"Seckendorf also wanted to save..." etc. definitely sounds like an almost verbatim transcription, you're right.
I could also see how there could be unanimity among everyone who took one look at that manuscript on the subject of: "Uh, maybe don't tell Fritz. By which I mean, definitely don't tell Fritz. In fact, voluntarily rip out your own tongue and eyes with hot pincers before you tell Fritz."
Quite. And handwritten copies were a thing. (That's how the Dowager Duchess of Würtemberg got a copy of Voltaire's Pucelle before Fritz did, and, in fact, why we have an Urfaust, i.e. a version of Faust I before Goethe ever published it - a lady-in-waiting to Anna Amalia head him read it out loud and transcribed it for the Duchess. If one of those Bayreuth scholars who ended up in Berlin got chummy with Thiébault and told him about the memoirs in confidence, he could have both made a copy and had a very good reason why he didn't tell Fritz (or anyone else of the royal family, for that matter).
Wilhelmine'd daughter might have known, as some of Wilhelmine's last letters when she had trouble holding a pen were dictated to her, but I don't think so, not least because Wilhelmine didn't seem to have touched the manuscript again after the mid 40s - when said daughter was in Würtemberg being miserable with husband Carl Eugen - , and her daughter didn't return to Bayreuth until the early 1750s.
I briefly wondered whether Wilhelmine could have written the memoirs without anyone in her immediate surroundings noticing, but she totally could have, since she was not only an avid and passionate letter writer (Fritz was her primary correspondant but by no means her only one) but a composer and libretto writer, and she could have just claimed she was busy with letters and/or a new composition. (When the memoirs got published and the first reaction was "anti Prussian forgery!", the fact that there was a manuscript in her recognizable handwriting settled that she was indeed the author, so she did not dictate any of it. Still, she might have said something or let something slip in the presence of a librarian or scholar. Espeically if she tried to find some histories and chronicles for the whole business between, say, her father and the Austrians, or the convoluted English marriage negotiations, and of course the holy grail, anything to do with 1730; going to Berlin was not an option in the early 1740s, so asking a scholar/historian from or around Bayreuth would have been a logical step to take, and even if she didn't tell that person just why she wanted the info, they might have guessed.
I read a Fontane biography last year (he had a big anniversary year in 2019, so there were a lot of Fontane related publications), but alas I don't think it mentioned in detail where he got the Katte related material from. For obvious reasons, biographers put their emphasis on him as a novelist.
Re: Katte Textual Criticism: Discussion (REPLY HERE)
I could also see how there could be unanimity among everyone who took one look at that manuscript on the subject of: "Uh, maybe don't tell Fritz. By which I mean, definitely don't tell Fritz. In fact, voluntarily rip out your own tongue and eyes with hot pincers before you tell Fritz."
Quite. And handwritten copies were a thing. (That's how the Dowager Duchess of Würtemberg got a copy of Voltaire's Pucelle before Fritz did, and, in fact, why we have an Urfaust, i.e. a version of Faust I before Goethe ever published it - a lady-in-waiting to Anna Amalia head him read it out loud and transcribed it for the Duchess. If one of those Bayreuth scholars who ended up in Berlin got chummy with Thiébault and told him about the memoirs in confidence, he could have both made a copy and had a very good reason why he didn't tell Fritz (or anyone else of the royal family, for that matter).
Wilhelmine'd daughter might have known, as some of Wilhelmine's last letters when she had trouble holding a pen were dictated to her, but I don't think so, not least because Wilhelmine didn't seem to have touched the manuscript again after the mid 40s - when said daughter was in Würtemberg being miserable with husband Carl Eugen - , and her daughter didn't return to Bayreuth until the early 1750s.
I briefly wondered whether Wilhelmine could have written the memoirs without anyone in her immediate surroundings noticing, but she totally could have, since she was not only an avid and passionate letter writer (Fritz was her primary correspondant but by no means her only one) but a composer and libretto writer, and she could have just claimed she was busy with letters and/or a new composition. (When the memoirs got published and the first reaction was "anti Prussian forgery!", the fact that there was a manuscript in her recognizable handwriting settled that she was indeed the author, so she did not dictate any of it. Still, she might have said something or let something slip in the presence of a librarian or scholar. Espeically if she tried to find some histories and chronicles for the whole business between, say, her father and the Austrians, or the convoluted English marriage negotiations, and of course the holy grail, anything to do with 1730; going to Berlin was not an option in the early 1740s, so asking a scholar/historian from or around Bayreuth would have been a logical step to take, and even if she didn't tell that person just why she wanted the info, they might have guessed.
I read a Fontane biography last year (he had a big anniversary year in 2019, so there were a lot of Fontane related publications), but alas I don't think it mentioned in detail where he got the Katte related material from. For obvious reasons, biographers put their emphasis on him as a novelist.