cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

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frederick the great

Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

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I was assuming castration too, but like you, I don't remember that at all! And I read a few books and articles quite recently on Henry IV and the so-called investiture controversy, and I'd think I'd remember!

I'm intrigued that this is how a Byzantine writer presents the tale,

Agreed, it is interesting that this is how the Byzantines, gougers-of-eyes and removers-of-noses, tell it. ;)

The refusal of the Byzantines to acknowledge the Germans as emperors was a big deal in foreign policy and definitely hampered the Crusades.

This is also why when Otto (I) wanted a Byzantine princess for his son, as in, an Emperor's daughter, Nikephoros Phokas was all "NO WAY, German" and John Tsimitskes (his nephew, who murdered and replaced him and then scapegoated Theophano the older, with whom he may or may not have had an affair, but whom definitely took the fall for him) a few years later was more diplomatic and did send a bride, but Theophanu the younger was his niece, not his daughter, plus hadn't been born in the purple at all, what with both Nikephoros and John being military ursurpers.

:) Though it was just high profile wannabe Emperors and very noble rebels who got the noses and eyes treatments, not envoys. I mean, Lieutward of Cremona (Otto I's envoy who was supposed to bring home an imperial bride) bitches a lot about how snobby everyone treated him, but he doesn't fear for his life. For that matter, come the Crusades, one of the many things that made the Crusaders so distrustful of the Byzantines was that they exchanged envoys with the Turks and treated them respectfully. I mean, you have to consider that Alexios I. Komnenos did want military help against the Turks, but not in the sense of annihilating them. He wanted Nicea and Antioch back. (Not Jerusalem. His army wasn't nearly large enough to garnison and defend Jerusalem, see earlier posts about the civil wars depleting them.) And the Turks were already an established factor by that time. What Byzantium did and had done successfully to other enemies in the past centuries - like the Bulgars, the Rus, the Varangians - was after various wars to integrate them into the Empire and employ them. For that matter, there were some Turks already fighting for the Emperor (and there had been for the previous wannabe Emperors.) There were even some Mosques within Constantinople itself. Imagine you're a member of the First Crusade, where the preachers have very successfully dehumanized the Turks and presented the situation in the Middle East as Muslims torturing and slaughtering Christians on a daily basis, and then the fall of Nicea goes thusly:

Crusaders: *besiege Nicea, fight skirmishes, win skirmisches*

Alexios: *negotiates with Turkish garnison*

Turkish garnison, which includes the wife and children of the Sultan: *surrenders to the Emperor*

Alexios: Rejoice, we can take the city without further bloodshed! Nicea, location of the very first Christian Synod, is once again part of the Byzantine Empire!

Crusaders: But - we wanted to sack it!

Alexios: No way. Nicea has been in Turkish hands for only 20 years. Most of the people inside are former countrymen of mine. No sacking. Thanks, fellows, and have some gold from me for your kind efforts, but I got it from here.

Crusaders: Can we at least ransom the Sultana?

Alexios: Nope. The Sultan is going to stay around. He's my enemy today, but tomorrow I might need him against the Normans. For example. So I'm going to host the Sultana and her kids in the palace for a few weeks and then send her home free of ransom.

Crusaders: What kind of Christian Emperor are you anyway?

Mind you, that's the Empire in a post crisis state where Alexios knows he has to rebuild a lot, and at peak power, who knows what would have happened, but still. Mutilation is something you do to your high profile competition, not to envoys, if you're a ~~Byzantine~~ Roman Emperor.

You might even do it to your own child, though, which is what Romanos I. Lekapenos did with his illegitimate son Basil, to ensure he would not be a danger to his legitimate offspring. The irony is that Basil - who grew up to be one of the most powerful eunuch officials of the Byzantine Empire and managed to serve and survive several Emperors in a row - did not betray Romanos, but his legitimate sons did.

Remind me if he did this for gayness?

For female gayness, there's indeed poor Rosenstengel, and for male, I was thinking of the 1730 "sodomite" who did it with both animals and men (or am I misremembering?) according to the pamphlet I found and got burned. Neither was a noble, though.

Did the philologist say anything about how fluent the Attic Greek was?

No, not that I recall.

Lehen! I'm proud of your German vocabulary triumphing over the English expressions. To celebrate, have the most famous poem featuring the word, by Walther von der Vogelweide, first in medieval German, and then in modern German. Walther - who switched sides repeatedly in the Staufer versus Welfen wars and thus first wrote poetry for Philip von Schwaben, and then for Otto von Braunschweig, and finally for young Friedrich II - was delighted that he finally was rewarded with a Lehen for his poetical and satirical efforts:
Ich hân mîn lêhen, al die werlt, ich hân mîn lêhen

Nû entfürhte ich niht den hornunc an die zêhen

Und will alle boese hêrren dester minre flêhen

Der edel künec, der milte künec hât mich berâten

Daz ich den sumer luft und in dem winter hitze hân

Mîn nâhgeburen dunke ich verre baz getân:

Sie sehent mich niht mêr an in butzen wîs als sî wîlent tâten

Ich bin ze lange arm gewesen ân mînen danc

Ich was sô voller scheltens daz mîn âten stanc:

Daz hât der künec gemachet reine, und dar zuo mînen sanc.

Modern German:
Ich hab mein Lehen, alle Welt, ich hab mein Lehen!
Nun fürchte ich nicht mehr den Februar an den Zehen
und werde alle schlechten Herren um nichts mehr bitten.
Der edle König, der mildtätige König hat für mich gesorgt,
dass ich im Sommer kühle Luft und im Winter Wärme habe.
Bei meinen Nachbarn bin ich viel geschätzter:
Sie sehn mich nicht mehr als Schreckgespenst, wie sie es einst taten.
Ich bin zu lange arm gewesen ohne meine Schuld:
ich war so voller Schelte, dass mein Atem stank.
Das hat der König rein gemacht und mein Singen dazu.

(Translation by Margarita Kuhn.)

Edited 2023-02-04 15:26 (UTC)

Because the question came up in email: How are these members of the Rohan family related?

1. The Rohan whose thugs beat up Voltaire, leading to one of Voltaire's stints in the Bastille and his exile to England.

2. The Rohan who was duped in Marie Antoinette's affair of the necklace.

3. The Rohan whose wife had an affair with Bonnie Prince Charlie.

4. The Rohan who had an affair with Bonnie Prince Charlie's illegitimate daughter.

Okay, #3 was not asked in email, but she was the first Rohan(-by-marriage) I learned about, so I had to include her. I did look up how they were all related toward the beginning of salon, because I had the same question, but I've since forgotten, so here goes again.

...

Believe it or not, 2-4 are brothers! 1 is a from a different branch entirely, and I hope you appreciate all the copy-pasting and forgive any errors. ;)

Louis I de Rohan Guemene, d. 1457
Louis II de Rohan Guemene	Pierre I de Rohan Gie
Louis III de Rohan Guemene	Pierre II de Rohan Gie
Louis IV de Rohan Guemene	Rene I de Rohan
Louis V de Rohan Guemene	Rene II de Rohan
Louis VI de Rohan Guemene	Henri II de Rohan
Hercule de Rohan Guemene	Marguerite de Rohan¹
Louis VIII de Rohan Guemene	Louis de Rohan Chabot
Charles II de Rohan Guemene	Guy Auguste de Rohan Chabot²
Charles III de Rohan Guemene
Hercule Meriadec de Rohan Guemene
3 Rohan brothers

1. Married Henri Chabot, founded the Rohan-Chabot line.
2. Had his thugs beat up Voltaire.

I was thinking of the 1730 "sodomite" who did it with both animals and men (or am I misremembering?) according to the pamphlet I found and got burned.

I think you are misremembering, at least given your write-up:

But I can tell cahn now that poor Lepsch had a go at the sheep courtesy to the pamphlet you uploaded. Well actually, I don't know which animal(s) he had a go at, but it wasn't humans. The giveaway is "viehische Vermischung" again

Ha ha, when I first saw the comment appear in my email, I thought you had ventured into Tolkien territory. : P

Did not know about that mistress of BPC (who appears also to have been his cousin), nor the guy his daughter had an affair with! But then, I haven't yet read the McLynn biography of BPC, which I will no doubt inevitably do some day...

I mean, that's also what I thought when I saw the snippet of Selena's email in Gmail!

Did not know about that mistress of BPC (who appears also to have been his cousin), nor the guy his daughter had an affair with! But then, I haven't yet read the McLynn biography of BPC, which I will no doubt inevitably do some day...

BPC's mistress is pretty well known (she also shows up in Outlander, which I realize you haven't read), but Clementina's affair is very obscure. It came as a surprise to me to learn about it in the last few years (slightly before salon?), and it might not be in McLynn.

What I would really like to read is The Stuarts' Last Secret: The Missing Heirs of Bonnie Prince Charlie, published in 2002 (I left Jacobite fandom in 2001), by Peter Pininski, who discovered, to his surprise, that Clementina had had an affair and illegitimate children, and that he was their descendant. (No, he is not claiming the throne, he seems very sane.) You can read about it here.

I know this poem! It comes up in my reading! It is indeed famous. It's quoted in full and in translation in the Frederick II bio I read, and the first phrase is cited in that bio of Henry the Lion I mentioned (not the one I'm reading now, the less academic one).

Lehen! I'm proud of your German vocabulary triumphing over the English expressions.

I thought you would be! :DD I've hardly read any history in English in the last year, only German (and increasingly French).

Okay, speaking of English and German, though, yesterday I heard from the Brandenburg archive in answer to a question I sent them in English, and it was again in German. Given that you said this the first time I got up my courage to write someone in Germany in English and got a reply in German:

Also, I am tempted to explain the lack of English on the part of your corrspondents by stating that Frankfurt an der Oder is in the very east of East Germany, and depending on the age of your correspondent, that means they might have learned (some, if any) English late in life. Whereas if you were corresponding with a historical society located in Frankfurt am Main (aka Mainhattan), I would be seriously disturbed if they had not replied to you in English.

...how surprising or unsurprising is it that 4 out of 5 separate archivists in Berlin and Potsdam, some of whom have "Dr." in their title, respond to English emails with 2-3 sentences in German?

I thought Clementina was the mistress of BPC, while the daughter's name was Charlotte? Anyway, the reason why I knew about the Rohan affair is that the last episode of the audio series The Stuarts which I reviewed here has Charlotte as the central character, and gives her essentially a Becky Sharp/Scarlett O'Hara characterisation, with the Rohan affair her very pragmatic way to get out of obscurity and genteel poverty and into an arrangement that's beneficial to both sides, but just an episode on her way to her ultimate goal (get Dad to recognize her as legitimate heir). Now I don't know when Mike Wallace wrote the series, but clearly he did know about the Rohan connection.

Thank you, oh mighty genealogy detector! Your work is indeed much appreciated.

Well, I continue to blame the East German education system and have to conclude all the archivists must be my age or older, as English was mandatory in the West German educational system and is still mandatory now.

I'll get to the Jürgen Luh interview, I swear, but: Mike Duncen, the "History of Rome" guy who also wrote the Lafayette bio did a podcast series called "Revolutions" with each "season" devoted to a different one, which makes it easy to pick and choose episodes. Season 3 is the French Revolution season, and listening to a few made me conclude that Christian von Krockow in his Fritz and Heinrich biography had been really onto something when comparing FW to Robespierre. Now, obviously there are differences. In temper, for starters; while Robespierre was often physically sick, he didn't self medicate while drink and tobacco, and he didn't shout, being more a case of "beware the quiet ones". (Though a case can be made for him having a nervous breeakdown or several in the last half year of his life.) He was very self controlled, unlike FW.

But what they share is wanting to completely change the society they're born into, not just by altering a few laws but by going for the mentality itself, the willingness to live an austere life style as an example, the increasing willingness to, when seeing people falling short of the ideal of Virtue/Protestant Christianty, resort to more and more brutal methods to enforce the ideal, while also being deeply hurt people refuse to acknwoledge it's all done out of love, and aren't grateful. Krockow, as you might recall, provides a few quotes from FW and Robespierre respectively and invites the reader to guess who said what. So basically, I can see his case that Robespierre is what FW might have become if being born into a bourgeois French family at that point in time, and convertely, FW Robespierre as he might have been when born as the sole son of the first Prussian King with access to absolute power from the get go.

Okay, except for the tall soldiers. I don't think Robespierre would have been into them. Also, he didn't have a Tiny Terror Maximilien phase, i.e. didn't share FW's physical brutality from early childhood onwards, though then again, if FW had been born the son of an Arles notary, not a prince, and one of several children, not in effect an only child (the half sister from F1's first marriage doesn't really count, as she was much older and already dead before FW had finished growing up), he might have learned more self discipline for his temper from the start?

You might be mixing up the Lepsch case - which was bestiality only IIRC - and the Ephraim Ostermann one (see towards the end of this comment), which was indeed both, although it was complicated by the fact that one of the guys he had sex with died, and that it's a bit unclear on which grounds he actually got the death penalty (which was sword first, then burning the dead body, as per FW's addition to the verdict).

Okay, I've listened to it now. Jürgen Luh comes across far more relaxed and humorous than I had expected from his books.

Potato Saga: Nothing new to you, I think, i.e., Fritz tried to make them popular - there are up to 14 written orders from him to that effect, though mainly in Silesia and Pommerania, not Brandenburg itself - , but it didn't really take en masse before the early 19th century. Luh makes a comparison to the distrust towards non-Biontech (that's Pfizer for you Americans) vaccine in Germany because of the side effects some of others have. Potatoes were relatively new and thus distrusted. That hungry soldiers during the Bavarian/Prussian war (i.e. fanboy Joseph against Fritz) ate uncooked potatos when plundering the land (Bavaria had potatos en masse long before Prussia did, ahem) and suffered accordingly didn't help. The famous story of Fritz ordering his soldiers to guard a potato field, thus making it look desirable for the farmers, was first reported about the guy who introduced the potato in France a century earlier and at some point in 19th century anecdote collections was transfered to Fritz. ("She cried, but she took" says hello.)

While he's at it, Luh also shoots down the story about FW cutting off the noses and ears of people stealing potatos. (This one I hadn't known.) Luh says that no one was motivated to steal potatos in FW's time, but concedes it sounds like an FW thing to threaten. At this point the interviewer asks him whether FW "didn't want to shoot his own son". Luh corrects that yes, FW was briefly tempted after the escape attempt to kill him but backed off, that Katte was killed, by sword, not gun (or axe), and cracks me up by referring to Katte as "an acquaintance of his (i.e. Fritz)" - seriously, "ein Bekannter" is about the most distant thing you can call someone who moves in the same social circles.

The third Hohenzollern (or rather married to one) associated with potatos is Louise Henriette, Princess of Orange and (first) wife of the Great Elector, and here Luh says yes, it's true that she had potatos in her gardens - for the decorative bloom, not for to eat. But she had them; we know from the garden descriptions.

Fritz himself never ate a potato or something made out of a potato in his life. Luh says we have detailed kitchen lists and mentions Fritz was a maccaroni fiend. Also that he adored cherries and was willing to pay up to the equivalent of a soldier's widow pension to get them.

Asked whether there isn't all said and known about Fritz already, and what they are doing at the research center Sanssouci, Luh denies it, and mentions a few ongoing projects. Other than research about Crown Prince Wilhelm the Nazi Idiot, son of Emperor Willy the WWI disaster, who made it back to the news when the current Hohenzollern got it into their heads that they want money from the state, they have the more pleasant and interesting to us current project of researching Wilhelmine's trip to France and Italy. Luh says they already have edited and published her letters to Fritz and her other family (presumably that's the website) and are preparing an edition of her Italian diaries. Also, the "Beilagen" (additions? supplements?) from her letters to Fritz from Italy which were believed to be lost have turned up as they were filed somewhere else, and they'll be added in the next edition.

Asked whether Fritz did something good if he didn't introduce the potato (despite trying to) to the wider masses, Luh confirms he did abolish torture (more or less), had the most censorship free state of continental Europe and promoted education. He also calls him the sole intellectual monarch among the Hohenzollern and that the only other Hohenzollern able to compete with him in the brains-and-enlightened-attitude department was his brother Heinrich, but everything that came later "is pretty dark", "ziemlich dunkel". (Earlier in the interview, he's referred to Wilhelmine as the other intellectual in the family, but without mentioning the enlightenment.) I mean, no argument about the other Hohenzollern monarchs, none of whom would count as intellectuals, and btw, the whole interview is a good example of what a "Hohenzollern, ugh!" backlash the current head of same has caused with his behavior these last few years, but this is way more positive than I expected Luh to be about Fritz. On the negative side, when summarizing the escape attempt he repeats his theory Fritz didn't really want to get away, he wanted the attention and the glory - den Ruhm - , but says this is his opinion and not the one of the majority of scholars.

Edited 2023-02-05 11:34 (UTC)

Yes, that's it, I was mixing up the two! Thank you for clearing this up.

Yes, typo, thank you!

...Wow, I had *completely* forgotten Krockow compared Robespierre and FW, and it's still not even ringing a bell. I should probably reread that, it's been almost 3 years.

Anyway, yes, that is an interesting comparison!

So basically, I can see his case that Robespierre is what FW might have become if being born into a bourgeois French family at that point in time, and convertely, FW Robespierre as he might have been when born as the sole son of the first Prussian King with access to absolute power from the get go.

Yeah, I could see that. They definitely have the fanaticism in common!

The other difference that comes to mind is that FW doesn't seem nearly as eloquent as Robespierre. Do you think FW could have gotten as far as he did without the ability to *make* people do what he wanted? Or do you think feelings were running high enough during the French Revolution that he could have been a successful demagogue just by having strong enough opinions? I think, uh, recent events show that a politician doesn't have to be particularly articulate to get people to follow them.

Or am I underestimating FW or, conversely, overestimating Robespierre?

Our sodomy expert to the rescue, thank you! :D

(Selena is our orgy expert: "But Philippe's orgies were well lit!")

I found a good essay on sodomy as a crime in Prussia...whose author...wrote his whole dissertation on the subject, i.e. sodomy as a crime in the 18th century

Damn, I went looking for the dissertation just now, and Google books shows it was made into a book, but I can't find it for sale anywhere, nor even in the Bavarian Stabi. :( Oh well.

Ah, thank you greatly! Some of this I didn't know.

That hungry soldiers during the Bavarian/Prussian war (i.e. fanboy Joseph against Fritz) ate uncooked potatos when plundering the land (Bavaria had potatos en masse long before Prussia did, ahem) and suffered accordingly didn't help.

For example, this.

The famous story of Fritz ordering his soldiers to guard a potato field, thus making it look desirable for the farmers, was first reported about the guy who introduced the potato in France a century earlier and at some point in 19th century anecdote collections was transfered to Fritz.

And also this! It smacked of an apocryphal story (but then again, so did the candles, and that one turned out to be probably real), but I wondered where it had come from. Now we know!

While he's at it, Luh also shoots down the story about FW cutting off the noses and ears of people stealing potatos. (This one I hadn't known.)

Neither had I!

Luh says that no one was motivated to steal potatos in FW's time, but concedes it sounds like an FW thing to threaten.

HAHAHA both parts of that are hilarious.

seriously, "ein Bekannter" is about the most distant thing you can call someone who moves in the same social circles.

LOL! Oh, Luh.

mentions Fritz was a maccaroni fiend.

I did know macaroni was his favorite!

Also that he adored cherries and was willing to pay up to the equivalent of a soldier's widow pension to get them.

We all know about the cherries, but the soldier's widow pension was news to me!

Asked whether there isn't all said and known about Fritz already, and what they are doing at the research center Sanssouci

WOW, interviewer! Asking your interviewee if they actually do anything or is their whole research center just a scam. :PP

Dude, I have 4 essays with original discoveries in progress, and I'm just an amateur!

Also, there's a whole article just on Fritz's *nose*. :P I found it while looking for the sodomy dissertation, and I may summarize it.

Also, the "Beilagen" (additions? supplements?) from her letters to Fritz from Italy which were believed to be lost have turned up as they were filed somewhere else, and they'll be added in the next edition.

Oh, nice!

(Earlier in the interview, he's referred to Wilhelmine as the other intellectual in the family, but without mentioning the enlightenment.)

Hmm. Maybe that's fair, I don't know how much she was into reforming? But she was definitely herself a product of the enlightenment.

when summarizing the escape attempt he repeats his theory Fritz didn't really want to get away

Why on earth would he want to get away from being beaten and humiliated? Jürgen Luh clearly wouldn't.

UGH.

(You told us what Nancy Mitford's father was like, I have to wonder about Luh's.)

Anyway, this was great, thank you! My German reading speed is getting faster, and I've been thinking lately that it might make sense to start working on my listening comprehension*. (I did try before asking, but quickly discovered it was not going to happen--I need to start with something that has a transcript I can read along with.)

* Especially with all those products of East German education my product-of-American-education self keeps running into. ;)

Okay, we've talked about Fritz's nose (hooked irl, depicted straight), and Heinrich's nose (curved upward), but here is a whole article about Fritz's nose! (No mention of Heinrich.)

It's a mixed bag. The arguments are mostly weak, there's uncritical reliance on Voltaire's memoirs and Burgdorf for Fritz's sex life, etc. but it does present new-to-me quotes as well as an interesting comparison of the Fritz portraits.

In the spirit of "I read (okay, skimmed) it so you don't have to," the author's main argument is:

- Fritz almost never sat for portraits, so people were relying on an audience of a few minutes or a glimpse of him during a military parade review.

- Contemporaries (including himself) described Fritz as unattractive, and his death mask shows a hooked nose, but every portrait painter straightens out the nose and pretties him up.

- The only accurate portrayal of him is by William Hogarth, a satirical British painter who never met him, and who was caricaturing him and thus was willing to depict the brown skin and hooked nose. The author has written a whole paper (that I have not read) arguing that the flutist in Marriage A-la-Mode: The Toilette is actually Fritz! Contrary to the usual interpretation that it's G3's music teacher. The rest of the article will assume that the author's conclusion is fact.

- Hogarth's source may have been Georg Friedrich Schmidt, a Prussian engraver who was living in Paris and working on a portrait of Fritz in 1743, at the time Hogarth came to Paris. Now, Schmidt absolutely depicted Fritz in an idealized style, but the article author thinks he may have admitted to Hogarth in person that it was idealized and in what way. And he may have told Hogarth Fritz was gay, as Schmidt may have been gay himself (the evidence presented by the author is about as weak as for the rest of his claims) and may have had an intimate relationship with Fritz (the evidence presented is that one person implied they were both gay)!

So, two things we already knew, and two speculations. Admittedly, I haven't read the author's article in which he makes the case for the identification of Fritz in Hogarth (and he seems to be a Hogarth specialist), but nothing about this article puts me in a hurry to check out his other work (though I admit to being mildly curious).

I'm not going to pick apart everything that's wrong with this article (spoiler: almost everything), but here are some quotes. They're unfortunately from secondary sources, but sometimes secondary sources allow a determined detective to trace them back to the original (or lack thereof), so I'm collecting them here for future reference:

Commenting to the Marquis d’Argens, he remarked: “There is so much talk about the fact that we terrestrial kings are made in the image of God. Then I look in the mirror and am obliged to say to myself: How unlucky for God!” Cited by Gisela Groth, “Wie Friedrich II. wirklich aussah”, Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 November 2012.

And when he was asked by Pesne to be available for a portrait intended for the Russian Tsarina Elizabeth, the artist received the negative reply that he should “only paint a handsome young man, it will be fine that way”. See Schieder, “Die auratische Abwesenheit des Königs”, 333.

When a marriage between the crown prince and the English princess Amalie was considered and the English royal family wanted a portrait of Frederick, his father said that Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, the wife of King George II, should have a large monkey painted for her because that was Frederick’s likeness. See Hildebrand, Das Bildnis Friedrichs des Großen 96; Kunisch, Friedrich der Große: Der König und seine Zeit 27.

When he sent one of these unloved portraits to his nephew, Prince Frederick Augustus of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who had ordered it for his masonic lodge, he recommended to place the picture in the garden as an alternative to a scarecrow. Letter dated 30 January 1777. See Emil Knorr, “Friedrich der Große als Freimaurer”, Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch, 3 (1899), 122. See also Schieder, “Die auratische Abwesenheit des Königs”, 331; Kluxen, Bild eines Königs, 24.

The fact that the king had an extremely distinctive nose long before his death, which some contemporaries apparently made fun of, is also indicated by the following biting remark made by him about himself: “My nose may be large, but it’s not for dancing around.” Allgemeine Zeitung, no. 362 (28 December 1854), 5784.

Even Denis Diderot was sure that Frederick the Great had not touched a single woman and did not sleep with his wife. See Morris Wachs, “Diderot’s ‘Parallèle de César et de Frédéric’”, in Otis Fellows/Diana Guiragossian (eds.), Diderot Studies, 14 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1971), 259–65. T

Significantly, in July 1750, the king wrote to Darget: “Mes hémorroïdes saluentaffectueusement votre v…” (“My hemorrhoids affectionately greet your cock.”) See Ursula Pia Jauch, Friedrichs Tafelrunde& Kants Tischgesellschaft: Ein Versuch über Preußen zwischen Eros, Philosophie und Propaganda (Berlin: Matthes & Seitz,2014), 318n28.

A few works that might be worth checking out:

Klaus Büstrin, “‘Ich habe gemeinet, du häst mihr lieb’: Friedrichs enge Beziehungen zu seinem Kammerdiener Fredersdorf”, Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten, 1 September 2012; the article on Fredersdorf in Anna Eunike Röhrig, Mätressen und Favoriten: Ein biographisches Handbuch (Göttingen: MatrixMedia Verlag, 2010).

Norbert Schmitz, Der italienische Freund: Francesco Algarotti und Friedrich der Große(Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2012); Ursula Pia Jauch, “Eros zwischen Herr und Knecht: Friedrich der Grosse und FrancescoAlgarotti im Land der Lust”, in Bernd Sösemann (ed.), Friedrich der Große in Europa – gefeiert und umstritten (Stuttgart:Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012), 59–70; Wolfgang Nedobity, “Frederick’s Swan: Francesco Algarotti and the Expression of Desire”, SSRN [Social Science Research Network] Electronic Journal, July 2012, 1–5

Finally, a couple quotes about Fritz memorabilia that amused me with reference to recent salon purchases:

Less well-heeled contemporaries can buy Frederick mugs in souvenir shops and on the Internet, apparently with whatever likeness they want — just as one imagines his Old Fritz personally.

And travel bags with Menzel's Flute Concert! (For those who don't know, that's what I got

cahn for Christmas.)

And for childlike persons there is Frederick on horseback as a Playmobil figure.

Selena, guess that makes you a childlike person. Better than Montesquieu's take on Bavarians, at least?

Question for

selenak: I seem to remember you said that the bottom picture in this image painted by Knobelsdorff at Rheinsberg, was EC's favorite because she thought it looked the most like him? Am I remembering right?

Krockow's Robespierre comparison: it's on page 23 f. in my edition. After quoting one of Robespierre's speechfes (as he later reveals, it's from February 1794, Paris), he says this could have been FW's Inaugural Speech, if a Prussian King held one.

"The surprising closeness shows a basic pattern of revolutionary thought and action; taking all the differencces in cause and goals into account, it still always aims at the children of light fighting against the children of darkness in a decisive battle. Injustice is supposed to be replaced with justice, lies with truth, vice and luxury through naturalness and simplicity, in short, Evil by Good. This is how Martin Luther thunders against Popery, how the faithful Puritans in the great English Revolution attack their King and deliver him to his execution, that's what Rousseau says. Always and in a central place, it also concerns education - even if it's education to dictatorship and tyranny: if Old Adam can't be replaced by a New Man, everything has been in vain."

FW doesn't seem nearly as eloquent as Robespierre

That is certainly true. Otoh, Robespierre was a trained lawyer; if FW had gone through the same training and his livelihood had depended on it, who knows, he might have been better than he was at speaking. (Let's not forget, FW was able to make Wusterhausen into a self sustaining estate at age 10. (Or was it 12? One of the two, or he got it as a present when he was 10 and by the time he was 12 it was self sustaining and exporting. This is not something his teachers or his royalty status did for him. If he was motivated to learn something, he did.) Also, Robespierre, while a good public speaker, wasn't as far as I know the type of orator to seduce/urge the masses into immediate action; that was more Danton's thing. Robespierre's brand of charisma also wasn't the instantly-chummy/devoted/slain-by-admiration kind of thing which Fritz had (and again, Danton, and Camille Desmoulins), but he did have force of personality, and whoever was devoted to him remained so. It's difficult to say if FW without being royalty and having the according power would have been able to win anyone over, because it was never put to the test, but he had hardcore convictions, a very emotional way of voicing them, boundless energy and a stupendous work ethic, and that certainly would have come in handy.

Yes indeed, that was her favorite, for that reason, and that's why the palace in Schönhausen has it.

Even Denis Diderot was sure that Frederick the Great had not touched a single woman and did not sleep with his wife.

Diderot, who went out of his way NOT to meet Fritz, ever, and presumably didn't even know EC's name? I'd be very surprised if his intel on Fritz' sex life was based on more than Voltaire's pamphlets. Young Münchow would like to protest that there was marital sex in Rheinsberg, he wrote a letter to the papers including this intel, and he was there as a page, while Diderot was not. Manteuffel adds that while Fritz reminds him of Hadrian, and in retrospect the prostitutes didn't report anything of interest, he's pretty sure there were some (female) prostitutes, since La Chetardie bribed them first.

This essay writer sounds like a soulmate of Burgdorf of "Die Liebe des Königs war tödlich" fame, alright. This said, the Algarotti and Fredersdorf essays sound like they're worth checking out.

Yes indeed, that was her favorite, for that reason, and that's why the palace in Schönhausen has it.

Do you happen to have a source for that? Or just "The Schönhausen people say so"?

Diderot, who went out of his way NOT to meet Fritz, ever, and presumably didn't even know EC's name? I'd be very surprised if his intel on Fritz' sex life was based on more than Voltaire's pamphlets.

Yeah, I mean, the whole section is good evidence that Europe thought that Fritz was gay. Which is relevant to whether Hogarth would include him in a depiction of "homosexual depravity"! But much less so to anything about Fritz's actual sex life.

This essay writer sounds like a soulmate of Burgdorf of "Die Liebe des Königs war tödlich" fame, alright.

He couldn't even convince me that Fritz was gay, and I'm already convinced Fritz was gay! :P

This said, the Algarotti and Fredersdorf essays sound like they're worth checking out.

Yeah, that's my main interest in this article, that and tracking down the quotes at some point. And the comparison of portraits was interesting (even if I often came to different conclusions).

Okay, I have to share one of the most entertaining of the many egregious aspects of this essay:

Voltaire's claim that Fritz exclusively bottomed is taken at face value, and footnoted with statistics.

According to recent surveys, 21.8% of all homosexuals prefer the passive part in sexual intercourse. 7.1% of them even state that they are fixated on the passive role. 43.4%, on the other hand, are not determined in their sexual behaviour and like both the active and passive role in anal sex. See Thomas Hertling, Homosexuelle Männlichkeit zwischen Diskriminierung und Emanzipation: Eine Studie zum Leben homosexueller Männer heute und Begründung ihrer wahrzunehmenden Vielfalt (Münster, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, London: LIT Verlag, 2011), 198. This may not have been much different in the 18th century.

I mean. The readers of Voltaire's memoirs and pamphlets are not going to find themselves thinking, "Oh, I see, Fritz likes to bottom. I've read the Kinsey report, and that all checks out." !!!

The author doesn't seem to realize that Voltaire's claim was AN INSULT. It's like the opposite of the people who claim the only evidence that Fritz was gay was Voltaire trying to slander him with all this talk of bottoming.

This is what I mean when I say "I read this essay so you don't have to."

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Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

Re: Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version

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Re: Pope Gregory vs Henry IV: the Byzantine version

Re: Frat Boys of Versailles: The Actual Quotes

Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast

Rohan genealogy

Re: Frat Boys of Versailles: The Actual Quotes

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Re: Rohan genealogy

Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast

Re: Rohan genealogy

Re: Rohan genealogy

Re: Byzantine tales, brought to you by virtue of me having finished the available podcast

FW and Robespierre: Soulmates?

Re: Frat Boys of Versailles: The Actual Quotes

Re: Jürgen Luh, Fritz, and Potatoes

Re: Frat Boys of Versailles: The Actual Quotes

Re: Rohan genealogy

Re: FW and Robespierre: Soulmates?

Re: Frat Boys of Versailles: The Actual Quotes

Re: Jürgen Luh, Fritz, and Potatoes

Fritz's nose

Re: FW and Robespierre: Soulmates?

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Re: Fritz's nose