The amazing thing is, readers seem to have done, and not just in 1907. I checked out the reviews of the 2007 republication. And it did get good publicity - the Zeit - one of our big national papers - published excerpts from the diaries over several weeks, for example. But does a single review mention our chronicler has something of a long term thing for Fritz' younger brother? Nah. I mean, I get they quote the big Fritz related set pieces, like "Madame has grown more corpulent", Sanssouci, the court evacuating Berlin, or Lehndorff complaining about his job, but seriously, describing Lehndorff's diaries without mentioning his love even once? Why, review writers, why?

(BTW: one reviewer says "better than Thiébault". I mean, not that I disagree, but I also think you can't really compare someone's memoirs, written many years after the fact and of course focused on the central character the memoirs are about, with a selection from someone's journals written without hindsight.