maia asked: Compare and contrast the US right now and Germany in the 1930s.

Welll, that's the 1 billion question, isn't it. (Literary so, given that the Orange Felon wants to have this sum of money from any fellow autocrat so they can join his "board of peace".

Now: being German, I instinctively shy away from invoking Godwin's law, so I'll start at the outset by declaring that no, I don't think the Orange One is Hitler 2.0, or that ICE are the Gestapo. (The SA during the late Weimar Republic might be a better comparison, as in, paramlitary units lustily doing their best to create and exude violence in the cities so that the dear leader can declare only he can restore order.) Also, I wish we'd have had as many demonstrations against our newly authoritarian government in, say, 1933-1935 as there are in the US right now, instead of, well, none. Individual acts of resistance, sure. Also the SPD being the sole party speaking out against the Ermächtigungsgesetz after the Reichstag burning. (Don't remind me that our current bunch of Neonazis wants to inhabit the very room named after the brave SPD guy who spoke against Hitler on that occasion in 1933.) But no equivalent to the "No Kings" demonstrations, or the current ones in the bitter cold of Minnesota, not until it's the 1940s and the women married to some of the last free Jews in Berlin actually demonstrate in front of Gestapo headquarters when their men get rounded up. I respect and admire the hell out of these women, but given the reaction by Goebbels & Co., who really didn't know how to handle this, I can't help but which these kind of demonstrations had happened in 1933 already, when the ostracisation and taking away of civil rights of everyone's neiighbours started.

Anyway: where I do see parallels is the way rich industrialists paved the way and/or quickly fell in line and profit from the autoritarian government that came to power legally and then promptly started to destroy the republic it was supposed to govern from the inside, and the way huge swaths of the media of the day even before complete state control lis established cleave to the new Overlords. And on the other side of the political spectrum, I see a parallel in the tendency of the left and/or liberal parties to attack each other instead of allying against the authoritarians. (This would be the early 1930s pre 1933.) Now this is hardly unique to the 1930s; a friend of mine who is in his late 80s and actually is a member of the SPD, our traditional centre-left party, said you can always rely on the left to attack each other with more vehemence than anyone else to the profit of their opponents.) Seriously, in the late Weimar Republic the Communists might have had their streetfights with the Nazis, but they kept declaring the SPD was the true enemy, and never mind the communists, your avarage progressive journalist was far more likely to attack and complain moderate or left leaning politicians than the Nazis. (Famously, journalistic icon Karl Kraus declared this was because "nothing about the Nazis inspires my imagination" ("Zu den Nazis fällt mir nichts ein"). Thanks, Kraus.) I'm not saying Democrats should be above criticism, absolutely not, but honestly, I have no time at all for the type of purist who declared they couldn't vote for Kamala Harris (or Hilary Clinton before her) because "Republicans and Democrats are the same anyway" or other arguments along that line. They knew what was at stake, just as anyone paying attention back in the Weimar Republic day did.


Of course, the Orange Menace has been far more open about his grifter status and his unending greed than the Nazis back in the day, but that's because of the difference in eras and societies; financial shakedowns and mafia tactics are getting admiration from huge parts of US society, it seems, whereas the Nazs while being no less interested in robbery by state (some were a bit more blatant about it like Goering, but it really was practised on every level, starting, of course, with forcing German Jews to "sell" their property for ricidiculous little sums) felt the need to dress it up far more, not least because part of Hitler's image included priding himself on "asceticism" and "living for the people". But they - and pretty much every populist/authoritarian system not just in the 1930s - use the same basic structure in their rethoric which unfortunately keeps working through the decades (centuries?).

1) You, the audience, are the best, you're perfect, anyone who wants you to change or adjust is an evil tyrant.

2.) But evidently your life isn't perfect. This is the fault of THEM. (Never, ever, is it the slightest bit your responsibility.) THEY are a mixture of external bogeymen and within-the-society scapegoat. THEY have absolutely no redeeming features and so you don't have to consider talking or negotiating or what not - THEY just deserve to be squashed. Punishing THEM will also magically solve whatever problems your society currently has.

3.) Of course, the squashing and punishing of THEM cannot be done with those lame old laws already existing. On the contrary, these have to be gotten rid off. Any attempt to restrain the punishment and squashing of THEM is clearly treason anyway.

4.) The glorious movement you, you wonderful person, are now a part of is led by the best leader ever. If he doesn't deliver all you want from him immediately, well, he's punishing both the weak traitors and the evil brutes for you, and isn't that the best part anyway?


Meanwhile, any half way responsible take on political situation basically has to start with "it's complicated", analyze and use "maybe it's this way, but maybe there are also other factors" type of qualifications, and any policy of a democratic government is by nature of the government a compromise. Meaning you always leave some disappointment in your electorate. And in an age with an ever shorter attention span, where the majority of people are not bothering with reading or listening to longer explanations anymore and just want short and punchy reassurances, this is possibly more dangerous a fertile ground for the transition of a Republic to a totalitarian state than Germany of the early 1930s was.

Not least because Germany, not as the Kaiserreich nor as the Weimar Republic nor even as the Third Reich, was ever the most powerful state of the world, with the largest miilitary and economic might. The fact the US won't be this for much longer anymore if things continue the way they are going isn't a comfort, because then it will be China.) It did a lot of damage when ruled by evil people anyway. But it had at no point the type of power the US has right now. This is not a comforting thought, either.

Lastly: in school, we were taught that a problem the Weimar Republic had was that there weren't enough republicans with a small r in it, that the Empire had conditioned its subjects to a strictly hiearchical society, that as opposed to England Germany hadn't had a centuries long transitonary period between absolutism and parliamentary rule, let a centuries of a Republic with the resulting self-understanding the way the uS has. On the one hand, I am a bit more sceptical on tha last part now. I mean, I always knew that The West Wing wasn't reality tv, but I didn't think The Handmaid's Tale was, either. Especially with the Nixon precedence, where the Republicans did turn against their blatantly caught at wrong doing President instead of removing their spine and denying he could have possibly done something wrong, I did believe the whole checks and balance thing I had learned about in school did work. For enlightened self interest reasons if not for moral reasons, because who would want their career to depend on the whim of a despot with more self control than a toddler? But no. On the other hand, see above. I only wish we would have had so much visible protest and opposition to horrible injustices in the 1930s as I see every day happening in the US. The Weimar Republic ceased to be within three months of Hitler becoming Chancellor, basically. By autumn, the transformation into hardcore dictatorship was complete. Whereas the US is still a Republic. If you can keep it.

The other days

I'll have you know it's really hard to limit myself to only five. And of course this is highly subjective. For an entertaining alternative choice with two per German Bundesland (i.e. federal state), check out the two most recent episodes of History of the Germans here.


Aaaanyway, pondering deeply, this is what I have come up with from the depths of my Teutonic yet Southern Wessi German soul:

1.) The Rhine between, say, Düsseldorf and Koblenz. You can either go by boat on the river itself or take the train, but this is a combination of landscape, architecture and history which is both aesthetically pleasing and incredibly historically and contemporarily relevant. Parts of it are ridiculously romantic. Other parts visibly suffer from climate change.

2.) Berlin. I am the opposite of a Berlinerin, but it's the capital, and talk about being relevant for German history (though not beyond the last two hundred and fifty years or so) and present. If you don't visit in Winter, take a boat trip on the Spree as well.

3.) Munich. Was bombed as much as Berlin, did a better job at reconstruction, is the South to Berlin's North (and only three hours away from Italy via Autobahn or train), with the Alps next door. Offers Baroque splendour to Berlin's 19th century classicism. Speaking of German history of the 20th century: if you haven't visited the Jewish Museum in Berlin with its section devoted to the Holocaust, visit the NS Doku centre and the Jewish museum in Munich. (Don't visit the Dachau concentration camp if you're in a hurry, but do visit it if you have much more time, and don't do anything else on that day. It's stomach turning and it ought to do be. You can't do that in the morning and then hop over to the art collection at the Alte Pinakothek in the afternoon.)

4.) Lake Constance, aka der Bodensee. Most parts of this gigantic lake are either in the German state Baden(-Württemberg) or in Switzerland, but there's a Bavarian section as well, oh, and a Rhine connection. The individual cities located on the lake and the islands in it offer early medieval castles and Zeppelins (they were first built here, and if you have a lot of cash, you can still board one), 19th century German poets and prehistoric settlements, and lots and lots of vegetables and gardening and great food throughout the year. Oh yeah, and the Romans were there, too. And a famous Church Council featuring in opera and historical novels. (Have a pic spam.)


5.) Bamberg. Hamburg. Was bombed to smithereens, did a reasonable job at reconstruction, offers a legendary harbor which you can take a two hours boat trip to visit, two great towers to have a view from, an early morning fish market, an immigration museum, stylish nineteenth century villas, quite expensive shops, some good art musuems and the Reeperbahn. Look, it was as important in shaping the Beatles as Liverpool was, and so the world owes it a visit for this alone, okay? Also: three hours train ride to some spectacular northern sea beaches from there.

The other days

Daily horrors whenever one catches up with the news, both on a global and national level, makes for an increasing need to find some way to fannishly relax. (Mind you, there are no safe zones from current day insanity in fandom, either. Some weeks ago yours truly was horrified to learn the claim that the Orange Felon supposedly likes Sunset Boulevard, one of Billy Wilder's masterpieces. I'm still in denial about that - maybe he just likes some songs from ALW's musical version? How would he even have the patience and focus to watch an entire movie with no action scenes, no sex scenes and lots and lots of sharp dialogue, not to mention no macho hero in sight? What Billy Wilder, who as a young man watched the country he was in go from a Republic to a fascist state, but who was with all cynisim pretty idealistic about the US where he found refuge would have said about the present, I don't want to imagine. At the very least, he'd demand a rewrite. I mean: like all VPs during the Munich security conference, the current one a few days ago visited Dachau. I'm not exaggerating, it is what every single US VP attending the Munich security conference has done. Like the rest of them, Vance got a guided tour by one of the few still living survivors. If it filtered through that Dachau, one of the very first German concentration camps which when it was built and put to work in 1933 included as its very first inmates Social Democrats, Union Representatives and Communists, i.e. the very people Elon Musk and Alice Weidel (Germany's Marine Le Pen wannabe) declared to be Nazis to an audience of billions, Vance didn't say. Instead, he went from visiting a concentration camp to meeting Weidel, i.e. the leading woman of a certified right extremist (or if you want to be less polite, Neonazi) party, and then held forth at the conference where he claimed to defend free speech (you know, while his boss kicks out reporters daring to say "Gulf of Mexico" and erases trans people out of existence) and told Europeans they're the true anti democratic dictators and should work with their Nazi parties already.

Billy Wilder, at his most cynical, would not have written such caricatures as are currently in charge of dismantling democracy not just in the US but nearly everywhere. Btw, the retort by our current secretary for defense, Boris Pistorius, was this:





Aaanyway. I find history podcasts not just interesting in general but at such times as these oddly comforting in a "this, too, shall pass" way. (I am not referring to the history of the 20th century, of course. That currently provides a "this, too, shall come back" vibe.) Since it's been a while, some impressions on my English language favourites:

History of Byzantium: got into something of a depressive slump after the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, but that's history, and it is now back to the narrative. (Decline-and-fall-like as it has to be.)

Not just the Tudors: continues to be very entertaining, and most guest speakers Susannah Libscombe interviews are good, with the occasional dud; most recently there excellent episodes on the various males of the Borgia family, and then for Lucrezia she changed her interview partner and alas her new interviewee was, shall we say, less than stellar.


History of the Germans: has since last I wrote been reordered so there are thematic seasons, i.e. if you're just interested in, say, the Ottonians or the Hanseatic League, you can listen to just those seasons. On a personal level, my experience with this podcast has been that the seasons that deal with parts of history I'm not so familiar with captivate me more than those I do already know a lot about, but not because the later is badly researched (au contraire), it's just that I love getting intrigued and learning more. So of course I have favourites. In the recent year, I loved the Interregnum season (starring among others Rudolf von Habsburg, the first Emperor of that family, going from simple count to HRE buy "waving a marriage contract in one hand and a sword in the other" as he tactically married his many female relations to lots of dying-out-older nobility, Ludwig the Bavarian (proving that getting excommunicated by the (Avignon) Pope is no longer the big deal it used to be as he employs, as Dirk puts it, half the cast of The Name of the Rose, and Karl IV, he after whom the bridge and a lot of other things in Prague are named after) and the current season, The Reformation before the Reformation, which you get the whole late medieval enchilade of corrupt popes and antipopes, the Council of Konstanz (good for book swapping, not so good for actual radical reforms, ask Jan Hus, who gets burned during it) and then the Hussite Revolution in Bohemia.

Revolutions: Mike Duncan's second podcast which used to be finished with the Russian Revolution but now has been resumed by him with a highly entertaining sci fi season, the Martian Revolution. Its backstory sounds a bit inspired by The Expanse as well as lots of the historical revolutions he has covered. If the CEO of OmniCorps whose blinkered know-it-all-ness, ego and lack of anything resembling human empahy triggered the Martian Revolution sounds a bit like a current tech bro in charge of the White House, I'm sure it's entirely coincidental.

Based not directly on history but on a historical novel, The Flight Portifolio by Julie Orringer, this is a new miniseries available on Netflix telling the story of Varian Fry and several of his co-workers in the Emergency Rescue Committee who between 1940 - 1941 saved more than 2000 refugees, mostly, though not exclusively, anti-Nazi artists, writers and intellectuals. As with most fictionalisations of rl events, some of the rl people didn't make the cut - in the series, the main rl characters other than Fry are Mary Jayne Gold, Albert Hirschmann (who is both himself and merged with another rl character who doesn't exist in this version, Gold's lover Raymond Couraud), Lisa Fittko and as the sole helpful instead of obstructive member of the US Consulate at Marseille,
Hiram Bingham. Whereas not only Couroud but Miriam Davenport don't show up. There are also fictional main characters: two ex-soldiers-turned-hotel-workers-turned-resistance fighters, Paul Kandidjo and his younger brother, Varian Fry's not-so-ex-boyfriend Thomas Lovegrove. Of the many, many famous people the ERC saved or tried to save, similarly while others are name dropped we only "meet" a tiny selection (which makes dramatic sense), to wit, Walter Benjamin, Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt, Marcell Duchamps, Walter Mehring, and Marc Chagall.

(I was sad Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger as well as Heinrich and Nelly Mann didn't make the cut, or for that matter Franz Werfel and Alma Mahler Werfel, because them being saved is actually how I knew about Varian Fry, but like I said: I can understand the series limiting the cameos.)

Now I haven't read the original novel, though having watched the series, I googled and found out that when it got published in 2019, it providing Varian Fry with a (fictional) male lover was attacked in the New York Times, only for Fry's real life son to write to the NYT and say that yes, actually, his father did have (real life) male lovers. Here's an interview with the author, Julie Orringer, talking about why she made the choices she did, from the Paris Review. Not having read the novel in question, my own review is based strictly on the miniseries.

( Detailed observations of the tv series ensue )

All in all: won't become the Casablanca of tv series, but is vey watchable and hopefully will introduce more people to some rl heroes who did consider it their business to help refugees in the darkest of times.

Several things accumulating during a busy week, mainly:

1.) Andor season 1 finale: ( Spoilery thoughts. )

2.) I also finished all the episodes of the History of the Germans podcast released so far. (It's reached the near midpoint of the 13th century so far.) And can only repeat my reccomendation. It's history narrated entertainingly and comprehensively, yet without any dumbing down or patronizing, and I enjoyed both the episodes about eras I knew little or nothing about (early Ottonians, for example) and those I knew a lot about (Hohenstaufen). While using the various kings and Emperors as narrative red threads, the author also covers a lot more aspects of the eras - the completely changing role of the papacy, for example, going from its nadir (the Popes were only puppets of essentually two Roman noble families, often in their early 20s or even teenagers, and had zilch authority outside of Rome, with the Emperors installing bishops and abbots - this era is also known as the "pornocracy", I kid you not) to the Innocent III "All monarchs including the Emperors are my lowly servants" theocratic power height. The podcast is also good at paying due tribute to various female power players (as for example, but by no means exclusively, Empresses Adelheid and Theophanu whom I've written about before) and pointing out that while nineteenth century historians defined the various noble familiies jockeying for power through their patriarchs, several of them at the time defined themselves through their most powerful female ancestor instead. And there's just lots and losts of intrigue, backstabbing, scheming, and dysfunctional families. While reading through other people's reviews, I see they keep expressing amazement the (German, but doing this in English) author has a sense of humor. To which I say: guys, the rumors of our seriousness have been vastly exaggarated, and also, Erich Kästner, Heinrich Heine and Kurt Tucholsky would like a word.

yhlee asked me about my favourite German dishes, which I hadn't written about before and thus am happily able to reply to in detail. Now, several of my faves wouldn't count as German (what with being Italian), but I do love products of our local cuisine as well. Here are a few of my all time favourites, with illustrations and thus hidden beneath a cut.

( Delicious meals await your click! )


The other days

When luring mildred_of_midgard into participating in ficathons over a year ago, I used the bribe of indicating this might be the occasion for fanfiction starring Peter (von) Keith to happen. Peter usually, if he shows up at all in historical fiction, plays a minor supporting role in the big 1730 tragedy of Frederick the Great's youth, the escape attempt plus ensuing bff (and probable lover) execution and prison stint, as the other friend and possible lover who did make it out of Prussia alive. Since for understandable reasons most 1730 dealing fiction is focused on Frederick and Katte (the tragically executed (boy)friend), having to deal with this other guy involved is something probably deemed as just too confusing and/ior disrupting the OTP intensity, and thus Peter ends up either being confused with his younger brother (who was physically present during the disaster of an escape attempt and 'fessed up about it), or left out altogether. (I've even seen a tv series where Peter, his brother and Katte are made into the same character.)

However, as it turns out - and as mildred_of_midgard found out and chronicled in this post - there is actually a lot to learn about Peter (and his relationships) if you care to look, and I have always had a soft spot for those characters who survive a tragedy and then have to rebuild their lives from scratch, who know they might not have the great central starring role in the drama they're caught up in but do the best with the part they're given regardless, forging their own happiness. So it was my pleasure to (finally!) write the promised Peter (von) Keith story for her, for which there could only be one title:



The Boy Who Lived (5993 words) by Selena
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century Frederician RPF, 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Peter Karl Christoph von Keith, Hans Hermann von Katte & Peter Karl Christoph von Keith, Francesco Algarotti/Peter Karl Christoph von Keith, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great/Hans Hermann von Katte
Characters: Peter Karl Christoph von Keith, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Hans Hermann von Katte, Caroline von Ansbach Queen of England, Petronella von der Schulenburg Lady Chesterfield, Francesco Algarotti, George II of Great Britain
Additional Tags: Character Study, Survivor Guilt, Angst with a Happy Ending, Exile, Escape, Jealousy
Summary:

In 1730, three young men try to escape Prussia: Crown Prince Friedrich, Hans Herrmann von Katte - and Peter von Keith. Only one of them succeeds. As Peter finds himself free (unlike Friedrich) and alive (unlike Katte), he also finds himself haunted by love and guilt while searching for a way to make his own future.

Now I had planned to write a lighthearted treat in the same fandom as well, around an idea I nicknamed in my head "Two sugar daddies, no waiting", but this year I really did not find the time. Otoh, I was spoiled as a reader both with the wonderful Voltaire and Frederick as BNFs in modern fandom AU which cahn wrote for me, and by the just as hilarious "Challenge yourrself to relax", a Corporate AU Mildred wrote for cahn in which Frederick as a CEO is only slightly less driven and dysfunctional than he was as King...but at least there are coffee mugs for his long suffering supporting cast. :)

Die Eiserne Zeit/Age of Iron is a docudrama miniseries in six parts, mainly a German-French co production originally shown at ARTE and now also available at Amazon Prime, about the 30 Years War. It tackles the extremely difficult task of getting across an international war with a myriad of different parties involved which kept changing goals over the decades in a way that's accessible to a tv audience which doesn't just consist of academics well read about 17th century Europe by providing the viewers with a couple of (historical) people whose personal stories they can follow through part or in a few cases all of the war. By and large, the series does this very well. Mind you, the first episode is by far the most stiff, possibly because two of the main people presented, the Winter King and Queen - Elizabeth Stuart (sister of Charles I) and Friedrich of the Palatinate), whose short lived rule in Prague kicks off the war along with the earlier defenestration - do not come across as interesting in the same way the characters later episodes will focus on. But I'd stll reccommend watching it, because it does explain the set up well, and also it introduces one of the charactes who make it through the entire war, all thirty years of it, mercenary Peter Altendorf, who is one of the few common soldiers able to read and write at the time and who kept a still preserved diary which is a great primary source on what the war was like on a day to day level. Altendorf was a Lutheran but fought mostly for Catholic armies; he was married twice, and his wives (and children, all of whom from his first marriage died when still babies or toddlers) were part of the army. (Especially the longer the war took, the more women tried to escape the fate of rape and murder by marrying a soldier and sticking with an army as part of the baggage trains.)

The other people we're mainly following: Peter Paul Rubens, painter, diplomat, spy (only the first two episodes), Père Joseph, Capuchin and Richelieu's top agent, Barbara Gseller, an innkeeper in Biberach who is so well documented because she'd end up denounced as a witch (some of the worst waves of witch prosecution happened during the 30 Years War in Germany) (and would as one of the very very few escape from this alive), and Anna Maria von Haugwitz, whose parents die in one of the notorious masacres of the war but who ends up marrying Swedish general Wrangel, one of the most influential and richest men to emerge from it. The usual 30 Years War VIPs like Catholic General Wallenstein or Swedish King Gustav Adolf, or Cardinal Richelieu also show up, but more in cameos; the series really tries for a middle-and-ground level perspective (except for the opening episode with the two royals). These storylines rarely intersect - when they do, it's briefly, like Rubens and Pere Joseph playing chess and trying to sound each other out in Paris, or the Swedes coming through Biberach which means Anna Maria and her husband are briefly in Barbara Gseller's inn - but they do succeed painting an intense picture and making you care what happens to these people. Hagendorf's relationship with his wives is surprisingly affectionate and partner-like - once when he's seriously wounded after a battle his wife goes plundering in his stead, for example, which is essential since that's what they live from, with regular salaries only rarely getting paid -, and there is a great poignancy in Barbara Gseller being the only one who is polite, even kind to the executioner whom no one else wants to sit near, let alone drink with when he comes into her inn, which pays off in the episode where she gets denounced, and when in the last episode after she incredibly (but not inventedly, I looked it up afterwards) has survived her trial, she sees him again, I caught my breath.

In between, you get interviews with various historians - Germans, French, Swedish - and close ups of documents as can be expected. Inevitably, there's a lot left out - for example, the entire literature that emerged from this war, so no mention of the original pre Brecht Mother Courage, the one by Grimmelshausen -, but it does give you a good idea of what the main causes and (shifting) goals of the war were and what it was like for the people caught up in it. If it's available in your area, I can reccomend it.

The other series I recently consumed was the BBC's radio dramatisation of all eight (at the time they did this, i.e. no Legacy of Spies) John Le Carré novels featuring George Smiley, from Call to the Dead to The Secret Pilgrim, with Simon Russell Beale as Smiley. I enjoyed it a lot, some installments inevitably more than others, and was fascinated by some of the choices caused by the medium. A key one was the way these dramatizations Smiley's wife Ann. In the novels, she's except for one scene in Smiley's People never there in the present day narration, but much thought about by Smiley, or recalled by him and other people. In the radio plays, she's performed by Anna Chancellor, and shows up as Head!Ann frequently in Smiley's thoughts, when she argues with him, teases or encourages him, and provides part of his inner voice. Which not only makes the inner monologues dialogues - good choice in an audio version - but also provides the elusive Ann with more dimension than "promiscous society girl". It also makes it understandable that Smiley can never quite let her go emotionally even when they are separated, and not just because Chancellor even in a voice only performance is able to get across she's charming, but because she's given emotional insight and an irreverent humor (taking its cue from real Ann telling George in their "Smiley's People" present day scene "I'm a comedian, George, I need a straight man"), and gets a lot of the best lines. (You can also tell the producers got fond of Anna Chancellor as Ann; in The Secret Pilgrim, which is told from Ned's pov and is basically a collection of short stories, only some of which feature Smiley, they included her one more time anyway by letting one of the stories be told by Ann to Ned when they're unexpectedly at the same party, instead of letting Ned come across it while sorting files.) Since much of the Le Carré universe is so very male, it also provides the stories with a female presence who neither ends up dead nor victimised nor is Connie Sachs, and all this without changing the stories themselves. (Since Ann is still mostly absent except in Smiley's head.)

Simon Russell Beale is very good in the main part, and so are the other actors, though not for the first time, I wished German characters wouldn't be portrayed by actors faking German accents when the dialogue in-story isn't in English (since Smiley is fluent, and so is Alec Leamas). Though I can forgive htis more easily in a radio version, where an accent immediately signals to the listener where the character in question is supposed to come from without this having to be described.) Listening to the stories themselves, I was struck by the fact that as early as The Looking Glass War, Le Carré had a go at the poisonous nature of British WWII nostalgia. Having finished listening, I wondered whether anyone ever wrote a Le Carré/The Americans crossover, but after some superficial checking, I don't think so. Hm. Note to self: try it, at some hypothetical point in the future when you have the time again.

I had a (happily) exhausting week travelling through the Mark Brandenburg. Now, I've just put up four extensive photo posts complete with explanations at rheinsberg, which I'll link you to, but for everyone wanting just a short overview:

( Beneath the cut, along with links to the big posts )

I continue to blame Cahn and Mildred and various debates. Also my thing for dysfunctional siblings and their messed up relationships.

Promises To Keep (3595 words) by Selena
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, 18th Century CE Frederician RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia, Henry of Prussia & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Henry of Prussia, August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia & Henry of Prussia, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Augustus William of Prussia, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Other(s)
Characters: Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758), Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Friedrich Wilhelm I von Preußen | Frederick William I of Prussia
Additional Tags: Dysfunctional Family, Seven Years' War, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brother Feels, Survivor Guilt, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Loyalty
Summary:

It's 1758, the Seven-Years-War rages, and the royal family of Prussia is tearing itself apart. Wilhelmine, Friedrich's favourite sister, wants to reconcile the feuding brothers. But Wilhelmine is dying…