heeeeee at the trig calculations, if I were as invested in this question as you (which I must admit I am not) this is exactly the sort of crazy thing I would do :)
I thought of you! And no, I definitely don't recommend being this invested in this question. :P
Also, no hurry on the OCR AT ALL, I just got to the library today and checked out Blanning, so I'm good on the reading front for a while :D (Also I thought maybe I should actually read Fritz' own memoirs after this...)
You'll probably finish Blanning before I finish my reread at this rate! I seriously am struggling on these new sedatives. :/ There might be more OCR than not in days to come.
Fritz's memoirs: if you find them in English, let me know! I admit I haven't looked that hard.
(I thought it was really cool to look at the family tree in the beginning, which usually just confuses me, and be all "Hey I know all those people!" Though I hesitated for a second at "Henry," lol.)
That is so awesome! Front-row seat to sensationalist scholarship! :D With a mix of German and English names, no less. (I guess it's good I told you that Braunschweig = Brunswick, otherwise that would be confusing now that you're going to see a bunch of Brunswicks.)
Btw, I totally think you should report back to us on the music aspects, when you have time, because I think we're all aware of my limitations there, and Blanning did have a good sizable section on that.
Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version
Wait, Fritz's memoirs are not even in English?? *checks the interwebs quickly* I see Catt's memoirs but not Fritz's???? okay, this is super weird to me!
But yes, I will report back on the music aspects. I have one book I have to finish (not this-fandom-related) before I can start on the Blanning, though :)
Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version
I mean, they might be? I just haven't found them. He wrote two different sets of memoirs, btw, one for the first two Silesian wars and one for the third (the Seven Years' War). There's also the memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, which is another highly biased account of Prussian history up to Fritz's time (1740s).
I see Catt's memoirs but not Fritz's???? okay, this is super weird to me!
Admittedly I haven't read them. But from descriptions and my occasional use of them in French as a reference source, I gather they're more like Julius Caesar's Commentaries than Wilhelmine's or Catt's memoirs: a third-person account of how the King won his wars and how the King is a great general and how the King is responsible for all the Prussian victories, to the point where Heinrich felt the need to annotate the margins with outraged comments about how it is all LIES. And then build an obelisk as his refutation.
I gather they're really military and political history, neither highly accurate, nor even as exciting as Catt's as historical novels go. Most of the people who care deeply about Fritz's version of Fritz's battles probably already read German or French, which is why if there is an English translation, it's hard to find. That said, they are on my reading list, but only after I've read enough military history to be able to read them critically (at which point I may be back at work and have moved onto other things). In sum, they may not be of great interest to you, but if you find translations, let me know. There may be good stuff in there that nobody notices because nobody reads them cover-to-cover.
Things that have been translated into English include the Anti-Machiavel (which I haven't read in twenty years and should acquire a copy of and reread, preferably after brushing up on Machiavelli himself), and a book-length set of excerpt from his instructions to his generals, which I own and is on my list to reread as soon as I can concentrate enough to read books again.
Ideally I would beef up my French and open up whole new vistas, and I occasionally toy with the idea, but I need to fix my concentration first, and by the time that happens, I'll be back at work and probably back to Classics, or at least back to writing Fritzian fanfic. Until then, OCR cleanup it is!
(*Ideally ideally* I would beef up my German, but let's be realistic: I will be out of this fandom before I get around to it. I'd rather know German than French, but I'm closer to reading proficiency in French, so it's more likely to happen.)
Edited 2020-03-09 21:05 (UTC)
Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version
Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg - First sentence: "Nothing ought to give us so great a distaste for writing, as the multitude of books with which Europe is overwhelmed."
The Silesian Wars memoirs are somewhere on archive.org, but I don't have time to search for them at the moment.
Thomas Holcraft also translated much of Friedrich's letters into English. Just linking his correspondence with Jordan as an example. I've just noticed it includes Friedrich's first assessment of Maupertuis: "Maupertuis is arrived. He is a clever fellow, and amiable in conversation; but still a hundred points below Algarotti."
Avi Lifschitz at Oxford is releasing the first modern English collection of Friedrich's philosophical writings.later this year.
a third-person account of how the King won his wars and how the King is a great general and how the King is responsible for all the Prussian victories,
Not exactly...? Friedrich needs to have at least a veneer of critical self-judgement for his writing to be taken seriously in his public role as "historian". It would be rather silly of him to present himself as responsible for all of Prussia's victories, since his credibility would be dashed, and he himself would come across as self-centred if he praised his own exploits too highly. His writing style rather depends on who his target audience is for any given piece; is he writing to the public (Anti-Machiavel, Memoirs of the Silesian and Seven Years Wars), is he writing for the eyes of his successor only (Political Testaments - which weren't published in full, unedited form until 1920), or is he writing for his own amusement (much of his raunchier and blasphemous works are only distributed to a few men who he is close with as a sign of trust in his own lifetime). You'll find his most honest war-focused writing in the Political Testaments. As for his war memoirs intended for the public, while I obviously would not trust them from the outset, nor do I know enough about the intricacies of the war to give an accurate assessment about their reliability, he does write much about other generals and majors, obviously not to the extent that Henry wished and he honestly should have done. He completely skips over his fallout with Wilhelm after the battle of Kolin, for example, and is hesitant to outright condemn himself from what I've skimmed. To give a typical example of his style of credit-giving in an excerpt from the Seven Years War memoirs part 1: "We have already said that the Prussians lost persons highly worthy to be regretted, because of their great merit. Such were marshal Keith, prince Francis of Brunswick, and General Geist. Most of the generals were either hurt or wounded; as were the king, the margrave Charles, and many others whom it would be too tedious to name."
While I was doing some quick looking around, I came across this interesting book exploring the context, circumstances and reliability of the memoirs of Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange (August Wilhelm's daughter). Most of the pages concerning her are available in the preview on Google Books.
You all know probably about these things already, but I'll copy-paste some quotes. It's interesting to see just how flawed the scholarship we look at really is, with historians relying on censored and truncated releases of primary sources all too often, and almost never mentioning that these releases were censored, or even worse, not realising it themselves:
About Volz' version of the memoirs (indicative of Volz' tendency to censor text): "The texts have been carefully transcribed and annotated. In several places, however, Volz omits text – he does state this, but in a way that suggests that only single sentences and unimportant details were struck. In reality however, sometimes large sections of text have been left out, usually concerning a matter potentially embarrassing for the Hohenzollern family: the first marriage of Wilhelmina’s brother, the crown prince, to their cousin Elisabeth of Brunswick. Elisabeth refused to conform to the court’s restrictions, probably had lovers, one of whom may have fathered her child, and was even suspected of planning a coup d’état , after Catharine’s recent example in Russia(...) Elisabeth was arrested and in a secret trial condemned to lifelong imprisonment in the Castle of Stettin. This affair was quickly and sternly covered-up by Frederick; the trial records were sealed and have remained so." [Even to this day! The last attempt to access the case files was in 1924, according to this book, released in 2011. Lack of interest in the matter stopping 21st century historians, or is it the archives themselves still?]
"There were also women at court who kept diaries. Those that have been handed down to us are from the lady-in-waiting Sophie von Voss and from princess Wilhelmina (“Prinzessin Heinrich”), the wife of Wilhelmina’s uncle Henry of Prussia."
"These writings were not intended for publication, and sometimes not even for the family’s eyes. Wilhelmina of Bayreuth probably gave the manuscript of her memoirs to her personal physician, for it surfaced again in the hands of his descendants."
"Upon another visit in 1804 she went deeply into the fatal conflict of 1757 between her father and king Frederick, and at her request her uncle Ferdinand sent her a copy of the file that Augustus William had compiled himself to plead his case. Later she made a request for her father’s letters. [Where are his letters now? Many of them still have never been released, right?] In 1802 she corresponded, from England, on the past, with her cousin Elisabeth, who was still locked up in Stettin."
"For example, there were several handwritten copies of chamberlain Pöllnitz’s memoirs on the Hohenzollern court in circulation; Pöllnitz himself used to read out from his manuscript as entertainment to his friends. (...) It is quite possible that personal writings that could bring dishonour to or doubt on the legitimacy of the royal or princely family – and the boundary here between private and public was wafer-thin – were suppressed by the family. This happened various times within the Hohenzollern family. For example, the first two volumes of chamberlain Pöllnitz’s memoirs on the Prussian court, sprinkled with gossip, were published, but the third part – concerning the court of King Frederick – never appeared. It was in the personal possession of “a prince of the blood,” presumably Wilhelmina’s brother, later King Frederick William II, who refused to release it, and it never has surfaced."
"Nothing ought to give us so great a distaste for writing, as the multitude of books with which Europe is overwhelmed."
ROTFlOL. That is golden. Thank you so much for this overview on the English-accessible Fritz writings. Also, poor Maupertuis. Captured by the Austrians, dissed by Voltaire, and even his boss and defender doesn't regard him as top of the intellectual crop. (Then again, Maupertuis suggested vivisections on prisoners, so...)
Your google book link won't work for me and tells me I maxed out my google excerpt time for this month, but:
Elisabeth, first wife of FW2, and the scandal around her arrest: gets mentioned in Lehndorff's diaries a lot, which I did quote from in my original write up of same. Lehndorff does mention - and believe - the rumor of her having planned a coup with her lovers, but I haven't seen anyone non-contemporary believe the "coup" part. (Lehndorff tends to be jump to "Messalina!" conclusions in any Queen + lover scenario pretty easily when he hears gossip about them; there are two other examples after Elisabeth.) One reason why I doubt it myself is that Fritz originally intended to send Elisabeth back to her mother, his sister Charlotte - who refused to take her and completely condemned her -, before life long banishment to Stettin (after the initial few months in Küstrin were over) became his decision. Fritz also put the blame on the entire situation squarely on future FW2's shoulders in his "he neglected her charms, and thus she started to cheat" statement which made it into the biographies I've read and was cited as being in the Histoire de mon Temps. I very much doubt he'd have done that if he'd thought Elisabeth was planning a coup, as opposed to having extramarital sex for its own sake. (Pangels quotes a similar "he neglected her charms" statement from a letter from Fritz to Charlotte, too, as an example of Fritz' generous nature, though of course she does not mention that Fritz' own record re: neglecting the charms of one's wife is, well...)
Elisabeth, btw, outlived everyone else and made sure in her will she would not be buried anywhere near her mother in Braunschweig. She understandably did not forgive Charlotte.
lifelong imprisonment in the Castle of Stettin
I would qualify the term "imprisonment" here. When Lehndorff & his second wife come through Stettin in the mid 1770s, we get this description (which also shows his attitude to Elisabeth has changed from "OMG she totally was the Prussian Messalina and wanted to kill Crown Prince Jr. with her lovers!" to "I feel sorry for her": With some pity, I see the former Princess of Prussia, who now lives as Princess Elisabeth banished in Stettin. She has the permission to stroll around as she pleases, which she uses amply. (...) The whole distraction the Princess Elisabeth can take is visiting two or three ladies of Stettin society who can hardly be called charming. No gentleman dares to talk to her, other than the fat Duke of Bevern. She dresses in a strange manner, but as she is beautiful, everything suits her well, wherereas the ladies of Stettin who try to imitate her look absurd - two short skirts so one could confuse them with bad ballet dangers, and the heads full of curls so that they look like Medusa from afar. Whereas when I look at the Princess form afar while she strolls down the promenade, she appears like Diana to me. Her pretty little foot is visible, and her legs well above her ankle; she wears a pink corset which suits her beautifully. (...) My wife pays her respect to Princess Elisabeth and returns delighted by her, singing her praises. She claims the Princess is well content, but I can't help but think she must be unhappy.
Later Lehndorff diary entries include rumors that she has started to have affairs again (though these are only rumors he's heard, not personal observations). Ferdinand's daughter, Princess Radziwill, mentions somwewhere visiting Elisabeth and being somewhat at a loss on what to say since Elisabeth was utterly unembarrassed and not sorry at all for anything. A case probably can be made therefore for Stettin, after a while, being firstly exile/banishment rather than imprisonment and later then self chosen place of residence. I could be wrong, and I can't find a citation for it right now, but I think she had the option to leave it later and refused.
Lack of interest in the matter stopping 21st century historians, or is it the archives themselves still?]
At a guess, the former. Given that biographers in the last few decades had no problem getting at the unpublished correspondances between various Hohenzollern siblings (AW with everyone, or the Marwitz letters from the Fritz/Heinrich correspondance which had not been included in any pre WWII editions that I know of). While the scandal around the Elisabeth/FW2 divorce happpened within Fritz' lifetime, it just wasn't of much interest to even deconstructing Fritz biographers, as it had little to do with him (beyond the marriage having been his idea to begin with). And FW2 never got many biographies devoted to himself. There's one more recent mentioned in his German wiki entry, which may delve into Elisabeth as well.
Re: the unpublished AW letters in particular, recent biographers I've seen quoting from them were Ziebura, Oster, Luh; even Jessen has one letter of his to Mina (Princess Heinrich), though without looking those up, I can't tell you where they physically are (Berlin, Trier, Bayreuth?). The website devoted to Wilhelmine's France and Italian journey which I linked at Rheinsberg has his letters to and from Wilhelmine and her husband during that time online.
"There were also women at court who kept diaries. Those that have been handed down to us are from the lady-in-waiting Sophie von Voss and from princess Wilhelmina (“Prinzessin Heinrich”), the wife of Wilhelmina’s uncle Henry of Prussia."
Both get quoted amply by Ziebura in her various Hohenzollern biographies; the former (Sophie von Voss, née von Pannewitz, daughter of the FW puncher, herself object of AW romantic interest, aunt of FW2's morganatic wife Julie) is available in German in print; the same publisher who republished the original Lehndorff diary collection (i.e. the first volume without any of the subsequent ones) previously also had republished hers. This renewed the copyright in Germany, btw, which means no online accessibility for me re: the original editions. Sophie lived long enough to see Napoleon defeated, so her diaries cover many decades of Prussian court life.
Pöllnitz: Lehndorff mentions reading his unpublished memoirs repeatedly during the 1750s. Mind you, he also mentions Pöllnitz (in person, not in writing) at one point admitting he absolutely invents stuff when he feels like it.
Hohenzollern ensorship in general: was heavy, absolutely. As I mentioned elswhere, until 1918, every single historian who'd gotten access to the archives had to submit their subsequent publication for inspection and censorship. Mostly because the narrative as pointed out by Hahn that Preuss first detailed and which justified both Prussian and Hohenzollern rule over Germany.
Then again, Maupertuis suggested vivisections on prisoners, so..
Wait... what? :/ When was this suggestion? My familiarity with Maupertuis only extends to his scientific endeavors (they influence Friedrich's scientific beliefs, which I want to post about at some point when I have more time) and his quarrel with Voltaire.
Re: Google book. My memory is failing me again, because I have read your write-up, but the passages about Elizabeth slipped my mind. Thank you for the write-up. I'd actually discovered the book because I was looking for information concerning the original manuscript of Lehndorff's diary - Giles MacDonogh had written on his blog that "both Trakehnen and Steinort seem to have miraculously survived [the Second World War] in some form, although the latter lost all its contents, even the manuscript of Ernst Ahasverus Lehndorff’s diary" so I guess it was destroyed.
Both get quoted amply by Ziebura in her various Hohenzollern biographies
I wish there were English versions, or just digital German versions of Ziebura's works so I could read them. And digital versions of the full Hohenzollern sibling correspondences! Alas, it is not to be.
McDonogh is wrong! (Well, mostly.) Since Lehndorff wrote diaries for decades, starting in 1750, there isn't just one manuscript. There are a lot of them. Some of which were indeed destroyed in WWII, but the rest of the original diaries still exist. They are at the state archive in Leipzig, here. (The surviving diaries are in this subsection of the archive.
(Re: the destroyed ones, one reason to be very grateful to Schmidt-Lötzens translations, otherwise they'd be lost forever.)
The Lehndorff Family Archive in Leipzig also has the manuscripts from our Lehndorff's ancestor the baroque globetrotter, who named himself Ahasverus and thus burdened his descendants with that name. ;) They look like a real treasure trove, but reading hand written (mostly) French manuscripts is beyond me, I fear...
Die Idee des medizinischen Strafvollzugs war dem gebildeten Bürgertum vertraut und basierte auf aristotelischen Theorien, die im Zuge der Rückbesinnung auf die Antike neue Relevanz erhielten. Befürwortet wurde die Vivisektion zum Beispiel von Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, dem Arzt nach dem bezeichnenderweise die Köpfmaschine der französischen Revolution benannt wurde. Auch Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Präsident der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin, schlug vor, Hinrichtungen durch die Erprobung neuartiger Operationsmethoden und durch Experimente mit Giften und Antidota zu ersetzen und in die Hände der Ärzte zu legen.
Son of ETA: For more about the fate of the Lehndorff diaries, see this 2002 essay, published before there was a reprint (which happened in 2007).
Huh. OK, I have a bit more sympathy in context -- scientist!me does rather think that he is right that vivisection would in fact be a really great way to learn about the human body. It is probably a good thing that scientist!me has twenty-first century ethics drummed into me and no actual power to do whatever kinds of experiments I want :P
I mean, it's still a terrible idea, and it sounds from the article that even in the 18th C people realized this (although I think it's sort of hilarious that if I'm parsing google translate correctly, a major objection was from people who wanted the corpses for teaching purposes) -- so, yeah, I'll take this as at least partial further evidence that Maupertuis wasn't actually the deepest of thinkers. (I mean, not that deep scientific thinkers are necessarily the deepest ethical thinkers at any time!)
(As I told gambitten upthread, Zinsser's Emilie bio also really doesn't think Maupertuis's intellect is All That.)
I wish there were English versions, or just digital German versions of Ziebura's works so I could read them. And digital versions of the full Hohenzollern sibling correspondences! Alas, it is not to be.
I knooooooow! I super want to read Ziebura and the full sibling correspondences too! You think she might get her stuff translated if we write to her and tell her there are three of us who are seriously big fans but can't read German and reeeeeeally want an English version? :) (I know, I'm kidding. Mostly.)
You probably have seen mildred's machine translations of the letters at Trier but that's of course super incomplete, sigh.
If you're willing to pay for 1) the copy of whatever Ziebura book(s) you want translated, and 2) more books as bribes for my time and labor, there's nothing stopping me from machine translating Ziebura for you, now that I have my library-digitizing technology. If you're interested, talk to me once I'm done with Poniatowski. (It's coming along, a little every day.)
oooooh, thank you!! For the commentary as well as for the links. I love that first line, that's so Fritz. LOL.
"Maupertuis is arrived. He is a clever fellow, and amiable in conversation; but still a hundred points below Algarotti."
Heeeee. To be fair this is also the conclusion the Emilie biography I read came to :)
As for his war memoirs intended for the public, while I obviously would not trust them from the outset, nor do I know enough about the intricacies of the war to give an accurate assessment about their reliability, he does write much about other generals and majors, obviously not to the extent that Henry wished and he honestly should have done. He completely skips over his fallout with Wilhelm after the battle of Kolin, for example, and is hesitant to outright condemn himself from what I've skimmed.
I was totally going to ask if he gives Heinrich any credit but... lol, ok, guess I don't have to :)
That's also really interesting about Wilhelmina, Princess of Orange's memoirs, which I had no idea about. (In general, you can assume that whatever you are talking about I don't know but would be glad to learn! That's why selenak and mildred so often address various points towards me -- because they know I have no clue :) )
Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version
Thank you for the English translations! I would reply in detail, and I may come back to do so at a later date, but am having a rough couple of days health-wise and so am just leaving a brief thank-you note for now. :)
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Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version
I thought of you! And no, I definitely don't recommend being this invested in this question. :P
Also, no hurry on the OCR AT ALL, I just got to the library today and checked out Blanning, so I'm good on the reading front for a while :D (Also I thought maybe I should actually read Fritz' own memoirs after this...)
You'll probably finish Blanning before I finish my reread at this rate! I seriously am struggling on these new sedatives. :/ There might be more OCR than not in days to come.
Fritz's memoirs: if you find them in English, let me know! I admit I haven't looked that hard.
(I thought it was really cool to look at the family tree in the beginning, which usually just confuses me, and be all "Hey I know all those people!" Though I hesitated for a second at "Henry," lol.)
That is so awesome! Front-row seat to sensationalist scholarship! :D With a mix of German and English names, no less. (I guess it's good I told you that Braunschweig = Brunswick, otherwise that would be confusing now that you're going to see a bunch of Brunswicks.)
Btw, I totally think you should report back to us on the music aspects, when you have time, because I think we're all aware of my limitations there, and Blanning did have a good sizable section on that.
Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version
But yes, I will report back on the music aspects. I have one book I have to finish (not this-fandom-related) before I can start on the Blanning, though :)
Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version
I see Catt's memoirs but not Fritz's???? okay, this is super weird to me!
Admittedly I haven't read them. But from descriptions and my occasional use of them in French as a reference source, I gather they're more like Julius Caesar's Commentaries than Wilhelmine's or Catt's memoirs: a third-person account of how the King won his wars and how the King is a great general and how the King is responsible for all the Prussian victories, to the point where Heinrich felt the need to annotate the margins with outraged comments about how it is all LIES. And then build an obelisk as his refutation.
I gather they're really military and political history, neither highly accurate, nor even as exciting as Catt's as historical novels go. Most of the people who care deeply about Fritz's version of Fritz's battles probably already read German or French, which is why if there is an English translation, it's hard to find. That said, they are on my reading list, but only after I've read enough military history to be able to read them critically (at which point I may be back at work and have moved onto other things). In sum, they may not be of great interest to you, but if you find translations, let me know. There may be good stuff in there that nobody notices because nobody reads them cover-to-cover.
Things that have been translated into English include the Anti-Machiavel (which I haven't read in twenty years and should acquire a copy of and reread, preferably after brushing up on Machiavelli himself), and a book-length set of excerpt from his instructions to his generals, which I own and is on my list to reread as soon as I can concentrate enough to read books again.
Ideally I would beef up my French and open up whole new vistas, and I occasionally toy with the idea, but I need to fix my concentration first, and by the time that happens, I'll be back at work and probably back to Classics, or at least back to writing Fritzian fanfic. Until then, OCR cleanup it is!
(*Ideally ideally* I would beef up my German, but let's be realistic: I will be out of this fandom before I get around to it. I'd rather know German than French, but I'm closer to reading proficiency in French, so it's more likely to happen.)
Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version
Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg - First sentence: "Nothing ought to give us so great a distaste for writing, as the multitude of books with which Europe is overwhelmed."
The Silesian Wars memoirs are somewhere on archive.org, but I don't have time to search for them at the moment.
A History of the Seven Years War - Part 1
A History of the Seven Years War - Part 2
Thomas Holcraft also translated much of Friedrich's letters into English. Just linking his correspondence with Jordan as an example. I've just noticed it includes Friedrich's first assessment of Maupertuis: "Maupertuis is arrived. He is a clever fellow, and amiable in conversation; but still a hundred points below Algarotti."
Additionally:
1999 translation of excerpts of Friedrich's various writings on war - of which "over half of the present volume is translated into English for the first time".
Avi Lifschitz at Oxford is releasing the first modern English collection of Friedrich's philosophical writings.later this year.
Not exactly...? Friedrich needs to have at least a veneer of critical self-judgement for his writing to be taken seriously in his public role as "historian". It would be rather silly of him to present himself as responsible for all of Prussia's victories, since his credibility would be dashed, and he himself would come across as self-centred if he praised his own exploits too highly. His writing style rather depends on who his target audience is for any given piece; is he writing to the public (Anti-Machiavel, Memoirs of the Silesian and Seven Years Wars), is he writing for the eyes of his successor only (Political Testaments - which weren't published in full, unedited form until 1920), or is he writing for his own amusement (much of his raunchier and blasphemous works are only distributed to a few men who he is close with as a sign of trust in his own lifetime). You'll find his most honest war-focused writing in the Political Testaments. As for his war memoirs intended for the public, while I obviously would not trust them from the outset, nor do I know enough about the intricacies of the war to give an accurate assessment about their reliability, he does write much about other generals and majors, obviously not to the extent that Henry wished and he honestly should have done. He completely skips over his fallout with Wilhelm after the battle of Kolin, for example, and is hesitant to outright condemn himself from what I've skimmed. To give a typical example of his style of credit-giving in an excerpt from the Seven Years War memoirs part 1: "We have already said that the Prussians lost persons highly worthy to be regretted, because of their great merit. Such were marshal Keith, prince Francis of Brunswick, and General Geist. Most of the generals were either hurt or wounded; as were the king, the margrave Charles, and many others whom it would be too tedious to name."
While I was doing some quick looking around, I came across this interesting book exploring the context, circumstances and reliability of the memoirs of Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange (August Wilhelm's daughter). Most of the pages concerning her are available in the preview on Google Books.
You all know probably about these things already, but I'll copy-paste some quotes. It's interesting to see just how flawed the scholarship we look at really is, with historians relying on censored and truncated releases of primary sources all too often, and almost never mentioning that these releases were censored, or even worse, not realising it themselves:
About Volz' version of the memoirs (indicative of Volz' tendency to censor text):
"The texts have been carefully transcribed and annotated. In several places, however, Volz omits text – he does state this, but in a way that suggests that only single sentences and unimportant details were struck. In reality however, sometimes large sections of text have been left out, usually concerning a matter potentially embarrassing for the Hohenzollern family: the first marriage of Wilhelmina’s brother, the crown prince, to their cousin Elisabeth of Brunswick. Elisabeth refused to conform to the court’s restrictions, probably had lovers, one of whom may have fathered her child, and was even suspected of planning a coup d’état , after Catharine’s recent example in Russia(...) Elisabeth was arrested and in a secret trial condemned to lifelong imprisonment in the Castle of Stettin. This affair was quickly and sternly covered-up by Frederick; the trial records were sealed and have remained so." [Even to this day! The last attempt to access the case files was in 1924, according to this book, released in 2011. Lack of interest in the matter stopping 21st century historians, or is it the archives themselves still?]
"There were also women at court who kept diaries. Those that have been handed down to us are from the lady-in-waiting Sophie von Voss and from princess Wilhelmina (“Prinzessin Heinrich”), the wife of Wilhelmina’s uncle Henry of Prussia."
"These writings were not intended for publication, and sometimes not even for the family’s eyes. Wilhelmina of Bayreuth probably gave the manuscript of her memoirs to her personal physician, for it surfaced again in the hands of his descendants."
"Upon another visit in 1804 she went deeply into the fatal conflict of 1757 between her father and king Frederick, and at her request her uncle Ferdinand sent her a copy of the file that Augustus William had compiled himself to plead his case. Later she made a request for her father’s letters. [Where are his letters now? Many of them still have never been released, right?] In 1802 she corresponded, from England, on the past, with her cousin Elisabeth, who was still locked up in Stettin."
"For example, there were several handwritten copies of chamberlain Pöllnitz’s memoirs on the Hohenzollern court in circulation; Pöllnitz himself used to read out from his manuscript as entertainment to his friends. (...) It is quite possible that personal writings that could bring dishonour to or doubt on the legitimacy of the royal or princely family – and the boundary here between private and public was wafer-thin – were suppressed by the family. This happened various times within the Hohenzollern family. For example, the first two volumes of chamberlain Pöllnitz’s memoirs on the Prussian court, sprinkled with gossip, were published, but the third part – concerning the court of King Frederick – never appeared. It was in the personal possession of “a prince of the blood,” presumably Wilhelmina’s brother, later King Frederick William II, who refused to release it, and it never has surfaced."
Keeping Up With the (Censoring) Hohenzollerns
ROTFlOL. That is golden. Thank you so much for this overview on the English-accessible Fritz writings. Also, poor Maupertuis. Captured by the Austrians, dissed by Voltaire, and even his boss and defender doesn't regard him as top of the intellectual crop. (Then again, Maupertuis suggested vivisections on prisoners, so...)
Your google book link won't work for me and tells me I maxed out my google excerpt time for this month, but:
Elisabeth, first wife of FW2, and the scandal around her arrest: gets mentioned in Lehndorff's diaries a lot, which I did quote from in my original write up of same. Lehndorff does mention - and believe - the rumor of her having planned a coup with her lovers, but I haven't seen anyone non-contemporary believe the "coup" part. (Lehndorff tends to be jump to "Messalina!" conclusions in any Queen + lover scenario pretty easily when he hears gossip about them; there are two other examples after Elisabeth.) One reason why I doubt it myself is that Fritz originally intended to send Elisabeth back to her mother, his sister Charlotte - who refused to take her and completely condemned her -, before life long banishment to Stettin (after the initial few months in Küstrin were over) became his decision. Fritz also put the blame on the entire situation squarely on future FW2's shoulders in his "he neglected her charms, and thus she started to cheat" statement which made it into the biographies I've read and was cited as being in the Histoire de mon Temps. I very much doubt he'd have done that if he'd thought Elisabeth was planning a coup, as opposed to having extramarital sex for its own sake. (Pangels quotes a similar "he neglected her charms" statement from a letter from Fritz to Charlotte, too, as an example of Fritz' generous nature, though of course she does not mention that Fritz' own record re: neglecting the charms of one's wife is, well...)
Elisabeth, btw, outlived everyone else and made sure in her will she would not be buried anywhere near her mother in Braunschweig. She understandably did not forgive Charlotte.
lifelong imprisonment in the Castle of Stettin
I would qualify the term "imprisonment" here. When Lehndorff & his second wife come through Stettin in the mid 1770s, we get this description (which also shows his attitude to Elisabeth has changed from "OMG she totally was the Prussian Messalina and wanted to kill Crown Prince Jr. with her lovers!" to "I feel sorry for her":
With some pity, I see the former Princess of Prussia, who now lives as Princess Elisabeth banished in Stettin. She has the permission to stroll around as she pleases, which she uses amply. (...) The whole distraction the Princess Elisabeth can take is visiting two or three ladies of Stettin society who can hardly be called charming. No gentleman dares to talk to her, other than the fat Duke of Bevern. She dresses in a strange manner, but as she is beautiful, everything suits her well, wherereas the ladies of Stettin who try to imitate her look absurd - two short skirts so one could confuse them with bad ballet dangers, and the heads full of curls so that they look like Medusa from afar. Whereas when I look at the Princess form afar while she strolls down the promenade, she appears like Diana to me. Her pretty little foot is visible, and her legs well above her ankle; she wears a pink corset which suits her beautifully. (...) My wife pays her respect to Princess Elisabeth and returns delighted by her, singing her praises. She claims the Princess is well content, but I can't help but think she must be unhappy.
Later Lehndorff diary entries include rumors that she has started to have affairs again (though these are only rumors he's heard, not personal observations). Ferdinand's daughter, Princess Radziwill, mentions somwewhere visiting Elisabeth and being somewhat at a loss on what to say since Elisabeth was utterly unembarrassed and not sorry at all for anything. A case probably can be made therefore for Stettin, after a while, being firstly exile/banishment rather than imprisonment and later then self chosen place of residence. I could be wrong, and I can't find a citation for it right now, but I think she had the option to leave it later and refused.
Lack of interest in the matter stopping 21st century historians, or is it the archives themselves still?]
At a guess, the former. Given that biographers in the last few decades had no problem getting at the unpublished correspondances between various Hohenzollern siblings (AW with everyone, or the Marwitz letters from the Fritz/Heinrich correspondance which had not been included in any pre WWII editions that I know of). While the scandal around the Elisabeth/FW2 divorce happpened within Fritz' lifetime, it just wasn't of much interest to even deconstructing Fritz biographers, as it had little to do with him (beyond the marriage having been his idea to begin with). And FW2 never got many biographies devoted to himself. There's one more recent mentioned in his German wiki entry, which may delve into Elisabeth as well.
Re: the unpublished AW letters in particular, recent biographers I've seen quoting from them were Ziebura, Oster, Luh; even Jessen has one letter of his to Mina (Princess Heinrich), though without looking those up, I can't tell you where they physically are (Berlin, Trier, Bayreuth?). The website devoted to Wilhelmine's France and Italian journey which I linked at Rheinsberg has his letters to and from Wilhelmine and her husband during that time online.
"There were also women at court who kept diaries. Those that have been handed down to us are from the lady-in-waiting Sophie von Voss and from princess Wilhelmina (“Prinzessin Heinrich”), the wife of Wilhelmina’s uncle Henry of Prussia."
Both get quoted amply by Ziebura in her various Hohenzollern biographies; the former (Sophie von Voss, née von Pannewitz, daughter of the FW puncher, herself object of AW romantic interest, aunt of FW2's morganatic wife Julie) is available in German in print; the same publisher who republished the original Lehndorff diary collection (i.e. the first volume without any of the subsequent ones) previously also had republished hers. This renewed the copyright in Germany, btw, which means no online accessibility for me re: the original editions. Sophie lived long enough to see Napoleon defeated, so her diaries cover many decades of Prussian court life.
Pöllnitz: Lehndorff mentions reading his unpublished memoirs repeatedly during the 1750s. Mind you, he also mentions Pöllnitz (in person, not in writing) at one point admitting he absolutely invents stuff when he feels like it.
Hohenzollern ensorship in general: was heavy, absolutely. As I mentioned elswhere, until 1918, every single historian who'd gotten access to the archives had to submit their subsequent publication for inspection and censorship. Mostly because the narrative as pointed out by Hahn that Preuss first detailed and which justified both Prussian and Hohenzollern rule over Germany.
Re: Keeping Up With the (Censoring) Hohenzollerns
Wait... what? :/ When was this suggestion? My familiarity with Maupertuis only extends to his scientific endeavors (they influence Friedrich's scientific beliefs, which I want to post about at some point when I have more time) and his quarrel with Voltaire.
Re: Google book. My memory is failing me again, because I have read your write-up, but the passages about Elizabeth slipped my mind. Thank you for the write-up. I'd actually discovered the book because I was looking for information concerning the original manuscript of Lehndorff's diary - Giles MacDonogh had written on his blog that "both Trakehnen and Steinort seem to have miraculously survived [the Second World War] in some form, although the latter lost all its contents, even the manuscript of Ernst Ahasverus Lehndorff’s diary" so I guess it was destroyed.
I wish there were English versions, or just digital German versions of Ziebura's works so I could read them. And digital versions of the full Hohenzollern sibling correspondences! Alas, it is not to be.
Re: Keeping Up With the (Censoring) Hohenzollerns
(Re: the destroyed ones, one reason to be very grateful to Schmidt-Lötzens translations, otherwise they'd be lost forever.)
The Lehndorff Family Archive in Leipzig also has the manuscripts from our Lehndorff's ancestor the baroque globetrotter, who named himself Ahasverus and thus burdened his descendants with that name. ;) They look like a real treasure trove, but reading hand written (mostly) French manuscripts is beyond me, I fear...
ETA: re: Maupertuis: see here:
Die Idee des medizinischen Strafvollzugs war dem gebildeten Bürgertum vertraut und basierte auf aristotelischen Theorien, die im Zuge der Rückbesinnung auf die Antike neue Relevanz erhielten. Befürwortet wurde die Vivisektion zum Beispiel von Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, dem Arzt nach dem bezeichnenderweise die Köpfmaschine der französischen Revolution benannt wurde. Auch Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Präsident der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin, schlug vor, Hinrichtungen durch die Erprobung neuartiger Operationsmethoden und durch Experimente mit Giften und Antidota zu ersetzen und in die Hände der Ärzte zu legen.
Son of ETA: For more about the fate of the Lehndorff diaries, see this 2002 essay, published before there was a reprint (which happened in 2007).
Maupertuis and vivisection
I mean, it's still a terrible idea, and it sounds from the article that even in the 18th C people realized this (although I think it's sort of hilarious that if I'm parsing google translate correctly, a major objection was from people who wanted the corpses for teaching purposes) -- so, yeah, I'll take this as at least partial further evidence that Maupertuis wasn't actually the deepest of thinkers. (I mean, not that deep scientific thinkers are necessarily the deepest ethical thinkers at any time!)
(As I told
Re: Keeping Up With the (Censoring) Hohenzollerns
I knooooooow! I super want to read Ziebura and the full sibling correspondences too! You think she might get her stuff translated if we write to her and tell her there are three of us who are seriously big fans but can't read German and reeeeeeally want an English version? :) (I know, I'm kidding. Mostly.)
You probably have seen mildred's machine translations of the letters at Trier but that's of course super incomplete, sigh.
Re: Keeping Up With the (Censoring) Hohenzollerns
Re: Keeping Up With the (Censoring) Hohenzollerns
Let us discuss this further :)
Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version
"Maupertuis is arrived. He is a clever fellow, and amiable in conversation; but still a hundred points below Algarotti."
Heeeee. To be fair this is also the conclusion the Emilie biography I read came to :)
As for his war memoirs intended for the public, while I obviously would not trust them from the outset, nor do I know enough about the intricacies of the war to give an accurate assessment about their reliability, he does write much about other generals and majors, obviously not to the extent that Henry wished and he honestly should have done. He completely skips over his fallout with Wilhelm after the battle of Kolin, for example, and is hesitant to outright condemn himself from what I've skimmed.
I was totally going to ask if he gives Heinrich any credit but... lol, ok, guess I don't have to :)
That's also really interesting about Wilhelmina, Princess of Orange's memoirs, which I had no idea about. (In general, you can assume that whatever you are talking about I don't know but would be glad to learn! That's why selenak and mildred so often address various points towards me -- because they know I have no clue :) )
Re: Katte at Küstrin: The Theodor Hoffbauer Version