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rheinsberg2020-01-20 01:10 pm
mildred_of_midgard) wrote in rheinsberg2020-01-20 01:10 pm
Entry tags:
No Homo Crackfic
Part 1
Here's how you no-homo like a pro(fessional historian):
Historian 1: Look, Old Fritz can't be gay. There's NO WAY. He was so manly! He invaded provinces and partitioned Poland! He won a three-front war! He spent years on campaign enduring all sorts of hardships. Could he have done that if he was gay? NO HOMO.
Historian 2: I'm with you so far, but what's with the lack of sex? He was king, he could have had *anyone*. Explain, plz.
Historian 1: Okay, so remember the ladies Orzelska and Ritter and Wreech and Formera and so on and so forth? What do they all have in common? He was young! Clearly, something happened in his twenties that made him impotent.
Historian 2: Like what?
Historian 1: Like his dad kept a close eye on him, so he couldn't have normal affairs like a young prince, so he had to resort to prostitutes. Naturally, he caught a venereal disease.
Historian 2: Oooh, so that operation on his penis he was supposed to have had in 1733?
Historian 1: Yeah, except the operation went wrong and he was castrated.
Historian 2: Right, right, gotcha. And then he *pretended* to be into "Socratic" love so people wouldn't guess anything was wrong. But really it was just homoerotic poetry in the classical Greek style, no action or anything.
Historian 3: No, no, you're both wrong! If he was impotent, how could he have been manly enough to invade and hold Silesia? Eunuchs are weak and effeminate. Clearly the botched operation caused a *cosmetic* disfigurement that made him *self-conscious* about his penis, hence the no sex. Obviously he was actually perfectly virile the whole time!
Historian 3: But I'm with you on the faking homoerotic interest via poetry.
Historian 4: Idk about any operation, but I promise you, dear readers, there was nothing "unnatural" about Fritz's sex drive, it was just "underdeveloped." It's MANLY to not be into women and only like waging war, k? If he wrote poetry at all, much less erotic poetry, you will not find any mention of it in my incredibly manly book.
Historian 5: No, no, you're all wrong! He was sekritly in love with EC but forced to pretend he wasn't, because he had trash-talked the marriage to defy his father before he'd met her, and Fritz was constitutionally incapable of backing down. He would totally cut off his nose to spite his face for 46 years.
Allow me to convince you with all the evidence. Remember how they lived together while his father was alive, and he claimed to be having sex with her? He was perfectly happy at Rheinsberg. Lonely and sad afterward. QED. HUGE TRAGEDY for our totally heterosexual hero. Everybody shed a tear for the tragic love of Friedrich II and Elisabeth Christine.
Historian 6: Okay, but you guys realize there is no evidence that there was any operation at all? And his naked body was examined by many people after his death, and *nobody* commented on any supposed disfigurement? The doctor who treated Fritz during his life and claimed to have seen this "disfigurement" is a totally unreliable source, who would claim anything to salvage his hero's reputation. YES HOMO. EXTREMELY HOMO. MAXIMUM HOMO. [ETA: okay, not *Philippe d'Orleans* maximum, but Philippe may have been throwing some transgender in there too, hard to say. Anyway. Lots of homo. :P]
Margaret Goldsmith (writing in 1929): Nice job catching up, 2016 guy. I said all this a hundred years ago. Fritz/Katte 4ever. <333
(NB: I have placed all these accounts in dialogue form in the mouths of historians for the sake of entertainment. The actual details of the historiography, what was said by Fritz's doctor and what was said later and by who, are more complicated and irrelevant. Suffice it to say that these stories have all been bruited about by people EXTREMELY concerned to save Heroic Old Fritz's reputation from the awful and unsubstantiated gay rumors.)
Also, I entitled this comment "Crackfic" in reference to our Fritz/Joseph crackfic [ETA: contains so many obscure references and inside jokes that it's difficult to port as a standalone, but for now, here's the original thread], but honestly, the whole venereal disease/operation/castration/cosmetic disfigurement stories should count as crackfic too. :P
And yet those of us who think he might actually have been interested in men are the "gossipy sensationalists," omg, smh.
Part 2
Part 1 alludes to one of Fritz's doctors, Zimmermann by name. He's the one who came up with the operation claim that historians have since used.selenak did a write-up of his hilarious mental gymnastics, as published in 1790, to account for Fritz's apparent lack of interest in women and apparent interest in men.
Zimmerman speaks:
As we all know, Voltaire and countless other French bastards as well as some German ones have slandered our noble King by claiming he was into men. Even I, reader, had my doubts when someone claiming to have been his lover told me there was guy on guy action until shortly before the 7 Years War. But really, this is all nonsense. Let me set things straight, and I do mean STRAIGHT.
Fritz loved women. Adored them, couldn’t get enough oft hem. But when poor Doris got whipped and locked up, he was traumatized. (I don’t name Doris Ritter by name, I just say „a girl cruelly punished by FW who didn’t even have sex with him“.) Never ever again would he endanger a woman he actually liked! So he went to whores instead. Lots of whores, because he was so utterly manly and potent. Inevitably, STD ensued.
Fritz then asked one of his dastardly Schwedt cousins for help. Heinrich von Schwedt made him consult that utter quack Malchow, who put him through a cure which was no such thing. Fritz, thinking himself cured, then married EC with a clear conscience. And sure, he was a bit disgruntled about his father having forced the marriage on him, but he couldn’t help but falling in love with her, seeing as she was pretty and devoted and docile. For six months, there was utter married bliss and sex sex sex. Then, alas, the STD returned.
Now we all know our noble king was a man of action, and as ruthless towards himself as to everyone else. To protect his beloved wife, he had an operation done. This operation actually just stopped his semen flowing, i.e. it was sterilization by cutting off the semen transmission, but the quack who did it was clumsy, and so Fritz thought he got castrated! Which he totally was not. I can’t emphasize enough that he was NOT a eunuch, he just thought he was, got major body issues, and never ever had sex with anyone again. However, being a satirist himself, he knew there’d be major satire to fear from all those people envious of his manliness. So he decided to throw them off the scent by faking an interest in gay Greeks, gay Romans, gay poetry and gay people. It worked, too.
Not that he ever stopped loving the ladies in his mind. Just look at what happened with Barbarina. Can you explain that other than him wanting her and believing himself unable to actually have her? You can’t. He even kept her portrait in his bedroom. Shed a tear for all the Fritz/Barbarina action that didn’t happen, readers. Our King even forbade anyone to look at his naked body after he died to protect his secret. The only reason why I am now divulging it is that those French bastards won’t shut up with their gay insinuations, and it’s my patriotic duty to set things STRAIGHT.
mildred_of_midgard comments: Per Blanning, the surgeon and medical officers who did look at the body when preparing it for burial said it all looked completely normal, in fact "indignantly asserted that the royal genitalia were as 'complete and perfect as those of any healthy man,'" and Blanning furthermore claims that "Frederick’s naked body lay for more than one and a half hours and was seen by at least a dozen people, none of whom noticed any genital deformity."
Other quotes from Blanning:
Although it does not necessarily invalidate his testimony, it needs to be recorded that Zimmermann was a long-standing and passionate admirer of Frederick, despite being Swiss by birth and Hanoverian by choice. After his first encounter with his hero in 1771 he left the room in floods of tears, exclaiming, "Oh, my love for the King of Prussia is beyond words!"
However, there is so much error in his account—for example, he has the newlyweds moving to Rheinsberg immediately after their marriage, rather than three years later—that his reliability must be doubted.
mildred_of_midgard: So does he not specify who this unnamed lover is at all?
selenak: Taking another look, I see Zimmermann‘s source doesn‘t claim to have been the participant of the guy on guy action himself, though he might have been. The exact phrasing is thusly: (...) since one of Friedrich‘s favourites, the confidante and companion of his last years, told me in Potsdam, that Friedrich has loved shortly before the beginning of the Seven Years War as Socrates has loved Alcibiades.“.
The sole confidant and companion of Fritz‘ last years I can think of was George Keith, Lord Marischall, before his own death, and I don‘t think he‘d be refered as „a favourite“? Anyway, Fritz, now you‘re in the Socrates role, it seems. I guess that makes Glasow the most likely candidate for Alcibiades in 1756.
mildred_of_midgard: My guess would be Lucchesini (his chamberlain from 1780 until his death in 1786 and reader after Catt was dismissed in 1782, and reported as the person Fritz confided in most in his last years), but he's not exactly a good source on what was happening in 1756. Unless Fritz is talking, and I doubt Fritz is talking?
selenak: Also, quickly browsed to what Zimmermann, in 1790, is writing before this chapter on how Fritz was utterly straight. Firstly, he spells Katte „Catt“ and has him hunted down and captured while escaping. He also has Wilhelmine thrown through a window, so clearly has read Voltaire. Oh, and she gave Fritz her jewelry for the big escape. (Since it‘s 1790, no one has read her memoirs yet, where no such thing is claimed. No idea where the jewelry story is from.)
Zimmerman‘s theory as to why Fritz tried to escape is pretty original, though. He says he doesn‘t buy the story of Fritz wanting to go to England and still pursuing the English marriage project. No, his own theory is that Fritz wanted to go to Austria and marry MT. He says he knows there is much indignation and scepticism about the Fritz/MT marriage plan story, but he himself thinks Fritz would have been utterly capable of it since a) he was truly indifferent to all religions, as opposed to being a hardcore Protestant, and b) marrying MT would have removed him from his father‘s power once and for all and made him his dad‘s social superior, which Fritz as Zimmermann knew him would have been totally into. Zimmermann furtherly argues this explains why Seckendorff and Vienna tried to save Fritz from execution subsequently. Seckendorff wasn‘t just against the English marriage, he was for the Fritz/MT marriage as the thing to make Austria and the HRE secure. And, says Zimmermann, it totally explains why Franz Stephan attended Fritz‘ engagement party. He was gloating over his rival having to tie the knot with MT‘s cousin.
Lastly, Zimmermann says the Fritz/MT marriage would have saved the HRE from the Seven Years War and saved thousands and thousands of lives and thus he‘s a shipper, err, he regrets Fritz didn‘t get away and got to do it. (For Europe, and since the only good thing the MT/Franz Stephan marriage produced was Joseph. )
I find this fascinating. I mean, it‘s all nonsense, of course, but it‘s a great reflection of what was and wasn‘t known in 1790, and Zimmermann is actually a bit closer to reality in his opinion on the question as to whose idea the fabled Fritz/MT marriage plan was and whether the hero of the Protestant faith would have done it than most other people for another century. Also, he‘s the first contemporary Fritz fan I‘ve seen who regrets this marriage didn‘t happen.
(Gloating Franzl at the engagement party takes the cake, though. Zimmermann, you should have tried writing soap operas, you have a gift.)
mildred_of_midgard:
No idea where the jewelry story is from.
If it's not completely made up, it may be based on this:
The king was naturally keen to know who had funded the flight. Frederick, anxious to conceal his negotiations with Guy Dickens, claimed he had picked the diamonds out of the White Eagle order that had been presented to him by the king of Poland
I could see Wilhelmine getting substituted in a version of this story 60 years later.
ETA: Per Hinrichs, as summarized byselenak, "Re, the money, as in Katte's species facti, he used the diamond from the Saxon medal August the Strong had given him, plus, and this is is new to me, some jewelry from the Queen and Wilhelmine (a ring), in that they had given them both to him as presents and he pawned them (without their knowledge) to get cash." See the full write-up here.
Here's how you no-homo like a pro(fessional historian):
Historian 1: Look, Old Fritz can't be gay. There's NO WAY. He was so manly! He invaded provinces and partitioned Poland! He won a three-front war! He spent years on campaign enduring all sorts of hardships. Could he have done that if he was gay? NO HOMO.
Historian 2: I'm with you so far, but what's with the lack of sex? He was king, he could have had *anyone*. Explain, plz.
Historian 1: Okay, so remember the ladies Orzelska and Ritter and Wreech and Formera and so on and so forth? What do they all have in common? He was young! Clearly, something happened in his twenties that made him impotent.
Historian 2: Like what?
Historian 1: Like his dad kept a close eye on him, so he couldn't have normal affairs like a young prince, so he had to resort to prostitutes. Naturally, he caught a venereal disease.
Historian 2: Oooh, so that operation on his penis he was supposed to have had in 1733?
Historian 1: Yeah, except the operation went wrong and he was castrated.
Historian 2: Right, right, gotcha. And then he *pretended* to be into "Socratic" love so people wouldn't guess anything was wrong. But really it was just homoerotic poetry in the classical Greek style, no action or anything.
Historian 3: No, no, you're both wrong! If he was impotent, how could he have been manly enough to invade and hold Silesia? Eunuchs are weak and effeminate. Clearly the botched operation caused a *cosmetic* disfigurement that made him *self-conscious* about his penis, hence the no sex. Obviously he was actually perfectly virile the whole time!
Historian 3: But I'm with you on the faking homoerotic interest via poetry.
Historian 4: Idk about any operation, but I promise you, dear readers, there was nothing "unnatural" about Fritz's sex drive, it was just "underdeveloped." It's MANLY to not be into women and only like waging war, k? If he wrote poetry at all, much less erotic poetry, you will not find any mention of it in my incredibly manly book.
Historian 5: No, no, you're all wrong! He was sekritly in love with EC but forced to pretend he wasn't, because he had trash-talked the marriage to defy his father before he'd met her, and Fritz was constitutionally incapable of backing down. He would totally cut off his nose to spite his face for 46 years.
Allow me to convince you with all the evidence. Remember how they lived together while his father was alive, and he claimed to be having sex with her? He was perfectly happy at Rheinsberg. Lonely and sad afterward. QED. HUGE TRAGEDY for our totally heterosexual hero. Everybody shed a tear for the tragic love of Friedrich II and Elisabeth Christine.
Historian 6: Okay, but you guys realize there is no evidence that there was any operation at all? And his naked body was examined by many people after his death, and *nobody* commented on any supposed disfigurement? The doctor who treated Fritz during his life and claimed to have seen this "disfigurement" is a totally unreliable source, who would claim anything to salvage his hero's reputation. YES HOMO. EXTREMELY HOMO. MAXIMUM HOMO. [ETA: okay, not *Philippe d'Orleans* maximum, but Philippe may have been throwing some transgender in there too, hard to say. Anyway. Lots of homo. :P]
Margaret Goldsmith (writing in 1929): Nice job catching up, 2016 guy. I said all this a hundred years ago. Fritz/Katte 4ever. <333
(NB: I have placed all these accounts in dialogue form in the mouths of historians for the sake of entertainment. The actual details of the historiography, what was said by Fritz's doctor and what was said later and by who, are more complicated and irrelevant. Suffice it to say that these stories have all been bruited about by people EXTREMELY concerned to save Heroic Old Fritz's reputation from the awful and unsubstantiated gay rumors.)
Also, I entitled this comment "Crackfic" in reference to our Fritz/Joseph crackfic [ETA: contains so many obscure references and inside jokes that it's difficult to port as a standalone, but for now, here's the original thread], but honestly, the whole venereal disease/operation/castration/cosmetic disfigurement stories should count as crackfic too. :P
And yet those of us who think he might actually have been interested in men are the "gossipy sensationalists," omg, smh.
Part 2
Part 1 alludes to one of Fritz's doctors, Zimmermann by name. He's the one who came up with the operation claim that historians have since used.
selenak did a write-up of his hilarious mental gymnastics, as published in 1790, to account for Fritz's apparent lack of interest in women and apparent interest in men.Zimmerman speaks:
As we all know, Voltaire and countless other French bastards as well as some German ones have slandered our noble King by claiming he was into men. Even I, reader, had my doubts when someone claiming to have been his lover told me there was guy on guy action until shortly before the 7 Years War. But really, this is all nonsense. Let me set things straight, and I do mean STRAIGHT.
Fritz loved women. Adored them, couldn’t get enough oft hem. But when poor Doris got whipped and locked up, he was traumatized. (I don’t name Doris Ritter by name, I just say „a girl cruelly punished by FW who didn’t even have sex with him“.) Never ever again would he endanger a woman he actually liked! So he went to whores instead. Lots of whores, because he was so utterly manly and potent. Inevitably, STD ensued.
Fritz then asked one of his dastardly Schwedt cousins for help. Heinrich von Schwedt made him consult that utter quack Malchow, who put him through a cure which was no such thing. Fritz, thinking himself cured, then married EC with a clear conscience. And sure, he was a bit disgruntled about his father having forced the marriage on him, but he couldn’t help but falling in love with her, seeing as she was pretty and devoted and docile. For six months, there was utter married bliss and sex sex sex. Then, alas, the STD returned.
Now we all know our noble king was a man of action, and as ruthless towards himself as to everyone else. To protect his beloved wife, he had an operation done. This operation actually just stopped his semen flowing, i.e. it was sterilization by cutting off the semen transmission, but the quack who did it was clumsy, and so Fritz thought he got castrated! Which he totally was not. I can’t emphasize enough that he was NOT a eunuch, he just thought he was, got major body issues, and never ever had sex with anyone again. However, being a satirist himself, he knew there’d be major satire to fear from all those people envious of his manliness. So he decided to throw them off the scent by faking an interest in gay Greeks, gay Romans, gay poetry and gay people. It worked, too.
Not that he ever stopped loving the ladies in his mind. Just look at what happened with Barbarina. Can you explain that other than him wanting her and believing himself unable to actually have her? You can’t. He even kept her portrait in his bedroom. Shed a tear for all the Fritz/Barbarina action that didn’t happen, readers. Our King even forbade anyone to look at his naked body after he died to protect his secret. The only reason why I am now divulging it is that those French bastards won’t shut up with their gay insinuations, and it’s my patriotic duty to set things STRAIGHT.
mildred_of_midgard comments: Per Blanning, the surgeon and medical officers who did look at the body when preparing it for burial said it all looked completely normal, in fact "indignantly asserted that the royal genitalia were as 'complete and perfect as those of any healthy man,'" and Blanning furthermore claims that "Frederick’s naked body lay for more than one and a half hours and was seen by at least a dozen people, none of whom noticed any genital deformity."Other quotes from Blanning:
Although it does not necessarily invalidate his testimony, it needs to be recorded that Zimmermann was a long-standing and passionate admirer of Frederick, despite being Swiss by birth and Hanoverian by choice. After his first encounter with his hero in 1771 he left the room in floods of tears, exclaiming, "Oh, my love for the King of Prussia is beyond words!"
However, there is so much error in his account—for example, he has the newlyweds moving to Rheinsberg immediately after their marriage, rather than three years later—that his reliability must be doubted.
mildred_of_midgard: So does he not specify who this unnamed lover is at all?selenak: Taking another look, I see Zimmermann‘s source doesn‘t claim to have been the participant of the guy on guy action himself, though he might have been. The exact phrasing is thusly: (...) since one of Friedrich‘s favourites, the confidante and companion of his last years, told me in Potsdam, that Friedrich has loved shortly before the beginning of the Seven Years War as Socrates has loved Alcibiades.“.The sole confidant and companion of Fritz‘ last years I can think of was George Keith, Lord Marischall, before his own death, and I don‘t think he‘d be refered as „a favourite“? Anyway, Fritz, now you‘re in the Socrates role, it seems. I guess that makes Glasow the most likely candidate for Alcibiades in 1756.
mildred_of_midgard: My guess would be Lucchesini (his chamberlain from 1780 until his death in 1786 and reader after Catt was dismissed in 1782, and reported as the person Fritz confided in most in his last years), but he's not exactly a good source on what was happening in 1756. Unless Fritz is talking, and I doubt Fritz is talking?selenak: Also, quickly browsed to what Zimmermann, in 1790, is writing before this chapter on how Fritz was utterly straight. Firstly, he spells Katte „Catt“ and has him hunted down and captured while escaping. He also has Wilhelmine thrown through a window, so clearly has read Voltaire. Oh, and she gave Fritz her jewelry for the big escape. (Since it‘s 1790, no one has read her memoirs yet, where no such thing is claimed. No idea where the jewelry story is from.)Zimmerman‘s theory as to why Fritz tried to escape is pretty original, though. He says he doesn‘t buy the story of Fritz wanting to go to England and still pursuing the English marriage project. No, his own theory is that Fritz wanted to go to Austria and marry MT. He says he knows there is much indignation and scepticism about the Fritz/MT marriage plan story, but he himself thinks Fritz would have been utterly capable of it since a) he was truly indifferent to all religions, as opposed to being a hardcore Protestant, and b) marrying MT would have removed him from his father‘s power once and for all and made him his dad‘s social superior, which Fritz as Zimmermann knew him would have been totally into. Zimmermann furtherly argues this explains why Seckendorff and Vienna tried to save Fritz from execution subsequently. Seckendorff wasn‘t just against the English marriage, he was for the Fritz/MT marriage as the thing to make Austria and the HRE secure. And, says Zimmermann, it totally explains why Franz Stephan attended Fritz‘ engagement party. He was gloating over his rival having to tie the knot with MT‘s cousin.
Lastly, Zimmermann says the Fritz/MT marriage would have saved the HRE from the Seven Years War and saved thousands and thousands of lives and thus he‘s a shipper, err, he regrets Fritz didn‘t get away and got to do it. (For Europe, and since the only good thing the MT/Franz Stephan marriage produced was Joseph. )
I find this fascinating. I mean, it‘s all nonsense, of course, but it‘s a great reflection of what was and wasn‘t known in 1790, and Zimmermann is actually a bit closer to reality in his opinion on the question as to whose idea the fabled Fritz/MT marriage plan was and whether the hero of the Protestant faith would have done it than most other people for another century. Also, he‘s the first contemporary Fritz fan I‘ve seen who regrets this marriage didn‘t happen.
(Gloating Franzl at the engagement party takes the cake, though. Zimmermann, you should have tried writing soap operas, you have a gift.)
mildred_of_midgard:No idea where the jewelry story is from.
If it's not completely made up, it may be based on this:
The king was naturally keen to know who had funded the flight. Frederick, anxious to conceal his negotiations with Guy Dickens, claimed he had picked the diamonds out of the White Eagle order that had been presented to him by the king of Poland
I could see Wilhelmine getting substituted in a version of this story 60 years later.
ETA: Per Hinrichs, as summarized by
selenak, "Re, the money, as in Katte's species facti, he used the diamond from the Saxon medal August the Strong had given him, plus, and this is is new to me, some jewelry from the Queen and Wilhelmine (a ring), in that they had given them both to him as presents and he pawned them (without their knowledge) to get cash." See the full write-up here.