Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 44

[cahn]

Not only are these posts still going, there is now (more) original research going on in them deciphering and translating letters in archives that apparently no one has bothered to look at before?? (Which has now conclusively exonerated Fritz's valet/chamberlain Fredersdorf from the charge that he was dismissed because of financial irregularities and died shortly thereafter "ashamed of his lost honor," as Wikipedia would have it. I'M JUST SAYING.)

Comments

Re: Katte's less famous final Puncte - Translation

[selenak]

Mind you: we also know that Katte's mind during that last night and on that last morning was set on reassuring Fritz he does not blame him and providing him with a message of love, not of telling him "repent and be a good father-loving Christian from now on!" (Reminder, we know this because the Küstrin officers in their letters mention back and thro of messages during the night to that effect, and of course any version of the famous last verbal exchange between Fritz and Katte includes those core elements.)

So while he, personally, repented and found comfort in the faith of his childhood when facing his death, which presumably included accepting the idea that it all happened due to his having sinned (against the fourth Commandment because the authority of fathers and monarchs is supreme) but that having repented he was now forgiven, he also did not see his affection for Fritz (and vice versa) as such as something wrong but as something good, and wanted to help him as much as he could till he drew his last breath.

On the less romantic side, Katte having sincerely found back to Protestant orthodoxy makes me doubt even more that in a scenario where he gets the tribunal ordained prison sentence instead of a death sentence and is pardoned the moment Fritz becomes King, he and Fritz - who in 1740 was just out of his Christian Wolff phase, in retrospect the last Fritzian attempt to be a philosophical Christian as opposed to a deist philosopher - could have resumed their old closeness.

Re: Katte's less famous final Puncte - Translation

[cahn]

(Reminder, we know this because the Küstrin officers in their letters mention back and thro of messages during the night to that effect, and of course any version of the famous last verbal exchange between Fritz and Katte includes those core elements.)

<3333 Thank you for the reminder! And there's his Puncta to Fritz too <3

he also did not see his affection for Fritz (and vice versa) as such as something wrong but as something good, and wanted to help him as much as he could till he drew his last breath.

<3333

Re: Katte's less famous final Puncte - Translation

[mildred_of_midgard]

he also did not see his affection for Fritz (and vice versa) as such as something wrong but as something good, and wanted to help him as much as he could till he drew his last breath

Awwwww, yes. At least there's that. <3333

On the less romantic side, Katte having sincerely found back to Protestant orthodoxy makes me doubt even more that in a scenario where he gets the tribunal ordained prison sentence instead of a death sentence and is pardoned the moment Fritz becomes King, he and Fritz - who in 1740 was just out of his Christian Wolff phase, in retrospect the last Fritzian attempt to be a philosophical Christian as opposed to a deist philosopher - could have resumed their old closeness.

Sadly, I am forced to agree. I guess good thing I'm writing nonfiction these days, not fanfic! ;)