Will do. I‘ve been at a conference this last week which was great but also exhausting and time-consuming. In between, I did manage to start one of the two new big MT biographies in earnest and have some more useful and/or fun anecdotes for you two. I also am listening to a complete rendition of Wanderungen in der Mark Brandenburg, which has a Neu-Ruppin and a Rheinsberg chapter, too, and of course Fontane gets chatty about Fritz in Neuruppin as well. You probably know this, but Cahn does not, but: in order to win Dad‘s favour, post-Küstrin Fritz, stationed in Neuruppin since about two months, writes home to FW that there‘s a really extra size tall shepherd who already has refused to join the army, and he‘s totally willing to kidnap him for his father‘s Tall Guy Regiment. (A moment of silence, please, for the poor tall shepherd whose fault Hohenzollern dysfunction was not, and who just wanted to stay with his sheep.)
Fontane also mentions the Austrian money Fritz got via Seckendorff well until 1736 - and also that Seckendorff left him in no doubt that this wasn‘t him, S, as a private person doing the crown prince a favour but Karl VI (aka MT‘s Dad) it‘s from, and tongue-in-cheekily (for a Prussian writer a hundred years later writing about the national idol) adds he wonders whether since Fritz ever paid MT (as her father‘s heir) back, since post-Silesia it‘s not like he was lacking for funds and revenues...
But really, Cahn, we need a new post, so I can tell you all about MT being unimpressed with her civil service asking for vacations when she‘s back to work in the cabinet just a few days after giving birth and her favourite daughter, Maria Christine, aka Mimi, carrying on a passionate love affair with Joseph‘s first wife Isabella of Parma (we have Isabella‘s love letters; in the 19th century this was passed off as a platonic romantic friendship entirely and just in the spirit of the emo age, but they had to edit out the raunchier bits to do so).
Re: MT marriage AU, cont'd
Fontane also mentions the Austrian money Fritz got via Seckendorff well until 1736 - and also that Seckendorff left him in no doubt that this wasn‘t him, S, as a private person doing the crown prince a favour but Karl VI (aka MT‘s Dad) it‘s from, and tongue-in-cheekily (for a Prussian writer a hundred years later writing about the national idol) adds he wonders whether since Fritz ever paid MT (as her father‘s heir) back, since post-Silesia it‘s not like he was lacking for funds and revenues...
But really, Cahn, we need a new post, so I can tell you all about MT being unimpressed with her civil service asking for vacations when she‘s back to work in the cabinet just a few days after giving birth and her favourite daughter, Maria Christine, aka Mimi, carrying on a passionate love affair with Joseph‘s first wife Isabella of Parma (we have Isabella‘s love letters; in the 19th century this was passed off as a platonic romantic friendship entirely and just in the spirit of the emo age, but they had to edit out the raunchier bits to do so).