Re: the eyes, remember when I mentioned that Amalie was supposedly the sibling with the closest physical resemblance to Fritz? Goethe's late age pen pal Zelter, a musician, once got her to let him go through her cherished collection of rare original Bach manuscripts (as far as we know, she did not have an affair with Friedemann, but she did manage to gather the most impressive collection of hand-written Bach scores - both JB himself and his sons; Carl Emmanual also called her his patroness and wrote a dedication to her), and here's how Zelter describes it - Amalie was an old lady at that point:
"Princess Amalie once let me see her musical collection, but only the titles, through the glass of the cupboards. One of the works, she took out, but kept it in her hands, and only let me look. But then I grabbed it in order to further browse through it, and shocked, her eyes grew large as wheels. They were the eyes of her brother."
(„Prinzeß Amalie ließ mich einmal ihre Musikalien sehen, aber nur die Titel, durch das Glas der Schränke. Ein Werk nahm sie heraus, behielt es aber in Händen und ließ mich nur hineingucken. Da griff ich aber zu, um darin blättern zu können, und sie, erschrocken, machte Augen wie Wagenräder. Es waren die Augen ihres Bruders.“)
Re: What the Prussian Ambassador Wrote
Re: the eyes, remember when I mentioned that Amalie was supposedly the sibling with the closest physical resemblance to Fritz? Goethe's late age pen pal Zelter, a musician, once got her to let him go through her cherished collection of rare original Bach manuscripts (as far as we know, she did not have an affair with Friedemann, but she did manage to gather the most impressive collection of hand-written Bach scores - both JB himself and his sons; Carl Emmanual also called her his patroness and wrote a dedication to her), and here's how Zelter describes it - Amalie was an old lady at that point:
"Princess Amalie once let me see her musical collection, but only the titles, through the glass of the cupboards. One of the works, she took out, but kept it in her hands, and only let me look. But then I grabbed it in order to further browse through it, and shocked, her eyes grew large as wheels. They were the eyes of her brother."
(„Prinzeß Amalie ließ mich einmal ihre Musikalien sehen, aber nur die Titel, durch das Glas der Schränke. Ein Werk nahm sie heraus, behielt es aber in Händen und ließ mich nur hineingucken. Da griff ich aber zu, um darin blättern zu können, und sie, erschrocken, machte Augen wie Wagenräder. Es waren die Augen ihres Bruders.“)