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rheinsbergIf you're new to the Frederician era and have at best read one biography or two, then congratulations if you remember the name Jacob Paul (von) Gundling at all. If you do, chances are that you've read a sentence or two claiming he was the court fool under Friedrich Wilhelm I., and was made head of the Academy of Sciences by him and thus was the symbol of in how low regard FW held the sciences. (If this comes up at all in Fritz biographies, it usually does when the author explains how the restructuring and refunding of the Academy in the Frederick the Great era was a symbol of the rebirth of Enlightenment and culture in Prussia.) While all of this is technically correct, it describes who Gundling was and what was done to him by Friedrich Wilhelm about as accurately as if I were to describe our antihero Frederick as "a maladjusted flute player who had a subsequent military career" . In fact, despite the huuuuge competition in the field, Gundling has a good head start in the race of being the most mistreated victim of the Soldier King. How so? Let me review a novel, a film and a non-fiction biography to explain.
1. "Der König und sein Narr" by Martin Stade. Published first in the GDR, 1975. The film version from 1981 (West German tv) is reviewed below, with screencaps, because they're both excellent, though the book has a flaw the film version covers, whereas the film version lacks something that's really important in the book.
Book: harrowing. It's written in first person, narrated by Gundling who spends his last weeks of life writing this book trying to figure out why all this happened, how he got from scholar to dying court fool with a coffin in the guise of a big barrel of wine standing in his room in which he knows he'll be put. The first person perspective at one point means Stade has to cheat because he evidently wanted to include a scene with FW where Gundling doesn't show up, and he has Gundling imagine how it must have happened. But Gundling's argument - that by now he knows exactly how the King feels and thinks and as a professional historian can flesh these things out - is hard to refute.
The biggest difference to Der Meister von Sanssouci, a novel by Claus Back about architect and painter Knobelsdorff which Stade finished upon Back's death in 1969 and which will get a separate post, is that Gundling while being an incredibly tragic figure is written as being partly complicit in his terrible fate. Not in the sense of "he deserves this", absolutely not, but as he goes back to understand how his life turned out this way, he realises there were several points where he still could have made other choices, when it hadn't been too late yet. Also, the novel, which starts with F1's death, lets Gundling - who is now jobless since FW immediately fired the entire heraldic and historic department as part of his austerity measures - actively seek out FW so he can keep a job at court and won't have to make the rounds at the universities and patrons outside Prussia again. After talking to FW's servant Creutz and hearing FW wants to encourage Prussian manufacturing, that he has no time for history and is all about commerce, Gundling recalls he himself has written an essay about manufacturing and commerce and cajoles Creutz to bring this up with FW, and he writes a petition to FW, too. Since Gundling is victimized through the greater part of the novel, it's I think a good choice on Stade's part to let him have as much of an agenda as it's possible. It's also this, from the get go, that makes this novel work not just as a historical novel but as a general "intellectuals and power" book that is very evidently also reflecting the situation it's written in, i.e. in a dictatorship. Can you keep your integrity and your art while accomodating absolute power? Gundling has a mixture of selflish and selfless motives early on: he had liked his comfortable job with F1, he's near 40 and doesn't want to go back to becoming a jobless scholar, but he also, when he meets FW, realises that FW actually is serious about reform and concludes this could put him in a position where he, Gundling, can help making a difference, can make the country better.
Stade is really good at making it understandable why Gundling initially finds FW a genuine chance and despite increasing warning signs sticks it out for a while, and he also lets FW initially be seriously impressed by Gundling (who points out a few useful things, such as, two thirds of Berlin lived directly or indirectly through the court (carpenters, artisans, washerwomen, tailors, every level of food delivery etc), so when there's no more court in that sense, you need to supply other employment quickly or they'll all leave before starving); FW doesn't start the relationship thinking he wants someone else to kick around. But there are also red flag signals about his capacity for cruelty, and each described session of the Tobacco Parliament also is terrific (and visceral to read) in how it depicts the group dynamics encouraging each other's cruelty and make it ever worse. Narrating Gundling realises he participated early on when he didn't have to - he was annoyed at the fool (the real, official fool), so he had a go at him; when a wife who was a professional snitch on deserters and her husband showed up to petition FW to grant them a divorce, and the tobacco college who finds it hilarious that the woman is fat and the man is thin goads and mocks them instead, and finally sets them at each other, with FW deciding that the one of them who manages to beat the other at dice can literally beat the other (as in hit, brutally) out of the room, Gundling the narrator muses that these two, who are outcasts and only have each other, could have been allies in their misery, could have escaped what was about to happen if only they'd refused to turn on each other, but instead they let the lords use them as their entertainment by venting their aggression and misery on each other, he also reflect that he himself could have protested, or left, or just remained silent, but after a while watching the two, he too, joined everyone else's laughter, unable to realise he was looking at his own future.
As the pranks against Gundling himself go from still passing as pranks (i.e. trying to frighten him with ghosts since he has said he doesn't believe in them) to physical assaults and vicious taunts, the number of titles and the salary FW heaps on him also rise, and they slide into a fatal dynamic where Gundling lives for those moments of "truth telling" where he makes clever remarks the King and his other companions can't find good rejoinders too, and those moments where he actually manages to change FW's mind on something; that's what he draws his ever more fragile sense of self worth from as much as the increasing amounts of alcohol, and in response FW grows ever more inventive with the "pranks", too, the more cutting the remarks become. Of Gundling's two escape attempts, only the second, longer one is described at full length. He initially goes to Breslau but all teaching jobs available there demand that he converts to Catholicism, which he refuses to do. (Stade's Gundling isn't such a good Protestant, he's a secret atheist, but he's compromised so much already that he refuses to submit to Rome, too, after all the submissions to FW.) Instead, he hangs out with some rebellious students, which as it turns out makes for his last hours of freedom because Old Dessauer is there to kidnap him and bring him back to Prussia.
Gundling has just one more glimmer of light when he meets Anne de Larrey, and here's where I think the novel shows a flaw that the movie makes up for, because Stade's novel has the first encounter, then just the statement they got married and she was the only one who ever understood him, and much later he wonders why he wrote so much about FW and so litlte about her. Which imo is lampshading for: "I don't know how to write this character and this relationship." I'll get to how the film does it in a moment. But otherwise he's in free fall. There are two final steps of humiliation left, and both come after a seeming victory. Firstly, the Tobbacco Parliament has French ambassador Rottembourg as a guest when Gundling (who still has the reading the news job) reads out a short notice that Voltaire after his most recent stint in the Bastille has been brought to Calais with the permission to go to England and the strict interdiction to get closer than 50 miles to the French court. FW asks who this Voltaire is, Rottembourg says he had it coming, FW says if that's the French way of dealing with these things, well, in Brandenburg he has better methods to keep the country quiet. (This is also when Gundling realises that he's been kidding himself when clinging to the belief he could shame FW into doing the right thing now and then as a justification for staying around.) Gundling can't resist having a go at Rottembourg (who is written as a snobbish French aristocrat) with comments about how France fears the written and spoken word that clearly are meant for FW as well, and while Rottembourg loses the verbal duel, FW ends the encounter by saying he'll have to publish an edict against evil atheists like this Voltaire person (FW isn't into differentiation about Deism), and Gundling will write it for him.
Which Gundling is now too afraid not to do, and so he loses the last bit of his intellectual integrity he's been proud of. The other Pyrrhic victory is when FW presents him with David Fassmann as his potential sucessor, Fassmann (who has never met FW and wants the job) taunts Gundling and Gundling loses it and starts to beat on Fassmann. But now he's done just what all the others from the Tabagcie which he despised for being unable to answer verbal arguments except by brutal force has done, and that was the last moral differentiation he's been clinging to, and he's lost that as well. From this point onwards, all that's left is drinking himself to death. The last few pages are written in a hallucinatory style, with Gundling no longer able to tell what is reall and what isn't ("did I talk with the King about the Crown Prince?" is one of two Fritz mentions in this novel; the other is when Gundling briefly spots child Fritz and thinks he reminds him of a little caged bird), and where he comes up with an image summarizing everything: He sees the King who holds up a mirror to him, the mirror showing Gundling himself as he's now, in his entire degredation. But he also notices the King uses this mirror which shows Gundling like a shield, to avoid having to look at himself.
(Let me add here that one of the elements that make this book better than "Der Meister von Sanssouci" is that FW always feels like a character, one particular person, not someone who as an absolute monarch is bound to play a certain role by historic necessity. What FW does are his own actions; Gundling as the narrator never says, well, Kings, you, know, but progress marches on! That's what I mean by this novel not being orthodox, which Der Meister von Sanssouci is.)
Gundling's death is his final escape, when he is at least free of fear and pain and feels that curiosity again he had as a boy when he wanted to learn everything and wanted to understand and find out all the reasons, and when he understands that, he's free.
2.) Der König und sein Narr (Film, directed by Frank Beyer, written by Ulrich Plenzdorf.
Now, the movie: script by Ulrich Plenzdorf, who wrote "Die neuen Leiden des jungen W.", the modern Werther novel which I read in school. There are, of course, a lot less characters (the novel even includes vivid cameos even by F1's ceremonial master von Besser, and by August the Strong when he's visiting Berlin), events like the bears do not happen (presumably because it would be way too dangerous to film that; also this is a German tv movie, and we don't have the budget for Hollywood trained stunt bears!) , the humiliation conga that Gundling observes and too late realises foreshadows his own is limited to just the female snitch showing up, not her husband (there are a few other examples in the novel); all these cuts are understandable, and they make room for fleshing out Anne de Larrey and her relationship with Gundling, which imo was really needed. So in the movie, we see how they connect, that she's kind and clever and that he's able to charm her by being witty without being cruel, and the marriage becomes the FW free space in his life, but alas too late to save him. As the movie is not told in the first person, we're in Anne's pov for the last section and at the funeral, where Fassmann holds the funeral speech. (The director and the actor didn't let Fassmann do this mockingly but suddenly fully aware he's next, and thus terrified.)
Another difference between movie and novel is something which I did miss, and that's letting Gundling actively work to get a job from FW. In the film, he gets fired after F1's death, he's on his way to leave Berlin when he's called back because FW has found out he's written that essay about manufactoring; there is no indication that Gundling tried to make this happen. Also, he doesn't laugh with the others early on in the Tobacco Parliament; he's thus presented entirely as an innocent there, and the way the evolving group dynamic happens is observed by him strictly from the outside, not form the inside. (Plus where the novel has three different cases, of which the female snitch and her husband are but one, the movie has only the one, where, as I said, Gundling remains serious.) The film thus loses some complexity in its main character, though it has an invention later on to bring some of that back - the rebeillious students with whom Gundling has hung out in Breslau show up at his doorstep when he' married and has his own town residence, and he doesn't have the courage anymore to offer them sanctuary, not when his own welfare and that of Anne and her dead brother's children whom she has adopted are at stake. Still, not the same.
However, and it's a big however: the two leads are outstanding. Wolfgang Kieling as Gundling has a tragic dignity that goes with an increasing fragility despite not being a fragilly built man, a great voice and a way to convey so much with his acting of what's going on inside Gundling at any given point. And Götz George as FW is hands down the best FW I've yet seen on screen, which includes Günter Strack in Der Thronfolger. He feels like a living live wire, with an incredible energy barely hold in check and never falls into metaphorical moustache twirling or hammy acting, which makes scenes when FW goes from relatively harmless to doing something cruel way more effective. The script also trusts its audience to get the point without someone putting a sledge hammer on it as when FW on the one hand tells child!Fritz (in his one and only scene) that wars of agression are evil and on the other in the next breath goes on to bully people some more. That both novel and movie keep out the other Hohenzollerns as much as they can and focus on FW strictly in the context of his relationship with Gundling also makes the story as the absolutely perfect counterpoint to anyone pulling out the "well, 1730 and his relationship with his oldest son aside, he was really good!" argument. Both book and movie don't offer a final explanation as to why FW does what he does to Gundling - Gundling has an opinion about this, of course, but in the novel he's the pov character who offers this opinion, and in the film we only briefly see FW (twice) when Gundling isn't around, either). But what he does is the systematic destruction of a human being, that's made crystal clear in both versions (the film makes it even more literal in that the gigantic barrel of wine in which Gundling will later be buried is literally full of wine when it arrives so Gundling can drink himself do death on it, and does, while Anne is kept away from his bedroom by two soldiers), and that he does this is its own judgment on him.
3.) Screencaps
4.) Martin Sabrow: Herr und Hanswurst. Das tragische Schicksal des Hofgelehrten Jacob Paul von Gundling
This book from 2003 is the first proper non fiction Gundling biography in centuries, literally, and it is a really good one. The author is open from the start about the problems with the source material - the first biographical writings about Gundling were by his arch enemy David Fassmann and explicitly meant as attacks on him, the first "real" biography wasn't published until 50 years later, at which time the image of Gundling as the court fool was well set and most of the people who could have known him were dead, and the 19th century dealt with the problem that there's no way you can tell the Gundling story honestly and make FW come out well by declaring (up to and including the Hohenzollernjahrbuch in 1901) that it was really all Gundling's own fault by virtue of being a vain alcoholic, and the worst stories were clearly invented, because FW would never.
However, there is actually material to be found to work with and countercheck the anecdotal stories against. Gundling's own books, of course (not in the sense of containing autobiographical accounts but in terms of showing what he was working on at any given time, and also the dedications are interesting and telling), but also various uniiversity and clergy accounts, the "Berliner Adreß-Kalender" which shows when Gundling lived where, and the court news, which was what passed for a newspaper in FW's Berlin and are able to provide date and place for some of the most outrageous stories which one would have hoped to be invented or exeggarated, but weren't, such as the bears. There is also Gundling's brother Hieronymus who was a very respected Professor in Halle and of whom we have some letters and a last will, the records of the Academy through the FW years, and a few other statistical archive treasures. Unlike, say, the Maupertuis biographer, Sabrow manages to weave a compelling - and despite it actually offering some more minor victories for Gundling than "Der König und sein Naarr" does, heartrendering - tale out of all this. I'll limit myself to what was new to me or where he contradicts tradition.
Gundling was born the younger of two sons of a clergyman near Nuremberg. (As a commoner; the ennoblement laer happened courtesy of FW.) Unfortunately for him and his older brother Hieronymus, their parents died when they were still young, and their father didn't leave them enough money to study, which means they had to rely on sponsors. Hieronymus, the older, managed to that and having made Magister and Doctor ended up as a highly respected Professor in Halle for the rest of his life. Jacob Paul could afford uni only because he immatriculated together with a spawn of the local nobility, Tetzel, whom he was supposed to supervise and help out scholarly. When Tetzel decided he had enough of studying and wanted to do the grand tour, Gundling - with a choice that as Sabrow says was no choice at all, i.e. either continue to study without money to pay for it, or go with Tetzel on the Grand Tour and continue to be paid - did leave without getting his degree. (This is important in the long run.) Tetzel's Grand Tour included England, and Gundling may or may not have met the Archbishop of Canterbury there. (His enemy Faßmann claims he can't have done, as Gundling says they talked in Latin due to Gundling's bit of English learned en route not being up to a conversation, and, Faßmann says, it's impossible to talk with Brits in Latin because they pronounce it wrong. Sabrow is not mpressed with this argument, but says this doesn't mean Gundling actually met the guy. We just don't know. It's worth pointing out that his later wife spent some of her formative years in England, though, and that he'd been there for a while might have helped forming a connection between them.)
After Tetzel had finished his tour, he didn't return to university and dismissed Gundling, who finished the rest of his education in the do it yourself manner, but with results that produced a book about Prussian state history that was impressive enough to get him hired by F1's people. Leipniz himself thought young Gundling good enough to want him for the Academy, but the other members voted against it because Gundling had not finished his degree properly, and was only a Professor by royal appointment. Still, Gundling settled down in Berlin, started to do heraldic work (which was the job) and research for histories (what he wanted to do) and eventually write that fateful essay about commerce and manufacturing with reform ideas.
F1 dies, FW starts his austerity program. Here comes the first big divergence to tradition. Now, Faßmann claimed - and all subsequent biographers, including FW biographers like Förster -, followed him in this, that a fired and thus homeless Gundling settled down in one of the local taverns, got drunk and entertained people by reading the news to them, which alterted none other than Grumbkow to his existence, who was on the look out for a newsreader for FW, Gundling shows up, gets hired, and immediately gets humiliated. Sabrow demonstrates that this is telescoping and inventing from the pov of someone who only came into the King's orbit in 1726. Firstly, the tavern where Grumbkow supposedly spotted a drunken Gundling didn't exist yet in the year of FW's ascension and for several more years to come. Secondly, far from lodging in a tavern, the Berlin Address Book shows Gundling going from living at the Ritterakademie (the one in charge of the genealogiies which FW dissolved) to, after a year of interruption, living with Kammergerichtsrat Plarre in the Mittelstraße, Dorotheenstadt, where he'll stay for the next five years. Plarre had a first class library which Gundling actually managed to talk FW into acquiring for the Prussian State when Plarre died in 1717.
About the missing year: in Gundling's years later written and published detailed mapping of Brandenburg and Pomerania, he mentions, in the preface/dedication, having been sent to inspect Brandenburg manufacturing back then and have gotten the job through Gumbkow, to whom the volume is dedicated. Could this be a euphemism? Sure, except that the court news from September 30 1713 also mention Gundling in this context ("Der Herr Rath Gundling hat von Brandenburg referiret, daß er daselbst feine blaue Tücher zu 3 Taler wehrt fabricieret gefunden hätte" etc.), and what the court news notably don't report at this point are any of the later humiliations which will show up frequently in years to come in their reporting. Which is why Sabrow arrives at the conclusion that yes, Gundling, having lost his original job in Berlin, did get a new and respectable one from FW via Grumbkow by virtue of that reforms suggesting essay. What's more, it's also documented that he made the suggestion to discontinue allowing every little estate to brew their beer according to their own standards but to introduce a single state standard which the breweries had to adher to, which made a lot of nobility hate his gut because it essentially created both state control and a state monopoly on said quality control; FW, though, was delighted. But if the start was so promising, how did we get to the horrible tragedy to ensue? Sabrow finds the turning point in the late winter of 1714, which is when the first "prank" story shows up, the one with the ghosts.
Now to us it may sound relatively harmless compared to what's to come, but the key point here is that according to the court news Gundling hadn't just lectured the Tobacco Parliament on ghosts not existing but that he had "professed atheism". And then the gang managed to frighten him with fake ghosts. This wasn't just a loss of face; in a system where FW had made Manly Courage such a big standard to achieve, it marked Gundling as a coward, and resulted in an instant loss of respect from FW. What's more, the noblemen of the Tobacco College probably already either hated his gut for the beer issue or they resented a commoner upstart among them. That's when the court news starts to report he's been forced to drink, not just alcohol but purges, has been forced out of his clothes and into the court fools, and so on and so forth. Gundling then makes his first flight attempt (to his brother in Halle) in 1716, which doesn't last long. Halle is still Prussian territory, and brother Hieronymus fears for his own job. (He's also unhappily married and a father, which becomes a plot point much later.) So Gundling returns, and tries to avoid the court as much as he can, at one point even hiding with SD, who helps him. (!) "As the Queen was worried that the old comedy would be played with this man, she pretended he wasn't there but absent when he was sent for." Alas, though, FW sees through her. He appoints Gundling to Geheimer Rat on August 17 1716 and in September 1716 court news agent Ortgies reports FW ordering Gundling, who had tried to refuse joining a hunting expedition, to be beaten up with a hunting dagger. On October 10th 1716, the bears happen. The court news report that Gundling was led into a chamber "where the King keeps some young bears, and several fire crackers were thrown in through a window by which such beasts were irritated, so much so that the man had great trouble to defend himself against them and the crackers."
(This version is even worse than the one from Morgenstern, because of the additional fireworks to upset the bears.)
While the horror show you're already familiar with by now is going on, there's this weird parallel aspect Sabrow points out, i.e. that Gundling simultanously is the butt of everyone's jokes and seen as a person of influence. One Johann Michael von Loen, who was a student of Gundling's brother Hieronymus and later spent the winter 1717/1718 in Berlin, notes both that "the King wanted to give his soldiers a scholar as a a spectacle" in order "for Gundling to be laughed at by the entire court", but also that "he often spends entire hours locked up alone with the King in his cabinet, writes and works when with him, so he can be useful to many and damaging to some." None other than Seckendorff in his reports to Prince Eugene agrees. (Not just early on. He writes as late as 1727 that "the well known Geheimrat Gundling sits both at the lunch table and in the evening in the Tobacco College and reads the newspapers for the table, and then there repeated sharp remarks about Hanover", which is useful to Seckendorff, of course. Which is why in addition to the usual bribery money for Gumbkow which was due, he wants from Eugene bribery material for Gundling, to wit: "Not a golden necklaces but an imperial medaillon set with diamonds, for they consider it a far greater honor here to distribute medaillons than to distribute necklaces, since the later are even given to ordinary couriers, whereas the former are given to people of some distinction."
Then there's the Preacher Freylinghausen, known to us because he observes kid AW begging for the life of a deserter as you might recall. On another occasion, when he visits Wusterhausen in 1727, he's seated at the table between Gundling on one side and Fritz on the other, while SD sits opposite them. Since Freylinghausen isn't a nobleman or a military m an, he has an entirely peaceful conversation with Gundling about the work of the theological faculty in Halle, reccomends a mathematician to Gundling as a candidate for the Academy and then they talk about what they're read about the coronation of G2 in England which happened that year. Freylingshausen's report contains nothing derogative about Gundling; he talks about him just as a scholar whom he has had a good conversation with. Sabrow constrasts this almost en famille picture with what happens in the same month when Gundling isn't a guest at a family meal but in the tobacco college where the other guests are all military: his wig is set on fire.
Sabrow sees Gundling marrying Anne de Larray - who is the daughter of another historian (who lived in England for years) - in 1720 as Gundling managing to create something of a parallel world for himself to escape in. The wedding itself is one of the few time where he gets the better of his tormentors, who had prepared a laxative for him to drink on his wedding night so he wouldn't get off the loo. He evidently by now had seen something like this coming and thus avoided it happening by simply playing sick two days before and on short notice getting special permission to marry Anne in his bedroom, which meant they had the wedding, and the wedding without the awful society that would have awaited them if everything had gone as planned. How do we know this actually happened? Because in this case, not only do both Fassmann and Loen report it but the book of marriages of the French Community (Anne was a Huguenot from the French Colony) notes down as well that the marriage has been concluded "en chambre" before it was supposed to happen. The Berlin Address Book shows Gundling had his own house by how, and the court registers that those titles FW kept heaping on him actually came with salaries and money. And then there was that stupendous output on books during the 1720s, which are part of Sabrow's element that Gundling can't have been the non-stop alcoholic of legend. He says of course he drank, but doubts it was more than FW and Gumbkow did, not just because writing those books demands a great deal of focus and concentration (in addition to which Gundling actually did his job as Head of the Academy, as much as that was meant to be a humliation on FW's part, but he threw himself into it, initializing projects, publishing anthologies with essays from the members) , but also because Gundling had an autopsy. According to Wilhelmine's letter to her sister Friederike in April 1731, the autopsy showed Gundling died of "an ulcer and a hole in the stomach". Now, later 18th century writers interpreted that to mean he drank so much that his stomach burst, but that's scientific nonsense, says Sabrow. Perforation of he stomach usually happens if an ulcer isn't treated in time and eats its way through the various layers of the stomach. Basically, he thinks Gundling was undoubtedly a heavy drinker in our terms, but like FW himself (and Grumbkow, and Seckendorff) evidently not to a degree where it would have incapacitated him from working. Which he did, till the end. One of the projects he wrote about was btw something we'll see again later with Fritz and Fredersdorf - trying to foster a Brandenburg silk industry by growing mulberry trees in Brandenburg.
As I said elsewhere, he took that position that was supposed to be FW's ultimate joke on scholars seriously. Three days afterthe appointment, he called the Academy council together for a "session extraordinaire" as it says in the protocol in order to find out what had become of Leipniz' correspondence, and how far the translation projects of the society had come. Writes Sabrow: If Gundling was in Berlin - as opposed to Potsdam or Wusterhausen - he showed up regularly at the council sessions, not just in the first time of his presidency. That he didn't take his presidential duties seriously anymore after the beginning is a far spread assumption, but it doesn't hold up next to the careful protocols of the Academy Sessions: the last council session presided over by Gundling took place on August 16th 1730 and agreed on two suggestions the President made for new members of the Academy. The majority of the routine sessions did happen without the President, who came in person when the acceptance or refusal of new members were debated, or important decisions about projects were made. However, like his predecessor Leipniz he supervised the work of the society during the time of his absence via letters from Potsdam and Wusterhausen, letters through which he at times completely dominated the council sessions, aas an example from the year 1725 demonstrates: "Secretary reads from President Gundling's two writings of May 5th and May 7th in which the later talks about payment of the seal for the medical surgical college, for the building of the society courtyard, because of the changes of the handymen, because of the materials for the print of Neumann's work at Potsdam needed, and what the change of Mr. Schütz and the replacement of his position in the obervatory can be reported, and demands to know what of the above has been done, and replied to."
All this, of course, doesn't change the fact that to most people, the idea that the King's favourite chew toy now held of the office of the great Leipniz was, depending on whether they were more FW or more Fritz minded, either the ultimate joke on scholars or an unbearable humiliation of science and learning. There were still some scholars taking him seriously, but usually they were the ones living far from Prussia and only knowing Gundling via his books. To most, and certainly to all who joined the Academy in Fritz' time, he was FW's fool and joke on scholarship. And for all the times when he was treated like a guest, sitting at the King's table with his family, there were ten times when he was abused in the most horrible way. Including during the last week of his life and beyond. But before that happened, something else did, which also forms a part of Sabrow's argument that Gundling was both compos mentis and at least partially successful in carving out an FW free paralled world. When his brother Hieronymous died in 1729, Hieronymus' last will named Gundling as the guardian for his children and executer of his last will. Now, Hieronymus, as mentioned, had been unhappily married and trying to get a separation from his wife Augusta, who supposedly openly cheated on him and was living in Berlin. Surely, asks Sabrow, if Jacob Paul in 1729 had been the non-stop drinker of legend, his brother - who had a great many friends and colleages in Halle whom he could have asked to become guardians -, would not have entrusted either the children nor the family fortune for safekeeping to him? Augusta (who had left her husband and children two years earlier which she could since she was the niece of one of the most influential Prussian tradesmen) sued, at which point her brother-in-law demonstrated that fool or not, he actually could wield what influence he had on FW in a devastating way in this one very personal matter. Augusta was arrested in November 1729 for loose living (remember FW's NO WHORES doctrine?) and put into Spandau. Gundling punching downward or just fuflfilling his brother's last will? You decide. In any event, Augusta remained in Spandau where she died a year after her brother-in-law.
Which brings me to Gundling's death, and his burial circumstances. They were notorious when they happened, with the result that 19th and early 20th century historians refused to accept reality if it didn't fit with their idea of a character. For lo and behold, this happened:
David Fassmann in his second Gundling-mocking diatribe, published soon after the event itself, among many other things: The King buried him in a barrel of wine.
Wilhelmine, in a letter to her sister Friederike (who was already married to Ansbach) from 1731: "The King had him buried in his beautiful robe and his gigantic wig in a barrel. He himself accompagnied the body to Bornstedt, where (Gundling) was buried."
Later Hohenzollern fan historians: Fassmann was a satirist and Wilhelmine is a Dad-hating liar. No way super Christian Protestant FW would have made a mockery of a funeral like that, having Gundling buried in in a wine barrel, letting his arch enemy hold the taunting burial speech. No way!
So we get from Louis Schneider, 1867, writing an essay "Ist Gundling in einem Weinfasse begraben worden?" (which states he can't prove that Gundling wasn't, but it would have been widely out of character for FW to order such a thing) to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (frequent wiki source, though not for the Gundling entry) from 1878 claiming that there were "severe doubts as to whether the mocking inscriptions on Gundlings coffin really were put there", to the Neue Deutsche Biographie from 1966 declaring confidently that "especially the infamous burial of Gundling in a barrel of wine can't have happened in this form".
THEN, someone has the bright idea of checking for records of the people professionally concerned with burials, to wit, the clergy. And lo! In the archive of the Franckesche Stiftungen in Halle, there's a letter from Potsdam Reverend Johann Heinrich Schubert, written only five days after Gundling's burial. Which not only backs up the wine barrel tale 100% but also proves the unfortunate Gundling in his dying days knew FW wouldn't even let him be buried in peace. Writes Schubert: Poor Gundling has told me among many sighs and lamentations how he has been abused, and lamented especially that due to his distress over the fact he would be buried in a barrel with such an inscription could not properly collect himself. (In order to face his death calmly, that is.) (Remember, that barrel with the inscription had to stand in the same room with the dying man.) Continues Reverend Schubert:
On the 8th of this month (April) I visited him, and departed from him rather sadly because of this matter. R(ex) learns of this and questions me on the 9th, why I went so sadly from Gundling? I replied that I regretted very much being unable to soothe the man's distress in his soul, and was begging R(ex) most humbly to have pity in the poor soul and give (Gundling) the assurance that he would be buried like other people. But alas! This petition has been received most uncharitably.
There are other documents from clergymen, too, because originally FW had demanded one of them hold the funeral. Five Lutheran Pastors (Gundling was originally from Nuremberg and thus not a Calvinist) teamed up, led by Pfarrer Schultze, Schubert the letter writer, and the preacher from St. Nikolai (which was the parish where Gundling would be buried), and decided to "rather suffer everything" than obey FW's instruction to participate in such a funeral. They told FW they'd be happy to bless and preach over Gundling's coffin as long as it was a proper coffin, as every Christian had a right to, not a wine barrel. FW then threatened that he'd get the Calvinist clergy to do it instead, but the Lutherans didn't back down, and so it turned out FW had bluffed, because the Calvinists refused to go along with this horrible mockery of a funeral, either. FW then had a colonel tell the clergymen "Wollen die Priester nicht mitgehen u(nd) haben Bedenken, so mögen sie zu hause bleiben."
Not having a preacher for the funeral rites, he then told Fassmann to do it.
Later historians: FW WOULD NEVER!
Sabrow ends the biography with a pointed comparison of FW/Gundling to Fritz/Voltaire, complete with the quote from Fritz from November 1740 when he's haggling about Voltaire's travel expenses, along the lines of "rarely has a fool been paid so well", and a 1753 quote from Fritz where he again uses the term fool - "how much noise a fool can make in good society!" I partly agree and have written about some eerie parallels elsewhere, though of course a key difference between the two pairings is that Voltaire didn't need Fritz, not financially (because he had money himself), and not professionally. (That Gundling didn't have a "proper" university degree automatically limited the professional possiblities to him outside of Prussia even before FW destroyed his reputation.) This gave him a confidence that Gundling didn't have, and the ability to go tit for tat in the battle of pamphlets and insults. And as humiliating and frightening as the entire Frankfurt episode must have been, it was an episode, which Voltaire got out of to be Voltaire for decades more, his reputation unchanged. (I.e. if you admired him before, you admired him afterwards, and if you hated him before, well, you certainly didn't feel sorry now.) Moreover, no matter how often Fritz would rail about Voltaire being the scum of the earth as a human being, he never put down Voltaire's work, he kept his admiration for it from first to last. That's simply a different foundation than FW being at best impressed by the manfuctoring suggestions and maybe by Gundling's greater knowledge of the world (since he had travelled in foreign countries) and ability to read and interpret the world's news for him, but having nothing but contempt for the core of what was important to Gundling, his work as a scholar.
When reading Sabrow's biography, I had dimly recalled Stratemann, otherwise FW Fan No.1. among the envoys, does mention Gundling's ghastly funeral, though I hadn't translated the passage in question in my big Stratemann write up, just mentioned it. So I looked it up again right now, and wow. Stratemann has all the horrid details, and his editor Wolff, otherwise also a FW fan who doesn't lose an opportunity to chide Wilhelmine for being a bad, unloving daughter, grudgingly adds a footnote that the recent Hohenzollern Jahrbuch essay by Schneider "proving" that the barrel of wine burial has to be a legend since FW would never has thus been made redundant due to an impeccable contemporary witness.
Stratemann first mentions Gundling's death at the end of his dispatch from April 14th:
Last Wednesday, the famous Baron v. Gundling has left this world at 10 in the morning, and the well known writer of entertainments, Faßmann, now has his post, though he has made it a condition: that he was to have familiar conversations only with the King, and with no one else.
"Familiäre Conversation", eh? That's one way to describe it. In the next dispatch, dated April 28th 1731, Stratemann offers much more detail. He starts the dispatch by saying FW entertains himself with daily par force hunting, taking along not just the younger kids, the Queen and his fave officers, but now for the first time Gundling's successor Faßmann.
Said Faßmann will be introduced, like his predecessor, in all local colleges, the financial directory and will be made Geheimer Rat, and will be presented to the Academy of Sciences as their next President. He also enjoys the complete Gundling salary of 1200 or 1500 Reichstaler per annum and fodder for two horses. As the King approached him for the job, he has argued with His Majesty: That he should be treated at court on a completely different footing from Gundling. The King was his lord and master, and he would suffer anything from him, but! all the others should keep out of his face and should pay him the respect due to a royal Geheimer Rat, otherwise he would forego all respect towards no matter which person and would take up St. Peter's sword.* Whereupon he was given the reaussurance: that he would be protected against everyone, and it wouldn't be allowed that anyone should harm him or do anything else.
He's also being given the favor: that in the royal lunch room, a small table has been set up and that he is to share food on it served to the royal table. He's now working at his latest entertainment, a "Conversation among the Dead" featuring the famous Saxonian Taubmann and the lately died Gundling.
Of the later, his predecessor, the following story has reached me from Potsdam: the preachers there have decidedly not wanted to join the procession; whereupon the larger part of their funding has been withdrawn from them; the generals and officers, on the other hand, have put all scruples aside and have done the King's will in this.
( ...) by editor Wolff. The next printed part of the dispatch deals with Küstrin rumors about Fritz getting food and drink delicacies mailed to him by the sympathetic population. However, Stratemann also attachs the news agent report about Gundling's funeral to his dispatch, and Wolff quotes it in the footnote.
News Agent report: Last Thursday, the funeral rites of Geheimer Rat Gundling took place, which were remarkable indeed. For as soon as Gundling had died, his wife, who had been here throughout his illness, had to leave again. Following this, the King had (Gundling) dressed up in his proper robes, put on a stretch and had him carried across the market in public by two fellows into a citizen's house. There, he was put into a coffin which had been an ordinary barrel of wine, and which still had its pegs and hoops attached, and there until his funeral was exhibited for everyone to gawk at. The barrel of wine had been cut in the middle, since one half had to serve as the top,and on this top was written the following inscription:
Here lies in his skin,
half man, half pig, a marvellous thing:
Smart in his youth, mad in his age,
witty at dawn, at sunset full of rage,
thus Bacchus shouts in all this bling:
That dear child of his is Gundling!
On Friday afternoon at 2 pm the procession happened thusly: this barrel was put on a stretch and was carried by thirty tailors, and the entire school and his footman were marching in front of the coffin wearing mourning; after the coffin, the castellan and headmaster followed as the bereaved, then all the generals and officers from the regiments, and allpresent Geheime and Kriegs-Räte, doctors and physicians of regiments; then the entire city council, and representatives of the guilds. All this the King had ordered, and the citizens were threatened with five Reichstaler fee to pay if they should stay away. The procession passed the palace and the garnison church, went to the Brandenburg Gate, after which the company returned, while the coffin, or rather, the barrel, was put on a cattle truck, and was buried in Bornstedt. This much about a such a remarkable funeral.
Epitaph
Gundling has now drunk his last,
can no longer have a blast
from the wine this barrel held,
and regret he must have felt.
Therefore this was his last will:
that his belly with wine to fill,
should be put in such a hose,
in which he'd often put his nose
throughout his life. Now readers, if you are not thick:
admit this man was nothing but a pig!
Next dispatch, dated May 5th, opens: As I hear from Potsdam, the King isn't feeling well at all, but has been hurt by a boar attacking with his tusks on his foot, which subsequently has swollen up massively. So he has been much inconvenienced.
Small justice. As is Faßmann lasting only until July the same year, at which point he's realised what FW's promises were worth, got into a nasty antisemetic argument with a Jew named Marcus to boot and flees Prussia. The next few attempts to replace Gundling don't last much longer, until Morgenstern. But seriously, the cruelty of it all is breathtaking every time I read about it. FW taking away funding from the five rebels, and fining anyone else who dares to stay away: go figure. Of course, it's also telling of the era's toleration of "pranks" towards an ennobled commoner like Gundling that Stratemann sees no reason to prettify any of this, whereas the Katte saga has such touches like him believing the tribunal wanted a death sentence and FW would pardon him, or that Fritz' release is immminent, or that Wilhelmine got locked up for months only because she was so sick.
It's been over a year since I've read Kloosterhuis, and it's strictly speaking not his subject, but I don't recall him mentioning Gundling anywhere in his book, not just when analysing the escape attempt related documents but when talking about FW's character in general.
*St. Peter's Sword: allusion to Peter cutting off the ear of one of the guards arresting Jesus.
In conclusion: a completely harrowing tale, and infuriating in that for such a long time, it was written off as mildly embarrassing to FW at best, not as the testimony to cruelty it is.
1. "Der König und sein Narr" by Martin Stade. Published first in the GDR, 1975. The film version from 1981 (West German tv) is reviewed below, with screencaps, because they're both excellent, though the book has a flaw the film version covers, whereas the film version lacks something that's really important in the book.
Book: harrowing. It's written in first person, narrated by Gundling who spends his last weeks of life writing this book trying to figure out why all this happened, how he got from scholar to dying court fool with a coffin in the guise of a big barrel of wine standing in his room in which he knows he'll be put. The first person perspective at one point means Stade has to cheat because he evidently wanted to include a scene with FW where Gundling doesn't show up, and he has Gundling imagine how it must have happened. But Gundling's argument - that by now he knows exactly how the King feels and thinks and as a professional historian can flesh these things out - is hard to refute.
The biggest difference to Der Meister von Sanssouci, a novel by Claus Back about architect and painter Knobelsdorff which Stade finished upon Back's death in 1969 and which will get a separate post, is that Gundling while being an incredibly tragic figure is written as being partly complicit in his terrible fate. Not in the sense of "he deserves this", absolutely not, but as he goes back to understand how his life turned out this way, he realises there were several points where he still could have made other choices, when it hadn't been too late yet. Also, the novel, which starts with F1's death, lets Gundling - who is now jobless since FW immediately fired the entire heraldic and historic department as part of his austerity measures - actively seek out FW so he can keep a job at court and won't have to make the rounds at the universities and patrons outside Prussia again. After talking to FW's servant Creutz and hearing FW wants to encourage Prussian manufacturing, that he has no time for history and is all about commerce, Gundling recalls he himself has written an essay about manufacturing and commerce and cajoles Creutz to bring this up with FW, and he writes a petition to FW, too. Since Gundling is victimized through the greater part of the novel, it's I think a good choice on Stade's part to let him have as much of an agenda as it's possible. It's also this, from the get go, that makes this novel work not just as a historical novel but as a general "intellectuals and power" book that is very evidently also reflecting the situation it's written in, i.e. in a dictatorship. Can you keep your integrity and your art while accomodating absolute power? Gundling has a mixture of selflish and selfless motives early on: he had liked his comfortable job with F1, he's near 40 and doesn't want to go back to becoming a jobless scholar, but he also, when he meets FW, realises that FW actually is serious about reform and concludes this could put him in a position where he, Gundling, can help making a difference, can make the country better.
Stade is really good at making it understandable why Gundling initially finds FW a genuine chance and despite increasing warning signs sticks it out for a while, and he also lets FW initially be seriously impressed by Gundling (who points out a few useful things, such as, two thirds of Berlin lived directly or indirectly through the court (carpenters, artisans, washerwomen, tailors, every level of food delivery etc), so when there's no more court in that sense, you need to supply other employment quickly or they'll all leave before starving); FW doesn't start the relationship thinking he wants someone else to kick around. But there are also red flag signals about his capacity for cruelty, and each described session of the Tobacco Parliament also is terrific (and visceral to read) in how it depicts the group dynamics encouraging each other's cruelty and make it ever worse. Narrating Gundling realises he participated early on when he didn't have to - he was annoyed at the fool (the real, official fool), so he had a go at him; when a wife who was a professional snitch on deserters and her husband showed up to petition FW to grant them a divorce, and the tobacco college who finds it hilarious that the woman is fat and the man is thin goads and mocks them instead, and finally sets them at each other, with FW deciding that the one of them who manages to beat the other at dice can literally beat the other (as in hit, brutally) out of the room, Gundling the narrator muses that these two, who are outcasts and only have each other, could have been allies in their misery, could have escaped what was about to happen if only they'd refused to turn on each other, but instead they let the lords use them as their entertainment by venting their aggression and misery on each other, he also reflect that he himself could have protested, or left, or just remained silent, but after a while watching the two, he too, joined everyone else's laughter, unable to realise he was looking at his own future.
As the pranks against Gundling himself go from still passing as pranks (i.e. trying to frighten him with ghosts since he has said he doesn't believe in them) to physical assaults and vicious taunts, the number of titles and the salary FW heaps on him also rise, and they slide into a fatal dynamic where Gundling lives for those moments of "truth telling" where he makes clever remarks the King and his other companions can't find good rejoinders too, and those moments where he actually manages to change FW's mind on something; that's what he draws his ever more fragile sense of self worth from as much as the increasing amounts of alcohol, and in response FW grows ever more inventive with the "pranks", too, the more cutting the remarks become. Of Gundling's two escape attempts, only the second, longer one is described at full length. He initially goes to Breslau but all teaching jobs available there demand that he converts to Catholicism, which he refuses to do. (Stade's Gundling isn't such a good Protestant, he's a secret atheist, but he's compromised so much already that he refuses to submit to Rome, too, after all the submissions to FW.) Instead, he hangs out with some rebellious students, which as it turns out makes for his last hours of freedom because Old Dessauer is there to kidnap him and bring him back to Prussia.
Gundling has just one more glimmer of light when he meets Anne de Larrey, and here's where I think the novel shows a flaw that the movie makes up for, because Stade's novel has the first encounter, then just the statement they got married and she was the only one who ever understood him, and much later he wonders why he wrote so much about FW and so litlte about her. Which imo is lampshading for: "I don't know how to write this character and this relationship." I'll get to how the film does it in a moment. But otherwise he's in free fall. There are two final steps of humiliation left, and both come after a seeming victory. Firstly, the Tobbacco Parliament has French ambassador Rottembourg as a guest when Gundling (who still has the reading the news job) reads out a short notice that Voltaire after his most recent stint in the Bastille has been brought to Calais with the permission to go to England and the strict interdiction to get closer than 50 miles to the French court. FW asks who this Voltaire is, Rottembourg says he had it coming, FW says if that's the French way of dealing with these things, well, in Brandenburg he has better methods to keep the country quiet. (This is also when Gundling realises that he's been kidding himself when clinging to the belief he could shame FW into doing the right thing now and then as a justification for staying around.) Gundling can't resist having a go at Rottembourg (who is written as a snobbish French aristocrat) with comments about how France fears the written and spoken word that clearly are meant for FW as well, and while Rottembourg loses the verbal duel, FW ends the encounter by saying he'll have to publish an edict against evil atheists like this Voltaire person (FW isn't into differentiation about Deism), and Gundling will write it for him.
Which Gundling is now too afraid not to do, and so he loses the last bit of his intellectual integrity he's been proud of. The other Pyrrhic victory is when FW presents him with David Fassmann as his potential sucessor, Fassmann (who has never met FW and wants the job) taunts Gundling and Gundling loses it and starts to beat on Fassmann. But now he's done just what all the others from the Tabagcie which he despised for being unable to answer verbal arguments except by brutal force has done, and that was the last moral differentiation he's been clinging to, and he's lost that as well. From this point onwards, all that's left is drinking himself to death. The last few pages are written in a hallucinatory style, with Gundling no longer able to tell what is reall and what isn't ("did I talk with the King about the Crown Prince?" is one of two Fritz mentions in this novel; the other is when Gundling briefly spots child Fritz and thinks he reminds him of a little caged bird), and where he comes up with an image summarizing everything: He sees the King who holds up a mirror to him, the mirror showing Gundling himself as he's now, in his entire degredation. But he also notices the King uses this mirror which shows Gundling like a shield, to avoid having to look at himself.
(Let me add here that one of the elements that make this book better than "Der Meister von Sanssouci" is that FW always feels like a character, one particular person, not someone who as an absolute monarch is bound to play a certain role by historic necessity. What FW does are his own actions; Gundling as the narrator never says, well, Kings, you, know, but progress marches on! That's what I mean by this novel not being orthodox, which Der Meister von Sanssouci is.)
Gundling's death is his final escape, when he is at least free of fear and pain and feels that curiosity again he had as a boy when he wanted to learn everything and wanted to understand and find out all the reasons, and when he understands that, he's free.
2.) Der König und sein Narr (Film, directed by Frank Beyer, written by Ulrich Plenzdorf.
Now, the movie: script by Ulrich Plenzdorf, who wrote "Die neuen Leiden des jungen W.", the modern Werther novel which I read in school. There are, of course, a lot less characters (the novel even includes vivid cameos even by F1's ceremonial master von Besser, and by August the Strong when he's visiting Berlin), events like the bears do not happen (presumably because it would be way too dangerous to film that; also this is a German tv movie, and we don't have the budget for Hollywood trained stunt bears!) , the humiliation conga that Gundling observes and too late realises foreshadows his own is limited to just the female snitch showing up, not her husband (there are a few other examples in the novel); all these cuts are understandable, and they make room for fleshing out Anne de Larrey and her relationship with Gundling, which imo was really needed. So in the movie, we see how they connect, that she's kind and clever and that he's able to charm her by being witty without being cruel, and the marriage becomes the FW free space in his life, but alas too late to save him. As the movie is not told in the first person, we're in Anne's pov for the last section and at the funeral, where Fassmann holds the funeral speech. (The director and the actor didn't let Fassmann do this mockingly but suddenly fully aware he's next, and thus terrified.)
Another difference between movie and novel is something which I did miss, and that's letting Gundling actively work to get a job from FW. In the film, he gets fired after F1's death, he's on his way to leave Berlin when he's called back because FW has found out he's written that essay about manufactoring; there is no indication that Gundling tried to make this happen. Also, he doesn't laugh with the others early on in the Tobacco Parliament; he's thus presented entirely as an innocent there, and the way the evolving group dynamic happens is observed by him strictly from the outside, not form the inside. (Plus where the novel has three different cases, of which the female snitch and her husband are but one, the movie has only the one, where, as I said, Gundling remains serious.) The film thus loses some complexity in its main character, though it has an invention later on to bring some of that back - the rebeillious students with whom Gundling has hung out in Breslau show up at his doorstep when he' married and has his own town residence, and he doesn't have the courage anymore to offer them sanctuary, not when his own welfare and that of Anne and her dead brother's children whom she has adopted are at stake. Still, not the same.
However, and it's a big however: the two leads are outstanding. Wolfgang Kieling as Gundling has a tragic dignity that goes with an increasing fragility despite not being a fragilly built man, a great voice and a way to convey so much with his acting of what's going on inside Gundling at any given point. And Götz George as FW is hands down the best FW I've yet seen on screen, which includes Günter Strack in Der Thronfolger. He feels like a living live wire, with an incredible energy barely hold in check and never falls into metaphorical moustache twirling or hammy acting, which makes scenes when FW goes from relatively harmless to doing something cruel way more effective. The script also trusts its audience to get the point without someone putting a sledge hammer on it as when FW on the one hand tells child!Fritz (in his one and only scene) that wars of agression are evil and on the other in the next breath goes on to bully people some more. That both novel and movie keep out the other Hohenzollerns as much as they can and focus on FW strictly in the context of his relationship with Gundling also makes the story as the absolutely perfect counterpoint to anyone pulling out the "well, 1730 and his relationship with his oldest son aside, he was really good!" argument. Both book and movie don't offer a final explanation as to why FW does what he does to Gundling - Gundling has an opinion about this, of course, but in the novel he's the pov character who offers this opinion, and in the film we only briefly see FW (twice) when Gundling isn't around, either). But what he does is the systematic destruction of a human being, that's made crystal clear in both versions (the film makes it even more literal in that the gigantic barrel of wine in which Gundling will later be buried is literally full of wine when it arrives so Gundling can drink himself do death on it, and does, while Anne is kept away from his bedroom by two soldiers), and that he does this is its own judgment on him.
3.) Screencaps
4.) Martin Sabrow: Herr und Hanswurst. Das tragische Schicksal des Hofgelehrten Jacob Paul von Gundling
This book from 2003 is the first proper non fiction Gundling biography in centuries, literally, and it is a really good one. The author is open from the start about the problems with the source material - the first biographical writings about Gundling were by his arch enemy David Fassmann and explicitly meant as attacks on him, the first "real" biography wasn't published until 50 years later, at which time the image of Gundling as the court fool was well set and most of the people who could have known him were dead, and the 19th century dealt with the problem that there's no way you can tell the Gundling story honestly and make FW come out well by declaring (up to and including the Hohenzollernjahrbuch in 1901) that it was really all Gundling's own fault by virtue of being a vain alcoholic, and the worst stories were clearly invented, because FW would never.
However, there is actually material to be found to work with and countercheck the anecdotal stories against. Gundling's own books, of course (not in the sense of containing autobiographical accounts but in terms of showing what he was working on at any given time, and also the dedications are interesting and telling), but also various uniiversity and clergy accounts, the "Berliner Adreß-Kalender" which shows when Gundling lived where, and the court news, which was what passed for a newspaper in FW's Berlin and are able to provide date and place for some of the most outrageous stories which one would have hoped to be invented or exeggarated, but weren't, such as the bears. There is also Gundling's brother Hieronymus who was a very respected Professor in Halle and of whom we have some letters and a last will, the records of the Academy through the FW years, and a few other statistical archive treasures. Unlike, say, the Maupertuis biographer, Sabrow manages to weave a compelling - and despite it actually offering some more minor victories for Gundling than "Der König und sein Naarr" does, heartrendering - tale out of all this. I'll limit myself to what was new to me or where he contradicts tradition.
Gundling was born the younger of two sons of a clergyman near Nuremberg. (As a commoner; the ennoblement laer happened courtesy of FW.) Unfortunately for him and his older brother Hieronymus, their parents died when they were still young, and their father didn't leave them enough money to study, which means they had to rely on sponsors. Hieronymus, the older, managed to that and having made Magister and Doctor ended up as a highly respected Professor in Halle for the rest of his life. Jacob Paul could afford uni only because he immatriculated together with a spawn of the local nobility, Tetzel, whom he was supposed to supervise and help out scholarly. When Tetzel decided he had enough of studying and wanted to do the grand tour, Gundling - with a choice that as Sabrow says was no choice at all, i.e. either continue to study without money to pay for it, or go with Tetzel on the Grand Tour and continue to be paid - did leave without getting his degree. (This is important in the long run.) Tetzel's Grand Tour included England, and Gundling may or may not have met the Archbishop of Canterbury there. (His enemy Faßmann claims he can't have done, as Gundling says they talked in Latin due to Gundling's bit of English learned en route not being up to a conversation, and, Faßmann says, it's impossible to talk with Brits in Latin because they pronounce it wrong. Sabrow is not mpressed with this argument, but says this doesn't mean Gundling actually met the guy. We just don't know. It's worth pointing out that his later wife spent some of her formative years in England, though, and that he'd been there for a while might have helped forming a connection between them.)
After Tetzel had finished his tour, he didn't return to university and dismissed Gundling, who finished the rest of his education in the do it yourself manner, but with results that produced a book about Prussian state history that was impressive enough to get him hired by F1's people. Leipniz himself thought young Gundling good enough to want him for the Academy, but the other members voted against it because Gundling had not finished his degree properly, and was only a Professor by royal appointment. Still, Gundling settled down in Berlin, started to do heraldic work (which was the job) and research for histories (what he wanted to do) and eventually write that fateful essay about commerce and manufacturing with reform ideas.
F1 dies, FW starts his austerity program. Here comes the first big divergence to tradition. Now, Faßmann claimed - and all subsequent biographers, including FW biographers like Förster -, followed him in this, that a fired and thus homeless Gundling settled down in one of the local taverns, got drunk and entertained people by reading the news to them, which alterted none other than Grumbkow to his existence, who was on the look out for a newsreader for FW, Gundling shows up, gets hired, and immediately gets humiliated. Sabrow demonstrates that this is telescoping and inventing from the pov of someone who only came into the King's orbit in 1726. Firstly, the tavern where Grumbkow supposedly spotted a drunken Gundling didn't exist yet in the year of FW's ascension and for several more years to come. Secondly, far from lodging in a tavern, the Berlin Address Book shows Gundling going from living at the Ritterakademie (the one in charge of the genealogiies which FW dissolved) to, after a year of interruption, living with Kammergerichtsrat Plarre in the Mittelstraße, Dorotheenstadt, where he'll stay for the next five years. Plarre had a first class library which Gundling actually managed to talk FW into acquiring for the Prussian State when Plarre died in 1717.
About the missing year: in Gundling's years later written and published detailed mapping of Brandenburg and Pomerania, he mentions, in the preface/dedication, having been sent to inspect Brandenburg manufacturing back then and have gotten the job through Gumbkow, to whom the volume is dedicated. Could this be a euphemism? Sure, except that the court news from September 30 1713 also mention Gundling in this context ("Der Herr Rath Gundling hat von Brandenburg referiret, daß er daselbst feine blaue Tücher zu 3 Taler wehrt fabricieret gefunden hätte" etc.), and what the court news notably don't report at this point are any of the later humiliations which will show up frequently in years to come in their reporting. Which is why Sabrow arrives at the conclusion that yes, Gundling, having lost his original job in Berlin, did get a new and respectable one from FW via Grumbkow by virtue of that reforms suggesting essay. What's more, it's also documented that he made the suggestion to discontinue allowing every little estate to brew their beer according to their own standards but to introduce a single state standard which the breweries had to adher to, which made a lot of nobility hate his gut because it essentially created both state control and a state monopoly on said quality control; FW, though, was delighted. But if the start was so promising, how did we get to the horrible tragedy to ensue? Sabrow finds the turning point in the late winter of 1714, which is when the first "prank" story shows up, the one with the ghosts.
Now to us it may sound relatively harmless compared to what's to come, but the key point here is that according to the court news Gundling hadn't just lectured the Tobacco Parliament on ghosts not existing but that he had "professed atheism". And then the gang managed to frighten him with fake ghosts. This wasn't just a loss of face; in a system where FW had made Manly Courage such a big standard to achieve, it marked Gundling as a coward, and resulted in an instant loss of respect from FW. What's more, the noblemen of the Tobacco College probably already either hated his gut for the beer issue or they resented a commoner upstart among them. That's when the court news starts to report he's been forced to drink, not just alcohol but purges, has been forced out of his clothes and into the court fools, and so on and so forth. Gundling then makes his first flight attempt (to his brother in Halle) in 1716, which doesn't last long. Halle is still Prussian territory, and brother Hieronymus fears for his own job. (He's also unhappily married and a father, which becomes a plot point much later.) So Gundling returns, and tries to avoid the court as much as he can, at one point even hiding with SD, who helps him. (!) "As the Queen was worried that the old comedy would be played with this man, she pretended he wasn't there but absent when he was sent for." Alas, though, FW sees through her. He appoints Gundling to Geheimer Rat on August 17 1716 and in September 1716 court news agent Ortgies reports FW ordering Gundling, who had tried to refuse joining a hunting expedition, to be beaten up with a hunting dagger. On October 10th 1716, the bears happen. The court news report that Gundling was led into a chamber "where the King keeps some young bears, and several fire crackers were thrown in through a window by which such beasts were irritated, so much so that the man had great trouble to defend himself against them and the crackers."
(This version is even worse than the one from Morgenstern, because of the additional fireworks to upset the bears.)
While the horror show you're already familiar with by now is going on, there's this weird parallel aspect Sabrow points out, i.e. that Gundling simultanously is the butt of everyone's jokes and seen as a person of influence. One Johann Michael von Loen, who was a student of Gundling's brother Hieronymus and later spent the winter 1717/1718 in Berlin, notes both that "the King wanted to give his soldiers a scholar as a a spectacle" in order "for Gundling to be laughed at by the entire court", but also that "he often spends entire hours locked up alone with the King in his cabinet, writes and works when with him, so he can be useful to many and damaging to some." None other than Seckendorff in his reports to Prince Eugene agrees. (Not just early on. He writes as late as 1727 that "the well known Geheimrat Gundling sits both at the lunch table and in the evening in the Tobacco College and reads the newspapers for the table, and then there repeated sharp remarks about Hanover", which is useful to Seckendorff, of course. Which is why in addition to the usual bribery money for Gumbkow which was due, he wants from Eugene bribery material for Gundling, to wit: "Not a golden necklaces but an imperial medaillon set with diamonds, for they consider it a far greater honor here to distribute medaillons than to distribute necklaces, since the later are even given to ordinary couriers, whereas the former are given to people of some distinction."
Then there's the Preacher Freylinghausen, known to us because he observes kid AW begging for the life of a deserter as you might recall. On another occasion, when he visits Wusterhausen in 1727, he's seated at the table between Gundling on one side and Fritz on the other, while SD sits opposite them. Since Freylinghausen isn't a nobleman or a military m an, he has an entirely peaceful conversation with Gundling about the work of the theological faculty in Halle, reccomends a mathematician to Gundling as a candidate for the Academy and then they talk about what they're read about the coronation of G2 in England which happened that year. Freylingshausen's report contains nothing derogative about Gundling; he talks about him just as a scholar whom he has had a good conversation with. Sabrow constrasts this almost en famille picture with what happens in the same month when Gundling isn't a guest at a family meal but in the tobacco college where the other guests are all military: his wig is set on fire.
Sabrow sees Gundling marrying Anne de Larray - who is the daughter of another historian (who lived in England for years) - in 1720 as Gundling managing to create something of a parallel world for himself to escape in. The wedding itself is one of the few time where he gets the better of his tormentors, who had prepared a laxative for him to drink on his wedding night so he wouldn't get off the loo. He evidently by now had seen something like this coming and thus avoided it happening by simply playing sick two days before and on short notice getting special permission to marry Anne in his bedroom, which meant they had the wedding, and the wedding without the awful society that would have awaited them if everything had gone as planned. How do we know this actually happened? Because in this case, not only do both Fassmann and Loen report it but the book of marriages of the French Community (Anne was a Huguenot from the French Colony) notes down as well that the marriage has been concluded "en chambre" before it was supposed to happen. The Berlin Address Book shows Gundling had his own house by how, and the court registers that those titles FW kept heaping on him actually came with salaries and money. And then there was that stupendous output on books during the 1720s, which are part of Sabrow's element that Gundling can't have been the non-stop alcoholic of legend. He says of course he drank, but doubts it was more than FW and Gumbkow did, not just because writing those books demands a great deal of focus and concentration (in addition to which Gundling actually did his job as Head of the Academy, as much as that was meant to be a humliation on FW's part, but he threw himself into it, initializing projects, publishing anthologies with essays from the members) , but also because Gundling had an autopsy. According to Wilhelmine's letter to her sister Friederike in April 1731, the autopsy showed Gundling died of "an ulcer and a hole in the stomach". Now, later 18th century writers interpreted that to mean he drank so much that his stomach burst, but that's scientific nonsense, says Sabrow. Perforation of he stomach usually happens if an ulcer isn't treated in time and eats its way through the various layers of the stomach. Basically, he thinks Gundling was undoubtedly a heavy drinker in our terms, but like FW himself (and Grumbkow, and Seckendorff) evidently not to a degree where it would have incapacitated him from working. Which he did, till the end. One of the projects he wrote about was btw something we'll see again later with Fritz and Fredersdorf - trying to foster a Brandenburg silk industry by growing mulberry trees in Brandenburg.
As I said elsewhere, he took that position that was supposed to be FW's ultimate joke on scholars seriously. Three days afterthe appointment, he called the Academy council together for a "session extraordinaire" as it says in the protocol in order to find out what had become of Leipniz' correspondence, and how far the translation projects of the society had come. Writes Sabrow: If Gundling was in Berlin - as opposed to Potsdam or Wusterhausen - he showed up regularly at the council sessions, not just in the first time of his presidency. That he didn't take his presidential duties seriously anymore after the beginning is a far spread assumption, but it doesn't hold up next to the careful protocols of the Academy Sessions: the last council session presided over by Gundling took place on August 16th 1730 and agreed on two suggestions the President made for new members of the Academy. The majority of the routine sessions did happen without the President, who came in person when the acceptance or refusal of new members were debated, or important decisions about projects were made. However, like his predecessor Leipniz he supervised the work of the society during the time of his absence via letters from Potsdam and Wusterhausen, letters through which he at times completely dominated the council sessions, aas an example from the year 1725 demonstrates: "Secretary reads from President Gundling's two writings of May 5th and May 7th in which the later talks about payment of the seal for the medical surgical college, for the building of the society courtyard, because of the changes of the handymen, because of the materials for the print of Neumann's work at Potsdam needed, and what the change of Mr. Schütz and the replacement of his position in the obervatory can be reported, and demands to know what of the above has been done, and replied to."
All this, of course, doesn't change the fact that to most people, the idea that the King's favourite chew toy now held of the office of the great Leipniz was, depending on whether they were more FW or more Fritz minded, either the ultimate joke on scholars or an unbearable humiliation of science and learning. There were still some scholars taking him seriously, but usually they were the ones living far from Prussia and only knowing Gundling via his books. To most, and certainly to all who joined the Academy in Fritz' time, he was FW's fool and joke on scholarship. And for all the times when he was treated like a guest, sitting at the King's table with his family, there were ten times when he was abused in the most horrible way. Including during the last week of his life and beyond. But before that happened, something else did, which also forms a part of Sabrow's argument that Gundling was both compos mentis and at least partially successful in carving out an FW free paralled world. When his brother Hieronymous died in 1729, Hieronymus' last will named Gundling as the guardian for his children and executer of his last will. Now, Hieronymus, as mentioned, had been unhappily married and trying to get a separation from his wife Augusta, who supposedly openly cheated on him and was living in Berlin. Surely, asks Sabrow, if Jacob Paul in 1729 had been the non-stop drinker of legend, his brother - who had a great many friends and colleages in Halle whom he could have asked to become guardians -, would not have entrusted either the children nor the family fortune for safekeeping to him? Augusta (who had left her husband and children two years earlier which she could since she was the niece of one of the most influential Prussian tradesmen) sued, at which point her brother-in-law demonstrated that fool or not, he actually could wield what influence he had on FW in a devastating way in this one very personal matter. Augusta was arrested in November 1729 for loose living (remember FW's NO WHORES doctrine?) and put into Spandau. Gundling punching downward or just fuflfilling his brother's last will? You decide. In any event, Augusta remained in Spandau where she died a year after her brother-in-law.
Which brings me to Gundling's death, and his burial circumstances. They were notorious when they happened, with the result that 19th and early 20th century historians refused to accept reality if it didn't fit with their idea of a character. For lo and behold, this happened:
David Fassmann in his second Gundling-mocking diatribe, published soon after the event itself, among many other things: The King buried him in a barrel of wine.
Wilhelmine, in a letter to her sister Friederike (who was already married to Ansbach) from 1731: "The King had him buried in his beautiful robe and his gigantic wig in a barrel. He himself accompagnied the body to Bornstedt, where (Gundling) was buried."
Later Hohenzollern fan historians: Fassmann was a satirist and Wilhelmine is a Dad-hating liar. No way super Christian Protestant FW would have made a mockery of a funeral like that, having Gundling buried in in a wine barrel, letting his arch enemy hold the taunting burial speech. No way!
So we get from Louis Schneider, 1867, writing an essay "Ist Gundling in einem Weinfasse begraben worden?" (which states he can't prove that Gundling wasn't, but it would have been widely out of character for FW to order such a thing) to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (frequent wiki source, though not for the Gundling entry) from 1878 claiming that there were "severe doubts as to whether the mocking inscriptions on Gundlings coffin really were put there", to the Neue Deutsche Biographie from 1966 declaring confidently that "especially the infamous burial of Gundling in a barrel of wine can't have happened in this form".
THEN, someone has the bright idea of checking for records of the people professionally concerned with burials, to wit, the clergy. And lo! In the archive of the Franckesche Stiftungen in Halle, there's a letter from Potsdam Reverend Johann Heinrich Schubert, written only five days after Gundling's burial. Which not only backs up the wine barrel tale 100% but also proves the unfortunate Gundling in his dying days knew FW wouldn't even let him be buried in peace. Writes Schubert: Poor Gundling has told me among many sighs and lamentations how he has been abused, and lamented especially that due to his distress over the fact he would be buried in a barrel with such an inscription could not properly collect himself. (In order to face his death calmly, that is.) (Remember, that barrel with the inscription had to stand in the same room with the dying man.) Continues Reverend Schubert:
On the 8th of this month (April) I visited him, and departed from him rather sadly because of this matter. R(ex) learns of this and questions me on the 9th, why I went so sadly from Gundling? I replied that I regretted very much being unable to soothe the man's distress in his soul, and was begging R(ex) most humbly to have pity in the poor soul and give (Gundling) the assurance that he would be buried like other people. But alas! This petition has been received most uncharitably.
There are other documents from clergymen, too, because originally FW had demanded one of them hold the funeral. Five Lutheran Pastors (Gundling was originally from Nuremberg and thus not a Calvinist) teamed up, led by Pfarrer Schultze, Schubert the letter writer, and the preacher from St. Nikolai (which was the parish where Gundling would be buried), and decided to "rather suffer everything" than obey FW's instruction to participate in such a funeral. They told FW they'd be happy to bless and preach over Gundling's coffin as long as it was a proper coffin, as every Christian had a right to, not a wine barrel. FW then threatened that he'd get the Calvinist clergy to do it instead, but the Lutherans didn't back down, and so it turned out FW had bluffed, because the Calvinists refused to go along with this horrible mockery of a funeral, either. FW then had a colonel tell the clergymen "Wollen die Priester nicht mitgehen u(nd) haben Bedenken, so mögen sie zu hause bleiben."
Not having a preacher for the funeral rites, he then told Fassmann to do it.
Later historians: FW WOULD NEVER!
Sabrow ends the biography with a pointed comparison of FW/Gundling to Fritz/Voltaire, complete with the quote from Fritz from November 1740 when he's haggling about Voltaire's travel expenses, along the lines of "rarely has a fool been paid so well", and a 1753 quote from Fritz where he again uses the term fool - "how much noise a fool can make in good society!" I partly agree and have written about some eerie parallels elsewhere, though of course a key difference between the two pairings is that Voltaire didn't need Fritz, not financially (because he had money himself), and not professionally. (That Gundling didn't have a "proper" university degree automatically limited the professional possiblities to him outside of Prussia even before FW destroyed his reputation.) This gave him a confidence that Gundling didn't have, and the ability to go tit for tat in the battle of pamphlets and insults. And as humiliating and frightening as the entire Frankfurt episode must have been, it was an episode, which Voltaire got out of to be Voltaire for decades more, his reputation unchanged. (I.e. if you admired him before, you admired him afterwards, and if you hated him before, well, you certainly didn't feel sorry now.) Moreover, no matter how often Fritz would rail about Voltaire being the scum of the earth as a human being, he never put down Voltaire's work, he kept his admiration for it from first to last. That's simply a different foundation than FW being at best impressed by the manfuctoring suggestions and maybe by Gundling's greater knowledge of the world (since he had travelled in foreign countries) and ability to read and interpret the world's news for him, but having nothing but contempt for the core of what was important to Gundling, his work as a scholar.
When reading Sabrow's biography, I had dimly recalled Stratemann, otherwise FW Fan No.1. among the envoys, does mention Gundling's ghastly funeral, though I hadn't translated the passage in question in my big Stratemann write up, just mentioned it. So I looked it up again right now, and wow. Stratemann has all the horrid details, and his editor Wolff, otherwise also a FW fan who doesn't lose an opportunity to chide Wilhelmine for being a bad, unloving daughter, grudgingly adds a footnote that the recent Hohenzollern Jahrbuch essay by Schneider "proving" that the barrel of wine burial has to be a legend since FW would never has thus been made redundant due to an impeccable contemporary witness.
Stratemann first mentions Gundling's death at the end of his dispatch from April 14th:
Last Wednesday, the famous Baron v. Gundling has left this world at 10 in the morning, and the well known writer of entertainments, Faßmann, now has his post, though he has made it a condition: that he was to have familiar conversations only with the King, and with no one else.
"Familiäre Conversation", eh? That's one way to describe it. In the next dispatch, dated April 28th 1731, Stratemann offers much more detail. He starts the dispatch by saying FW entertains himself with daily par force hunting, taking along not just the younger kids, the Queen and his fave officers, but now for the first time Gundling's successor Faßmann.
Said Faßmann will be introduced, like his predecessor, in all local colleges, the financial directory and will be made Geheimer Rat, and will be presented to the Academy of Sciences as their next President. He also enjoys the complete Gundling salary of 1200 or 1500 Reichstaler per annum and fodder for two horses. As the King approached him for the job, he has argued with His Majesty: That he should be treated at court on a completely different footing from Gundling. The King was his lord and master, and he would suffer anything from him, but! all the others should keep out of his face and should pay him the respect due to a royal Geheimer Rat, otherwise he would forego all respect towards no matter which person and would take up St. Peter's sword.* Whereupon he was given the reaussurance: that he would be protected against everyone, and it wouldn't be allowed that anyone should harm him or do anything else.
He's also being given the favor: that in the royal lunch room, a small table has been set up and that he is to share food on it served to the royal table. He's now working at his latest entertainment, a "Conversation among the Dead" featuring the famous Saxonian Taubmann and the lately died Gundling.
Of the later, his predecessor, the following story has reached me from Potsdam: the preachers there have decidedly not wanted to join the procession; whereupon the larger part of their funding has been withdrawn from them; the generals and officers, on the other hand, have put all scruples aside and have done the King's will in this.
( ...) by editor Wolff. The next printed part of the dispatch deals with Küstrin rumors about Fritz getting food and drink delicacies mailed to him by the sympathetic population. However, Stratemann also attachs the news agent report about Gundling's funeral to his dispatch, and Wolff quotes it in the footnote.
News Agent report: Last Thursday, the funeral rites of Geheimer Rat Gundling took place, which were remarkable indeed. For as soon as Gundling had died, his wife, who had been here throughout his illness, had to leave again. Following this, the King had (Gundling) dressed up in his proper robes, put on a stretch and had him carried across the market in public by two fellows into a citizen's house. There, he was put into a coffin which had been an ordinary barrel of wine, and which still had its pegs and hoops attached, and there until his funeral was exhibited for everyone to gawk at. The barrel of wine had been cut in the middle, since one half had to serve as the top,and on this top was written the following inscription:
Here lies in his skin,
half man, half pig, a marvellous thing:
Smart in his youth, mad in his age,
witty at dawn, at sunset full of rage,
thus Bacchus shouts in all this bling:
That dear child of his is Gundling!
On Friday afternoon at 2 pm the procession happened thusly: this barrel was put on a stretch and was carried by thirty tailors, and the entire school and his footman were marching in front of the coffin wearing mourning; after the coffin, the castellan and headmaster followed as the bereaved, then all the generals and officers from the regiments, and allpresent Geheime and Kriegs-Räte, doctors and physicians of regiments; then the entire city council, and representatives of the guilds. All this the King had ordered, and the citizens were threatened with five Reichstaler fee to pay if they should stay away. The procession passed the palace and the garnison church, went to the Brandenburg Gate, after which the company returned, while the coffin, or rather, the barrel, was put on a cattle truck, and was buried in Bornstedt. This much about a such a remarkable funeral.
Epitaph
Gundling has now drunk his last,
can no longer have a blast
from the wine this barrel held,
and regret he must have felt.
Therefore this was his last will:
that his belly with wine to fill,
should be put in such a hose,
in which he'd often put his nose
throughout his life. Now readers, if you are not thick:
admit this man was nothing but a pig!
Next dispatch, dated May 5th, opens: As I hear from Potsdam, the King isn't feeling well at all, but has been hurt by a boar attacking with his tusks on his foot, which subsequently has swollen up massively. So he has been much inconvenienced.
Small justice. As is Faßmann lasting only until July the same year, at which point he's realised what FW's promises were worth, got into a nasty antisemetic argument with a Jew named Marcus to boot and flees Prussia. The next few attempts to replace Gundling don't last much longer, until Morgenstern. But seriously, the cruelty of it all is breathtaking every time I read about it. FW taking away funding from the five rebels, and fining anyone else who dares to stay away: go figure. Of course, it's also telling of the era's toleration of "pranks" towards an ennobled commoner like Gundling that Stratemann sees no reason to prettify any of this, whereas the Katte saga has such touches like him believing the tribunal wanted a death sentence and FW would pardon him, or that Fritz' release is immminent, or that Wilhelmine got locked up for months only because she was so sick.
It's been over a year since I've read Kloosterhuis, and it's strictly speaking not his subject, but I don't recall him mentioning Gundling anywhere in his book, not just when analysing the escape attempt related documents but when talking about FW's character in general.
*St. Peter's Sword: allusion to Peter cutting off the ear of one of the guards arresting Jesus.
In conclusion: a completely harrowing tale, and infuriating in that for such a long time, it was written off as mildly embarrassing to FW at best, not as the testimony to cruelty it is.
Gundling at the start of the movie, when he just lost his job as F1's historian:
Gundling meets FW for the first time
FW without a wig
FW with a wig, later in the Tobacco College
Gundling and the court fool. Remember the costume of the fool, we'll see it again.
Gundling's first return after his first escape attempt. FW has just told him he gets another title, Gundling says "Ihr erhöht mich, um mich zu erniedrigen".
Remember, FW fired the court musicians except for orchestra leader Pepusch, then told him to train some Potsdam Giants to play. This is the result, and they're even playing Händel!
Another neat detail is that FW prays before he eats. They're not named in the movie, unlike in the novel where they are named, but those are Grumbkow and Seckendorff next to him:
FW and Grumbkow, whom Gundling in the novel characterizes as always having his eyes half closed and impossible to read.
Gundling's second escape attempt leads him to Breslau, and the library where his old study buddy works is so beautiful I had to include it:
But it's no use, he gets kidnapped back. BTW, I was wrong. The non fictional biography has arrived, and FW did indeed sent the Old Dessauer himself to retrieve him. Upon his return, FW makes Gundling Master of Ceremonies, an office that hadn't been fulfilled anymore since he fired Besser, and now Gundling has to wear this get up at court functions you'll see below. The first time the audience sees him in it, he meets his future wife, Anne de Larrey , for the first time. This is the moment when he first looks at her and she looks back and he is so sure he knows what she must think:
But Anne is a good observer and watches him being kind to one of the old footmen who had to stand all the time; Gundling uses his Master-of-Ceremonies title to order the old guy to sit down. This is Anne:
Here's a screenshot where you see the full get up as Gundling has to entertain FW and the rest:
Next we get the only scene in the movie where you see Hohenzollerns that are not FW. It's a family walk in the park Gundling gets invited to, featuring FW, pregnant SD, Fritz and Wilhelmine. Since Fritz and Wilhelmine as children keep running to and thro, it's hard to get them in the same shot, so here we go:
Gundling and Anne fall in love:
Which means for the first time since a loooong while, Gundling shows up at the tobacco parliament happy:
Naturally, it can't last. Here he is reading the "Voltaire off to England" news:
He uses that excuse to quote some Voltairian zingers at at guest Rottembourg (the one in white) that apply not just to French monarchies. The Tobacco Parliament is not amused:
Really not amused:
See above for how this ends for Gundling. Next time he is at the Hellfire Club, err, the tobbacco college, it's just him and FW at first. FW tells him he's found a good potential successor for Gundling:
Enter David Fassmann, trying to win FW by insulting Gundling.
Gundling loses it, takes the heating pan and starts to beat at Fassmann.
This is where he hits his final rock bottom. Afterwards, he starts to drink from all the bottles around.
Fassmann holds the FW penned mocking funeral speech:
Surprisingly, he doesn't look happy. It's just a small part, but the actor is good. Check how he conveys with his expression that it dawns on Fassmann just what kind of position it is that he has won:
The oboists play (btw, this is way more dignified than how the actual funeral went):
The barrel-coffin:
And the end (that's Anne and her niece and nephew standing there behind the Giants):