Also: in fairness, as Mildred has often said, it's FW who is the unorthodox person here. Every other king or uncrowned ruler in Europe when hiring someone to teach their son would have been all for Latin and Greek and Roman history, as well as French literture, because that was the canon. Kings were expected to know about this. If the kid actually is curious about this and wants to learn, all the better. The only other noble in sympathy with FW's position would have been his pal the Old Dessauer, who supposedly had his sons raised with minimum to no education at all to see what would happen. (Says Lehndorff when writing about one of the sons: the result was such that we should hope no prince will ever try such foolery again.) But seriously, Duhan was doing what every other noble father of his time would have wanted him to do.
Somewhat relatedly, I recently came across the anecdote of G1's early days in Britain again when he didn't speak much English and his PM and cabinent apparantly were none too good in French (and of course did not have a word of German) - making Latin, for a while, the default language of communication. Now G1 was no intellectual. But knowing enough Latin (in addition to being bilingual in French and German, and having some Italian) for this was not unusual, it was expected of him as a Prince Elector of Hannover.
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Re: Fritz-Duhan Follow-Up
Date: 2020-11-18 07:48 am (UTC)Somewhat relatedly, I recently came across the anecdote of G1's early days in Britain again when he didn't speak much English and his PM and cabinent apparantly were none too good in French (and of course did not have a word of German) - making Latin, for a while, the default language of communication. Now G1 was no intellectual. But knowing enough Latin (in addition to being bilingual in French and German, and having some Italian) for this was not unusual, it was expected of him as a Prince Elector of Hannover.