Me: *counts* Me: checks wikipedia, because super bad at dates Me: Oh Heinrich. <33333333
March 1799 - August 17, 1786 = 12 years, 6 months, some days. Just saying.
OK... tell me more about Lehndorff? So I know from your previous posts that he was EC's chamberlain and Heinrich's friend-with-benefits and had a diary... did he write about Heinrich in his diary??
Extensively, and it's even online...in German...in scanned pages...in Fraktur. *facepalm* Actually, the font is a lot less bad than most such examples, but omfg. Also, I can get copy-pastable OCRed text views, but only a couple sentences at a time without paying. I was looking him up recently for the Fredersdorf quotes.
Anyway, I'll give you what I can from various bios.
"His love life can be followed in some detail through the diaries of Count Lehndorff, who was himself besotted with the prince, as the following sample reveals:
"1 May 1753 the most miserable day of my life, because Prince Henry is leaving; I go to see him, my heart full of grief. I hurry to my dear prince, what a sorrowful meeting! I leave him without a word, I see tears pouring down his face, the dearest in the world, what a man to be worshipped, what a loss for me, I swear eternal devotion. I return to my home in sorrow and cannot sleep, I write my prince a letter.
"2 May I get a letter from him which makes me burst into tears. I jump on my horse and ride to meet him, but when I see his carriage approaching I get off and hide, otherwise my heart would have burst. I did not think that one person could be so devoted to another; in pagan times they would have made him a God.
"The sight of Prince Henry in tight riding breeches and looking 'as beautiful as an angel' was enough to send Lehndorff into erotic rapture."
Also, Lehndorff fell in love with an English aristocrat, Sir. Charles Hotham, and wanted to join him in England. But as a Prussian, he had to ask the King's permission to leave the country. Fritz said no. "I cry, and I cry, and I cry," Lehndorff writes. No reason given for the refusal, but I think we all know the real reason is: "If *I* can't go to England with my lover, *nobody* gets to go to England with their lover."
The Maras: *sigh*
Lehndorff also records a masked party in January 1754 where AW dressed up as a woman as part of some general royal hijinks (with heavy anti-Semitic overtones that Lehndorff and all the Hohenzollern brothers thought was hilarious, and which I will refrain from recounting), and also later in the month, when a Countess Bentick more seriously dressed as a man, "in the forlorn hope that her male attire would win her the attention of the exclusively homosexual Prince Henry." No dice, Countess.
After Heinrich's forced marriage, Lehndorff wrote to him: 'Monseigneur, the king has built a palace for you with admirable arrangements: one may spend one’s life there without ever setting one's eyes on one's wife.'
I should add that on this occasion, Bielfeld referred to Heinrich as a "Potsdamite," saying that even though his wife was of more than mortal beauty, it would do her no good. Oh, those Potsdamites. :P
If I find an accessible translation, I'll let you know, but I doubt there is one, since even my biographers are using the German original, and they usually tell you about translations where they can.
Also, I just want to say that today the OCR + auto Google Translate function in Chrome seem to be behaving themselves, but last time I checked, Chrome persisted in translating "Dreissig Jahre am Hofe Friedrichs des Grossen" as "Thirty Years at the Pants of Frederick the Great," through what I suspect was a confusion between 'f' and old-fashioned 's', leading to "Dreissig Jahre am Hose Friedrichs des Grossen."
It made me laugh so much. So close but yet so far! It's "Thirty Years in the Pants of Frederick the Great's Other Self," Google!
Re: Oh Brother! More impressions of the Heinrich bio
Me: checks wikipedia, because super bad at dates
Me: Oh Heinrich. <33333333
March 1799 - August 17, 1786 = 12 years, 6 months, some days. Just saying.
OK... tell me more about Lehndorff? So I know from your previous posts that he was EC's chamberlain and Heinrich's friend-with-benefits and had a diary... did he write about Heinrich in his diary??
Extensively, and it's even online...in German...in scanned pages...in Fraktur. *facepalm* Actually, the font is a lot less bad than most such examples, but omfg. Also, I can get copy-pastable OCRed text views, but only a couple sentences at a time without paying. I was looking him up recently for the Fredersdorf quotes.
Anyway, I'll give you what I can from various bios.
"His love life can be followed in some detail through the diaries of Count Lehndorff, who was himself besotted with the prince, as the following sample reveals:
"1 May 1753 the most miserable day of my life, because Prince Henry is leaving; I go to see him, my heart full of grief. I hurry to my dear prince, what a sorrowful meeting! I leave him without a word, I see tears pouring down his face, the dearest in the world, what a man to be worshipped, what a loss for me, I swear eternal devotion. I return to my home in sorrow and cannot sleep, I write my prince a letter.
"2 May I get a letter from him which makes me burst into tears. I jump on my horse and ride to meet him, but when I see his carriage approaching I get off and hide, otherwise my heart would have burst. I did not think that one person could be so devoted to another; in pagan times they would have made him a God.
"The sight of Prince Henry in tight riding breeches and looking 'as beautiful as an angel' was enough to send Lehndorff into erotic rapture."
Also, Lehndorff fell in love with an English aristocrat, Sir. Charles Hotham, and wanted to join him in England. But as a Prussian, he had to ask the King's permission to leave the country. Fritz said no. "I cry, and I cry, and I cry," Lehndorff writes. No reason given for the refusal, but I think we all know the real reason is: "If *I* can't go to England with my lover, *nobody* gets to go to England with their lover."
The Maras: *sigh*
Lehndorff also records a masked party in January 1754 where AW dressed up as a woman as part of some general royal hijinks (with heavy anti-Semitic overtones that Lehndorff and all the Hohenzollern brothers thought was hilarious, and which I will refrain from recounting), and also later in the month, when a Countess Bentick more seriously dressed as a man, "in the forlorn hope that her male attire would win her the attention of the exclusively homosexual Prince Henry." No dice, Countess.
After Heinrich's forced marriage, Lehndorff wrote to him: 'Monseigneur, the king has built a palace for you with admirable arrangements: one may spend one’s life there without ever setting one's eyes on one's wife.'
I should add that on this occasion, Bielfeld referred to Heinrich as a "Potsdamite," saying that even though his wife was of more than mortal beauty, it would do her no good. Oh, those Potsdamites. :P
If I find an accessible translation, I'll let you know, but I doubt there is one, since even my biographers are using the German original, and they usually tell you about translations where they can.
Also, I just want to say that today the OCR + auto Google Translate function in Chrome seem to be behaving themselves, but last time I checked, Chrome persisted in translating "Dreissig Jahre am Hofe Friedrichs des Grossen" as "Thirty Years at the Pants of Frederick the Great," through what I suspect was a confusion between 'f' and old-fashioned 's', leading to "Dreissig Jahre am Hose Friedrichs des Grossen."
It made me laugh so much. So close but yet so far! It's "Thirty Years in the Pants of Frederick the Great's Other Self," Google!