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: Prinzsorgenfrei update

[mildred_of_midgard]

Thank you, I have passed it on! Along with this quote,

What you say about death is very true. One can hardly think with joy of the complete destruction of his being, and whoever says he does, feels the secret contradiction in his heart. All one can do is use the time and, when the last hour has come, die in a good manner.

I am also here to pass on an exchange from my emails with Prinzsorgenfrei:

Mildred: I don't really do tumblr, but I was looking through yours recently and saw something about a letter that shows our Katte had an interest in Karl XII of Sweden?? Tell me/salon more? :D

Prinzsorgenfrei: The Karl XII thing is from the Martin von Katte text on Katte's time in Glaucha! I can't quote it verbatim, but it said that Katte was very interested in Karl from maybe around age 10 and got a miniature painting of him in his teens that he kept (possibly around his neck??) until his death. I have NO clue what the source for that is, but the image of 14-year-old Katte finding out about the early death of his Idol (who was on the opposing side in the current war, but shhh) while at school is incredibly funny to me. What a nerd. He also played the flute in a quartet while in Glaucha! And shared his room with Ingersleben and some Scot called Carmichael. And may have lost a chunk of his money to being bad at Latin (at first, he got pretty good later, apparently).

Mildred: OMG that's awesome! I wonder what Hans Heinrich thought of all this...I do remember 3-year-old Fritz saying he wanted to go to war with Dad and kill the king of Sweden with a big cannon. Did not know that was the same time as Katte was carrying around a painting of the king of Sweden!

*

This is all reminding me that amongst my many things to do is finish reading Voltaire's life of Karl XII, read Fritz's essay on Karl XII, and read what Catt says Fritz said about Karl XII, because I remember Catt talking about it, only Karl XII was only a name to me back when I read Catt, and I should reread it now!

So much to read (preferably in French), so little time...