AW readthrough: I made it through the introduction and the first paragraph of the first chapter. (It's been a rough week, sleep-wise.)
The thing that jumped out at me was Ziebura saying the harsh judgment of historians on the reliability of Wilhelmine's memoirs cannot be maintained after reading the AW+Wilhelmine correspondence.
Now, I know you said that AW was her intercessor and intermediary during the fallout with Fritz, and that definitely doesn't make her relationship with Fritz look like all sunshine and roses, but her memoirs don't cover that period.
I also know you've reasoned that she was projecting her fallout with Fritz during the time of the memoir-writing back into the 1730s and early 1740s and tried telling herself she should have seen it coming, but said that the letters between her and Fritz don't bear that out. I also know she's unreliable on factual matters pertaining to events she wasn't present for, because she doesn't have access to the archives.
Personally, I've never been fully onboard with historians trying to say, "Well, FW was definitely abusive, but you have to tone down Wilhelmine's accusations." She's certainly going to skew the picture she presents (and justifiably so), but disbelieving victims because the abuse sounds too terrible to be true is not something I want to do by default.
So what aspect of the harsh judgment on reliability is Ziebura challenging here?
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AW readthrough
Date: 2020-08-27 01:28 am (UTC)The thing that jumped out at me was Ziebura saying the harsh judgment of historians on the reliability of Wilhelmine's memoirs cannot be maintained after reading the AW+Wilhelmine correspondence.
Now, I know you said that AW was her intercessor and intermediary during the fallout with Fritz, and that definitely doesn't make her relationship with Fritz look like all sunshine and roses, but her memoirs don't cover that period.
I also know you've reasoned that she was projecting her fallout with Fritz during the time of the memoir-writing back into the 1730s and early 1740s and tried telling herself she should have seen it coming, but said that the letters between her and Fritz don't bear that out. I also know she's unreliable on factual matters pertaining to events she wasn't present for, because she doesn't have access to the archives.
Personally, I've never been fully onboard with historians trying to say, "Well, FW was definitely abusive, but you have to tone down Wilhelmine's accusations." She's certainly going to skew the picture she presents (and justifiably so), but disbelieving victims because the abuse sounds too terrible to be true is not something I want to do by default.
So what aspect of the harsh judgment on reliability is Ziebura challenging here?