cahn: It's really hard for me to get a bead on EC; I like to think she was more interesting than Fritz let her be, but it's not super clear from what I've seen. Everything does point to her being really nice, though!
Gisela Langfeld, who wrote the preface to the 2007 reprint of Lehndorff's diaries, points out that on one of the occasions when he must have reread his diaries much later in life and scribbled little observations on the margins - like commenting his first "It's all over between Heinrich and me, woe!" entry with "nope, still friends now when we're in our mid 60s!" - , he also writes re: one of his harsher entries on EC's boringness that now that he's happily retired, he finds he was unfair towards her, simply because he felt miserable in his job, and that coloured his judgment.
This being said, I think nobody, including defenders like Thiébault who writes a lot of nice things about her, have ever made a case for EC having been a riveting conversationalist or blessed with great charm. Ziebura in her biography of the three wives distills it to: both EC and Louise suffered from the get go from various disadvantages aside from the fact their husbands didn't want them. They were shy, either stuttered or lisped - comments on this in various memoirs and diaries are ambiguous enough for it to even have been no more than dialect. For example, Lehndorff notes that when the Queen and her sisters (a younger one in addition to Louise) were together, they spoke "incomprehensibly; it is supposed to be German but I can't make out a single word of it" - which does sound to me as if they were talking Plattdeutsch, a northern German dialect sounding a lot like Dutch. When they first got introduced to the Hohenzollerns, they froze and weren't able to say anything, which came across as dumb, rude or both to this not collection of by and large not very kind people. And they evidently didn't get the kind of education that would allow them to make interesting or at least witty conversation. Now, EC tried to learn all this during the Rheinsberg years to please her husband, but the result can't have been that impressive, because one of the things Lehndorff complains about is that dinners with her tend to take really long because she talks a lot "without having anything interesting to say". (The poor woman evidently was a in a "damned if she does, damned if she doesn't" type of situation - at first she was dismissed as boring by her in-laws when she didn't make conversation, and then she was dismissed by her courtiers as boring when she tried, but without the gift for bonmots or interesting narration.) (And of course, as a courtier you had to stay for as long as the Queen wanted you there, until she officially ended the meal/party/ gathering. Cue resentful Lehndorff who'd rather be at home with a good book and/or alone with EC's brother-in-law.)
Ziebura thinks one reason why while pre AW's death both Braunschweig sisters were treated identically while post AW's death Louise's cedit with everyone starts to go upwards while EC still is stuck in the role of boring, and now also whiny queen as far as her in-laws and parts of her court are concerned, until the later 1760s, is that even with an unconventional court like the Prussian one where the King is only present intermittendly, everyone does take their cues from the King. Who is consistently kind to Louise post AW's death, and that allows her to gain in confidence and florish, and because she avoids becoming partisan for one particular family member, she becomes everyone's calm point and confidante. (Plus, as Lehndorff approvingly notes, her dinners tended to be short, not endlessly long.) Which EC couldn't be; EC, being human, resented, for example, that Amalie got so much more of Fritz' attention and thus relationships between them were somewhat terse, and she also felt somewhat outclassed by Mina, the one in-law whom all the Hohenzollerns had been instantly impressed by (because Mina was beautiful, gracious and witty when arriving) and thus avoided her when she could in their younger days. (Post mid 60s it became academic due to Heinrich's break-up with his wife.)
Another EC disadvantage in her particular role must have been that she didn't have a natural (or learned) "presence" and couldn't command attention in a room, which was expected from a Queen. It's this factor which Lehndorff in his "SD versus EC" compare and contrast after SD's death hones in on. Unfortunately, this wasn't something that could be helped. I mean, you can learn the social graces, but the ability to draw attention to yourself not in an irritating but in a impressing way is much, much harder to aquire.
On the plus side, EC had evidently the ability to be kind to her subordinates (usually; when she snaps at Lehndorff after SD's death in public, she apologizes to him a day later, which is another problem, because on the one hand, it shows she noticed she's hurt him, otoh, Queens don't apologize to courtiers), her investment into various charities was long term and doesn't seem to have been just out of boredom but because she really wanted to help people, her reply to the condolence letter from the Marquise d'Argens, formerly a dancer & actress, is without snobbery and very human instead, and she manages decades of life with the Hohenzollern without strangling a single one, starting with her husband. All of which is anything but given in the position she found herself in for decades. Just for comparison: two of Fritz' sisters responded to their miserable marriages and illnesses by sinking in non-stop depressions and stopped interacting with the outside world. Whereas EC never stopped reaching out to people; she must have had an optimistic core and a lot of resilience.
In summation: the ways in which she was remarkable were there, but they don't translate to something you could easily render in fiction, not least because they went in tandem to the ways she came across as dull.
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Elisabath Christine
Date: 2020-01-25 12:43 pm (UTC)Gisela Langfeld, who wrote the preface to the 2007 reprint of Lehndorff's diaries, points out that on one of the occasions when he must have reread his diaries much later in life and scribbled little observations on the margins - like commenting his first "It's all over between Heinrich and me, woe!" entry with "nope, still friends now when we're in our mid 60s!" - , he also writes re: one of his harsher entries on EC's boringness that now that he's happily retired, he finds he was unfair towards her, simply because he felt miserable in his job, and that coloured his judgment.
This being said, I think nobody, including defenders like Thiébault who writes a lot of nice things about her, have ever made a case for EC having been a riveting conversationalist or blessed with great charm. Ziebura in her biography of the three wives distills it to: both EC and Louise suffered from the get go from various disadvantages aside from the fact their husbands didn't want them. They were shy, either stuttered or lisped - comments on this in various memoirs and diaries are ambiguous enough for it to even have been no more than dialect. For example, Lehndorff notes that when the Queen and her sisters (a younger one in addition to Louise) were together, they spoke "incomprehensibly; it is supposed to be German but I can't make out a single word of it" - which does sound to me as if they were talking Plattdeutsch, a northern German dialect sounding a lot like Dutch. When they first got introduced to the Hohenzollerns, they froze and weren't able to say anything, which came across as dumb, rude or both to this not collection of by and large not very kind people. And they evidently didn't get the kind of education that would allow them to make interesting or at least witty conversation. Now, EC tried to learn all this during the Rheinsberg years to please her husband, but the result can't have been that impressive, because one of the things Lehndorff complains about is that dinners with her tend to take really long because she talks a lot "without having anything interesting to say". (The poor woman evidently was a in a "damned if she does, damned if she doesn't" type of situation - at first she was dismissed as boring by her in-laws when she didn't make conversation, and then she was dismissed by her courtiers as boring when she tried, but without the gift for bonmots or interesting narration.) (And of course, as a courtier you had to stay for as long as the Queen wanted you there, until she officially ended the meal/party/ gathering. Cue resentful Lehndorff who'd rather be at home with a good book and/or alone with EC's brother-in-law.)
Ziebura thinks one reason why while pre AW's death both Braunschweig sisters were treated identically while post AW's death Louise's cedit with everyone starts to go upwards while EC still is stuck in the role of boring, and now also whiny queen as far as her in-laws and parts of her court are concerned, until the later 1760s, is that even with an unconventional court like the Prussian one where the King is only present intermittendly, everyone does take their cues from the King. Who is consistently kind to Louise post AW's death, and that allows her to gain in confidence and florish, and because she avoids becoming partisan for one particular family member, she becomes everyone's calm point and confidante. (Plus, as Lehndorff approvingly notes, her dinners tended to be short, not endlessly long.) Which EC couldn't be; EC, being human, resented, for example, that Amalie got so much more of Fritz' attention and thus relationships between them were somewhat terse, and she also felt somewhat outclassed by Mina, the one in-law whom all the Hohenzollerns had been instantly impressed by (because Mina was beautiful, gracious and witty when arriving) and thus avoided her when she could in their younger days. (Post mid 60s it became academic due to Heinrich's break-up with his wife.)
Another EC disadvantage in her particular role must have been that she didn't have a natural (or learned) "presence" and couldn't command attention in a room, which was expected from a Queen. It's this factor which Lehndorff in his "SD versus EC" compare and contrast after SD's death hones in on. Unfortunately, this wasn't something that could be helped. I mean, you can learn the social graces, but the ability to draw attention to yourself not in an irritating but in a impressing way is much, much harder to aquire.
On the plus side, EC had evidently the ability to be kind to her subordinates (usually; when she snaps at Lehndorff after SD's death in public, she apologizes to him a day later, which is another problem, because on the one hand, it shows she noticed she's hurt him, otoh, Queens don't apologize to courtiers), her investment into various charities was long term and doesn't seem to have been just out of boredom but because she really wanted to help people, her reply to the condolence letter from the Marquise d'Argens, formerly a dancer & actress, is without snobbery and very human instead, and she manages decades of life with the Hohenzollern without strangling a single one, starting with her husband. All of which is anything but given in the position she found herself in for decades. Just for comparison: two of Fritz' sisters responded to their miserable marriages and illnesses by sinking in non-stop depressions and stopped interacting with the outside world. Whereas EC never stopped reaching out to people; she must have had an optimistic core and a lot of resilience.
In summation: the ways in which she was remarkable were there, but they don't translate to something you could easily render in fiction, not least because they went in tandem to the ways she came across as dull.