Jochen Klepper: Der Vater
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rheinsbergJochen Klepper's novel Der Vater is hands down one of the most famous and original German 20th century novels dealing with Prussian history, and also the one designed to get Fredericians protesting, as it is 900 plus pages of FW as the tragic hero of the tale. (SD is the villain.) Incidentally, the first time I read this novel I was still in school, and it was in a severely abriged version, only about 300 pages which centred on the father/son drama. At a guess, that edition existed because some post war publisher figured that the Fritz of it was why most readers were interested in FW. It wasn't until last year that I came across the complete, uncut version, which I read; this was also the first time I read Klepper
since aquiring enough historical knowledge to judge how Klepper works with or around the facts. With the caveat: what facts and research he had access to, writing in the 1930s in Nazi Germany as an harrassed Protestant theologian and writer with a Jewish wife and daughter who would end up committing suicide with them not rather than see them taken away to camps not too long after Der Vater became his success against the odds. I know a novel should speak for itself, but this biographical background of Klepper's is worth keeping in mind when looking at his characterisation of FW, why FW as a character spoke to him - keep in mind that the Third Reich had simultanously a cult of genius leader figures going, of which their distorted image of Friedrich II. was one; Klepper's FW is very much a counterpoint and antithesis to this, among other things. Klepper also had a strict pastor as a father himself, whom he was in conflict with, and trying to understand FW went hand in hand with trying to understand his father. Last not least, there was his own religious struggle to understand why God let the horror around him happen. After the war ended, Klepper's sister Hildegard gave his diary to the Allied trial against Adolf Eichmann where it was used evidence (in session 51).
So much for the author. On to the novel itself.
Some impressions: the 900 plus pages version is still immensely readable if you like well written 1920s/1930s style historical novels, which I do (by which I mean the language and psychology is of that time as much as it's rokoko when directly quoting from documents), and I can see from this version, as I could not from the 300 pages one, why so many literary historians say about Klepper's FW is that he's supposed to be a counter image to Hitler and Franco, the good, morally responsible ruler (despite being also a tragic human being) who reforms his country out of bankruptcy and despite his military fetish keeps it out of war. Klepper makes much of the lesson young FW draws from participating in the battle of Malplaquet in 1709, which was the bloodiest, most devasting European battle (as a part of the Spanish War of Succession - essentially, think old Louis XIV against the rest of Europe) of that century until the 7 Years War, which was on the one hand celebrating the anniversary with fellow veterans like Grumbkow and Seckendorff every year but on the other doing his best to ensure something like this does not happen again within his life time, at least not involving Prussian/Brandenburg armies.
Unsurprisingly, Klepper is good with FW's religious struggles throughout his life. If you do know more history, however, it's noticeable that he goes out of his way to mitigate FW's abusive streak (for which his behavior towards Fritz isn't the only example).
For example, the 900 pages version has actually a lot of Gundling (the severly cut version I recall from my teenage years does not at all) , but Gundling in Der Vater is an alcoholic already when FW hires him. They have a truth-to-power King Lear/Fool relationship of sorts in that Gundling's historical parables often illuminate what FW doesn't want to face about a given situation, but nobody is forcing Gundling to drink, he does that himself, the humiliating gestures come from other courtiers, not FW, and FW sending Dessauer to get Gundling back is a self flaggellating gesture, because he knows he needs to hear what Gundling has to say at times. Stuff like Wilhelmine's husband being forced to drink does not happen. Doris Ritter brings her fate on herself by fantasizing herself into a love story (when Fritz really just wants a place away from Dad where to practice music) and when her house is searched claims to be the prince's beloved, thereby condemning herself to be judged by the law as a whore. (There is no narrative sympathy for her, either by any character or by the narratiion; she's condemned as s silly self important idiot.) And the big gruesome homecoming scene from late August 1730 largely follows Wilhelmine's memoirs but starts with a significant alteration. Where in the memoirs FW tells SD Fritz is dead at first, in Klepper's novel SD, panicked, cries as soon as she sees him "my son is dead!" and FW immediately replies "he's dead to me". This leaves Fritz and Katte - and Wilhelmine but in her case only in some regards, I 'll get to that - as the only people to whom the narration has FW be abusive and unjust, with Katte as the only true innocent. Interestingly, Klepper does not follow the "guilty as of Prussian law" rationale re: Katte's death. (As opposed to presenting the Doris Ritter situation as FW simply following the law.) Instead, he has FW being in a complete Abrahamitic mind frame at this point, and Katte is the replacement sacrifice after him presenting the sacrifice of his son is rejected by God (via the tribunal declaring themselves not qualified to judge the Crown Prince).
Historical footnote here re: the sacrifice of Isaac: it is, of course, telling that this is not a parallel occuring to rl FW, because unlike Absalom, both Isaac and the ram substituted for him are innocent. Ditto with the Küstrin Preacher making the David and Jonathan comparison (which implicitly casts FW as Saul), and all but calling Katte a martyr (clad in White, with Christ's blood on him, standing in front of God's throne with the angels), which again FW would never have done (either in fiction or rl). Whereas if you cast FW as Abraham (or let him cast himself as Abraham), you pick a father willing to sacrifice his son BUT not due to any evil intent, and very much against his inclination; it is God's demand and God's test of his faith.
Incidentally, Klepper's own take on the predestination subject in the context of 1729 - 1731 is:
Katte pre escape: flirts with predestination as a fashionable intellectual subject, but more to philosophize about with Fritz, who knows it's something Dad is against and hence talks about, but isn't seriously interested in beyond that
November 1730: Happens.
Fritz post Katte's death: Okay, Dad. Fuck you. Now it's on! Predestination talk all the time, to avenge Katte!
FW: I think God is punishing me. Each of these letters from Küstrin is torment. When my son stops with the predestination talk, it'll be a sign God forgives me.
August 1731 reconciliation: Happens. (The submission scene as per Grumbkow's protocol but significantly missing the entire "here's what I'd have done if you'd have succeeded in your escape!" passage.)
FW: I think God has forgiven me. I have hope for my son again. Now to get him a good wife and queen!
SD is, as I recalled, the one character in this novel presented without any sympathies whatsoever. She's also depicted as the primary guilty party for making the Hohenzollern family life a battlefield and poisoning the relationship between FW and his two oldest children. Now, a lot of what Klepper uses for this characterisation is based on his source material, but he sharpens even that. For example, where Wilhelmine's memoirs have her governess Leti abusing her without her mother noticing until Fritz' governess talks to SD about this, Klepper's novel has Leti doing this with SD's explicit permission so Wilhelmine gets into future Queen of England shape, and he also has FW noticing the bruises and ordering an investigation, and then Fritz' governess speaking up. Also, FW is depicted as devastated about the deaths of the first two sons, remaining with the corpse of dead baby No.2 for eons, which contributes to all the big fatal build up of fatherly/royal expectations for son No.3, i.e. Fritz. Meanwhile, SD is seen as only ever regarding her children as means for her ambition. (It's not that Klepper is without source material for this - see Wilhelmine's bitter remark in that regard - it's that he does edit out anything that makes her look more human.) There are no derogatory FW remarks about daughters. He hits Wilhelmine once during the gruesome homecoming scene and the narrative says that in this moment, he wishes he could put her in front of a war tribunal, too, but the narrative also makes clear that this is wounded bear FW lashing out for his children hating him, and makes much of FW's visit to Bayreuth (which was a success in rl too according to Wilhelmine's letters) years later where Wilhelmine realizes that if she just approaches him lovingly, he's grateful for the chance to be a loving father back.
(The novel is a bit paradoxical about Wilhelmine in other regards. On the one hand, we do get to see her and Fritz as close in their childhood and teenage years, finding solace in each other, and we're told by the narration itself that they love each other. On the other hand, not only are we told that when Fritz introduces Wilhelmine to EC as his most beloved sister that in reality he no longer feels love for her, but we're also told during the FW visit to Bayreuth with his father-daughter reconciliation that Wilhelmine has to realise that she never really loved her brother, either, only the coming king in him. (Basically, the first part of the Fritz/Wilhelmine relatinship feels like it's based on Koser, while the second part feels like it's based on Lavisse.) And since her husband in this version has already started to cheat on her, destroying her illusion that she found love in her marriage, this leaves FW as the only person who does love her, which she was too long blind to see. The novel also earlier, ca. 1729, chides Wilhelmine along with SD for not seeing how heartbroken FW is by the increasingly hellish state of family affairs, and states that any other woman other than his wife and oldest daughter looking at ill and heartbroken FW would feel sorry for him. Part of it might be good old gender essentialism; i.e. the female characters depicted with complete approval by the narrative are the ones like EC, or, in a more cultivated way, Caroline, the future Queen of England - who are completely devoted without expecting any reward - and going with Wilhelmine's "he stopped loving me through the 1730s" from the memoirs while writing the entire correspondence of, but you're still left with two different claims and depictions within the same novel about the same relationship, as if the author changed his mind mid-way.)
FW is faulted for all the work schedule he heaps on his child and teenage oldest son, but not as much as SD for using the afternoons which FW had designed to being "for Fritz" to heap even more work (read: courtly lessons) on him. Klepper puts the beginning of FW's verbal and physical abuse as late as he can and as the climax of a father/son enstrangement caused by a combination of misunderstandings, FW having zero idea of child psychology, SD poisoning the ground and FW having this idea of "the King in Prussia" an institution which both he and his son must serve, which is why he can relate to AW solely as a loving father (since AW isn't the crown prince) but not to Fritz even before things have gone so bad that it's a mutual hate-on. (This is yet another instance which I think shows Klepper's primary source material must have been Koser, because that's Koser's argument, too, for why FW despite being so different from his father honored F1's wishes and bowed to his decisions - F1 being the King.)
Klepper does go for genuine father/son reconciliation but in steps through the 1730s, and only starting with the August 1731 meeting, during most of which Fritz fakes his reactions (for which he's not condemned, I should add, Fritz is depicted with much sympathy throughout), with him only realising at the end for the first time his father actually loves him; therefore, only the last hug is real. The EC marriage isn't meant as submission on FW's part but part of his policy to ally all the Protestant German principalities behind Prussia after becoming disillusioned with the Habsburgs. Part of why he takes to his daughter-in-law as a person afterwards isn't just that she's kind and modest, it is also because he can see she truly loves Fritz, just like he loved SD, without being loved back, and because she gets ridiculed as uncultivated by his wife and kids much as he knows he is behind his back. By the time FW dies father and son are truly reconciled. Considering SD has been depicted as the true villain and FW has just died a very painful death, the author evidently felt there needed to be some narrative punishment, and so we're told that SD has been judged by her son and by history, for while Fritz will give her honors, he won't let her interfere in politics and has stopped loving her. The part about politics is true (there's a famous Fritz quote to that effect from his late Crown Prince years, I think, and Wilhelmine's memoirs claim her mother was stunned to hear Fritz make that declaration ), but there's absolutely no evidence that Fritz stopped loving his mother, and on the contrary much evidence to prove he (and the other sons) did. (See our discussion about this.) (Klepper is on somewhat firmer ground with having the daughters having a more critical opinion of her as they get older.) But like I said: SD is the primary villain of this novel, so the narration has to offer some catharsis to the reader.
Late in the novel, Klepper has sickbed-bound FW observe his younger children - that's where the "little Heinrich as an ancient man in a child body and a human clockwork without passion" passages come from, which Christian von Krockow protests against in his Fritz and Heinrich double portrait -, and what surprised me most is that the description of Amalie doesn't just contain the hilarious anecdote of her driving Ulrike bonkers with all the cembalo playing but almost literally the passage from Lehndorff's diary about her being sometimes an angel and sometimes a devil. Now, since I can't imagine Klepper having read Lehndorff's journal and still emerging with the opinion that Heinrich was an unemotional human clock work, I suspect this means Klepper also used Gustav Volz' various 1920s "Fritz in the eyes of his contemporaries" anthologies, because Volz definitely does quote Lehndorff. (And helped Schmidt-Lötzen transcribing him.)
Going back to the early part of the novel: Klepper actually gives young FW and Caroline, future wife of G2, a tender and partly unspoken, only delicately confessed youthful romance, with Caroline talked out of marrying FW after his mother tells her that the Hohenzollerns need someone with a better dowry, and if she truly loves him, she should step back. (Young FW knows nothing of this.) Having now read Lord Hervey's memoirs, in which Caroline figures prominently, having learned more about the Hannover cousins in general and having read Barbara Beuys' biography of FW's mother Sophie Charlotte, I feel fairly confident in declaring that none of this is based on history. (Except for Caroline being briefly in the running as a possible match for FW, but then, she was also briefly in the running as a possible bride for Mt's father the Emperor at roughly the same time.) Presumably Klepper had read somewhere that Caroline was an avid reader and a devoted wife - which is true - and build his mental image based on this. The only FW biography readily available to Klepper would have been the one by Carl Hinrichs, who during the Third Reich edited and published the Katte and Fritz interrogation protocols, published also an FW biography and was, shall we say, not a friend of intellectual women like Sophe Charlotte. He also was very much okay with the regime he was publishing under. I doubt Hervey's memoirs were a) translated into German and b) accessible in a public library the later 1930s . But the Caroline Hervey describes definitely had no warm feelings for FW, and very much loved the power she had as Queen of England - she became regent whenever G2 was in Hannover -; being a devoted wife was a strategic decision on her part as this was her only means of having access to power, not because she thought this was how male/female relationships should be.
The SD/FW marriage starts out as pure politics as per history, and Klepper has him fall in love with her as she starts to bear him children because she's now the mother of his kids and he falls in love with what she represents, his idea of being a "normal" father with loving children, not with who she actually is. He realises for the first time his mental image of SD does not quite match the reality when he finds out about Wilhelmine being abused by Leti, but he's still able to write it off as aberration and misunderstanding until the mid 1720s. Throughout the novel, there's a regretful note on the author's part that FW/Caroline was not to be, as they'd been a perfect match. As I said: not according to what sources I've read.
Fräuleln von Pannewitz and the interlude where FW comes onto her and she punches him in 1733 do not exist in this novel. Ototh, we're told that young FW's issues with his mother (and the "a good princess but not a good Christian" quote about Sophie Charlotte) was because she ordered one of her ladies in waiting, her confidant and friend Fräulein von Pöllnitz, to seduce and deflower her teenage son, on the baroque princess rationale that then maybe he'd relax and stop with all the accounting, austerity and hardcore Christianity. Instead, young FW did have sex with female Pöllnitz but was horribly ashamed of himself thereafter and did not touch another woman again, including his beloved Caroline, until the wedding night with SD. Barbara Beuys mentions none of this in her biography of Sophie Charlotte, so either Klepper made it up or he has it from Carl Hinrichs. Mind you, it fits, if not SC and FW in particular, the morals of the era. Louis XIV' mother and Charles II' mother both had their sons deflowered by order, too, in similar ways. That this backfired and contributed to FW's hangups about any sexuality actually makes psychological sense, but, like I said: the only SC biographiy I've read makes no mention of it, so it could be completely invented.
Because the 900 pages novel offers all the FW founding hospitals and schools, scenes like his chat with one of the forcibly recruited Potsdam Giants (which is directly identical with the version in Der Thronfolger) come across as quite differently. BTW, considering Klepper has the Doris Ritter relationship take place in Doris' imagination, makes it very clear that Fritz does not have sex with EC and does not offer any other female love interest - no Madame Wreech mention, and while the Countess Orzelska does show up in Dresden, she at no point talks to Fritz - his Fritz does come across as gay. As opposed to the 300 pages version, the 900 plus pages version has a Fredersdorf cameo. In Klepper's novel, Fredersdorf serves in the Küstrin regiment, feels sorry for Fritz and plays oboe (not flute) under his window to cheer him up. It is mentioned he's good looking. (As with all rl descriptions of Fredersdorf.) Like I said, you do get the sense that Klepper wanted to make it as clear as possible in novel published in 1936 Germany that Fritz was gay. Otoh, I didn't get the impression he thinks FW had any repressed homosexual urges; his thing for the Potsdam Giants is more in the line of "unhappy father/father of the country seeking replacement sons".
Overall: Klepper's FW is presented as tragic but essentially a good man with flaws, at in the end understood as such by his children, including the two oldest ones, with his painful death being written as both atonment (like I said, Katte's death isn't presented as necessary or justified by Prussian law, but strictly because FW has convinced himself he needs a replacement sacrifice for his oldest son to God, in which he's wrong) and martyrdom (FW dies as justified in the Lutherian sense). This is achieved by a lot of editing, hardly unusual for a historical novel, of course, but at least it is a novel, not a biography.
since aquiring enough historical knowledge to judge how Klepper works with or around the facts. With the caveat: what facts and research he had access to, writing in the 1930s in Nazi Germany as an harrassed Protestant theologian and writer with a Jewish wife and daughter who would end up committing suicide with them not rather than see them taken away to camps not too long after Der Vater became his success against the odds. I know a novel should speak for itself, but this biographical background of Klepper's is worth keeping in mind when looking at his characterisation of FW, why FW as a character spoke to him - keep in mind that the Third Reich had simultanously a cult of genius leader figures going, of which their distorted image of Friedrich II. was one; Klepper's FW is very much a counterpoint and antithesis to this, among other things. Klepper also had a strict pastor as a father himself, whom he was in conflict with, and trying to understand FW went hand in hand with trying to understand his father. Last not least, there was his own religious struggle to understand why God let the horror around him happen. After the war ended, Klepper's sister Hildegard gave his diary to the Allied trial against Adolf Eichmann where it was used evidence (in session 51).
So much for the author. On to the novel itself.
Some impressions: the 900 plus pages version is still immensely readable if you like well written 1920s/1930s style historical novels, which I do (by which I mean the language and psychology is of that time as much as it's rokoko when directly quoting from documents), and I can see from this version, as I could not from the 300 pages one, why so many literary historians say about Klepper's FW is that he's supposed to be a counter image to Hitler and Franco, the good, morally responsible ruler (despite being also a tragic human being) who reforms his country out of bankruptcy and despite his military fetish keeps it out of war. Klepper makes much of the lesson young FW draws from participating in the battle of Malplaquet in 1709, which was the bloodiest, most devasting European battle (as a part of the Spanish War of Succession - essentially, think old Louis XIV against the rest of Europe) of that century until the 7 Years War, which was on the one hand celebrating the anniversary with fellow veterans like Grumbkow and Seckendorff every year but on the other doing his best to ensure something like this does not happen again within his life time, at least not involving Prussian/Brandenburg armies.
Unsurprisingly, Klepper is good with FW's religious struggles throughout his life. If you do know more history, however, it's noticeable that he goes out of his way to mitigate FW's abusive streak (for which his behavior towards Fritz isn't the only example).
For example, the 900 pages version has actually a lot of Gundling (the severly cut version I recall from my teenage years does not at all) , but Gundling in Der Vater is an alcoholic already when FW hires him. They have a truth-to-power King Lear/Fool relationship of sorts in that Gundling's historical parables often illuminate what FW doesn't want to face about a given situation, but nobody is forcing Gundling to drink, he does that himself, the humiliating gestures come from other courtiers, not FW, and FW sending Dessauer to get Gundling back is a self flaggellating gesture, because he knows he needs to hear what Gundling has to say at times. Stuff like Wilhelmine's husband being forced to drink does not happen. Doris Ritter brings her fate on herself by fantasizing herself into a love story (when Fritz really just wants a place away from Dad where to practice music) and when her house is searched claims to be the prince's beloved, thereby condemning herself to be judged by the law as a whore. (There is no narrative sympathy for her, either by any character or by the narratiion; she's condemned as s silly self important idiot.) And the big gruesome homecoming scene from late August 1730 largely follows Wilhelmine's memoirs but starts with a significant alteration. Where in the memoirs FW tells SD Fritz is dead at first, in Klepper's novel SD, panicked, cries as soon as she sees him "my son is dead!" and FW immediately replies "he's dead to me". This leaves Fritz and Katte - and Wilhelmine but in her case only in some regards, I 'll get to that - as the only people to whom the narration has FW be abusive and unjust, with Katte as the only true innocent. Interestingly, Klepper does not follow the "guilty as of Prussian law" rationale re: Katte's death. (As opposed to presenting the Doris Ritter situation as FW simply following the law.) Instead, he has FW being in a complete Abrahamitic mind frame at this point, and Katte is the replacement sacrifice after him presenting the sacrifice of his son is rejected by God (via the tribunal declaring themselves not qualified to judge the Crown Prince).
Historical footnote here re: the sacrifice of Isaac: it is, of course, telling that this is not a parallel occuring to rl FW, because unlike Absalom, both Isaac and the ram substituted for him are innocent. Ditto with the Küstrin Preacher making the David and Jonathan comparison (which implicitly casts FW as Saul), and all but calling Katte a martyr (clad in White, with Christ's blood on him, standing in front of God's throne with the angels), which again FW would never have done (either in fiction or rl). Whereas if you cast FW as Abraham (or let him cast himself as Abraham), you pick a father willing to sacrifice his son BUT not due to any evil intent, and very much against his inclination; it is God's demand and God's test of his faith.
Incidentally, Klepper's own take on the predestination subject in the context of 1729 - 1731 is:
Katte pre escape: flirts with predestination as a fashionable intellectual subject, but more to philosophize about with Fritz, who knows it's something Dad is against and hence talks about, but isn't seriously interested in beyond that
November 1730: Happens.
Fritz post Katte's death: Okay, Dad. Fuck you. Now it's on! Predestination talk all the time, to avenge Katte!
FW: I think God is punishing me. Each of these letters from Küstrin is torment. When my son stops with the predestination talk, it'll be a sign God forgives me.
August 1731 reconciliation: Happens. (The submission scene as per Grumbkow's protocol but significantly missing the entire "here's what I'd have done if you'd have succeeded in your escape!" passage.)
FW: I think God has forgiven me. I have hope for my son again. Now to get him a good wife and queen!
SD is, as I recalled, the one character in this novel presented without any sympathies whatsoever. She's also depicted as the primary guilty party for making the Hohenzollern family life a battlefield and poisoning the relationship between FW and his two oldest children. Now, a lot of what Klepper uses for this characterisation is based on his source material, but he sharpens even that. For example, where Wilhelmine's memoirs have her governess Leti abusing her without her mother noticing until Fritz' governess talks to SD about this, Klepper's novel has Leti doing this with SD's explicit permission so Wilhelmine gets into future Queen of England shape, and he also has FW noticing the bruises and ordering an investigation, and then Fritz' governess speaking up. Also, FW is depicted as devastated about the deaths of the first two sons, remaining with the corpse of dead baby No.2 for eons, which contributes to all the big fatal build up of fatherly/royal expectations for son No.3, i.e. Fritz. Meanwhile, SD is seen as only ever regarding her children as means for her ambition. (It's not that Klepper is without source material for this - see Wilhelmine's bitter remark in that regard - it's that he does edit out anything that makes her look more human.) There are no derogatory FW remarks about daughters. He hits Wilhelmine once during the gruesome homecoming scene and the narrative says that in this moment, he wishes he could put her in front of a war tribunal, too, but the narrative also makes clear that this is wounded bear FW lashing out for his children hating him, and makes much of FW's visit to Bayreuth (which was a success in rl too according to Wilhelmine's letters) years later where Wilhelmine realizes that if she just approaches him lovingly, he's grateful for the chance to be a loving father back.
(The novel is a bit paradoxical about Wilhelmine in other regards. On the one hand, we do get to see her and Fritz as close in their childhood and teenage years, finding solace in each other, and we're told by the narration itself that they love each other. On the other hand, not only are we told that when Fritz introduces Wilhelmine to EC as his most beloved sister that in reality he no longer feels love for her, but we're also told during the FW visit to Bayreuth with his father-daughter reconciliation that Wilhelmine has to realise that she never really loved her brother, either, only the coming king in him. (Basically, the first part of the Fritz/Wilhelmine relatinship feels like it's based on Koser, while the second part feels like it's based on Lavisse.) And since her husband in this version has already started to cheat on her, destroying her illusion that she found love in her marriage, this leaves FW as the only person who does love her, which she was too long blind to see. The novel also earlier, ca. 1729, chides Wilhelmine along with SD for not seeing how heartbroken FW is by the increasingly hellish state of family affairs, and states that any other woman other than his wife and oldest daughter looking at ill and heartbroken FW would feel sorry for him. Part of it might be good old gender essentialism; i.e. the female characters depicted with complete approval by the narrative are the ones like EC, or, in a more cultivated way, Caroline, the future Queen of England - who are completely devoted without expecting any reward - and going with Wilhelmine's "he stopped loving me through the 1730s" from the memoirs while writing the entire correspondence of, but you're still left with two different claims and depictions within the same novel about the same relationship, as if the author changed his mind mid-way.)
FW is faulted for all the work schedule he heaps on his child and teenage oldest son, but not as much as SD for using the afternoons which FW had designed to being "for Fritz" to heap even more work (read: courtly lessons) on him. Klepper puts the beginning of FW's verbal and physical abuse as late as he can and as the climax of a father/son enstrangement caused by a combination of misunderstandings, FW having zero idea of child psychology, SD poisoning the ground and FW having this idea of "the King in Prussia" an institution which both he and his son must serve, which is why he can relate to AW solely as a loving father (since AW isn't the crown prince) but not to Fritz even before things have gone so bad that it's a mutual hate-on. (This is yet another instance which I think shows Klepper's primary source material must have been Koser, because that's Koser's argument, too, for why FW despite being so different from his father honored F1's wishes and bowed to his decisions - F1 being the King.)
Klepper does go for genuine father/son reconciliation but in steps through the 1730s, and only starting with the August 1731 meeting, during most of which Fritz fakes his reactions (for which he's not condemned, I should add, Fritz is depicted with much sympathy throughout), with him only realising at the end for the first time his father actually loves him; therefore, only the last hug is real. The EC marriage isn't meant as submission on FW's part but part of his policy to ally all the Protestant German principalities behind Prussia after becoming disillusioned with the Habsburgs. Part of why he takes to his daughter-in-law as a person afterwards isn't just that she's kind and modest, it is also because he can see she truly loves Fritz, just like he loved SD, without being loved back, and because she gets ridiculed as uncultivated by his wife and kids much as he knows he is behind his back. By the time FW dies father and son are truly reconciled. Considering SD has been depicted as the true villain and FW has just died a very painful death, the author evidently felt there needed to be some narrative punishment, and so we're told that SD has been judged by her son and by history, for while Fritz will give her honors, he won't let her interfere in politics and has stopped loving her. The part about politics is true (there's a famous Fritz quote to that effect from his late Crown Prince years, I think, and Wilhelmine's memoirs claim her mother was stunned to hear Fritz make that declaration ), but there's absolutely no evidence that Fritz stopped loving his mother, and on the contrary much evidence to prove he (and the other sons) did. (See our discussion about this.) (Klepper is on somewhat firmer ground with having the daughters having a more critical opinion of her as they get older.) But like I said: SD is the primary villain of this novel, so the narration has to offer some catharsis to the reader.
Late in the novel, Klepper has sickbed-bound FW observe his younger children - that's where the "little Heinrich as an ancient man in a child body and a human clockwork without passion" passages come from, which Christian von Krockow protests against in his Fritz and Heinrich double portrait -, and what surprised me most is that the description of Amalie doesn't just contain the hilarious anecdote of her driving Ulrike bonkers with all the cembalo playing but almost literally the passage from Lehndorff's diary about her being sometimes an angel and sometimes a devil. Now, since I can't imagine Klepper having read Lehndorff's journal and still emerging with the opinion that Heinrich was an unemotional human clock work, I suspect this means Klepper also used Gustav Volz' various 1920s "Fritz in the eyes of his contemporaries" anthologies, because Volz definitely does quote Lehndorff. (And helped Schmidt-Lötzen transcribing him.)
Going back to the early part of the novel: Klepper actually gives young FW and Caroline, future wife of G2, a tender and partly unspoken, only delicately confessed youthful romance, with Caroline talked out of marrying FW after his mother tells her that the Hohenzollerns need someone with a better dowry, and if she truly loves him, she should step back. (Young FW knows nothing of this.) Having now read Lord Hervey's memoirs, in which Caroline figures prominently, having learned more about the Hannover cousins in general and having read Barbara Beuys' biography of FW's mother Sophie Charlotte, I feel fairly confident in declaring that none of this is based on history. (Except for Caroline being briefly in the running as a possible match for FW, but then, she was also briefly in the running as a possible bride for Mt's father the Emperor at roughly the same time.) Presumably Klepper had read somewhere that Caroline was an avid reader and a devoted wife - which is true - and build his mental image based on this. The only FW biography readily available to Klepper would have been the one by Carl Hinrichs, who during the Third Reich edited and published the Katte and Fritz interrogation protocols, published also an FW biography and was, shall we say, not a friend of intellectual women like Sophe Charlotte. He also was very much okay with the regime he was publishing under. I doubt Hervey's memoirs were a) translated into German and b) accessible in a public library the later 1930s . But the Caroline Hervey describes definitely had no warm feelings for FW, and very much loved the power she had as Queen of England - she became regent whenever G2 was in Hannover -; being a devoted wife was a strategic decision on her part as this was her only means of having access to power, not because she thought this was how male/female relationships should be.
The SD/FW marriage starts out as pure politics as per history, and Klepper has him fall in love with her as she starts to bear him children because she's now the mother of his kids and he falls in love with what she represents, his idea of being a "normal" father with loving children, not with who she actually is. He realises for the first time his mental image of SD does not quite match the reality when he finds out about Wilhelmine being abused by Leti, but he's still able to write it off as aberration and misunderstanding until the mid 1720s. Throughout the novel, there's a regretful note on the author's part that FW/Caroline was not to be, as they'd been a perfect match. As I said: not according to what sources I've read.
Fräuleln von Pannewitz and the interlude where FW comes onto her and she punches him in 1733 do not exist in this novel. Ototh, we're told that young FW's issues with his mother (and the "a good princess but not a good Christian" quote about Sophie Charlotte) was because she ordered one of her ladies in waiting, her confidant and friend Fräulein von Pöllnitz, to seduce and deflower her teenage son, on the baroque princess rationale that then maybe he'd relax and stop with all the accounting, austerity and hardcore Christianity. Instead, young FW did have sex with female Pöllnitz but was horribly ashamed of himself thereafter and did not touch another woman again, including his beloved Caroline, until the wedding night with SD. Barbara Beuys mentions none of this in her biography of Sophie Charlotte, so either Klepper made it up or he has it from Carl Hinrichs. Mind you, it fits, if not SC and FW in particular, the morals of the era. Louis XIV' mother and Charles II' mother both had their sons deflowered by order, too, in similar ways. That this backfired and contributed to FW's hangups about any sexuality actually makes psychological sense, but, like I said: the only SC biographiy I've read makes no mention of it, so it could be completely invented.
Because the 900 pages novel offers all the FW founding hospitals and schools, scenes like his chat with one of the forcibly recruited Potsdam Giants (which is directly identical with the version in Der Thronfolger) come across as quite differently. BTW, considering Klepper has the Doris Ritter relationship take place in Doris' imagination, makes it very clear that Fritz does not have sex with EC and does not offer any other female love interest - no Madame Wreech mention, and while the Countess Orzelska does show up in Dresden, she at no point talks to Fritz - his Fritz does come across as gay. As opposed to the 300 pages version, the 900 plus pages version has a Fredersdorf cameo. In Klepper's novel, Fredersdorf serves in the Küstrin regiment, feels sorry for Fritz and plays oboe (not flute) under his window to cheer him up. It is mentioned he's good looking. (As with all rl descriptions of Fredersdorf.) Like I said, you do get the sense that Klepper wanted to make it as clear as possible in novel published in 1936 Germany that Fritz was gay. Otoh, I didn't get the impression he thinks FW had any repressed homosexual urges; his thing for the Potsdam Giants is more in the line of "unhappy father/father of the country seeking replacement sons".
Overall: Klepper's FW is presented as tragic but essentially a good man with flaws, at in the end understood as such by his children, including the two oldest ones, with his painful death being written as both atonment (like I said, Katte's death isn't presented as necessary or justified by Prussian law, but strictly because FW has convinced himself he needs a replacement sacrifice for his oldest son to God, in which he's wrong) and martyrdom (FW dies as justified in the Lutherian sense). This is achieved by a lot of editing, hardly unusual for a historical novel, of course, but at least it is a novel, not a biography.
