Lavisse

[polymathy]

Lavisse: overall thoughts.

Lavisse wrote The Youth of Frederick the Great in 1891. In French; then it was translated into English in 1893.

He's really good about primary sources. Cites the French archives a lot, with the reports of the French envoys.

His take on Fritz is that he was cold, calculating, and incapable of love or friendship or other human feeling. If he loved Wilhelmine, that ended with Küstrin. And even before that, she mostly meant to him the possibility of having a sister as Queen of England, and his aloofness on the occasion of her wedding can be partly attributed to him giving up on that idea. Also just to him being arrogant and thinking he was better than everyone else, and especially a Margrave's son.

He never loved Katte, all protestations to the contrary. As evidenced by the fact that after Katte's executed, Fritz immediately starts doing what his father wants and acting like he likes it. [I mean, wasn't the whole "watching him get executed" scheme predicated upon the idea that it was because Fritz loved him that his will would be broken, because imprisonment obviously wasn't breaking it enough?]

Never mind that, 18-yo Fritz doesn't deserve any pity for having to watch Katte's head fall, nor from having to live in fear of his own head getting cut off. Nor does he inspire any pity in readers. [Speak for yourself!]

He's scheming and deceitful by the age of 14, and well on his way to being the menace of Europe by the time he's 19.

Unlike Mitford, Lavisse actually says FW had no right to start abusing Fritz at a young age and not let him develop into a person different from FW, but given that he was doing that, Fritz had no right to rebel, conspire with foreign powers, try to escape, or generally act in a provocative way to his father. And the escalation of abuse was partly justified by teenage Fritz's behavior.

Aaaand, that's why it took me so long to read this book instead of just picking it over for data.

But then I stopped ranting, and discovered it was a gold mine of primary sources, so fine. Go Lavisse, five time Nobel Prize for Literature nominee.

Lavisse: The Fun Part.

I thought I'd start with some entertaining anecdotes about FW that don't pertain to his A+ parenting.

When he be came allied to France and England, in 1725, he reserved to himself the right to furnish to the Emperor the contingent that he owed, in his quality of Elector, at the same time that he assisted the King of France with the number of troops fixed by the treaty. It certainly is to be regretted that this clause had not been put into action, and that Europe had not witnessed this spectacle of the King of Prussia fighting the Elector of Brandenburg.

Gotta admit, that would have been hilarious. Also, there were far more political antics like this than I had realized.

Royal Reader, you who are so much more knowledgeable about Austria and Imperial politics than I am, I would be interested in your take on the complexity of FW's politics vis-a-vis the Emperor as described in pages 75-95. I say complexity because it's probably faster for you to read them than for me to try to summarize them concisely yet thoroughly enough for you to give an informed opinion.

Frederick William was a blonde in spite of himself: as a child, he exposed himself to the sun so as to brown his girl skin. As soon as he commenced to wear the short perruque à queue, he chose a brown one.

No citation given, but I choose to believe!

He liked droll beasts, bears and monkeys. It is told that at the principal post of Potsdam was an old bear who understood the military commands. At the cry: Heraus! he would go out, raise himself up on his hind legs, and fall in line with the company; he recognized, it appears, the voice of the king, who was very proud of it.

He often went to the kitchen to watch the head cook and teach him economy, to beat him if he wasted the butter, or if he stole in his accounts, but also to give him a few instructions.

Before there was Fritzplaining, there was FWsplaining!

The king obliged his guests to drink excessively; it was one of the ways of making love to him, that of taking a little too much wine.

Citation: Sauveterre, F. A., Prussia, Nov. 12, 1729; La Chétardie, May 5, 1733, with the note, "There was often question of the King's dinners in the correspondence of Seckendorff and Prince Eugene."

When they were at Wusterhausen, the schoolmaster would often come and smoke his pipe there in the evening; the king held him in great esteem, because he had never been able to persuade the children of the village to cry with him: “Our master is an ass!”

That's...one way to evaluate someone's job performance.

FW is religious, but only when it aligns with his values:

The texts which speak of the birds of the air, nourished by the divine hand, and of the lilies clothed in splendor, though they spin not, appeared to him to have a dangerous application. If his eyes happened to fall upon the verses telling of Jesus’ visit to Lazarus, he quickly turned the page, but not so quickly as not to give the right to Martha instead of Mary, for, had he been in the Saviour's place, he would have beaten Mary. And then, besides, he confessed he was powerless to comprehend the charity of Christ.

Discussing the principle of turning the other cheek with Francke, the guy who Wilhelmine reports convinced FW he wasn't pious enough:

"Yes,” replied the king, “we are in a terrible position; if we wish to let everything pass, we are taken for idlers and cowards; if we wish to avenge ourselves we run the risk of losing our souls or the souls of others. The question is, what to do?”

“I know well what I would do,” said Francke.

And the king added: “So do I. Thou wouldst say to one who attacked thee: My dear friend, I am pained to see you sin in this way. May God pardon you!”

“Exactly,” said Francke, “and what I could do, others could do.”

“Not I,” retorted the king, “that does not apply to me!"

From the notorious Dresden interlude:

Frederick William did what he could to be agreeable, but he had some mishaps, among others he burst his trousers at a ball, where “the vivacity of the dance made him lose the power of reflection.” As he had brought with him only one pair of trousers of ceremony, he had to send for another, by special courier to Berlin.

No citation given!

Lavisse: FW Hates Fun.

A nobleman is convicted of embezzlement [no date given]:

[FW] had a gallows erected in the night, under the windows of the Chamber of Administration. There was great excitement in the city. An unprecedented action this, a condemnation, without trial, contrary to a judgment! The family did everything to save the unfortunate man. The next day being Sunday, they had twenty-four hours to attempt to bend the judge. At divine service the preacher took for the text of his sermon the words: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." The king wept, but the day following he convoked a meeting of the Chamber of Administration, and, under the eyes of the counselors, had their colleague hung.

Now, where have we seen this before?

MacDonogh even says that

[Fritz watching Katte] was not the first time that Frederick William had insisted on this. In 1718, the wife of the concierge Runck, who had been found guilty of robbing the Berlin Schloss with the locksmith Stief, was obliged to witness her husband's beheading. Pöllnitz, Mémoires, II, 71.

When you've hit on a winning formula...!

Now it's 1727, and 15-yo Fritz is already having suicidal thoughts:

Then the family life became intolerable: a kind of terror hung over the royal house; the queen cried every day. The prince's face was painful to see; everybody noticed the "black melancholy" in his great eyes. He confessed it to his friends, and letters from him express distaste of
life. He made excuses to a sick friend, Lieutenant von Borcke, for not trying to divert him: "I have rather need of some diversion myself to rid me of this melancholia"; he begged him not to die, saying: "Death is a thing I fear the most for my friends, but the least for myself."

I also see the "live for me!" has begun already.

About FW forcing Fritz to get him drunk, Lavisse thinks FW did it on an unspecified occasion when Fritz was younger (maybe 14, 15), to find out if Fritz was conspiring against him (and that Fritz, who was absolutely conspiring with French envoy Rottenburg, didn't let anything slip), but that the famous episode reported by Suhm was Fritz "playing a comedy."

Mind you, Lavisse also says that Suhm, disagreeing with FW that Fritz was only faking intoxication, reported as evidence that Suhm pinched Fritz and Fritz didn't even feel it. All I see that remotely corresponds to that in the Suhm write-up is "er habe mich so in den Arm gekniffen, daß ich ihn nicht mehr rühren könne," which sounds like Fritz holding Suhm's arm so tight Suhm couldn't move it. You tell me, O German Speaker.

I could elaborate more quotes like this, but I'll just give you these two, which kind of sum it up:

In the strife between the father and the son both were greatly at fault; the father, for refusing his son the right to live according to his nature, and smothering in this young soul, by his odious brutality, all disposition to filial piety; the son, in deceiving his father, in intriguing against him, in not loving him, in provoking him to anger by the whole course of his life.

Both suffered: the father was tortured by uneasiness, uncertainty, indecision and anger; the son, by the sight of Katte's blood, and by the fear of dying; but neither one nor the other had the right to be pitied.

Damn. I bet he approves of FW's "But consider my peace of mind!" letter to Hans Heinrich. Because indecision and fear of death are totally equivalent!

About Fritz's escape, I had always reported that Versailles had offered Fritz asylum. Lavisse says that the French minister at Berlin, La Chétardie, indeed said that Versailles had, but that Chétardie was mistaken. The letter Chétardie was referring to, saying that Fritz would be welcome in Paris and they hoped he could come, was dated a few months prior to the escape attempt, and referred to a proposed visit that Fritz was trying to get FW's approval for, and Versailles' welcome presupposed FW's approval. Lavisse says that once the escape attempt failed, Versailles hastily said they had nothing to do with it and had never encouraged him. (Now, I don't see that as necessarily anything but political savvy--why start an international incident when you don't have the kid?--but I'm sure Lavisse is right about the dates of the documents in the archives.)

Of interest to fanfic writers, when Fritz was prisoner at Küstrin:

The post-guards could not come out and present arms as he passed; the military were forbidden to salute him.

Lavisse: Katte

First, a few facts, and then we'll talk about the Fritz/Katte relationship.

Lavisse gives yet another variant on the last words of Fritz and Katte to each other, which I hadn't run into yet:

Guy Dickens (Raumer, p. 546), and Sauveterre, who, during those days, was evidently inspired by his colleague of England, gives this dialogue: "My dear, I earnestly beg your pardon for having brought you to this misfortune." "There is no reason why Your Highness should do so.— Monseigneur il n'y a pas de quoi." See, in Koser, Appendix, pp. 237–41, the bibliography of the execution of Katte.—Katte and Frederick spoke in French.

So now we're up to:

Fontane: "Point de pardon, mon prince; je meurs avec mille plaisirs pour vous."

Pöllnitz & Wilhelmine: "Ah! monseigneur, si j'avois mille vies, je les sacrifierois pour vous."

Catt: "Ah, Katte."

Thiébault: "Mon ami."

Münchow, Jr.: "La mort est douce pur un si aimable Prince."

Dickens & Sauveterre: "Monseigneur il n'y a pas de quoi."

And the one that's in Wikipedia, "Il n'y a rien à pardonner, je meurs pour vous la joie dans le cœur!" is still unsourced as far as I'm concerned!

Lavisse points out something that I had read elsewhere, but forgotten: that when Peter Keith was condemned for desertion, his sword was to be broken. Remember when we were wondering what happened to Katte's sword after he handed it over? I'm betting broken, melted down, and reused.

Lavisse tries to reconcile Fontane and Wilhelmine by having Katte executed on a pile of sand that was visible from Fritz's window, and that he could see when he woke up.

As I noted in the other comment about the "Puncta", Lavisse reports this about Pastor Müller:

On this day of the first interview, he gave Frederick Katte's last wishes, so as to keep his emotion alive, to "break" and "wring" his heart.

Then he reports, in a totally unsourced claim, that when Grumbkow showed up in mid November to talk to Fritz:

To show his gratitude to this new ally, the prince made him a present, with tears and sobs, of the last will or testament of Katte, which will, it seems to me, he ought to have kept until the day of his death.

Now, while Fontane reports Katte leaving a few things to people (none of whom are Fritz), I don't remember him mentioning a written will, and above all, I don't remember Fritz getting his hands on it.

Anyway, Lavisse is strongly of the opinion that sentiment takes precedence over survival, and anything that Fritz does to ensure his own survival just goes to show that he's cold and calculating and doesn't have emotions. Plotting against FW? Future plotter of Europe. Submitting to FW's will? Indifferent to Katte, well on his way to being a master manipulator in Europe, able to use Grumbkow as well as Grumbkow is using him.

Continuing with the theme of Fritz being indifferent to Katte, not long after Katte's death, one of the reports Hille writes has Fritz cracking a joke and saying that he was pleased to see "His Highness was as gay as a lark."

Now, I've seen three interpretations of this line:

MacDonogh: Fritz is cracking under the strain, and he's going to snap if they don't lighten the regimen. Accordingly, MacDonogh translates it "funny as a chaffinch."

Someone I forget: Hille needs to demonstrate to FW that the rehabilitation program is working, so he has an incentive to depict Fritz as doing fine and suppress all evidence that he isn't.

Lavisse: Fritz is dead inside and doesn't deserve our pity. "This young
man was ready for the hazards and perils of the life of a prince; he was ready for great state affairs."

Mitford: I assume, if she comments on this at all, she takes this as more evidence that Fritz is always laughing at poor, pitiful, innocent victim FW. Have not opened the book to find out.

Lavisse also says that Fritz will soon accuse Katte of having been maladroit. Now, I wonder if that means there's another communication out there that we haven't found. Because when I read that Grumbkow letter, I thought that if Fritz was going to enumerate his complaints, they would probably include Katte messing up the escape attempt (like not being persuasive enough to get leave from his commanding officer). But I don't think you can get "maladroit" from that letter, which is very generic about the nature of the complaints. So maybe another one will turn up.

Lavisse: Misc.

A couple passages that didn't fit anywhere else.

Hille, middle-class German civil servant of the FW school, is not impressed with Fritz. He complains about

"his immoderate taste 'for the brilliant, what the French call esprit.' 'The prince,' said Hille, 'prides himself extremely upon having this brilliancy. The best way of gaining his friendship will be to praise him, and not by procuring recruits about ten feet high. He is capable of being deceived in his councillors later, on account of this failing. Plain good sense does not please him, even added to all knowledge, solidity and virtue...A sentiment,
seasoned with a bon mot, with some point to it, will call him from the bare, solid facts. He hardly knows German. He finds that the men who haunt Potsdam are not filled with the ideas that form a man of esprit and polish, through the reading of French books. Whence comes his predilection for this nation?
He believes the French are what they paint themselves in their books. The ones that he sees do not undeceive him, for he thinks them a little spoiled by contact with the Germans...Through prejudice in their favor he finds merits in them of which they themselves are ignorant."

Now, whether Catt is putting words into Fritz's mouth when he has Fritz say the way to win him is with praise or not, that's at least two independent observers decades apart.

For someone who spent his entire childhood being humiliated, this is not surprising at all.

Hint, Fritz: your future nephew will need some positive reinforcement too, and will seek out people, in his case mistresses, who give it to him.

Also, lol at the implicit shade-throwing at FW, "recruits about ten feet high."

Now, here's an unsourced passage that's supposed to be a conversation between Schulenberg and Fritz at Küstrin, when FW is trying to pressure Fritz into a marriage. So it's 1731 or early 1732.

Upon the subject of marriage, Frederick's ideas shocked all the Cüstrin colony and the good Schulen burg. As he had reasons to fear a marriage not according to his tastes, he tranquilly declared: "If the king wishes me absolutely to marry, I will obey; after which, I will settle my wife somewhere and live at my ease." Schulenburg objected that, first of all, such conduct was "against the law of God, since He says expressly that adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, and, secondly, against honesty, since one must always hold to one's engagements." "But," replied the prince, "I will give my wife the same liberty."

In his mind, that evidently makes it okay. And does imply that even at this early date, when he's pretending to be super religious for FW's sake, he's not too worried about biblical prohibitions, but only what he thinks is right. What was it Heinrich said in that fic? "Friedrich, by the grace of no one but himself King in and of Prussia."

Furthermore, this is evidently a distinct conversation from the letter from Fritz to Grumbkow on September 4, 1732, when he's no longer at Küstrin, and he writes,

If I marry in the style of a gentleman, that is to say I let Madame do as she sees fit, then for my part I shall do what I like myself and long live liberty!

Then we have the already discussed today Catt quote from the diary, where Fritz shocks Catt by saying that a man cheating exempts a woman from faithfulness, in 1758. Then he sympathizes with niece-by-marriage EC circa 1769, specifically because her husband was neglecting her.

That's 4 examples across nearly 40 years of holding this minority opinion on open marriages, whether or not he would have had the courage to follow through if his own reputation was on the line.

“Run down the Emperor and Imperialists of Italy, if you will; the devil take me, if I send a man there.” He even advised the conquest of the Netherlands and Italy: “You will render a service to His Imperial Majesty, to whom these countries are a heavy burden.”


In virtue of these distinguo, which were things that
appertained to the Germany of former times, it hap
pened that Frederick William could be at one and the
same time, for and against the Emperor. When he be
came allied to France and England, in 1725, he reserved
to himself the right to furnish to the Emperor the con
tingent that he owed, in his quality of Elector, at the
same time that he assisted the King of France with the
number of troops fixed by the treaty. It certainly is to
be regretted that this clause had not been put into
action, and that Europe had not witnessed this spectacle
of the King of Prussia fighting the Elector of Bran
denburg.



Conversation at table reported by La Chétardie, French Minister at Berlin, Archives of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of France, Prussia,
The volumes of the diplomatic correspondence of the
Archives of Foreign Affairs (France) bear the date of
the year on the back. When the documents are taken
from a Supplement, mention will be made of it.

La Chétardie Archives of Foreign Affairs



Circa 1727.


We cannot blame him for pre
ferring a silver fork to one of steel; for wearing
gloves when it was freezing cold; for being liberal;
or even for mocking an old drunken general and a
pastor who believed in ghosts; nor for the excellent
taste he evinced, “of being interested in the sciences
and liking to talk with those who knew something.”

You can't, but Mitford can!

Later on, Lavisse will blame him for getting over Katte too quickly.
MacDonogh blames him and Wilhelmine for waiting for FW's death, like Hollywood villains.

[On Fritz conspiring with foreign powers to overthrow FW]

the conclusion from the history of these weak conspiracies is that the Crown Prince,—not to offend his future greatness, – roundly deserved a box on the
ears now and then.





[No citation. The ally is Grumbkow.]
To show his gratitude to this new ally, the prince made him a
present, with tears and sobs, of the last will or testament
of Katte, which will, it seems to me, he ought to have
kept until the day of his death.

I actually rather thought Fontane said Katte didn't leave anything to Fritz, which I guess doesn't exclude him getting the document from--I guess it would be Schack.



lavisse tries to reconcile reports of Katte's execution

Keith's sword must be broken

Versailles did not grant asylum.

Lavisse thinks Fritz was totally cold to Wilhelmine after Custrin, starting with that first visit.




[No citation given, but it's supposed to be to Schulenberg at Kustrin, and his wife hasn't been chosen yet. The letter we have where Fritz says he'll give his wife liberty is to Grumbkow, September 1732, at which point he's out of Kustrin and already engaged. So it seems like he said it twice during the period before his marriage. Plus he said to Catt in the 1750s that if men cheat, women should be allowed to as well. And *then* he sympathized with Elisabeth. Maybe he wouldn't have followed through with EC because of external societal pressures, but I'm seeing a pattern here.]