things before that, but that was the one that I remember being a Big Deal, partially because there was a schoolteacher on it so it had been hyped up at school.)

From:

selenak

Ha, let me see, the first world event I not at the time but in retrospect noticed was the global oil crisis in the early 1970s. The reason why I noticed is that I remember my Dad not allowed to drive at the weekends and being grumpy about it. (I didn't connect the dots until much later). Otherwise, my 1970s childhood memories do include politics, but not on a global level - i.e. I remember all the "Wanted" posters for the members of the Rote Armee Fraktion (Baader Meinhof Gang in English, as English speakers don't want to use the shorthand RAF for obvious reasons, while German speakers generally call them that) being everywhere, and in the early 1980s, I remember Schmidt's government falling and Kohl becoming Chancellor. One of the essay topics we had to write about during election season was "Does TV distort political reality? Discuss!" And lots and lots of nuclear power, yes/no debates being everywhere. I think that's one of the big differences between Germany and the US, and it struck me for the first time when I watched Dark, the first season of which was released shortly after Stranger Things had become a hit with its 1980s nostalgia. If you were a German teenager in the 1980s, you remember Atomkraft? Nein Danke! demos, whether you were pro or against. Whereas something like, say, the whole Satanic scare just wasn't a thing. And I really got a culture shock when visiting the US for the first time at age 14 smack in the middle of Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign, with flags everywhere (in itself bizarre and triggery if you grew up in Germany at that time, because national flags everywhere were strictly coded as tied to the Third Reich) and Reagan so incredibly popular (when the impression teenage me had of Reagan before that was that he was kind of ridiculous, because former actor, and that the British tv show "Spitting Image" made fun of him and Margaret Thatcher).

...and then came AIDS. Yes, I think that was the first global thing I very consciously noticed in the 1980s when it was happening. In terms of politics. In the later 1980s of course Gorbachev, Glasnost and Perestroika. I was one year out of school when the Berlin Wall fell, but I'd started to pay attention to what was going on in the Soviet Union while still at school. Most of us did. It's not a little heartbreaking to think about now how much hope there was, as we could see Gorbachev actually following through with this.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The first paragraph was very educational, as I learned *none* of the German parts of that

1980s elections: I do actually vaguely remember the 1988 election, in that that was where I, freshly turned 5 years old, learned what an election was and what political parties wrere, and that my parents and grandparents belonged to different parties, and I remember the name Dukakis, but I sort of wasn't counting that as my first, as what I got out of it was less a current event for me and more a political science lesson.

It's not a little heartbreaking to think about now how much hope there was, as we could see Gorbachev actually following through with this.

Oof, I can imagine. By the time I started paying attention, it was already not looking good.

From:

selenak

Having read the relevant book now: Mikhail Gorbachev, the Lafayette of the Soviet Union?

Not really, I know, the analogy doesn't work for Lafayette's entire life - just for the French Revolution vis a vis Gorbachev & the Soviet Union, especially from a German perspective. He was and still is seen re: German reunification as Lafayette is seen from the US (you could tell in all the German obituaries this year, no matter whether in left, moderate or right papers), while Russia has the later-French-Revolution/Bourbon pov on him.

From:

cahn

Like Mildred, I found the first paragraph very educational!

In the 80's: I remember acid rain being a big thing! I remember even writing a horror story about it in... probably third or fourth grade, haha. Nuclear power was never a big thing in the US, but the threat of nuclear annihiliation was. (Reading Watchmen, years and years later, took me back... I felt like it got that feel right, that there was always this undercurrent of "so we don't really think the world is going to end tomorrow... but it might!") I think I must have been too young to get much of the Satanic scare stuff, and I think my parents were much too pragmatic for it to really bother them in any case, though I do remember it being a cultural thing, very vaguely. By the time I was in late high school I played D&D a couple of times and it was fine, although I'm not sure my parents knew about it.

Oh, right, yes, I do remember being conscious of AIDS. Probably not in the early 80's, but certainly by the mid-to-late 80's I knew quite well it was a big thing. And Gorbachev, glasnost, and perestroika, yes, I remember those too; like German reunification, I wasn't old enough to get into it in great detail, but I certainly knew it was a Really Big Deal. And I remember how hopeful everything was.

Re: Once-current events that are now history

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-16 09:21 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, thank goodness. I was sitting here going "I know I often have really mistaken ideas, but I thought we were talking about the Holy Roman Empire and I didn't think that was a major consideration in the 1980's?"

Lol! I really thought that everyone would know which one I was talking about if I said "unification" instead of "reunification"! 'Cause yes, I don't really think the HRE goes with the 1980s very much either. ~~Unless we're talking about the big conglomerate that Sanssouci, Inc engaged in a hostile takeover with.~~

From:

cahn

I knew which one you were talking about! But then I got really confused by Selena's comment, because if she thinks you're talking about one thing and I think you're talking about another, I mean, the odds are not in my favor ;)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The first world event I remember being aware of as it happened was the Challenger explosion.

Lol, so I have a story for this one! I was 2, so I don't remember this myself, but I've since been told that the news kept showing the explosion over and over again, and that I, being 2 and having no idea what was going on, sat in front of the television clapping and cheering at each explosion, yelling, "Again! Again!"

...Once I got old enough to be told this story, I was like, "Oh, no!" But I understand why, when I was 2, I just thought it was like fireworks. Much like AW got on FW's good side for liking cannons as a toddler: it doesn't mean he's going to be a brave soldier someday and Fritz isn't, just that one is scared of loud noises and one thinks they're fun and doesn't know yet to connect them with his imminent death. (Which is the hard part of being a soldier, ffs, FW.)

There were probably things before that, but that was the one that I remember being a Big Deal, partially because there was a schoolteacher on it so it had been hyped up at school.)

Yeah, we got this in school a few years later for the same reason. I actually remember a detailed explanation of the O-ring problem in 5th grade, but that would have been in 1993, several years later.

From:

cahn

Aww! I think that's a cute story actually (because of course you were too young to get the context), but I can see why you were mortified once you got older.

It's so weird to think of the O-ring problem being history now, but of course it is. I think I was too old to get it in school, but I read about it in Feynman's memoirs at probably around the same time. (And it's in one of my kids' pop-science/math books.)

Re: Challenger

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-16 09:23 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Challenger

From:

cahn - Date: 2022-12-16 10:13 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Challenger

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-17 10:42 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Challenger

From:

cahn - Date: 2022-12-18 10:52 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Challenger

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-20 01:04 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Challenger

From:

cahn - Date: 2022-12-23 06:40 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Challenger

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2022-12-23 06:52 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

The famous quip of your friend Voltaire not withstanding, it was Roman, holy, and an Empire.

In Barbarossa's day, yes, much less so when Voltaire was writing. That reminds me, when I got to this part of the podcast a couple months ago, I made a note to ask: does anyone know what the source for that Voltaire quip is? Do we know for sure if it's a real quote, or like "she cried and she took"?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I should also add that I don't actually *remember* German or Italian unification more than faintly, because we only covered it in the one class and I never studied it on my own (stopped at Napoleon). So don't expect me to know much about it when it comes up. But by the standards of what we covered in history in school, it got covered in more depth than most things.

From:

selenak

Good grief. Did that teacher argue on the basis of his mother being Mary Queen of Scots? General later Stuart tendency towards Rome? Not even that?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yep! Mary Queen of Scots was Catholic, and she raised her son (!!) Catholic. She may have said something about all the Stuarts, I don't remember, but it's ringing a faint bell. Definitely Mary, though.

[ETA: This may be a false memory, but when you said "later Stuart tendency", a memory of her saying, "All the Stuarts were Catholic, Mildred," popped into my head, along with a memory of my jaw dropping and me thinking to myself, "Okay, I'm not qualified to adduce evidence about the later ones off the top of my head, but I am definitely going to die on this hill of James VI/I!" I 100% remember the Mary argument, though.]

My teacher actually taught us that twice, in that I argued with her the first time unsuccessfully, and a couple days later she called him Catholic again, whereupon I threw up my hand and went, "No, Mrs. R--! We went over this! He was Protestant!" But she WOULD NOT back down, even when I pointed out things like Mary's baby being taken away from her and the King James translation and so forth.

This kind of thing is why I have a hard time blaming individual Americans for not knowing history. It's a systemic problem.

Edited Date: 2022-12-15 09:05 am (UTC)

From:

selenak

You know which Stuart would be the most mortified by this? Not even James VI/I but his daughter Elizabeth the Winter Queen. Which brings ups back to people not knowing anything about the Thirty Years War. :)

A Mary Queen of Scots who actually raises her son and raises him Catholic can reside next to an FW who puts up with a younger gay son not wanting to marry and only for that reason lets the older one leave Küstrin after all...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I didn't know who the Winter Queen was at the time, but now that I do, I whole-heartedly agree with you!

A Mary Queen of Scots who actually raises her son and raises him Catholic can reside next to an FW who puts up with a younger gay son not wanting to marry and only for that reason lets the older one leave Küstrin after all...

My history teacher! Paid by the local school district to educate me about history!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

By the way, if anyone cares, said advisor of mine had an interview published in a major journal last month, where she talks, among other things, about growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria in the 1940s-1970s, and the difficulties of emigrating. There's a whole lot of English historical linguistics, but you can skim that part.