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cahnI'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.)
Jürgen Luh, Fritz, and Potatoes
Date: 2023-01-23 03:35 am (UTC)"Everyone should be blessed according to his style" This quote comes from Frederick II and shows a certain openness and tolerance that one would not necessarily expect from a monarch of his time (1712 - 1786). For example, although he largely abolished torture, the story of the spread of the potato is often at the fore when he is written about. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to say goodbye to stories you have grown fond of if they do not correspond to the truth. Frederick the Great tried to "bring the potato among the people" with his potato orders, but with only minimal success. In conversation with Dr. Jürgen Luh from the Research Center Sanssouci found out, among other things, that Frederick the Great would probably be happier to have cherries on his grave slab than potatoes. So, if you visit Sanssouci and the grave of Old Fritz, try cherries. The birds will probably be happy too.
I mean, we already know about the cherries, which are now obligatory in fanfics :D, but I would like to know more about the potatoes!
Re: Jürgen Luh, Fritz, and Potatoes
Date: 2023-01-23 12:25 pm (UTC)Re: Jürgen Luh, Fritz, and Potatoes
Date: 2023-01-23 11:27 pm (UTC)Good for them! (Except Fredersdorf, boo.)
Re: Jürgen Luh, Fritz, and Potatoes
Date: 2023-02-05 11:31 am (UTC)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.
Re: Jürgen Luh, Fritz, and Potatoes
Date: 2023-02-05 02:40 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2023-02-06 07:49 am (UTC)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
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.