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: Leining to Fredersdorf: Letter 2

[mildred_of_midgard]

OMG, clearly Glasow was the equivalent of the shiny red Porsche, yes.

You can see why the rumors that Fritz has ditched his faithful spouse of 20 years for the hot young model!

distinguished him with a special red uniform

Shiny red Porsche, shiny red chamber hussar... :P Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Re: Leining to Fredersdorf: Letter 2

[selenak]

:) So very true. Though it still slays me that he let the hot young model anywhere near his money. I mean, that's the difference to all the other dashing hussars like Giorgi. Not to mention all the haggling he did about Voltaire's travel expenses the first time Voltaire visited.

BTW, Kalkreuth's "Antinous wasn't more beautiful" (than Glasow) is one of those classical allusions (like years earlier Manteuffel comparing Fritz to Hadrian vis a vis Seckendorff the Nephew) which the educated contemporaries would have gotten immediately but apparently Charlotte Pangels and all the other "Voltaire was the only contemporary to ever say that Fritz was gay!" biographers did not. Meanwhile, I am wondering whether Kalckreuth speaks of personal experience. I mean, his insistence on Glasow's innocence doesn't, like Nicolai's, come with picking someone else as the true villain (i.e. the coffee maker Wöllner/Völker - has that guy shown up yet in the letters, Mildred) responsible for the misdeed(s), he just insists there were no misdeeds in the first place other than Glasow accepting a tea/chocolate invitation from the Countess Brühl and not reporting it, and that the sacked page made it all up. Since clearly there was at the very least some embezzling going on, I'm wondering about Kalckreuth's motives here. I mean, he was already Heinrich's boyfriend but not yet his AD (Henckel von Donnersmarck was), and while no Kaphengst, I bet he wasn't monogamous.

Re: Leining to Fredersdorf: Letter 2

[mildred_of_midgard]

but apparently Charlotte Pangels and all the other "Voltaire was the only contemporary to ever say that Fritz was gay!" biographers did not.

Are we sure they've even read Kalckreuth? He's not mentioned in MacDonogh or Blanning, I just checked. I honestly think we of salon (by which I mostly mean you) have read reams of sources on Fritz that many of his biographers have not.

(i.e. the coffee maker Wöllner/Völker - has that guy shown up yet in the letters, Mildred)

I'm only 3 lines ahead of you, and so far no, but still almost 3 pages to go in this letter, so we'll see.

ETA: I finished my first passthrough of the first paragraph, and I'm only missing 2 words, and I can already tell it's only mentioning Glasow in passing; Leining's talking about the payment of the order for Champagne wine that he found in Glasow's papers. Nothing exciting yet. We'll see about the second paragraph, but these letters may have run out of interesting Glasow gossip.

Since clearly there was at the very least some embezzling going on, I'm wondering about Kalckreuth's motives here. I mean, he was already Heinrich's boyfriend but not yet his AD (Henckel von Donnersmarck was), and while no Kaphengst, I bet he wasn't monogamous.

Hmm! It's possible!