Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 46

[cahn]

Background: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.

Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*

Comments

Re: Løvenørn letters: Aug 21, 1730

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, he had a ton of fans! 19th century Prussia was full of fans! He was just a normal German Hausvater, doncha know?

So was there something about Lövenörn in particular that made FW believe they were buds?

Well, when you first summarized this letter for us from Hartmann, you wrote:

Of interest to salon of the later eras: FW really did like Lovenorn, and no wonder, though I needed to look him up at German wiki to fully understand why. Lovenorn had an excellent military career, though mostly with the Russians, serving first Peter the Great's buddy Menshikov and then rising. He was present and distinguished himself at the battle of Poltava (aka where Peter kicked Charles' butt) and while eventually returning to Denmark ended his military career as Generalmajor due to gout. Like Manteuffel, he was in Berlin twice, with interruptions. FW had liked him and made him member of the Tobacco Colleague, but Lovenorn was less of a fan and in fact was happy to leave Berlin for the first time because of not liking those Tobacco Parliament sessions. (I should add here that the reason why none of the Danes at the Prussian court was into the Tabacgie wasn't the one we'd assume, it was pure snobbery - FW had born commoners like Gundling there was well as noble men!) They sent him back because he was supposed to be good at FW handling, though.

I should also point out that there was a Saxon diplomat whom FW also liked, for similar reasons. To quote from my earlier write-up:

Turns out, in the autumn of 1729, the Saxons (possibly at the advice of Suhm himself), decided that what they really needed was someone suitable for attending FW's tobacco parliament, otherwise they were never going to get anywhere. I'm only surprised it took them 9 years to come to this conclusion! So they sent Christian Ernst von Polenz, a military man. From the middle of September 1729, he was stationed alongside Suhm, hung out at Wusterhausen, and had FW's favor. But he wasn't being nearly as diplomatically successful as Seckendorff (who was, really?), so the Saxons replaced him with Moritz Karl von Lynar.

From January 1730, Lynar was the sole Saxon envoy to Prussia, which means Suhm must have been honorably dismissed at that point. But in November 1730, FW asked for Polenz back, and got him.

So I think you were right about it being the military thing, and Løvenørn wasn't the only one.

Re: Løvenørn letters: Aug 21, 1730

[selenak]

Right, my lack of emotional investment in the Danes clearly had me forget. :) But it figures that anyone FW would like would have to be either a distinguished military man or an impeccably Protestant Pastor. (Or really really tall, it goes without saying.)

Re: Løvenørn letters: Aug 21, 1730

[mildred_of_midgard]

Me: Clearly way too emotionally invested in the Danes. Also in 1730 in general. :D