Btw, I'm totally betting Song of Solomon/Song of Songs was AW's favorite book of the Bible. :P
Can totally see that, and also this being his way of truthfully replying if/when Dad asks whether he's learned bible verses by heart this week. Am amused he made the field preacher hold a sermon about them, and sure the soldiers loved this.
(Also: when Fritz selected a text to preach about, it was "Let women remain silent in the church" as I recall, post- battle of Mollwitz.)
August 8: Ha, I was just thinking, "I can see why [personal profile] selenak was wondering how Lehndorff found the time to hang out with the Divine Trio so much," and then I got to the "The Queen gave me a hard time--no rose without thorns!" line that I was telling Royal Patron about last week when I was describing the Lehndorff diaries to him.
What do you mean, the "Chamberlain to the Queen" job description isn't "hanging out with the Divine Trio"?
Let's also recapitulate EC's top staff here: One Oberhofmarschall von Wartensleben, who is a sugar-hoarding miser who in his younger years "seduces the chambermaids" and in his older years spies on everyone, and with whom she clashes now and then without being able to fire him; one chamberlain who is an addicted gambler (Müller), and one chamberlain who's busy mooning over her brother-in-law when he's not wishing he'd work for her husband instead.
Cape Stallion's ghost salutes you for discerning he just got sexier with more weight. :)
The Würtemberg brothers: also worth pointing out they were both raised at the Prussian court after the death of their father. Said father, Karl Alexander, was one of those Rokoko party boys who also pissed off his very Protestant subjects by converting to Catholicism. The reason he made it into literary history is an ugly one. His son Carl Eugen would immortalize himself by clashing with young Friedrich Schiller, which may not speak well of Carl Eugen but produced great literature.
Karl Alexander, otoh, being a baroque party boy of a prince needed money, lots of it. So he did what a great many princes at the time did; he had a "Court Jew", one Josef Süß Oppenheimer. When Karl Alexander died of a stroke, and left behind a dukedom in uproar over his money wasting ways, Catholic conversion and rumors he had wanted to conduct a coup with the help of his (Catholic) wife Marie Auguste's Thurn-and-Taxis relations which would have disempowered the Protestant parliament and reintroduced the cuius regio, eius religio principle in Würtemberg. Naturally, a scapegoat was wanted. Three guesses who became the scapegoat.
Josef Süß Oppenheimer got a show trial. Supposedly he might have saved his skin if he had converted, but Süß, despite the fact he was very assimilated and not orthodox at all, refused. (This circumstance was what centuries later attracted the attention of the writer my doctoral thesis is about, Lion Feuchtwanger.) His (Christian) mistress got publically whipped and shamed, and he himsel got hanged in a cage with all the viciousness an antisemitic lawforce in tandem with a mob is capable of. This produced some sensational pamphlets and a literary trope, as "Jud Süß", as he was thereafter called, became written about again and again. The two most famous versions remain the Feuchtwanger novel, which was his big international breakthrough as an author (and promptly ended up burned in 1933, as Feuchtwanger was among the first authors banned), and the Nazi movie, one of the worst propaganda movies in the Third Reich, which is saying something.
Re: Lehndorff readalong: through August 23, 1753
Can totally see that, and also this being his way of truthfully replying if/when Dad asks whether he's learned bible verses by heart this week. Am amused he made the field preacher hold a sermon about them, and sure the soldiers loved this.
(Also: when Fritz selected a text to preach about, it was "Let women remain silent in the church" as I recall, post- battle of Mollwitz.)
August 8: Ha, I was just thinking, "I can see why [personal profile] selenak was wondering how Lehndorff found the time to hang out with the Divine Trio so much," and then I got to the "The Queen gave me a hard time--no rose without thorns!" line that I was telling Royal Patron about last week when I was describing the Lehndorff diaries to him.
What do you mean, the "Chamberlain to the Queen" job description isn't "hanging out with the Divine Trio"?
Let's also recapitulate EC's top staff here: One Oberhofmarschall von Wartensleben, who is a sugar-hoarding miser who in his younger years "seduces the chambermaids" and in his older years spies on everyone, and with whom she clashes now and then without being able to fire him; one chamberlain who is an addicted gambler (Müller), and one chamberlain who's busy mooning over her brother-in-law when he's not wishing he'd work for her husband instead.
Cape Stallion's ghost salutes you for discerning he just got sexier with more weight. :)
The Würtemberg brothers: also worth pointing out they were both raised at the Prussian court after the death of their father. Said father, Karl Alexander, was one of those Rokoko party boys who also pissed off his very Protestant subjects by converting to Catholicism. The reason he made it into literary history is an ugly one. His son Carl Eugen would immortalize himself by clashing with young Friedrich Schiller, which may not speak well of Carl Eugen but produced great literature.
Karl Alexander, otoh, being a baroque party boy of a prince needed money, lots of it. So he did what a great many princes at the time did; he had a "Court Jew", one Josef Süß Oppenheimer. When Karl Alexander died of a stroke, and left behind a dukedom in uproar over his money wasting ways, Catholic conversion and rumors he had wanted to conduct a coup with the help of his (Catholic) wife Marie Auguste's Thurn-and-Taxis relations which would have disempowered the Protestant parliament and reintroduced the cuius regio, eius religio principle in Würtemberg. Naturally, a scapegoat was wanted. Three guesses who became the scapegoat.
Josef Süß Oppenheimer got a show trial. Supposedly he might have saved his skin if he had converted, but Süß, despite the fact he was very assimilated and not orthodox at all, refused. (This circumstance was what centuries later attracted the attention of the writer my doctoral thesis is about, Lion Feuchtwanger.) His (Christian) mistress got publically whipped and shamed, and he himsel got hanged in a cage with all the viciousness an antisemitic lawforce in tandem with a mob is capable of. This produced some sensational pamphlets and a literary trope, as "Jud Süß", as he was thereafter called, became written about again and again. The two most famous versions remain the Feuchtwanger novel, which was his big international breakthrough as an author (and promptly ended up burned in 1933, as Feuchtwanger was among the first authors banned), and the Nazi movie, one of the worst propaganda movies in the Third Reich, which is saying something.