if your new boss tells you, one month in, something about THE MOST TRAUMATIC EPISODE OF HIS LIFE, something that all of Europe has gosipped about and knows has happened for many years, wouldn't you have immediately jotted it down with thick letters?
My immediate thought was no, not necessarily, and if there's one thing I would trust Catt to remember years later--not accurately, mind you!--without taking notes, it would be something he'd already heard of and been wondering about. So, if he is pulling that up from memory, I wouldn't trust him on detail, but I'd trust him to remember that they talked about it and get at least some of it right (which parts are an open question).
Also, given how dicey the topic was, my immediate reaction was that I might be very, very careful about writing it down, for the reasons you mention. Especially if we trust Catt that he didn't feel safe commenting on it at all while Fritz was talking. (Of course, the alternative is that there was virtually no conversation between him and Fritz on this topic because it never happened, and Catt's just writing historical fiction based on Voltaire's memoirs.)
I of course can't be sure there isn't a passage in it where Fritz does talk about Küstrin, just doesn't mention Katte by name
That has also occurred to me. That's why Catt's diary is on my list of things to see if Google OCR + translate can handle in a useful way. But first I have a gazillion Heinrich letters to clean up. ;) Trying to work my way through the rheinsberg backlog while I'm at it.
So yes, there are several possibilities, and only one of them is falsifiable, i.e., he put it in his diary under non-searchable language, such as, "King talks about the time he tried to escape and was imprisoned" or "King talks about the you-know-what that we've all been dying to hear about from the horse's mouth--SCORE!" ;)
Will see what I can do about making the diary more accessible someday.
Re: Fritz and Wilhelmine Correspondance, Trier Version III - Three Funerals and a Wedding
My immediate thought was no, not necessarily, and if there's one thing I would trust Catt to remember years later--not accurately, mind you!--without taking notes, it would be something he'd already heard of and been wondering about. So, if he is pulling that up from memory, I wouldn't trust him on detail, but I'd trust him to remember that they talked about it and get at least some of it right (which parts are an open question).
Also, given how dicey the topic was, my immediate reaction was that I might be very, very careful about writing it down, for the reasons you mention. Especially if we trust Catt that he didn't feel safe commenting on it at all while Fritz was talking. (Of course, the alternative is that there was virtually no conversation between him and Fritz on this topic because it never happened, and Catt's just writing historical fiction based on Voltaire's memoirs.)
I of course can't be sure there isn't a passage in it where Fritz does talk about Küstrin, just doesn't mention Katte by name
That has also occurred to me. That's why Catt's diary is on my list of things to see if Google OCR + translate can handle in a useful way. But first I have a gazillion Heinrich letters to clean up. ;) Trying to work my way through the
So yes, there are several possibilities, and only one of them is falsifiable, i.e., he put it in his diary under non-searchable language, such as, "King talks about the time he tried to escape and was imprisoned" or "King talks about the you-know-what that we've all been dying to hear about from the horse's mouth--SCORE!" ;)
Will see what I can do about making the diary more accessible someday.