due to both brothers suspecting (correctly, as it turned out) that the Prussian envoy at St. Petersburg, Solms, in whose hands the courier service was, was either not enough concerned with safety or in the pockets of the Russians
Do we know which it was?
According to Ziebura, Solms did eventually 'fess up to telling Panin all, but he assured Heinrich it was all for patriotic reasons, that this openess served Prussia best to win Russia's trust. ;)
(cahn, Panin was back then Catherine's foreign secretary. He'd backed her coup against Peter. His English wiki page sounds just a liiiiiittle bit biased, but if you want to check out out, it's here. Seriously though, who wrote that page? Phrases like "Panin's strange tenderness towards Poland", "the efforts of the old statesman to prevent a matrimonial alliance between the Russian and Austrian courts determined Catherine to get rid of a counsellor of whom, for some mysterious reason, she was secretly afraid" or "Panin supported Catherine when she overthrew her husband, Tsar Peter III, and declared herself empress in 1762, but his jealousy of Catherine's lovers caused him to constantly try to sleep with her" (in vain) all sound as if they were cribed together from different novels.)
Anyway, Heinrich and Fritz did decide on using an alternate, non-embassy courier once the issue of Poland got on the table, with new cyphre; this was the Berlin business man Bachman who had a trading post in St. Petersburg, and with whose mail Heinrich could send some secret letters in addition to those he sent via offical embassay mail. But that still took two or three weeks per letter, so Fritz still couldn't micromanage from a far and had to more or less trust in his brother's ability to know what he was doing. Undoubtedly this was haaaaaard.
Poniatowski: recognizes a waistcoat a la mode when he spots one, see also here.
Blanning, who is the one who led us to Hahn (via Fredersdorf accusations), and who therefore should know about the nearsightedness, has Fritz showing off his fabled memory for names and faces in the 1760s!
Et tu, Blanning? Well, Fritz may well have had a great memory for names, per se. (The occasional Pliny/Ovid glitch excepted, he's doing fine with his writers and quotes till the end of his life from what I can see in Lucchesini's diary and in the letters to Heinrich.) Just not for the faces matching them, unless they get close enough. ;)
Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl
According to Ziebura, Solms did eventually 'fess up to telling Panin all, but he assured Heinrich it was all for patriotic reasons, that this openess served Prussia best to win Russia's trust. ;)
Oh, of course. I believe you completely! I also believe Katte's sole motivation was to prevent Fritz from escaping without causing more bad blood between him and FW. Absolutely.
Seriously though, who wrote that page?
Judging by the footnotes and the slightly archaic writing style, Bain, in 1911, whom the annual-Yuletide-Peter-requesting author has *nothing* good to say about as an objective historian. And indeed, he seems very biased in both her summaries and this Wikipedia page!
Undoubtedly this was haaaaaard.
Undoubtedly. But it paid off, because he got to take credit later!
Et tu, Blanning?
Read your own sources!
Well, Fritz may well have had a great memory for names, per se.
Perhaps, but we've seen at least one anecdote where he's recognizing people by having their names whispered in his ear, so combined with the eyesight, I'm guessing that that was 90% of his reputation of recognizing people. I may be biased because I'm personally faceblind. (I too can remember names as words, but identifying a person in front of me as someone I know or don't know or putting a name to a face is beyond me. I joke that I'm one step away from mistaking my wife for a hat--Oliver Sacks joke.)
But I've also wondered if I'm faceblind and inclined to guess who people are based on their hair precisely because some critical neurological paths were laid down when I was a small child supposed to be learning to recognize faces, and instead was peering blindly into the world and trying to do my best with something more visible to my eyes. Which would have been even harder as a nearsighted child with everyone around me wearing wigs and tricorns! Yes, wigs differed in style, but they definitely make it *even harder* than usual for me when watching these 18th century shows to figure out who's who. (One reason I will forgive Ekaterina for doing away with them, besides Elizaveta's lovely hair.)
So if Fritz was nearsighted when he was young (and we don't know that) and if uncorrected nearsightedness in early ages has anything to do with faceblindness (and I really, really don't know that), then maybe being king gives you all kinds of options for compensating, like getting the answer whispered to you while no one ever, ever gives you away. :P
Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl
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Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl
Do we know which it was?
According to Ziebura, Solms did eventually 'fess up to telling Panin all, but he assured Heinrich it was all for patriotic reasons, that this openess served Prussia best to win Russia's trust. ;)
(
Anyway, Heinrich and Fritz did decide on using an alternate, non-embassy courier once the issue of Poland got on the table, with new cyphre; this was the Berlin business man Bachman who had a trading post in St. Petersburg, and with whose mail Heinrich could send some secret letters in addition to those he sent via offical embassay mail. But that still took two or three weeks per letter, so Fritz still couldn't micromanage from a far and had to more or less trust in his brother's ability to know what he was doing. Undoubtedly this was haaaaaard.
Poniatowski: recognizes a waistcoat a la mode when he spots one, see also here.
Blanning, who is the one who led us to Hahn (via Fredersdorf accusations), and who therefore should know about the nearsightedness, has Fritz showing off his fabled memory for names and faces in the 1760s!
Et tu, Blanning? Well, Fritz may well have had a great memory for names, per se. (The occasional Pliny/Ovid glitch excepted, he's doing fine with his writers and quotes till the end of his life from what I can see in Lucchesini's diary and in the letters to Heinrich.) Just not for the faces matching them, unless they get close enough. ;)
Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl
Oh, of course. I believe you completely! I also believe Katte's sole motivation was to prevent Fritz from escaping without causing more bad blood between him and FW. Absolutely.
Seriously though, who wrote that page?
Judging by the footnotes and the slightly archaic writing style, Bain, in 1911, whom the annual-Yuletide-Peter-requesting author has *nothing* good to say about as an objective historian. And indeed, he seems very biased in both her summaries and this Wikipedia page!
Undoubtedly this was haaaaaard.
Undoubtedly. But it paid off, because he got to take credit later!
Et tu, Blanning?
Read your own sources!
Well, Fritz may well have had a great memory for names, per se.
Perhaps, but we've seen at least one anecdote where he's recognizing people by having their names whispered in his ear, so combined with the eyesight, I'm guessing that that was 90% of his reputation of recognizing people. I may be biased because I'm personally faceblind. (I too can remember names as words, but identifying a person in front of me as someone I know or don't know or putting a name to a face is beyond me. I joke that I'm one step away from mistaking my wife for a hat--Oliver Sacks joke.)
But I've also wondered if I'm faceblind and inclined to guess who people are based on their hair precisely because some critical neurological paths were laid down when I was a small child supposed to be learning to recognize faces, and instead was peering blindly into the world and trying to do my best with something more visible to my eyes. Which would have been even harder as a nearsighted child with everyone around me wearing wigs and tricorns! Yes, wigs differed in style, but they definitely make it *even harder* than usual for me when watching these 18th century shows to figure out who's who. (One reason I will forgive Ekaterina for doing away with them, besides Elizaveta's lovely hair.)
So if Fritz was nearsighted when he was young (and we don't know that) and if uncorrected nearsightedness in early ages has anything to do with faceblindness (and I really, really don't know that), then maybe being king gives you all kinds of options for compensating, like getting the answer whispered to you while no one ever, ever gives you away. :P
Re: Anhalt Sophie: Portrait of the Czarina as a young girl