selenak: (0)
selenak ([personal profile] selenak) wrote in [personal profile] cahn 2019-12-03 07:42 am (UTC)

Re: Oh Brother! More impressions of the Heinrich bio

Thank you so much for all those Lehndorf quotes! Presumably for reasons of copyright, I can't read the online edition here in Germany. (There was a 2007 new edition of the diaries, though that was only a "best of" selection.)

German wiki, btw, mentions, as did Ziebura, that Lehndorf was married (twice) while all this was going on. Not of course unusual for someone in this era even when not being a Royal. He was also really bitter about Fritz never promoting him, realising chamberlain to EC was a dead-end job in that it paid well but really wasn't how you distinguished yourself and got some juicy or glorious promotion, and eventually retiring to the countryside.

"The sight of Prince Henry in tight riding breeches and looking 'as beautiful as an angel' was enough to send Lehndorff into erotic rapture."

ETA: This also proves how far gone Lehndorff must have been, because even when young, Heinrich was never more than avarage looking, and when older, usually people found him downright ugly when first meeting him (Most of them were however subsequently wowed by his charm, which he must have had in considerable degree if he tried - very useful in a diplomat -, so a typical description of Heinrich from French, Russian and Swedes - he visited Ulrike in Stockholm, too - goes "huh, at first I thought, this little dry wrinkly man is the hero of the 7 Years War, but then he opened his mouth and wow! So smart! So charming! So witty! Swoon!"

Re: small, he was literally smaller than the not tall Fritz and both his other brothers. There's a famous anecdote of Heinrich motivating the guys from his first serious command by jumping into the muddy river and saying "men, if I can cross this depite it going to my waist, then so can you!"

Post a comment in response:

If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting