Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 42

[cahn]

Last post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.

Comments

Re: How not to raise a child: the Halle-Denmark edition

[mildred_of_midgard]

Btw, in the list of people with overly religious, abusive parents who turned out either freethinkers, libertines, or both, I had meant to add Christian VII. (The fact that we got 3 more examples in Denmark just from reading Barz was what inspired me to finally write up the Ferdinand of Parma monograph.) Christian's father obviously wasn't a strict Pietist, but his abusive governor was, and his nice governor was the protege of Voltaire.

So Christian VII ends up deeply skeptical about Christianity (in a way his father seems not to have been--of course, *his* beloved mentor, Moltke, was a devout Christian, which may have played a role). Christian gets out of going to church whenever he can, and at one point, he provokes his devout and bigotted brother-in-law by debating with him whether Christ even lived or not.

On a no doubt related note, we have this story about the effects on Christian of being constantly beaten by his governor as a child:

Even when he was already king, he experienced a morbid fear of the guards. Whenever he had to walk by them, he waited until a moment when he had the feeling they didn't see him, then rushed quickly by, finally to breathe out in relief, as if he had outrun a great danger.

I should also point out that Christian does a lot of running wild in the city, sleeping around and breaking windows, after he becomes king--the very thing his governor had beat him in hopes of preventing! Meanwhile, in Parma, the tutor is beating Ferdinand in hopes of preventing his future as a reviver of the Inquisition. You guuuuuys!!

For Struensee, we have fewer details, but according to him:

My father was an upright man, who acted according to his convictions, but I think he was too hard on me...That Jesus allows us everything harmless, that the morality of Christianity doesn't forbid us innocent pleasures, was never said to me. Everything I wanted, without differentiation, was cast as a sin. Wearing cuffs, powdering my hair, that was declared in all seriousness as godless, as being obviously sinful debaucher.

Eventually Struensee comes to the conclusion that everything his teachers say about religion was just based on what *their* teachers said, ad infinitum, that none of them are dealing with the contradictions in Scripture (which he concludes was written by humans and not divinely inspired), that the Old Testament God is really vengeful, that the pious churchgoers don't actually behave any better than anyone else, and finally that there's no immortal soul.

I was struck by the description that Francke was constantly frustrated that the products of his schools, if they went on to the local university, got a reputation as the wildest students, and he never understood why. To anyone with an understanding of psychology, though, it should be obvious. It might also be of interest to prinzsorgenfrei, who is always reading up on Katte and his friends' exploits at school!

Speaking of the university, it's worth nothing that Halle in the early 18th century had a Janus-like reputation as a bastion of Enlightenment as well as the center of Pietism, because it was settled by refugees in both cases, the establishment not being a fan of either new religious sects *or* freethinkers.

By the way, we talked about how, when Struensee's father, Francke's successor, said that the Pietists were being persecuted under Fritz, we suspected what he really meant was that they weren't allowed to do the persecuting any more and had to tolerate equals. Well, Winkle our academic Struensee biographer gives at least one example where Fritz apparently *did* do some persecuting:

In 1745, some students got into fights at the theater. The Rector of the University of Halle forbade comedians from entering the city. Fritz--I'm struggling a bit with his German here, but the gist is clear--he blames the clergy, not the comedians, insults Francke (this is the son of *the* Francke), says performances should continue, demands a public apology by Francke, and I think proof that the comedian was present at the apology? Or that Francke was present at the performance? Then he fines Francke, Jr. 20 Taler, even though the authorities protested that Francke had nothing to do with any of this. Here's Fritz's German if you want to help:

«Da ist das Geistliche Mukerpack Schuld daran. Sie Solen Spillen und Herr Francke oder wie der Schurke heißt, Sol darbei Seyndt, umb die Studenten wegen seiner Närischen Vohrstelung eine öfentliche Reparation zu thun, und mihr Sol der atest vom Comedianten geschiket werden, daß er dargewesen ist.»

Now, I'm with Fritz that banning comedians is the wrong solution to the problem of out-of-control students, but if Francke, Jr. really wasn't involved in that episode, then Fritz may have been scapegoating out of personal dislike, because, as Wilhelmine says, Francke, Sr. was responsible for a good deal of the suffering she and Fritz went through as children.