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.)
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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 :)