cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 44

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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.)

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Oh! Another thing I've been meaning to ask about: "er". Is that how a 16-yo crown prince would address his boyfriend in an intimate letter? A 40-yo monarch addressing his ex with whom he seems to be getting friendly again, yes, absolutely, but a teenage boy? You guys tell me.

Crown Prince Fritz "du"s Gröben in the intimate letters, and then switches to "Er" for the later letters where he's annoyed and a lot more formal. But he's 1) an adult, 2) annoyed. Affectionate and lonely teenage Fritz "er"ing Peter when asking for comfort?

From:

Depends how early in their relationship this is, I'd say. Also, don't forget, both Gröben and Fredersdorf aren't really good comparisons. Frederdorf because everyone is du-ing their valet, and Gröben because he and Fritz are in the army together, where, again, "du" shows up more often. Plus: the main language Fritz thinks in is French, and there, he's vous-ing even his beloved sister, so the formal mode of address does not signal the same kind of distance it would to us.

Outlier question, though: did you make the identification that this letter was written by Fritz, or did the archive? I mean, is it signed "Friech" or any variation thereof? Because while I don't think Peter would have kept a German letter from SOME GUY... hey, just imagine we're chewing on this and all the time it's not a Fritz note but one from, say, Knobelsdorff!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Well, I did, and I definitely agonized over the identification as Fritz! It's signed "Fri..i.h", and the Gröben letters have signatures with clearly visible "d"s and other letters, *but*, the "F" and "h" look so much alike I went with it. It may be a different Friedrich, but "Georg Wenzeslaus" it is not. ;)

It would also have to be the only letter signed "Frederick" from a different Frederick in a stack of 11 consecutive letters signed "Federic", "Fr", "Fri...i.h", and "Friedrich", all of which I'm taking to be from our Fritz (who is more likely to sign using just his first name than most people?)

I will screenshot and upload the signatures from Gröben, Richter, and Peter letters for comparison in a bit, so you can see for yourself.

Plus I noticed "dahr" for "da" in both this letter and Richter--but I will start going over spelling and handwriting comparisons in more detail shortly, and report back!

(Was "guht" a normal 18th century spelling? Fritz in the Gröben letters tends to put his "h"s before his "t"s, where I'm used to seeing them after the "t" in pre-spelling reform German, and we've got "guht" here, all through the Gröben letters, and all through Richter...but maybe that was normal?)

From:

Spelling: well, before Duden, there was no standard spelling. Now if you read German literary works predating Duden, unless they're academic editions, the spelling has been cleaned up to standard to make them accessible to modern readers, so honestly: I don't know. Could be, could not be. Maybe a comparison with FW's letters would enlighten us further on whether he spells it "guht" or "gut"?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Well, yes, I'm aware of that, but no standard spelling doesn't mean no norms or common spellings. If you ask me if "th" was a common spelling for modern "t" in older German, I will say yes, because I've seen it a million times. If you ask me if "ht" was a common spelling for same, I will hesitate, because I've only seen Fritz do it. [ETA: By which I mean none of the letters to Fredersdorf did.]

That said, had a quick glance at the FW to Dessauer letters, and he does indeed write "guht"!

Edited Date: 2023-06-24 06:12 am (UTC)

From:

Wouldn‘t be the first habit Fritz adopts from Dad…

More seriously, I do think that‘s the case, because FW is the one insisting Fritz talks and writes in German to him, and who writes back in German. All of Fritz‘ actual teachers like Duhan would have taught him in French. So naturally he‘s going to adopt FW‘s spelling for German.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Yep, I agree.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

...You guys, screenshots coming soon, but the handwriting is pretty identical to the Fredersdorf letters ("alle", for example), and the signature is a much closer match for the Fredersdorf letters than the Gröben letters! It's definitely Fritz, and it may be 1750s Fritz. (Wouldn't that turn everything we thought we knew about their relationship on its head.)

That said, aside from the signature, I haven't done a close comparison of 1730s vs. 1750s handwriting--and I haven't checked the dates on the Fredersdorf letters either, since the facsimiles don't have them, and I'll have to cross-check the text to assign them dates. There may not be a big difference between 1734 and 1745, say. I'll see if I can find a 1750s Fredersdorf facsimile, figure out which of the Gröben letters Fritz wrote and which he dictated, and see if there are noticeable differences. (There may not be.)

From:

felis

The facsimiles are usually the letters right next to the page, so the first one in the first Richter book (p.39) is 1745 and the third (p. 125) is 1753.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Thank you, I have posted them with dates now!

You all can see the two batches of screenshots I've posted, right?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, I'll do more screenshots later, but for now, the two most similar signatures:

To Fredersdorf, in Richter:

To Peter, in the Knyphausen collection:

Between this and the handwriting and the spelling, I'm not sure it's 1750s Fritz, but it's got to be Fritz! More later!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Okay, here we go!

November 1734:

Jan 1735:

February 1736:

July 1739:

December 1745:

April 1747:

November 1753:

April 1754:

June 1755:

And our undated mystery letter:

I'm not going to put too much weight on it resembling the 1753 letter specifically, but I wouldn''t be surprised if more data points showed that after 1740, Fritz had to sign so many letters he ran out of time and patience for the "d".

Not conclusive. But intriguing.

My plan is to order all the Fredersdorf letters from the Prussian archives and check out not just the signatures (which are all post-1740), but the paper and ink.

I also need some early letters in German! Hmm, I know there are letters from Küstrin, there must be some in German in Fritz's handwriting. The paper wouldn't be conclusive, though; really wish I could get those Borcke letters just for the paper comparison, even if they are in French.

Btw, I figured out what was up with the Borcke letters. A few things occurred to me:

1. They're all letters *from* Fritz.
2. Preuss didn't publish them.
3. The archives were still closed in 1881.
4. The Prussian archive doesn't seem to have them to this day.

Ergo, they must be like that batch of letters from Fritz to Suhm: they were in the possession of the respective family, then ended in up the hands of a collector who published them independently. Then I tracked down the original 1881 volume, and sure enough, it says the editor was lucky to come into the possession of these Borcke letters that had been in a family archive.

So I guess I'm not getting my hands on those. But Fredersdorf should be simple, though it will take several weeks. Now I'm cursing myself for not having ordered them when I thought about it, earlier this year! But I was already spending hundreds of dollars on archive orders, and I had no reason at the time to order something that was already published...

Well! I will place the order Monday, and probably also see what the archive has for Küstrin.

From:

felis

I can see the screenshots, yes. And I meant to say, if you are looking for Fritz letters in German, there are always the ones to FW (if they still exist), including the infamous 1728 one, written in Wusterhausen. :(

But I also have to say, looking at that signature, I don't really see that being Crown Prince Fritz. Your theory regarding the "d" is compelling and that looks very fluid and practiced IMO.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

And I meant to say, if you are looking for Fritz letters in German, there are always the ones to FW (if they still exist), including the infamous 1728 one, written in Wusterhausen. :(

Ha! I keep remembering those exist and then my mind veers away from them to "But what ELSE can I look at?" Because FW UGH. But yes, that's silly and I should just see if I can get my hands on them.

But I also have to say, looking at that signature, I don't really see that being Crown Prince Fritz. Your theory regarding the "d" is compelling and that looks very fluid and practiced IMO.

I would like more data points, but yes, that's what I think. I woke up leaning strongly to 1727-1728, with the building (and "er" and "affairs, work, worries") a point of confusion, and now that I've compared the signatures, I'm strongly leaning to 1753-1755, with the whole idea of Fritz asking Peter in German to come comfort him a point of confusion!

But again: deaths, Frexits, Fredersdorf married and dying, Fritz worried about Wilhelmine moving permanently to Italy: 1753-1755 makes more sense than any time before 1753.

And Peter could have been discreet and let everyone think he was going to Potsdam on business. At this point, he has Tiergarten and Charlottenburg responsibilities, and bust-supervision responsibilities if it's 1755, and getting one random task like that probably means he got others. And we know he'll get Amalie-escorting responsibilities in 1756. So if he just said, "The King has summoned me," everyone could draw their own conclusions. And I suspect the "bau" is something Peter is connected with somehow--maybe Fritz is telling him he's fine with how the project is coming along, and that if he doesn't seem happy about it, it's because of clinical depression, not that Peter's work is unsatisfactory.

Also, it occurred to me: just because King Fritz *can* pay the bills from Potsdam, logistically, more easily than Crown Prince Fritz could pay secret creditors from Wusterhausen...doesn't mean King Fritz *wants to*. Delaying paying until he's back would be a very Fritzian maneuver. In fact, at least two of his other letters to Peter include "the money will have to wait."

Also, I am irresistibly compelled to remember Zimmermann saying that someone (who we think is Luchessini) told Zimmermann that Fritz said he was still having Socratic love right before the Seven Years' War. Doesn't have to have been just Glasow! :P

Edited Date: 2023-06-23 08:05 pm (UTC)

From:

Also, I am irresistibly compelled to remember Zimmermann saying that someone (who we think is Luchessini) told Zimmermann that Fritz said he was still having Socratic love right before the Seven Years' War. Doesn't have to have been just Glasow! :

Verily. But if their reconciliation went that far, wouldn't Peter have received a more personal letter to his dying request re: Jägersdorf than a polite standard secretary penned one? I mean, yes, there's a war going on and Fritz is accordingly busy, but the war is going well for Fritz right then and also, it's winter quarters time. Not that this objection should stop fanfiction! I'm just playing advocatus diaboli.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

I know, I know. It's highly unlikely. ;)

But in all scholarly seriousness, are you with me on the signature and probable date, though? It at least makes sense of the bau and the "chagrin, affairen, arbeit, und sorgen"!

Re: Evolving Fritz signatures

From:

selenak - Date: 2023-06-24 06:06 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Well, now that we feel pretty good about Knobelsdorff as the intended recipient*, the tone of the final letter does make sense: "Sorry to hear it, hope you get better, happy to help out your family, but no signs that I'm going to be writing to anyone about my great depression after you die, either."

* Btw, when I was entertaining possible candidates, I decided it felt too familiar to fit Peter, but not familiar enough to fit Fredersdorf. Knobelsdorff fits perfectly.

From:

felis

Delaying paying until he's back would be a very Fritzian maneuver.

I wondered if it might be a convenient delay tactic, too! And I sure would like the 50s interpretation. (Maybe Knobelsdorff's death and Peter's subsequent promotion were a catalyst for more correspondence and contact.)

That said.

Playing advocatus diaboli for a minute, I have one other, possibly disappointing, theory: the letter wasn't written to Peter but to Knobelsdorff, and Peter somehow inherited it together with the library.

How I got there:

The vague winter return date and the false news = Fritz on campaign. Not least because I'm not entirely convinced that 50s King Fritz would call the trip from Potsdam to Berlin a "retour/Rückkunft" (although he might do so if that's the word that was used in the letter he's clearly responding to) and also because the dates - between occasional day trips to Berlin on one hand and always spending the majority of December in Potsdam on the other - don't really add up for the time period.

(/Sidenote: Could "mehr" in the first line of the letter also be "wehr", as in who spread the news of his return, not whether? m/w might look similar, and also, see below.)

The construction/building and Fritz's response to it made me think of the 40s, when Knobelsdorff was told repeatedly to report on the building projects specifically to give Fritz happy things to think about. The creditors could easily be related to this as well, but I don't know how much Fritz would have micro-managed this issue during war-time instead of delegating it.

His depression = a result of the two 1745 deaths, specifically Keyserlingk's. It would make sense for him to feel like that grief would stay with him for years.

So: letter written to Knobelsdorff in September 1745, in the wake of Keyserlingk's death and prior to Knobelsdorff's October visit, which would then have been the direct result of the letter. Knobelsdorff wrote to Fritz in German both in 1737 and 1748, which would explain the German from King Fritz, and he knew both Jordan and Keyserlingk as well and might share Fritz's grief (there's some mutuality implied in "2 sich trösten").

Reference points:

Letter to Countess Camas, September 13th:
[...] But, madam, don't imagine that the embarrassment of affairs and critical events can distract from sadness. I can say from experience that it is a bad remedy. Unfortunately, four weeks have passed since the cause of my tears and my affliction; but, since the vehemence of the first days, I feel neither less sad nor more consoled than I was. [...] I do not know who may have divulged the rumor of my imminent return; for my part, I am entirely ignorant of it, and, to tell you the truth, I do not expect it until the end of November or the beginning of December. [...]
- So there's both the enduring sadness and the almost identical rumour/date discussion. Also, there's no direct mention of the war or of Jordan/Keyserlingk (or even death itself) in this anywhere, which I'm pointing out because both things not being mentioned at all in the Peter letter was one of the big counterarguments for my theory that I could see.

Letter to Fredersdorf 24th September 1745: "ich habe vielle Sorgen und chagrin, ich werde froh seindt, Knobelstorf zu Sehen" and "ich glaube nicht, daß ich werde vohr Ende November in Berlin seindt"

Unfortunately, there are no Fritz to Knobelsdorff letters left to compare things like the "er" for example.

There is of course the possibility that yes, it was written in 1745, but no, not to Knobelsdorff but to Peter after all. But I have to admit, after knowing what we do about the state of their relationship in 1742, that would be even more of a surprise than the 50s version.

So. Thoughts? *ducks in anticipation* ;)

From:

You make a very good case. The almost identical phrasing in the Camas letter reminds me of how Fritz used the same text in his letters to both Duhan and Algarotti in 1740. He does this, and this truly was a depressing time for him despite impending victory against MT, for the reasons you name, plus this is the height of his fallout with Wilhelmine (lunch with MT!, September 1745 being when FS gets crowned in Frankfurt as Emperor and MT‘s route to Frankfurt takes her through Bayreuth territory), and Biche has been dognapped.

Also, this explanation would account for all the different things listed in the letter, especially the „bau“, for which we did not find a good explanation in the Peter theories for either the 1720s or the 1750s.

Given Peter inherited Knobelsdorff‘s books, I think it‘s plausible for Knobelsdorff to have used the letter as a reading marker in a book and for Peter to find it later and keep it.

Re: Letter from Fritz...to Peter? - or not?

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2023-06-24 04:31 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Damn you,

felis, for being such a good detective. :P This all makes way too much sense, and there's a reason I put "...to Peter?" in the subject: I was questioning more whether it was to Peter than whether it was from Fritz.

In reading your post, I was still ?? over the last line being used to Knobelsdorff as much as to Peter, but if they're comforting each other over *shared grief*, that makes a lot of sense. As does, as you point out, the idea that this specific grief (as opposed to depression in general) would stay with him for years.

(/Sidenote: Could "mehr" in the first line of the letter also be "wehr", as in who spread the news of his return, not whether? m/w might look similar, and also, see below.)

Yes, absolutely. The "h" would have primed me to read the word that's correctly spelled in modern German, but it does look exactly like a "w" now that I'm looking for it. It's got to be "wehr".

There is of course the possibility that yes, it was written in 1745, but no, not to Knobelsdorff but to Peter after all. But I have to admit, after knowing what we do about the state of their relationship in 1742, that would be even more of a surprise than the 50s version.

Yeah, no, that would be surprise me a *lot*, probably to the point of ruling it out. If it happened at all, surely it was post 1753.

Okay, I accept this as a working theory. Wow, that was a stunningly brilliant case on your part! It does a lot to console me for the loss of my reconciliation theory. (I always appreciate high-quality research.)

Edited Date: 2023-06-24 04:24 pm (UTC)

Re: Letter from Fritz...to Peter? - or not?

From:

felis - Date: 2023-06-24 06:30 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Letter from Fritz...to Peter? - or not?

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2023-06-24 06:35 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Letter from Fritz...to Peter? - or not?

From:

felis - Date: 2023-06-24 08:21 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

cahn

I go away from salon for a day or two and come back to find that Detective

felis has solved the mystery of the letter and that it's not to Peter after all?? AND not only that but

selenak was right in her totally offhand mention of "hey wouldn't it be funny if it were Knobelsdorff"??

OMG. SALON.

Re: Letter from Fritz...to Peter? - or not?

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2023-06-26 01:53 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

ETA: Yeah, looks like a lot of letters to FW in the Prussian archive, up through 1726, and then 1731-1736. None from 1727-1729, naturally, but that should still give us some good data points.

Guess I will be ordering them along with the Fredersdorf letters!

Do we know of any German correspondence between 1740-1745? It would help evaluate my theory about the "d".

If not, I might have to look for cabinet orders that he's likely to have signed.

Edited Date: 2023-06-23 08:04 pm (UTC)

From:

felis

Huh, that's interesting - Preuss wrote that everything between 1721 and 1728 was lost. I'm wondering if 1726 might actually be the 1728 one. The volume of German correspondence at Trier doesn't really have anything interesting 1740-45 - not only that, it also shows how rare German letters are, especially to important people. The one to Fouque for example is a secretary one - the rest of their correspondence is in French and in another volume entirely.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Huh, that's weird, because it's not just one letter from 1722-1726, it's 5 of them.

But nothing from 1728--but the catalogue isn't comprehensive, as we found with the Gröben letters that weren't in the catalogue.

Anyway, maybe the 1722-1726 letters turned up after Preuss's time?

But speaking of weird dates, 1754 or 1755 Fritz/Peter, amirite? Fritz must have been *lonely*. Btw, I know I keep saying 1753-1755, but if Wilhelmine was there in October 1753 and he kept going back and forth between Berlin and Potsdam, my tentative dating is narrowed to 1754 or 1755.

Oh, interesting, he writes to Wilhelmine in October 1, 1755, "I am now going to lead a solitary life until Christmas, when, in spite of myself, I have to stay in Berlin." Which we know from Rödenbeck he did, but he seems already sure he's not coming back until mid-December at that point, whereas with Peter he's not sure yet. Of course, things might have come up in October or early November making Fritz wonder if he would have to return sooner than he wanted.

I'm still voting for autumn 1754, though, just because Wilhelmine is in Italy and he's worried she's not coming back. And he's probably still more raw from 1753 (Voltaire, Fredersdorf's marriage, Algarotti's Frexit)...and he probably hasn't even met Glasow yet! :P

Edited Date: 2023-06-23 09:12 pm (UTC)

Re: Evolving Fritz signatures

From:

selenak - Date: 2023-06-24 06:03 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Evolving Fritz signatures

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2023-06-24 06:08 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: Evolving Fritz signatures

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2023-06-23 09:21 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: Evolving Fritz signatures

From:

mildred_of_midgard - Date: 2023-06-23 10:10 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

mildred_of_midgard

So a 16-yo not-yet-monarch would say "er" to a page? I've never been quite clear on who gets to say "er" to whom at what age.

100% King Fritz says it to Peter, though. Even if he is summoning him for Socratic love. :P

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