Suhm: Gossipy Sensationalism

[mildred_of_midgard]

AKA "Suhm: Fritz's other other other boyfriend?"

So I got interested in Suhm when he kept cropping up here and there in obscure but interesting episodes, and then finally I saw one biographer say, "Was the relationship homosexual? We don't know, but they sure used the language of romantic friendship in their correspondence."

And now that I've read it, OH BOY DID THEY.

So who was Suhm?


Ulrich Friedrich von Suhm, born 1691, was the Saxon envoy to Berlin from 1720 - 1730.

He attended the University of Geneva. According to Wikipedia and a genealogy site, he married Charlotte on November 1, 1721. In 1727, FW threatened to hang him because he was mad at actions of the Saxon ministers, who were mad at him over illegal recruiting practices. Suhm fled Prussia, and Augustus made him go back.

That episode in a little more detail:

As usual, a diplomatic incident starts with FW's recruiters of tall men recruiting men they weren't supposed to, and this time the Saxon officials chased them onto Brandenburg territory, captured them, and imprisoned them. Tracking down Carlyle's source tells me that Mauvillon is writing no later than 1741! And Mauvillon reproduces letters between August and FW, so we have primary sources for this episode. Anyway, here's Carlyle:

"Captain Natzmer to swing on the gallows? Taken on Brandenburg territory too, and not the least notice given me?" Friedrich Wilhelm blazes into flaming whirlwind; sends an Official Gentleman, one Katsch, to his Excellenz Baron von Suhm (the Crown-Prince's cultivated friend), with this appalling message: "If Natzmer be hanged, for certain I will use reprisals; you yourself shall swing!" Whereupon Suhm, in panic, fled over the marches to his Master; who bullied him for his pusillanimous terrors; and applied to Friedrich Wilhelm, in fine frenzy of indignant astonishment, "What, in Heaven's name, such meditated outrage on the law of nations, and flat insult to the Majesty of Kings, can have meant?" Friedrich Wilhelm, the first fury being spent, sees that he is quite out of square; disavows the reprisals upon Suhm. "Message misdelivered by my Official Gentleman, that stupid Katsch; never did intend to hang Suhm; oh, no;" with much other correspondence; [In Mauvillon (ii. 189-195) more of it than any one will read.]— and is very angry at himself, and at the Natzmer affair, which has brought him into this bad pass. Into open impropriety; into danger of an utter rupture, had King August been of quarrelsome turn. But King August was not quarrelsome; and then Seckendorf and the Tobacco-Parliament,— on the Kaiser's score, who wants Pragmatic Sanction and much else out of these two Kings, and can at no rate have them quarrel in the present juncture,— were eager to quench the fire. King August let Natzmer go; Suhm returned to his post; [Pollnitz, ii. 254.] and things hustled themselves into some uneasy posture of silence again;— uneasy to the sensitive fancy of Friedrich Wilhelm above all. This is his worst collision with his Neighbor of Saxony; and springing from one's Hobby again!—

Keep in mind that around this time, the French envoy* to Berlin is desperately trying to get recalled to Paris, since getting FW declared insane in a coup isn't working out, and he really, really doesn't like FW.

* Count Rottembourg, the one Katte hung out with in Berlin, and whom Katte later visited in Madrid when Rottembourg was--finally!--posted there.

In October 1728, Suhm witnessed the episode at the St. Hubertus feast where FW forced Fritz to get drunk. He is our main source for this episode, in the form of two dispatches he wrote to August.

During this episode, Fritz is hanging onto Suhm's arm quite tightly, telling him that he hates drinking, and later Suhm is one of the people who puts him to bed.

Some time in 1730, Suhm's wife died. In January of that same year, he was released from service and gets a pension. Judging by his correspondence, he divides his time between Berlin and Dresden during this period.

Between 1732 and 1736, after Fritz was released from Küstrin and given his own regiment at Ruppin, Fritz used to come for a few weeks during the winter holidays to stay at Berlin. During this time, Fritz and Suhm used to sit by the fireside, talking late into the night about philosophy and the like.

Fritz's nickname for Suhm was Diaphane, meaning transparent, letting light through. One biographer speculates there may have been wordplay on "Durchlaucht" (Serene Highness), or some other meaning that's lost to us.

Their extant Trier correspondence starts with Suhm responding to Fritz's request for a translation of Wolff's Metaphysics (the one Voltaire thought Fritz had translated, lol). Much of their early correspondence centers on the contents of Wolff, and the translation process. This is the manuscript that Mimi the monkey sets on fire, which we learn about because Fritz recounted the episode in a letter to Suhm. Fortunately, there was another copy! Unfortunately, someone had to recopy it for Fritz. Said copyist wasn't happy.

Then in 1737, shortly after Fritz moved into Rheinsberg, Suhm, who'd been petitioning to be accepted back into Saxon service, discovered that you should be careful what you wish for: his assignment was to go as Saxon envoy to St. Petersburg. It was cold, far away, and he really didn't want to go. But he convinced himself it was the right thing to do. Fritz really didn't want him to go. He failed to talk him out of going. They never saw each other again.

Side note: On December 1st, 1736, upon hearing of the appointment of Suhm as envoy to the court of Petersburg, FW says: "He's an arch villain, and I'm sorry I didn't hang him while I had him here." Source: Seckendorff's secret diary.

Once he gets to St. Petersburg, a lot of their correspondence centers on the loans Suhm's able to get Fritz from the Russians. They use the same code that Fritz uses with Seckendorff and the Austrians: books. Any time you see Fritz asking for a book not by Wolff in the second half of the correspondence, he's asking for money. If he's asking for 12 copies, he wants 12 times that amount. There are also other code words for loans in the form of other things he wants to obtain from the Russians. Oh, and also algebraic problems. Any algebraic problem is just code for "Solve for x, where x is the amount of money I want this time."

Amazingly, one of my sources says Fritz paid it all back within a few months of becoming king, and indeed, one of the postscripts to Suhm after he becomes king is "Ask the Duke (the de facto ruler of Russia at the time, who'd been lending Fritz money for years) where he'd like the money sent." I guess when your boyfriend is getting you money from the Russians, you're in a bigger hurry to pay it back than when Seckendorff is getting you money from the Austrians!

Then FW dies, and Fritz writes to Suhm the same message he writes to all his favorite people: "Dad just kicked it; come be an intellectual at my court!"

Sadly, Suhm had been having health problems for a few years, was very sick when he set out from St. Petersburg to Berlin, made it as far as Warsaw, lingered there for a month--excused from attending the court (remember, his boss Augustus* the Elector of Saxony is also the King of Poland) because of how sick he was--then finally realized he was dying, wrote to Fritz to ask him to take care of his kids, and died, November 8, 1740, without ever seeing Fritz. Not as tragic as Fritz/Katte, not as frustrating as Fritz/Peter Keith, still sad.

* Now Augustus III, only legitimate son of Augustus the Strong.

Fritz, to his credit, had the kids brought to Berlin and paid for their education, along with his sister to help raise the kids, because, remember, Mom died ten years earlier.

This is Fritz writing to Algarotti on Suhm's death: "I have just learned of Suhm's death, my close friend, who loved me as sincerely as I loved him, and who showed me until his death the confidence he had in my friendship and in my tenderness, of which he was convinced. I would rather have lost millions. We hardly find people who have so much spirit joined with so much candor and feeling. My heart will mourn him, and this in a way deeper than for most relatives. His memory will last as long as a drop of blood flows through my veins, and his family will be mine. Farewell; I cannot speak of anything else; my heart is bleeding, and the pain is too great to think of anything other than this wound."

Anyway. Fritz's list of potential serious boyfriends/homoromantic relationships, many of them probably or certainly not sexual, is now up to Keith, Katte, Fredersdorf, Algarotti, Voltaire, and Suhm. 5 out of 6's not bad, Fritz!

You'll see what I mean below, where I will summarize and excerpt the correspondence.

Suhm Family history
The Suhm family was Danish in origin. One branch came to Saxony with Anna Sophie, Danish princess who married the then Elector of Saxony. (See below for more on her.) This means our Suhm had a multitude of Danish relatives in addition to his Saxon ones.

Suhm's father, Burchard, had been an ambassador as well, in his case to France. There were six daughters and seven sons from that marriage, so our Suhm came from a large family. Burchard used to take at least two of his sons to work, Ulrich (our Suhm) and his younger brother Nicolas, and trained them up in diplomacy. According to a dissertation on Saxon diplomatic history from 1694-1763, this kind of diplomatic apprenticeship was a not uncommon practice. Both Ulrich and Nicolas grew up to be ambassadors. At least two of Burchard's other sons also held important military and leadership position.

One of Burchard's brothers, another Ulrich Friedrich, was a Danish admiral. Schemer Seckendorff tried to win him over to Imperial service, but he refused. Possibly because he was a good Protestant, according to Wikipedia. 

In 1721, Ulrich Friedrich married Charlotte von Lieth. They had 5 sons and one daughter.

Jakob Heinrich: September 19, 1722 -  February 11, 1733
Ernst Ulrich Peter: December 6, 1723 - 1785 (dying letter in May)
Margarethe Albertine Conradine: March 13, 1725 - February 16, 1785
Nicolas: October 23, 1726 - 1746
Burchard Siegfried Carl: September 5, 1728 - 1783
Frederik Christian: January 3, 1730 - March 9, 1732

Charlotte died in 1730. We don't know what month, but see below for my speculations. One of Suhm's sisters, the unmarried Hedwig, took over as surrogate mother for the children.

When Suhm died in Warsaw on November 8, 1740, he asked Fritz to take care of his children, and treat Hedwig as though she were his widow. One of Suhm's brothers, Nicolas, was the one who wrote to Fritz on November 11 to inform him of Ulrich Friedrich's death.

Hedwig lived in Berlin until her death nearly 33 years later, receiving a pension from Fritz. The kids were all educated under Fritz's long-distance supervision, and were given commissions and pensions as soon as they were old enough to enter the army.

The eldest son, Ernst Ulrich Pierre, lost a leg in Fritz's service at Prague (1757). He as a lieutenant at the time. In 1759, he was given the title of councilor of war and the job of postmaster. He died age 61/62 in May 1785, having in turn recommended *his* kids to Fritz by letter.

Margrethe Albertine Conradine married a Lieutenant-Colonel von Keith, ADC to the king*, in December 1750, Fritz having given permission in October 1750 at the request of Field Marshal (that would be James) Keith. Presumably the two Keiths are relatives. The Keith she married is named Robert Baronet Keith, born March 16, 1715 in London. They had two sons who survived and one daughter who died young.

* I wonder if this is why Peter Keith, also a lieutenant-colonel in 1750, gets listed as an ADC to Fritz in some sources but not others. Of course, since Lehndorff says Peter got an invitation to join Fritz at camp in autumn 1753, Peter Keith could *also* have been a Lt. Col. Keith ADC to Fritz, at least temporarily. A confusion of Keiths indeed!

Suhm Family and Saxon Diplomacy

Prussia
Ulrich Friedrich von Suhm, our Suhm, was envoy to Prussia from 1720-1730, as we've seen. I had been wondering and wondering what happened in 1730, and finally found it.

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. We'll see more of Lynar later.

From January 1730, Lynar was the sole Saxon envoy to Prussia, which means Suhm must have been honorably dismissed at that point. ("We're sorry what we need is a heavy drinker in the army who enjoys hunting and crude jokes, and that you can't fake it. It's not you, it's FW.") But in November 1730 (oh, *man*, I want to see Lynar's envoy report about the execution!), FW asked for Polenz back, and got him.

This is kind of hilarious, in light of Fritz's oft-quoted reaction when he heard Suhm had accepted an assignment to St. Petersburg. "This barbarous court needs those men who know how to drink well and fuck vigorously. I don't think you'd recognize yourself in this description. Your delicate body is the custodian of a fine soul, spiritual and penetrating."

Russia
Which leads me to talk about Suhm's posting to Russia. Apparently what happened was that Lynar, his short-lived successor in Prussia, had been posted to Russia in 1733--okay, so what happened was that Lynar was postmaster general, and in 1733 he got sent to Russia to announce that Augustus had died and been succeeded as Elector of Saxony by his only legitimate son Augustus III, and that the Polish throne was open (the War of the Polish Succession is about to happen). Lynar then hung out in St. Petersburg alongside le Fort, the current envoy, for almost a year, before Lynar got promoted to sole envoy.

Then, Lynar starts having an affair with Anna Leopoldovna, niece of the Czarina Anna, future mother of Ivan VI, and future regent of Russia. His enemies intrigue against him, and Saxony is forced to recall him. But because it's so nice to have somebody on the good side of someone with that much influence and potential future influence, they're planning on sending him back as soon as they can. But for now, they need a replacement.

Headcanon that they look around for envoys who have exhibited some skill at getting on the good side of the future ruler, and settle on Suhm, BFF of Crown Prince Fritz. :P

So Suhm goes to Russia in 1737. He's not informed about Lynar/Anna! In 1740, as we know, he requests his recall, and gets it. The Saxons consult the Russian envoy in Dresden about Suhm's successor, and they insist on having Lynar back. The Saxons are cool with this, since by now, his mistress is running the country. But it takes about a year before this is all settled, and when Lynar's on his way back to Russia in late 1741, he learns that Anna, now regent for her baby son Ivan VI, has been overthrown by Elizaveta. So he gives up on this whole project and stays in Saxony.

France
Our Suhm's father, Burchard von Suhm, was the Saxon ambassador to France from 1709 to 1720. He and his son Nicolas were present at Utrecht in 1713 for the famous conference and signing of the resulting peace agreements. Burchard died in office in Paris in 1720.

He was succeeded by Carl Heinrich von Hoym, whom we've seen before. He was guy who showed up in Katte's species facti as having discouraged the escape attempt at Zeithain. When we dug into his background, we found that that he "was the Saxon ambassador to Versailles, who had recently returned to Saxony. He apparently had many enemies there and in other courts (including Berlin and Vienna), and was imprisoned three times, before finally committing suicide in prison in 1736. Wikipedia tells me one of the charges, which it believes is trumped-up, was impregnating his niece." 

Mail delivery
How long, on average, it took for envoy reports to get from various courts to Dresden:

Three to four days from Berlin, a week from Munich, mostly eight days from Copenhagen, about ten days from Paris and Stockholm, thirteen to eighteen days from Turin, three weeks from St. Petersburg. (I can tell from Fritz's correspondence with Suhm that it was about 2 weeks between Rheinsberg/Berlin and St. Petersburg.)

Episodes from Fritz's life:

Mimi the Monkey
Fritz had a pet monkey at Rheinsberg. The monkey was named Mimi, and she comes up in the following anecdote, which is recounted by Fritz himself in a letter to Suhm.

Fritz is reading Wolff, the German philosopher, in a French translation made by Suhm. Then he goes to eat dinner, but while he's eating, Mimi sets the manuscript (fortunately just a copy) on fire, and celebrates watching it burn. Fritz writes to Suhm, "Our wits maintain that the monkey wanted to study the Metaphysics and, being unable to construe a word, put it to the flame. Others aver that Lange [a Pietist] had corrupted her, and that she played that turn from motives of zeal inspired by the prig. Finally, others said that Mimi was annoyed at the number of prerogatives which Wolff accords to man over beast, and offered up to Vulcan a book which denigrated her race." Translation MacDonogh's, except for changing the gender of the monkey to female, based on both the name and a letter from Fritz to Fredersdorf in German, where Fritz unambiguously refers to her as female (and he should know!).

Naturally, I had to go check out Fritz's correspondence, and found only one more reference to Mimi, in a letter from Suhm only a month later. He says he can't find it in him to blame Mimi "for having tried to consign to the flames the immortal work of the divine Wolff, since I find it extremely natural and extremely ingenious that this poor animal had tried to get rid of a paper that so often prevents her master from playing with her and enjoying her antics. It seems to me that in her place, even with all my reason, I could not have reasoned better, and I would have done the exact same thing." (Translation mine.)

Hubertus Feast

The only episode of Fritz becoming intoxicated that we know of is from October 1728, when he was 16. It was the feast of St. Hubertus, the patron saint of hunting, and his feast day was almost the only holiday FW would celebrate. FW liked drinking and making other people drink, and this was no exception. Suhm had to attend the feast. He wrote two letters to Augustus concerning his arrival for the feast and the feast itself, and his interactions with Fritz on those occasions.

Suhm arrives in Wusterhausen on the 17th, the drinking episode took place on the 19th, and Suhm is back in Berlin on the 20th. Since the actual feast day of Hubertus is November 3, the reason it was celebrated early this year, per Brunswick envoy Stratemann, was that Seckendorff had to leave for a few weeks, so FW moved the celebration earlier so he could attend.

In the first letter, Suhm is accosted by Fritz immediately upon arrival. Fritz starts telling him how terrible his life is, so emphatically that Suhm is flustered. Fritz says, "I say this to all my friends that I believe I can count on, in the hope that someone will get me out of this slavery in which I've been so cruelly placed." Actual quote, in direct discourse as reported by Suhm.

Suhm: I counseled patience and said that advertising his discontent just makes it harder for him to change the opinions he expresses so that his father is pleased with him, and that demonstrating his love for his father will lead to his father treating him better.

Fritz: I'VE TRIED THAT! Nothing works. Nothing moves him. Please, let your king have pity on me and intervene so that I can travel. I'll go anywhere he wants, just to be able to live more freely.

Suhm: That's not so easy to do, and the more you make it known that you want to get out of here, the harder your father's going to make it.

They get interrupted.

Fritz: *won't stop begging for someone to have pity on him and the state he's in*

Suhm: *does not stop explaining how making his opinions more acceptable to his father is the way to go*

Yes, literally, "il me réitéra sans cesse la prière," "he repeated his prayer ceaselessly to me," and "je ne cessay," "I did not stop."

[And thus, when 1730 rolls around, Fritz has already tried to escape at least once (November 1729), with Peter Keith, who's banished by FW to Wesel in January 1730. By August, everyone in charge of Fritz knows to keep an eye on him, which makes his well-advertised escape plan even more likely to fail.]

Then Suhm reports the Hubertus feast on the 19th.

Letter dated October 21, 1728.

"Finally the St. Hubert's Hunt came. Etiquette dictates that the Crown Prince sit opposite the King at the table and act as host. I sat next to him and also across from the Queen. All the companions at table had to keep pace with the King in drinking; only towards me he was more lenient, as I had been pardoned" - here in the sense of "had been given more leeway" - "due to having gotten my baptism after the hunt was finished".

[selenak: I'm assuming "baptism" means Suhm hadn't been hunting before, or at least not with FW. It puts me in mind of today's ceremonies when you cross the equator for the first time, or travel with a balloon for the first time. Champagne is involved, and it's referred to as a baptism as well. Anyway, that's why Suhm hadn't to keep pace with FW drinking.]

"The Crown Prince drank a lot, but only with great distaste, as he said to me. It meant that he would be sick the next day. Finally the wine began to have an effect on him. He spoke quite loudly of all the grounds that he had for being unhappy with his lot in life. The queen kept waving at me to signal me to make him be quiet, and I did everything I could. I asked him to use what little sense he had left.

"But it didn't help at all: on the contrary, he turned all the way toward me and said everything that came to his tongue...

"Suddenly, the King asked me, 'What is he saying?'

"I replied that the Crown Prince was drunk and couldn't stop himself any more.

"The King answered, 'Oh, he's just pretending. But what's he saying?'

"I replied that he had squeezed my arm the whole time and said that although the King made him drink too much, he still loved him.

"The King repeated that the Crown Prince was only pretending to be drunk. I replied that I could testify that he really was: he had pinched/squeezed me so hard in the arm that I couldn't feel it.

"Then the Crown Prince suddenly became very serious about that. Then the wine got the upper hand again, and he started to talk again. The Queen was so embarrassed she left the table. Everyone stood up, but only to sit down again. General Keppel and I asked the Crown Prince to go to bed, since he really couldn't hold himself upright any more.

"To this, the Crown Prince began to cry that he wanted to kiss the King's hand first. The others called out that this was right. The King laughed, when he saw the condition the Prince was in, and held out his hand across the table. But the Crown Prince also wanted to have the other, and he kissed them both, one after another, swore that he loved him with all his heart, and had the King bend over so he could hug him.

"Everyone called, 'Long live the Crown Prince!' This got the Crown Prince even more worked up; he stood up, walked around the table, embraced the King intimately, sank onto one knee, and stayed a long time in that position, all the while talking to the King.

"His Majesty was deeply affected and kept saying, 'Now, that's very good, just be an honest fellow, just be honest,' and so on. The whole proceeding was extremely moving and moved most of those present to tears.

"Finally, the Prince was lifted up. The King allowed everyone to leave. Herr von Keppel, I, and several officers carried the Prince to his room and put him to bed."

Footnote in my source: "Eyewitnesses expressed the not entirely unfounded opinion that Friedrich's performance was a cleverly calculated comedy."

The source is Suhm's letter, where he says that FW was reconciled to Fritz, briefly, before evil tongues determined to cause trouble between father and son started accusing Fritz of faking it.

Suhm also recorded an incident where FW was giving twelve-year-old Fritz advice on running a kingdom, and in front of everyone, started patting him on the cheeks, with increasing force until he was hitting him.

The Fritz correspondence:

Wolff
Translation

So the first part of the correspondence we have is all about the translation of Wolff (*the* major German philosopher of the period, post-Leibniz) that Suhm is producing at Fritz's the translation of Wolff's Metaphysics. You can hear Suhm's gulp, as he immediately plays up how hard it will be but how willing he is to do literally anything for Fritz, and he only hopes it will be good enough.

Fritz: Nah, it'll be great! Look, I checked out the chapter you already sent, looked at the German original, and yours is clearly the best.

Partway through this process, Suhm tries to convince Fritz that German is actually superior to French for metaphysical topics, because it has more vocabulary and less ambiguity.

Fritz: Okay, you've convinced me German has its virtues, but you will never convince me that it's superior to French. Forty years from now, I will dig up a pamphlet that I'm writing here at Rheinsberg, tack on some more anti-German comments, and send it out to join the fray.

Fritz: BESIDES. You're missing the point. Even if German were superior to French, WHICH IT'S NOT, I would still prefer to read it in French, because reading French translations of Wolff means getting letters from you, and letters from you give me warm and fuzzies. You don't seem to understand that if you suddenly decided to stop communicating in anything but Chinese, I would man up and learn Chinese just so I could keep talking to you. <333

Says the man who speaks and writes German to Fredersdorf.

Me: Awwww.

Monkey business
Partway through this, Mimi decides to set the thing on fire, which Fritz recounts with hilarity. As detailed here, where the subthread has some more info on Wolff as well.

Then I must admit to a mistake I made. It is not Fritz who says, "With all my powers of reason, I would have done the same (burn a manuscript if my master were ignoring me)," it's Suhm! So that's hilarious in a completely different way. Suhm is saying, as I understand it, that he would burn the fruits of his own hard labor if Fritz were ignoring him to read it. And that's sweet.

Immortal soul
Their discussions of the content are also interesting. At this early date, Fritz reads Wolff and and announces that he, Fritz, his now convinced that 1) he exists, 2) he has an immortal soul. And he thanks Suhm for making this possible by means of his translation.

Shortly thereafter, Fritz starts to read more widely and ceases to believe in an immortal soul. But at this point, their correspondence is full of Fritz coming up with reasons to believe in the immortality of the soul. At one point, he tells Suhm that he, Suhm, is one good argument for immortality of the soul. Namely, it's okay for most of humanity to be snuffed out at death, but not geniuses like Wolff, Newton, Voltaire, and Suhm.

Now, I get the impression this is something like Lehndorff calling Heinrich "as beautiful as an angel." Not exactly: Suhm seems to have been quite intelligent, whereas Heinrich was downright unattractive. But Suhm was evidently intelligent like you or me, not intelligent like Newton or Émilie. Anyway, Fritz is head over heels, and it's cute. <3

FW
cahn, you wanted endearing anecdotes about FW. Well, just as he takes up painting in the last couple years of his life, he also takes up reading Wolff in the last 6 months or so of his life. Wolff, whom he had kicked out of the country on pain of death. Suddenly, he decided to actually *read* Wolff, instead of just relying on what Wolff's enemies told him, and he decided Wolff was kind of neat! And that he (FW) suddenly believed in logic. And the importance of logic.

And because he's FW, I have this hilarious footnote from a biographer:

By an edict of 1739—with a notable rebound from the threat of hanging the philosopher sixteen years before—the students of theology were directed to get themselves ' thoroughly well grounded in philosophy and in a rational system of logic, such as that of Professor Wolff.' And in private life too his Majesty, who never did things by halves, suddenly insisted on the use of premises and conclusions. Having received a letter from the commandant of Wesel, General Dossow, an officer who stood high in his esteem, the King, looking for the flaws in the general's syllogisms, was shocked beyond measure at being unable to find any syllogisms at all. [Mildred's note: I'm sorry, I laughed out loud.]

He carried the letter the same evening to the Tabagje, [the tobacco parliament, where FW and all his friends smoked and drank and chewed the fat--Fritz hated it] and caused it to be read aloud and criticised 'on logical principles.' The whole Tabagje agreed that the writer of it ' raisonnait comme un coffre.' Whereupon the King replied to him :—' My dear General. I have received your letter and seen by it that you must either have been sleepy or drunk, or that you are a confused thinker and form your ideas quite incorrectly. You contradict yourself in your raisonnements. I advise you therefore as a friend, although you are advanced in life, do as I do, learn to think rationally and draw right conclusions, and then you will also be able to reason correctly. ' His Majesty sent a similar reply to a clergyman who had just been promoted to the office of Superintendent (Overseer or Bishop) in some part of the Mark :—' I see by your letter that you studied at Halle, and think yourself a good divine. But I see at the same time that you are a bad logician and form incorrect ideas. I advise you therefore, purchase a copy of Wolff's writings, and above all things learn logic. Then you will not write such preposterous stuff.'

Fritz's reaction to all this: That I should have lived to see the day!

More specifically, he writes to Suhm:

The news of the day is that the King read Wolff's philosophy for three hours of the day, whose God be praised! So here we are at the triumph of reason, and I hope that the bigots with their obscure cabal can no longer oppress common sense and reason. Would you have believed, two years ago, that this phenomenon would happen today? So we see that we must swear nothing, and that the things that often seem to us the most distant are the things that happen the soonest. But what will this philosopher say? Because, with all his rules of probability, I am sure he would never have suspected what just happened. I will tell you even more: Wolff is offered a pension of one thousand ecus, one of five hundred for his son, and a pension is promised to the woman in the event of widowhood. These are all new and amazing things, which however are true.

Wolff: turned down all the offers and stayed the hell away from Prussia under both FW and Fritz, both of whom tried to entice him to come back.

Franz Stephan
So there are several letters which involve Fritz getting his hands on some really good and expensive smoked salmon from the Rhine and sending it to the Duke of Lorraine. I.e. Franz Stephan, MT's new husband! Huh, I was looking to see how new, and the letter dates to March 22, 1736, and Wikipedia tells me they got married February 14, 1736. So this is basically a wedding gift.

Anyway, Fritz uses Suhm as his intermediary to get the salmon to Vienna and to handle all the communications around same.

This results in Suhm writing to Fritz that FS LOVED the salmon, all the more so because he knows how expensive it is, and in recognition of Fritz's generosity, he wants to swear eternal friendship, using Suhm as a go-between.

Which leads to this line from Fritz that I, at least, found hilarious:

Fritz: I certainly did not expect that the salmon I sent to the Duc de Lorraine would be as pleasant to him as it was.

From salmon to eternal friendship, Franzl, that was fast!

Well, enjoy the salmon while you have it, Vienna: future deliveries from Fritz over your borders might not be so pleasant.

selenak's addition: Well, firstly, he had already warmed up to Fritz after their engagement party meeting, secondly, Habsburgs and Lorraines can effuse and go into verbal hyperbole with the best of the Hohenzollern. :) Fritz in his first letter to Franzl after MT's dad is dead is so full of tender concern for a prince whose bff he swears himself forever and all the burdens that prince will carry (since it's clearly not the prince's wife who will do the governing), it brings out tears in one's eyes. (He's totally willing to lift some of those burdens, of course, as well we know.)

Russia
Baby, it's cold outside!
In late 1736, Fritz gets the bad news that Suhm has accepted a commission to go to St. Petersburg as Saxon envoy. He doesn't want to go, and Fritz doesn't want him to go.

Fritz: Normally letters from you are the best part of my day, but this is THE WORST. Can I convince you to stay by telling you how awful it's bound to be? You're going to freeze to death! Your health! How will I live without you? How will you live without me?

Suhm: Please don't. You're only making it harder to do what I know I need to do. Duty and honor call. OH GOD I'M GOING TO MISS YOU SO MUCH.

Fritz: Also, you're totally the wrong person for this job. This barbarous court needs those men who know how to drink well and fuck vigorously. I don't think you'd recognize yourself in this description. Your delicate body is the custodian of a fine soul, spiritual and penetrating. [Actual quote, the first line of which I had seen before in biographies.]

Fritz: Also, I'm pretty sure this means I'm never going to see you again. WOE IS ME.

Fritz: But okay. Go, cross the seas, look for another sky and, if it were possible, another world: my friendship will follow you everywhere, and I will tell myself that the universe has no space that does not become sacred in containing you. Russia will become my Greece, and Saint Petersburg, a place I never deigned to think of, the object of my best wishes. [Actual quote.]

"Russia will become my Greece." <3

And then Fritz tells Suhm to start numbering his letters so they can keep track of which letter is in reply to which. "This one is letter number 1!" he says. It's super cute.

Money, politics, and the military
In Russia, there's a lot of politics and some warfare, which I'll spare you, and also, since Fritz has a regiment, he has his recruiting quotas to meet, so Suhm does some recruiting in Russia for him. Everybody in the Prussian army had a hard time meeting FW's quotas, especially for tall men, seeing as how they are running out of tall men in Europe, and especially tall men willing to hang out in Potsdam and be paraded around.

Suhm also devotes much of their correspondence to getting Fritz loans, because Fritz goes through money like water at this period in his life. He's been getting money from the Imperial court at Austria via Seckendorff, but he doesn't like it:

Since you are willing to be my agent in Russia, have the kindness to let me have the new edition of the Life of Prince Eugene that is printed there; it will be shorter, the arrangement of the sending will be easier, the agreement with the bookseller, safer, and I will find my account there much better than with these booksellers of Vienna, which print slowly, which give no credit to those who subscribe, and who, in a word, do not suit me.

Remember, books are code for money. One biographer said that the first payment from Seckendorff was like the first drink for an alcoholic, an analogy that I can't see any reason to disagree with. Half his letters to Suhm after his arrival in Russia are "MORE MONEY PLZ," and you know he's simultaneously doing the same thing to EC and Seckendorff.

OH. And early on in the Suhm correspondence, Suhm is doing a bit of "woe is me," and Fritz tells Suhm to count himself lucky he's in Dresden and to read Seneca's chapter on the contempt for riches, I kid you not. Knowing what the second half of their correspondence looks like, I literally choked. Of course, he does say, in effect, "You're so lucky to be in a civilized court, we have to have compensations out here," BUT STILL.

Baby, I thought it was cold outside??
On a more personal note, Suhm sends two accounts of fires to Fritz. One started in his own house, which he inherited from his predecessor. He says if it had happened at night, he and all the neighbors would have killed, but because it was daytime, it was caught quickly, and he only lost some furniture.

Fritz: Who would believe that a house could burn in a country where one would rather be led to believe that everything would perish from cold? [Actual quote]

Then, not long after, there's another fire that burns down much of the neighborhood and stops two houses down from Suhm's.

Fritz: Isn't it enough that it's cold all the time there? Does everything have to keep catching on fire too?? Please come back to the sensible and safe country where I can show you how much I love you.

Tundras and taigas and bears, oh my!
And finally, there's this part where Fritz gives Suhm a list of questions about Russia, mostly about Peter I's reforms. It's interesting that he's writing to Suhm about Peter I around the same time he's writing to Voltaire about Peter I, if I'm remembering [personal profile] selenak's write-up correctly. I wonder if Suhm's recent appointment to Russia (his new Greece) inspired Fritz's interest in Peter I and hence his correspondence with Voltaire on same. Hmm, I should check the dates on that.

So anyway, the number one question on this list:

I would like to know:
1: If, at the beginning of the reign of Czar Peter I, the Muscovites were as crude [lit "aussi brutes"] as they say.

The next several questions are details on the reforms.

And Suhm writes, in very diplomatic, Fritz-stroking language, something that translates to: "If you think about this for five seconds, you'll realize that I am the DIPLOMAT to RUSSIA, and MAYBE these are not questions I should be answering where the RUSSIANS can read my mail. You think?"

And to his credit, Fritz immediately replied with, "Oh, yes, god, what was I thinking? Thank goodness I can count on you to have a modicum of discretion when I totally forget what discretion is."

All hail Suhm the diplomat.

mildred_of_midgard's later addition:

I wonder if Suhm's recent appointment to Russia (his new Greece) inspired Fritz's interest in Peter I and hence his correspondence with Voltaire on same. Hmm, I should check the dates on that.

Oh, interesting, it's the other way around! Voltaire brings up Peter I first, in Feb/March 1737, then again in May. Then you can hear Fritz thinking, "Oh, wait, I know someone in Russia now!"

Next thing you know, July 27, 1737, he's writing to Suhm with a detailed list of questions about Peter's reforms. Aha!

In Sickness and in Health
Home remedies
Like the Fredersdorf correspondence--like much of Fritz's correspondence--significant page time is devoted to discussions of health. Not quite as much as Fredersdorf's, is my impression, but still noticeable amounts here and there.

Fritz does his usual "Let me teach you medicine; I know all about it, seeing as how I am 1) constantly sick, 2) smarter than everyone else." Suhm, ever the diplomat, responds to that one with, "I'm sure that remedy works great for you, but fortunately for me, my problems are not nearly as bad as yours [exactly what Fritz wants to hear], so I will not be doing that at all. But good for you!"

Fritz is immediately reassured and not at all offended and just says, "Thank goodness! I wouldn't want you to have problems as bad as mine."

Suhm's life expectancy at this point: 1 year.
Fritz's: 47 years.

Suhm, like Fredersdorf, clearly knows how to manage Fritz.

Colic
At one point, Fritz has a bad colic, and Suhm sends sympathies, and then shortly thereafter, Suhm is attacked by a bad colic. And he writes the very sweet, "I wish that my colic could have been in place of yours, because that would totally be worth it. It doesn't seem fair that both of us have to suffer, when I would gladly suffer for you. But then I tell myself that if great kings and princes aren't spared, how could a lowly mortal such as myself expect to be spared. And the thought of being united in suffering with you does make me feel better, so that's something, at least."

Sleep
Very early on in the correspondence, when Fritz gets his first installment of Wolff, he and Suhm have this exchange:

Fritz: I'm so busy with my regiment you wouldn't believe it, ugh. And then I've been sick, so my doctor says I need to get some exercise, get the blood moving. So now I don't have any time for study. But never fear! I have a solution. I will give up sleep!

Suhm: I love how excited you are about my translation. Maybe not do without sleep, though?

Fritz: Give up learning?? Never! What a dastardly suggestion.

Suhm: No! Not give up learning! Keep learning. Just...look after your health while you do? Only because I love you so much!

Fritz: It's so sweet that you care about my health, but don't worry about me. I know what I'm doing.

I...have often wondered what year Fritz did his "can I do without sleep altogether?" coffee experiment [see below]. I still don't know, but I kinda feel like it might've been right around this time (1736).

Kids
Part way through their correspondence, Suhm has an acute episode of bad health and is convinced he's on his deathbed. He makes up his will and takes the liberty of naming Fritz as he one the wants to take care of his kids. Not King Fritz, Crown Prince Fritz, who has no money except what he's getting from foreign courts.

He recovers, but a few years later, when he is actually on his deathbed, he again asks Fritz to take care of the kids, this time King Fritz. Who does.

Till death do us part
When Fritz invites Suhm to Berlin at the end of June, one month after he becomes king, Suhm asks for permission to be relieved from his duties as Saxon ambassador. He gets permission, and he sets out some time in late August or early September.

It's a slow trip, during which he has to stop and rest, and write letters explaining what's taking so long. Fritz is wonderful and understanding and all "I can't wait to see you, but please take care of yourself."

He arrives in Warsaw at the end of September or early October. He writes to Fritz that he got suddenly much sicker right before leaving St. Petersburg, and knew an arduous journey might be a really bad idea, but he wanted to see Fritz so much that he couldn't wait, and he was sure that actually seeing him in person would cure all his ills.

Then we get a series of letters giving updates on how he's trying to get better but it's not working. One particularly touching note says, "I'm afraid that you're going to tell me to take it slow and arrive when I can, but I want to see you so badly that I would give up half my life if it meant I could spend the other half with you."

Fritz, right on cue: I think it might be a good idea to travel slowly!

Finally, on November 3, Suhm writes that he's been holding out as long as he could, among other things not wanting to break bad news to Fritz, but he also knows that wouldn't be fair to Fritz, so here he is. He has only a few days, maybe only hours, to live, and it's not fair because they were just about to be reunited, Fritz was king and everything was going to be great, and he almost made it, but the will of Heaven was against their happiness. Suhm describes himself as "ship-wrecked at port" [naufrage au port].

He asks Fritz to take care of the kids, and to treat his sister, who's been acting as the kids' mother in the absence of their mother, as he would Suhm's widow. [Fritz does, as we know.]

Then religious consolation, and finally, The hour is approaching, I already feel that my strength is abandoning me; I have to depart. Farewell. Another tear, it wets your feet. Oh! deign to look at it, great king, as a pledge of the tender and unalterable attachment with which your faithful Diaphane was devoted to you until his last sigh.

He dies five days later, age 49.

Shipping Mode
Saving the best for last: rococo emo, or, "the language of romantic friendship."

The early letters
I will tell you this: the opening letters from Fritz and Suhm are like the opening letters between Fritz and Voltaire--they spend so much time professing eternal devotion that, as sweet as it is, eventually you're relieved when they talk about something else. They have two kinds of exchanges. One goes like this.

Suhm: You're perfect! Sublime! Divine!
Fritz: Stop saying that!
Suhm: But it's true! For once, you can tell a prince this and it's not flattery!*
Fritz: But I don't even recognize myself in those descriptions! And then I feel like you must be writing to someone else!
Suhm: Okay, I'll TRY! But you must forgive me the occasional lapse, because I can't help it!

* Historians debate whether it was flattery. I want to believe it was real. I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE.

[ETA: Okay, you know what? I'm going with: it's real, because Fritz was very easy to get obsessed with, and the farther away you lived, the longer you stayed obsessed. And Fritz was not his boss. So it was real. I have spoken.]

Then every so often for the remainder of the letters, he starts gushing about Fritz, and then goes, "Sorry! Sorry. I can't help it."

And then the second kind of exchange:

Fritz: I really want to see you! Hearing from you brightens my day, and your absence keeps Rheinsberg from being perfect.
Suhm: I miss you so much! I can't live without you! May my job situation one day allow me to join you there.
Me, knowing how it's going to turn out: *cries*

Okay, maybe they were able to keep up the mutual love until the end *because* they never lived together, but allow me my dreams, okay?

Classics
Fritz, of course, invokes the standard classical comparisons: "Orestes and Pylades, the good Pirithoüs, the tender Nisus and the wise Achates," right after Suhm arrives in Russia, telling Suhm that no matter how far away he goes, Fritz will never forget him.

Then, after their next major life event, when Fritz is on the verge of becoming king, he again assures Suhm that he won't forget him: you will find in me everything that Orestes ever found in Pylades. [Actual quote.]

Yes, that's right. Fritz as Pylades and Suhm as Orestes, not the other way around.

To which Suhm replies, What! the greatest of kings wants to become Pylades for Orestes! Oh! who will ever be able to say all that is sublime and touching about such feelings?

Love is all you need
When Fritz's brother [we have no idea who, or whether it was a brother-in-law] shows up with some companions at Ruppin, Fritz bitches about how inane their conversation was, and how he had to entertain them, when he really wanted to be reading the next installment of the Wolff translation, and how he would gladly have gone two days without food if it meant he could talk to Suhm instead of these nitwits.

PEOPLE ARE STUPID WHY ARE PEOPLE SO STUPID I JUST WANT TO READ BOOKS AND TALK BOOKS <-- Man after my own heart.

And then there was the time Suhm wrote, "I was planning to work on the next installment of the translation for you, but instead I read and reread your last letter a thousand times without being able to get enough of it."

Poetic one-liners
After Suhm moves to Russia, Fritz writes:

When will I see you again, my dear Diaphane? When can we go for a walk under the beech trees and under the elms?

You guys, you may say it doesn't take much, but I must inform you that I have a new ship.

Also, remember how Fritz used to visit Berlin in the winters, and that's when he would see Suhm, and they would sit by the fire and talk for hours? After Suhm moves to Russia, Fritz writes, that first winter without him:

We are leaving next week for Berlin. I will find my chimney fire there, but I will not find there the one whose conversation charmed my soul.

MY HEART. And then he continues:

Remember, my dear Diaphane, that there is in Germany a small country situated in a pretty laughing valley and all surrounded by woods, where your name and your memory will not perish, as long as I live in it.

Live for me
When Suhm is so sick he thinks he's going to die, Fritz writes his usual, "Don't die! Live for me! Think how upset I will be if you die! You're the best proof of immortality of the soul I've got! Losing you forever would be a blow to humanity akin to losing Newton or Voltaire!" [Whenever someone is sick or upset or grieving, Fritz urges them to feel better for *his* sake, even when this is emotionally tone-deaf and outright offensive.]

Only this time, Fritz's "get well soon" approach works. Suhm writes, after he recovers, writes:

When my life is odious to me, the interest you deign to take in it would be enough to make it dear to me. I therefore come back with joy to life, since heaven wants it, and Your Royal Highness wants it; but, my lord, suffer it to be henceforth to live only for you, to enjoy the only good that I aspire to, that of possessing your good graces, to be a witness, finally, of your virtues and your glory.

Yes, I said to myself, whatever my fate, I will always be the envy of everyone, as long as Your Royal Highness deigns to keep me with such feelings. You have restored my health, my lord, perhaps life; so it is to you that I owe it, and that I make a vow to consecrate it. Take possession of me, as of property which belongs to you by the most sacred rights. You have given me a peace of mind that nothing in the world is capable of altering, a firmness that nothing can shake, and I feel intimately that I can now be happy in spite of fate. The only thing that can still afflict me is the distance in which the circumstances still condemn me to live away from Your Royal Highness. You are, monseigneur, to express myself figuratively, you are my sun; for, as soon as I am no longer in a position to experience the gentle influence of your rays, I feel a cold creep so deep into my soul, that nothing is capable of warming it.

A couple months later, Fritz gives Suhm a watch, inspiring Suhm to new heights of emotion:

In the transports of joy with which my heart is so intoxicated, what expression would I have left that could respond to the ardor of the feeling with which I feel my soul burning? It's a passion, it's a love. My poor body is too weak to support such a powerful emotion, too weak to feed such a burning fire, capable of consuming it; and the moment when my calm soul is in a peaceful state is the moment when I begin to be able to express weakly, as I do, a slight shadow of the ineffable feelings with which my soul was filled.

Exchange between mildred_of_midgard and selenak on the question of how much is flattery and how much is real:

Flattery
selenak:

greatest of kings

On the one Hand: definitely like Lehndorff calling Heinrich beautiful [see the Lehndorff tag, but in short, Lehndorff is madly in love with Heinrich, and Heinrich is objectively anything but beautiful in the eye of any other beholder], because Fritz hasn't actually done anything yet to justify any judgment of what type of king he'll be. On the other hand, Voltaire called Fritz "The Salomon of the North" around the same time, with similar (non-)justification, which irresistably reminds me of his later (post break up) comment "such accolades were cheap and cost us nothing" re him and Fritz showering each other with praise in the early correspondance, and Suhm is a professional diplomat writing to the guy who just got on the throne. Still, all the rest of it - from the beginning, i.e taking care of 16 years old distressed Fritz to the ending, him setting out on the long journey in a terrible state of health just to see Fritz again - makes me believe he did mean it in the sense of "you're going to be so fabulous, I just know it".

mildred_of_midgard:

On the one Hand: definitely like Lehndorff calling Heinrich beautiful, because Fritz hasn't actually done anything yet to justify any judgment of what type of king he'll be.

Oh, yeah. That's pretty standard stuff. I assume courtiers said the same thing to five-year-old Louis XV when he inherited.

makes me believe he did mean it in the sense of "you're going to be so fabulous, I just know it".

I also believe he believed it, as I believe did Voltaire, because he was so educated and enlightened and writing pamphlets about enlightened rule! Such a promising start!

But belief about Fritz's future prospects as greatest of kings aside, I keep wondering how much of the love was meant and how much was flattery or, at best, "accolades that cost us nothing." And I keep coming back to two things:

1) He actually knew Fritz, not extremely well, probably, but for a long time. For twenty years at that point. Unlike Voltaire. And he knew him at the worst period of his life (maybe barring 1758-1760), and his sympathy must have been strong.

2) Like you said, setting out on that long journey just after he'd gotten sick. If he was just flattering a monarch in hopes of a position, the thing to do would have been to try to get better first, not kill yourself in your rush to get there. The offer would still have been open; it wasn't a "move now or lose all hope of your dream job" situation. Fritz was being very chill and not rushing him, telling him to take care of himself, take it slow, etc. He actually offered the position very tentatively, hoping Suhm wanted to come join him but not taking it for granted, unlike his usual "OMG COME HERE NOW" messages.

And Algarotti, who post-1753-breakup was constantly being pelted with demands to know when he was coming back from Italy, started off saying things like, "My doctors say it might kill me to travel, but I'm so committed to rejoining you that I'm going to do it anyway," and then in eleven years never actually got around to doing it. Algarotti, who was almost certainly genuinely infatuated with Fritz, but who was increasingly disillusioned, and who was actually driven by a quest for his dream job and dream boss. And his correspondence with Fritz, post-breakup, is polite and full of encouragement and praise for his military accomplishments, but far from romantic. It reads very much like a "I see no need to gratuitously offend this king" keeping-in-touch correspondence.

Whereas you can watch Suhm set out immediately, drag himself mile by painful mile in the letters, going as fast as he can, against all medical advice and the demands of his body, and only stopping for good when he reports himself being unable to get out of bed and being excused from attending court. He also, if I'm reading the correspondence correctly, decided to submit his request to resign his position at St. Petersburg *before* he even had an offer in hand from Fritz. Wow, rereading more closely, before he'd heard from Fritz at all.

1740 chronology

May 31: FW dies.
June 14: Fritz writes a letter to Suhm telling him that he's king now and would Suhm like to come?
~June 15: The news reaches St. Petersburg. Fritz's June 14 letter is still on the way.
~June 15: Suhm writes to Dresden asking permission to leave St. Petersburg and go live with Fritz.
June 15: Suhm writes a letter congratulating and praising Fritz. He hasn't received Fritz's June 14 letter yet.
June 29: Fritz gets Suhm's June 15 letter. He thanks Suhm for the compliments, but says what he really was hoping for from the letter was to find out if Suhm wanted to join him. He sounds a little hurt.
July 2: Suhm gets Fritz's June 14 letter. He replies that he hadn't even waited for the formal invitation from the King but rather, relying on the Crown Prince's promises, immediately started trying to quit his job and is still waiting to hear back on that. Translation: "DUH, I want to be with you. I thought that went without saying."
July 15: Fritz gets Suhm's July 2 DUH letter. He is delighted.

So it seems to me like Suhm was motivated by love rather than a search for a position. Perhaps idealized love, and certainly not love that predicted the next 46 years, but one that was based on something real during the last 20.

ETA: Oh, god, the chronology makes me ship them more than ever now. <33 Chronology is not just plot! it's characterization!

Character portrait of Fritz

felis reports:

I also came across this 1787 edition of their letters (Correspondance familiere et amicale de Frederic second, roi de Prusse, avec U. F. de Suhm - english translation) and it starts with a Portrait du Prince Royal de Prusse, Par M. de Suhm, dated April 2nd, 1740, which I hadn't heard about before!

In regard to felis' questioning whether the document is authentic, mildred_of_midgard reports:

Starting on page 164 of this volume on Saxon history is a review of a work (more on which shortly) on the beginning of Frederick the Great's reign. The reviewer mentions that in the spring of 1740, Count Brühl, future prime minister of Saxony of whom we've heard so much, commissioned write-ups on the character of Soon-to-Be-King Fritz from his diplomats Manteuffel and Suhm.

Suhm's was very concise and cautious, Manteuffel went on for pages and pages in great detail.

mildred_of_midgard's write-up of Suhm's character portrait of Fritz. Wildly paraphrased!

Write-up of the character portrait"
First of all, it's very easy to go wrong when trying to understand Fritz. He's a lying liar who lies. His "situation and misfortunes" have made it necessary for him to hide what he's thinking. People who think they know what he's going to be like as king are just asking to be fooled. So I'm going to play it extra cautious in this write-up and only talk about what I'm sure of.

He loves fame! More than anything.

Also, good luck changing his mind on anything. He's a terrier, and he will live and die a terrier.

In a word, though, he's awesome. So very awesome. Among his good qualities are that he's good, generous, liberal, and compassionate, and he hates injustice. But mostly he's just trying to be perfect in every possible way. I pointed this out to him once, and he said trying to be perfect is like seeking after the philosopher's stone: you'll find many good things along the way even if you don't succeed in your goal.

Oh, yeah, he used to make fun of everyone, but don't worry, he's outgrown it. Now he criticizes people who do that.

He promised me that he will love me forever, that's his absolute best trait. *sparkly hearts*

Ahem. What I mean is, he's very loyal to his friends and never forgets them! The one time he cut someone off [Manteuffel: see discussion below] , and I got worried, he explained the whole thing to me and said he owed me an account so that I never worried again. And now I will never worry again! I'm totally moving in with him as soon as his dad kicks it.

He's extremely brave. I have it from the Prince of Liechtenstein, who as you know is a reputed general, that the very first time he was under cannonfire, he kept his cool in a very admirable way.

As you already know, he loves learning, reading, and conversation. He does not consider public affairs any of his business (which possibly suggests I tried bringing them up with him once).

People think he's going to be a warm and fuzzy monarch and go to war for princes he personally likes [Mildred's note: I really think this is FS, the future prince he's supposed to go to war for that he personally liked], but actually, he's going to be all realpolitik.

He likes to think things over and not make hasty decisions.

And there you have it: Fritz, my problematic fave. I think "great and good things may be done with him" as long as you know what you're doing, and if you screw that up, that's on you.

P.S. This is a totally unbiased account, even if it sounds like a eulogy. Fritz, ILU!

Comments on the character portrait
Between his awareness of (and sympathy for) Fritz's constant dissimulation, his awareness that Fritz's greatest passion is fame, and his awareness that Fritz will totally make war on princes that he personally likes, it sounds like Suhm kind of knew Fritz well enough not to be shocked by 1740 developments! He says a lot of other people have been deceived. Go Suhm!

The one thing where he seems to have been fooled is that he says Fritz "used to" mock everyone when he was young, but he's now outgrown that and criticizes people who mock others. Well, yes, the second part is and will remain true, Suhm. Sorry to break the news to you about the first part. :P

The part where Suhm says people have been fooled into thinking he will go to war on behalf of princes he personally likes, whereas Fritz has informed him that he could totally make war on someone he liked and ally with someone he didn't like at all, makes me think people have noticed that Fritz liked FS and sent him a salmon (via Suhm, remember!) but Suhm would not have been at all surprised if he'd lived a month longer and witnessed the "rendezvous with fame."

"I love you, Diaphane, but you're Prussian now and I'm invading Saxony" might not have surprised him either, much as I assume it would have disappointed him. (Given his list of Fritz's good qualities, the sheer ruthlessness of the occupation might have caught even Suhm off guard.)

The anecdote about Fritz displaying courage and a cool head when seeing action for the first time is one I'd seen before. Suhm says he's got it from the Prince of Lichtenstein (remember, the guy who loaned Fritz money, lost land when Fritz invaded Silesia, sold Fritz the Antinous, and eventually got his debts repaid in like the 1770s or whatever :P).

The most interesting part to me was Suhm saying that just before he left, he and Fritz had a conversation about "a certain person of distinction" who was no longer in Fritz's good graces, which had given Suhm some reason to wonder if Fritz might be fickle and might not always love him. And Fritz gave him the (unspecified by Suhm) reasons for distancing himself from this certain person of distinction, in order to reassure Suhm that Suhm had nothing to worry about.

Two things here.

One, whatever Fritz said was obviously convincing, plus the four subsequent years of correspondence, because the part that breaks *my* heart about their letters is the part where Suhm submitted his resignation the moment he heard about FW's death, without even bothering to inform Fritz, because he was so confident that Fritz wanted him that he assumed it would be equally obvious to Fritz that Suhm wanted *him*. Spoiler: Fritz needed the reassurance.

Two, of course I immediately wondered who the person of distinction was. Upon first reading, without having done any research, I guessed based on the chronology that it was Manteuffel. Suhm leaves for St. Petersburg in late 1736; Fritz is defending himself to Grumbkow about his sudden switch from love (remember, in July 1736, Fritz shows Manteuffel "all the tendernesses imaginable," leading [personal profile] selenak to wonder if they had sex, and gave him a Socrates bust walking stick head like the one he gave Voltaire) to coldness toward Manteuffel in October 1737. And of course, if Fritz suddenly turned cold on the current Saxon envoy, Suhm would be alert to that for both political and personal reasons!

felis: Volz says [Manteuffel]'s the "person of distinction", too.

Some digressions.

Stepping down
So my headcanon was that Suhm stepping down in 1730 had something to do with his wife's death. Then I found the account of Polenz and the tobacco parliament and all that, and that made it clear it was political rather than personal reasons. But even so, Suhm was left as co-envoy until 1730, so I thought maybe his wife's death was still the trigger for his retirement.

Then when I found out Lynar was sole envoy starting in January, I thought, "Naah. What are the odds she died before that posting? Less than 1/12." But then I found Charlotte giving birth to a child on January 3 in 1730, and dying of an unspecified date in 1730. The child does survive, but dies at age 2. You tell me what her most likely cause of death is. I'm thinking it was a difficult birth for both of them. (Alternatively, he just died of whatever two-year-olds died of back then, which was a lot of things.)

See, if Polenz can be co-envoy with Suhm, and be dismissed because he's doing a bad job and get replaced by Lynar, how come Suhm has to step down for Lynar? We've seen other co-envoys, like von Johnn and Løvenørn in 1730, and le Fort and Lynar in Russia in 1733. Plus Suhm seems to be in favor with the Saxon gov't, he just doesn't have the right personality to go drinking and smoking and hunting with FW. But he had been envoy for 10 years, and even after the Saxons decided they needed a military man, evidently still left him as envoy in Berlin. And they used him again as soon as there was an opening in Russia.

I'm thinking devoted and heartbroken husband in January 1730. Combined with ten years of good service and a recognition that the Saxons do need someone more suited to FW's personality, that might have gotten him a bereavement leave that turned into a permanent retirement and pension.

Fleeing the Country

In 1727, Suhm flees Prussia under threat of hanging. According to one of my sources, with his family. Then he's ordered and shamed into going back. My headcanon was that he leaves the family behind in Dresden for their own safety. It's only a 3-4 day journey between Berlin and Dresden, so he can visit them as needed, but he puts their safety first.

Then I found the birth and death dates of the children of Ulrich Friedrich and Charlotte. If you look at this fertile woman's pregnancy record, the only time she takes more than a year to get pregnant is in 1727. Assuming for the sake of the model that she gets pregnant 9 months to the day before giving birth, there's a possible outlier here:

December 19, 1721: Gets pregnant 6 weeks after marriage.
March 6, 1723: Gets pregnant 5.5 months after giving birth.
June 13, 1724: Gets pregnant 6 months after giving birth.
January 23, 1726: Gets pregnant 10 months after giving birth.
December 5, 1727: Gets pregnant 14 months after giving birth.
April 3, 1729: Gets pregnant 7 months after giving birth.

Right around the time she would normally have been getting pregnant (April 1727), they're all busy fleeing the country. The angry letter from Augustus to FW over the hanging incident is March 28, 1727. Now, she could have had a miscarriage sometime in 1727, but I wonder if she did stay in Dresden for a few months, separated from her husband, before they decided it was safe for her to come back to Berlin. She was probably back in Berlin by the end of 1727.

Side note: there's a letter in the Saxon archives in Dresden, dated September 1728, in which Ulrich is writing about "all kinds of family news," perhaps suggesting that his family was back in Berlin in 1728. But without seeing the letter or even knowing the recipient, I can't tell whether the news might instead concern his numerous adult siblings, aunts, and uncles, whose activities might be of more interest to the court than those of some small children.

Anna Sophia of Denmark

Wikipedia tells me that Augustus the Strong's mother, the Danish princess Anna Sophia, was super intellectual and reserved, her husband was all militaristic, and they had a somewhat distant marriage. When Augustus the Strong converted to Catholicism to become king of Poland, his wife refused to convert with him. To punish her, he gave his son and heir to his mother to raise. (Continuing with the theme of 18th century heirs being taken away from their mothers, often to be raised by their grandmothers.) Danish Mom Anna Sophia was also a devout Lutheran (so this really was about punishment and not religion), and tried to keep future Augustus III from converting, but failed. He ended up converting in 1712 so he could marry an Austrian archduchess.

Fritz and Coffee

mildred_of_midgard: Ask me about the time he decided to use himself as an experimental test subject for whether it was possible, with enough coffee, to do without sleep altogether. Fritz, you're crazy, ILU so much.

cahn: What was the result of his experiment??

mildred_of_midgard: Ahahahaha. About what you'd expect. "Valory was struck by his maniacal coffee drinking. By his own admission he consumed 'only six or seven cups in the morning now … and after lunch just one pot.' It had not always been so. He once drank forty cups in an attempt to see if he could do without sleep. His body went through such agonies as a result that it was years before he believed he had fully recovered from the experiment." [The quote is from unreliable biographer MacDonogh, but I've seen the "tried to do without sleep via coffee in his youth" anecdote in more than one place. I don't remember seeing "it was years before believed he had fully recovered" elsewhere, though. Take with a grain of salt.]

Comments

[felis]

Oh, interesting, it's the other way around! Voltaire brings up Peter I first, in Feb/March 1737, then again in May. Then you can hear Fritz thinking, "Oh, wait, I know someone in Russia now!"
Next thing you know, July 27, 1737, he's writing to Suhm with a detailed list of questions about Peter's reforms. Aha!

I just reached these Voltaire letters, came here because of the Suhm connection, and now I'm pretty sure that the questions are actually Voltaire's - if not verbatim, then at least paraphrased.

See this line from Voltaire's May letter: I throw myself at the feet of Y.R.H.; I beg him to be good enough to hire an enlightened servant whom he has in Muscovy to answer the attached questions.

And Frederick's reply to Voltaire in August: I immediately wrote to my friend in Russia; he will respond with accuracy and truth to the points on which you want clarification.

Sidenote: I totally feel Fritz' frustration with the postal service in the 18th century, which he shows in both of these correspondances.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ooooh. Well, that is very interesting! That's awesome. Thank you for cross-checking! (You can tell I haven't read the Fritz/Voltaire correspondence--am waiting until my French is better, although if that takes too long, I may only wait until my German is better and read Pleschinski before reading the originals. :))

That also explains why Fritz was so willing to agree that the question was rather indiscreet, without getting defensive. It all makes sense now.

ETA: he will respond with accuracy and truth

Gotta say, I <3 the Suhm vote of confidence. Also the difference between Voltaire's "hire an enlightened servant" and Fritz "my friend."

Ooh, and now that I look at this letter, I see he continues:

I immediately wrote to my friend in Russia; he will respond with accuracy and truth to the points on which you want clarification. Not content with this step, I have just unearthed a secretary of the court who has just returned from Muscovy, after a stay of eighteen consecutive years. He is a man of very good sense, a man who has intelligence, and who is aware of their government; he is, moreover, truthful. I asked him to answer me on the same points.

So he's getting a second opinion from someone who's been there longer.

Also, lol at Fritz as royal detective. Plus:

As soon as I receive anything on this matter, I will promptly send it out. I ask as wages for my efforts only one copy of the new edition of your Works.

Fritz accepts books as a currency too! cahn and selenak will find this dynamic v. v. familiar. :D (I am always doing research and accepting books as my wages, although in my case usually for machine translation favors: research is gratis. :))

[felis]

Also, lol at Fritz as royal detective.

Yes! He put some effort in there, I love that.

By the way, the second opinion is indeed what he sends Voltaire on November 13th. It was written in September 1737 by Johann Gotthilf Vockerodt and published more than a hundred years later in this volume. In German, so either the published version is a translation or Fritz had it translated for Voltaire (and himself), no idea. If you click on "online lesen" and skip to page 11, you can see that it's written exactly along the lines of the questions, using the German translation as chapter titles.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, Vockerodt! I've seen his name a lot in the political correspondence, and I feel like I've seen it elsewhere, but I can't think where. Thank you so much for the link. (As always, if anyone wants it in the library, let me know.)