cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 47

We haven't had a new post since before December 25, so obligatory Yuletide link to this hilarious story of Frederick the Great babysitting his bratty little brother, with bonus Fritz/Fredersdorf!

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

I do indeed approve of the magnificent bastardry! I also clearly need to get back to catching up on episodes. (Probably when the weather warms up a bit; I can only listen to podcasts when on very long walks.) I also need to get back to salon in general; work is calming down and I have no excuse now except lack of momentum.

So thank you for this write-up; it's inspiring me to take more steps in the direction of coming back!

(I owe you all a write-up on the Duc de Richelieu, whose biography I'm halfway through.)

Oh, lol, here's an update that surfaced as I was typing this: I'm idly browsing the list of books owned by Peter and catalogued after this death, and whoever was cataloguing them decided that they should compose an entry this way:

Antimachiavel par Voltaire, Hage, 1746.

You read this, and you realize just how inaccurate even archival sources are. Peter's been listed as a baron a number of times circa 1757), including by the same person who called him academy director (not curator), so...I'm pretty sure all references to Peter as Baron are just word-of-mouth confusion over his wife being a baroness*, the same way the guy who printed a book gets confused with the guy who wrote it (or maybe it's 1757 and everyone is all...let us never speak of Fritz and that book again. Something something keeping treaties. :P)

* I mean, in a status-conscious society, better safe than sorry, right? I myself have been addressed as "professor" in contexts where the reasoning was clearly "better to call someone in academia a professor when they're not, than not give a professor their proper title."

From:

selenak

You could in theory start with the last two episodes, since they begin a new era and resume the historical narrative, and return to the Teutonic Knights or the Hanse seasons at a later time. Also, do you think Fritz had any feelings about a (Hohen)Zollern being instrumental in bringing the Habsburgs to the throne? Did MT?

I'm idly browsing the list of books owned by Peter and catalogued after this death, and whoever was cataloguing them decided that they should compose an entry this way:

Antimachiavel par Voltaire, Hage, 1746.

LOL. That's how good libraries die, archivist! Well, not quite, but yeah, clearly not the brightest bulb among cataloguers. I mean, even the year is wrong. Unless there was another, illegal edition? (Since I can't imagine Fritz authorizing a reprint in 1746.)

BTW, long shot in the dark, but: does Peter own the ~~Antifritz~~ pamphlet Heinrich wrote under the nome de plume "Marechal Gessler" about all Fritz did wrong in the Silesian Wars?

From:

mildred_of_midgard

You could in theory start with the last two episodes, since they begin a new era and resume the historical narrative, and return to the Teutonic Knights or the Hanse seasons at a later time.

That's actually what I was thinking of doing, yeah. (Ugh, though work might be crazy again for the next 2-3 weeks. We'll see.)

Also, do you think Fritz had any feelings about a (Hohen)Zollern being instrumental in bringing the Habsburgs to the throne? Did MT?

No idea, really!

I mean, even the year is wrong. Unless there was another, illegal edition? (Since I can't imagine Fritz authorizing a reprint in 1746.)

Well, like you once explained to

cahn, once a book was released, the cat was out of the bag; you couldn't reliably control its publication thereafter. And The Hague was one of the places people went to get their books published where censorship would have prevented it back home.

In this case, Blanning tells me:

Even by the convoluted standards of eighteenth-century bibliography, the publishing history of Anti-Machiavel is complicated. For an exhaustive account see Charles Fleischauer (ed.), L’Anti-Machiavel par Frédéric II, édition critique, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, vol. 5 (Geneva, 1958), passim. There were at least 50 editions published during Frederick’s lifetime, 34 in French, 15 in German, 4 in English, and 1 each in Italian, Dutch, Latin, Russian and Swedish—

So there could easily be a 1746 one. I did go back and inspect the handwriting closely, to make sure it wasn't me misreading a 0 that wasn't perfectly aligned at the top...but no, it's pretty clearly a 1746.

BTW, long shot in the dark, but: does Peter own the Antifritz pamphlet Heinrich wrote under the nome de plume "Marechal Gessler" about all Fritz did wrong in the Silesian Wars?

Lol, I wasn't going to read several hundred handwritten titles of books mostly in French and not in the best handwriting line by line, but SINCE you asked...two days of deciphering later...no, he did not. :P

However, other books Peter had that might be of interest to salon: at least a couple by Gundling, including the house of Brandenburg one that you were going to read for us at some point,

selenak; a Reflexions sur l'Anti-Machiavel, par l'Abbe de St. Pierre that came out in 1742 (so a commentary on Fritz's commentary after Fritz's invasion); one of those "famous dead people talk to each other in the afterlife" dialogues: Charles VI and FW debating the Pragmatic Sanction in 1742!; La Pucelle, par Voltaire; and, of course, the anonymous pamphlets and other drama surrounding Fritz, Voltaire, Maupertuis, König, etc. (I don't think I saw a Doctor Akakia, though, now that I think of it.)

Lots of surprisingly specific architecture books, too, or at least surprisingly until I realized that he got Knobelsdorff's library. Maybe they were his originaly, given his interests! But I suspect at least one was K's.

From:

cahn

Thank you for the synopsis! I apparently am completely incapable of listening to a podcast more than a few episodes -- something in my brain just gets overexposed and then it just refuses to take any more. (This isn't the first podcast that I've enjoyed but then hit a wall and couldn't listen any more -- it's not the podcast's fault, it's that it's a podcast. Ugh.)

Meanwhile, the German Dukes, having helped themselves to as much territory and privileges as possible, did not want a guy among their ranks with money and soldiers enough to actually boss them around and, shock horror, tell them what to do.

Oh, hee!

He even had a golden armour.

For some reason I find that absolutely hilarious. He was prepared for the job!

Bohemia he let Ottokar's son keep, but made sure said son married his, Rudolf's daughter. You know. Just in case.

This guy knows what's up! Heh, Rudolf does sound rather magnificently conniving :D

Evidently the Austrian censor thought this was an ever so subtle allusion to Napoleon, Josephine and none other than Habsburg princess Marie Louise, Napoleon's second wife, who by now was happy (if not married to) with her man of choice, Count Neipperg

Oh wow! That's... something.

From:

cahn

I myself have been addressed as "professor" in contexts where the reasoning was clearly "better to call someone in academia a professor when they're not, than not give a professor their proper title."

Yep, have done this, can confirm! Also if not in academia (but in a science-ish context where the person probably has some education) will address as "Dr" unless/until I get confirmation they're not a Ph.D., for the same reason.