Since the Margravine did not understand the academic language Latin and did not value the French professors too highly, she asked them to discuss the two theses in German.
should read:
Since the Margravine did not...estimate the French language skills of the German professors too highly.
Not what's happening here, but one thing I noticed while reading this is that when Google randomly decides to delete half a sentence or a sentence and a half or whatever, it's frequently the part immediately following a direct quotation. Not just when quotes are split up by "he said," but when it's like "Blah blah. 'Direct quote here.' New sentence not in the quote.", Google will go, "Blah blah. 'Direct quote here.' in the quote.", and completely drop the words "New sentence not", for example.
I might programmatically inject paragraph breaks at the ends of quotes in the future and see if that helps.
* Erlangen journalist who trashes Fritz and causes a Fritz/Wilhelmine fallout is Johan Gottfried Groß.
Ohhhh!
That makes sense of something Blanning said. When recounting how Fritz's lack of people skills and unwillingness to make nice with foreign envoys backfired on him diplomatically, he writes:
So when Frederick went out of his way to insult the newly arrived Russian envoy, von Gross, by asking him whether he was related to a journalist of the same name, he was also ensuring that every last piece of malicious gossip would be reported back to St. Petersburg.
I thought that was just a remark that would be snide in a very classist era (which it was also that!), but Fritz is specifically asking about the guy who trashed him a few years before. See, Blanning needs to tell us these things.
The source, btw, is Koser in an article on the Prussian court circa 1750, which looks potentially interesting, as well as other articles (mostly the Great Elector, but at least one containing letters from Sophie Charlotte to FW's governor Dohna), but in addition to having the bad 1903 font, it is exceedingly tiny. Are they trolling me? :P I can almost read this (a fluent German reader should have no problem), but it just drives me crazy whenever I'm making a good faith effort to deal with a foreign language in a foreign font and then the text *also* has tiny, blurry, faint, or smeared font to boot. :P
Anyway, see Hohenzollern_Jahrbuch under Articles if you're interested.
* Long ago, we had questioned why Fritz calls female Marwitz "Medea": Oster gives enough of the quote that it looks to me that Fritz is saying Marwitz is bent on revenge, which is certainly a feature of Medea.
* Oster says Marwitz was responsible for the Bayreuth court allying more closely with Vienna!
* Wilhelmine is eerily like Fritz when it comes to hanging out with French intellectuals and snarking at her own subjects:
"They take 10 years to learn how to say good day and good evening, and another 10 to learn how to make an awkward bow."
This reminds me of Heinrich's
"I am busy feeding my officers and teaching them to speak. Until recently, they could only speak single words, but I dipped some cookies in Hungarian wine and now they can produce whole sentences."
* Wilhelmine getting the money to build an opera house by telling the committee in charge of finances that if they give her money to build a new palace, she and the Margrave can stay in Bayreuth longer in the winter and not have to go to Erlangen.
Then, "Oops, I accidentally built an opera house with the money." :P
Also, lol at Wilhelmine starting out wanting an opera house like Fritz's and then, after the fallout, even after they've made up, deciding she wants one like the one in Vienna.
* Aww at Wilhelmine enduring a horrible winter trip by pretending she's on her way to Berlin to see Fritz. YOU TWO. <333
* Aww at Wilhelmine wanting to see Fritz so much that she says she would have set out even if on death's door.
(You know which boyfriend I'm thinking of here. <3)
* Oster believes in the orange peel quote, sigh.
* Lol at Wilhelmine getting Fritz's permission to go to Montpellier, in France, for the sake of her health, all the while knowing she's using it as a jumping off point for an Italy trip, but doesn't want to ask him for permission for that up front.
Now I see where Heinrich got it from!
* Lol at Wilhelmine spending the night at the Marquis de Sade's!
* Lol at Wilhelmine making nice with the Pope's people so they'll look the other way while she illicitly exports art from Italy.
And apparently she left the whole Italy collection to Fritz in her will, and so it's still in Berlin to this day.
* Ansbach brother-in-law votes against Fritz in the imperial ban, Fritz swears to avenge himself if he survives the war! Ansbach brother-in-law also criticizes Wilhelmine's expenses, and Fritz says, "That's rich, coming from you, mister big spender. Just be glad the Italy trip was good Wilhelmine's health and she's still alive. Also, I'm not kidding about the vengeance part."
Brother-in-law conveniently dies early in the war, thus evading his eventual meeting with destiny, aka a gangster with good PR. :P
* And with that, I'm finally finished with the Oster comments! I have to say, I appreciated how Oster did justice to Wilhelmine and her husband as doing a good job at being the Baroque/Rokoko representational rulers they wanted to be, while repeatedly pointing out that this meant they were completely out of touch with their people, who justifiably resented their spending and were less than impressed.
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough
Fritz: WTF, Voltaire. I didn't get a copy until 1750!
*
Since the Margravine did not understand the academic language Latin and did not value the French professors too highly, she asked them to discuss the two theses in German.
should read:
Since the Margravine did not...estimate the French language skills of the German professors too highly.
Not what's happening here, but one thing I noticed while reading this is that when Google randomly decides to delete half a sentence or a sentence and a half or whatever, it's frequently the part immediately following a direct quotation. Not just when quotes are split up by "he said," but when it's like "Blah blah. 'Direct quote here.' New sentence not in the quote.", Google will go, "Blah blah. 'Direct quote here.' in the quote.", and completely drop the words "New sentence not", for example.
I might programmatically inject paragraph breaks at the ends of quotes in the future and see if that helps.
* Erlangen journalist who trashes Fritz and causes a Fritz/Wilhelmine fallout is Johan Gottfried Groß.
Ohhhh!
That makes sense of something Blanning said. When recounting how Fritz's lack of people skills and unwillingness to make nice with foreign envoys backfired on him diplomatically, he writes:
So when Frederick went out of his way to insult the newly arrived Russian envoy, von Gross, by asking him whether he was related to a journalist of the same name, he was also ensuring that every last piece of malicious gossip would be reported back to St. Petersburg.
I thought that was just a remark that would be snide in a very classist era (which it was also that!), but Fritz is specifically asking about the guy who trashed him a few years before. See, Blanning needs to tell us these things.
The source, btw, is Koser in an article on the Prussian court circa 1750, which looks potentially interesting, as well as other articles (mostly the Great Elector, but at least one containing letters from Sophie Charlotte to FW's governor Dohna), but in addition to having the bad 1903 font, it is exceedingly tiny. Are they trolling me? :P I can almost read this (a fluent German reader should have no problem), but it just drives me crazy whenever I'm making a good faith effort to deal with a foreign language in a foreign font and then the text *also* has tiny, blurry, faint, or smeared font to boot. :P
Anyway, see Hohenzollern_Jahrbuch under Articles if you're interested.
* Long ago, we had questioned why Fritz calls female Marwitz "Medea": Oster gives enough of the quote that it looks to me that Fritz is saying Marwitz is bent on revenge, which is certainly a feature of Medea.
* Oster says Marwitz was responsible for the Bayreuth court allying more closely with Vienna!
* Wilhelmine is eerily like Fritz when it comes to hanging out with French intellectuals and snarking at her own subjects:
"They take 10 years to learn how to say good day and good evening, and another 10 to learn how to make an awkward bow."
This reminds me of Heinrich's
"I am busy feeding my officers and teaching them to speak. Until recently, they could only speak single words, but I dipped some cookies in Hungarian wine and now they can produce whole sentences."
* Wilhelmine getting the money to build an opera house by telling the committee in charge of finances that if they give her money to build a new palace, she and the Margrave can stay in Bayreuth longer in the winter and not have to go to Erlangen.
Then, "Oops, I accidentally built an opera house with the money." :P
Also, lol at Wilhelmine starting out wanting an opera house like Fritz's and then, after the fallout, even after they've made up, deciding she wants one like the one in Vienna.
* Aww at Wilhelmine enduring a horrible winter trip by pretending she's on her way to Berlin to see Fritz. YOU TWO. <333
* Aww at Wilhelmine wanting to see Fritz so much that she says she would have set out even if on death's door.
(You know which boyfriend I'm thinking of here. <3)
* Oster believes in the orange peel quote, sigh.
* Lol at Wilhelmine getting Fritz's permission to go to Montpellier, in France, for the sake of her health, all the while knowing she's using it as a jumping off point for an Italy trip, but doesn't want to ask him for permission for that up front.
Now I see where Heinrich got it from!
* Lol at Wilhelmine spending the night at the Marquis de Sade's!
* Lol at Wilhelmine making nice with the Pope's people so they'll look the other way while she illicitly exports art from Italy.
And apparently she left the whole Italy collection to Fritz in her will, and so it's still in Berlin to this day.
* Ansbach brother-in-law votes against Fritz in the imperial ban, Fritz swears to avenge himself if he survives the war! Ansbach brother-in-law also criticizes Wilhelmine's expenses, and Fritz says, "That's rich, coming from you, mister big spender. Just be glad the Italy trip was good Wilhelmine's health and she's still alive. Also, I'm not kidding about the vengeance part."
Brother-in-law conveniently dies early in the war, thus evading his eventual meeting with destiny, aka a gangster with good PR. :P
* And with that, I'm finally finished with the Oster comments! I have to say, I appreciated how Oster did justice to Wilhelmine and her husband as doing a good job at being the Baroque/Rokoko representational rulers they wanted to be, while repeatedly pointing out that this meant they were completely out of touch with their people, who justifiably resented their spending and were less than impressed.