Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

[cahn]

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.)

Comments

Re: Jürgen Luh, Fritz, and Potatoes

[mildred_of_midgard]

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. ;)

Re: Jürgen Luh, Fritz, and Potatoes

[selenak]

I did know macaroni was his favorite!

Me too, because I did research on what the Royal family ate a couple of years ago. Incidentally, Luh also mentions that in peace time, Fritz spent up to eight hours on the table during dinner, BUT that he most likely wasn't eating but talking and monologuing during said hours, since there was no comparable weight gain. He did like to eat, but during those Sanssouci Tableround meals, he talked more than he ate, and all the food ordered (which we have the receipts for) wasn't for him alone but for all the guests.

See, my mental image of a Sanssouci meal during the early 1750s: Voltaire and Fritz do most of the talking, with some Algarotti, Marquis d'Argens and La Mettrie thrown in. Maupertuis glowers. The brothers Keith just tuck in all the great food and send their compliments to the chef. It's not surprising Voltaire remained thin as a reed and Fritz didn't gain additional weight!

Fritz and cherries: I dimly recalled one of his nicer letters to EC resulted from her sending him some, but looking it up at Rheinsberg, I see the fruit in question has not been defined in his letter (though it's still one of the nicer ones he wrote to her):

Madame,
I thank you for the beautiful fruits that you were kind enough to send me. I will eat them to your health, and I count on the fact that that Sans-Souci will not be outdone, and will in turn provide them for Schönhausen. I am with great esteem, etc.
My compliments to Madame Camas.

I look forward to the new edition of Wilhelmine's travel correspondance and journal. And maybe they'll get around and publish her correspondance with AW, which Ziebura says hasn't been published other than in quotes yet and quotes interesting stuff from (and republish the Fritz/AW letters which felis kindly read for us in the old Volz edition).

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.)

To help you in this endeavour, I thought of something idealy suited: Fontane's Rheinsberg chapters from the Wanderungen, which are online as texts, and a reading of same, which I was sure could be found at Youtube. I still am sure, but am currently distracted because I just discovered that the Wanderungen have been filmed, evidently, and in a dramatized fashion, because the Rheinsberg chapter has Heinrich getting the insulting "ditch Kaphengst!" message at Rheinsberg (I just watched Wulnitz tell him "the name Kaphengst alone provides sniggers from the royal court - the King says - and your private life isn't private but has to be examplary - the King says" and so on. No idea when this was made, whether it was a GDR production, but the scene so far makes it clear Heinrich/Kaphengst are not platonic, though Heinrich's reply so far has been "oh, and what about the court? Should I name you the princes who found love with another man?" not "what about my brother?" so this might still be an interpretation where Heinrich is gay but Fritz is not. Still, it's good stuff. Will continue watching, and report, and then go on the hunt for an actual reading of the Rheinsberg chapter as opposed of a dramatization of same. Heinrich's actor is both taller and more good looking than actual Heinrich (Lehnsdorf: This isn't possible!), but so far is good in the part.

ETA: OMG this is great. It's definitely a GDR production, showing Rheinsberg before the restoration, when it's still used as a sanatorium. It's a mixture of narration directly from Fontane (thus useable for transcripts) where we see Rheinsberg is it was in the filmed present (i.e. early 1980s, at a guess) with an off screen speaker, and dramatized scenes (Heinrich gets the "ditch your boytoy!" order and decides on the spot to buy Meseberg - btw Fontane in the chapter says just "insultingly phrased", not what the insults were, but evidently the GDR scriptwriter had a go at imagining Fritz insulting Heinrich. Kaphengst kommt, otoh, only makes it in the off screen narration and doesn't get depicted on screen. (The Kaphengst actor is suitably handsome, and as yet without a double chin. He's called Christian Ludwig by Heinrich, who is called Heinrich by Kaphengst before Kaphengst notices Fritz' messenger is present, at which point it's "Königliche Hoheit" again.)

anyway, there is enough direct Fontane text for you to have a go, and when the Fontane text is interrupted, you can watch on screen Heinrich-Fritz' messenger-Kaphengst here. The text of the Ruppin & Rheinsberg chapters from Wanderungen is here. Since that GDR production seems to have filmed the entire Wanderungen, there must be a Küstrin/Katte episode, too, surely.

Wretched son of ETA: Found Gert Westphal's reading of the Katte/Küstrin chapter from Wanderungen for you: here, titled "Die Katte-Tragödie". I dare say you know the text by heart.