Sabrow sees Gundling marrying Anne de Larray - who is the daughter of another historian (who lived in England for years) - in 1720 as Gundling managing to create something of a parallel world for himself to escape in. The wedding itself is one of the few time where he gets the better of his tormentors, who had prepared a laxative for him to drink on his wedding night so he wouldn't get off the loo. He evidently by now had seen something like this coming and thus avoided it happening by simply playing sick two days before and on short notice getting special permission to marry Anne in his bedroom, which meant they had the wedding, and the wedding without the awful society that would have awaited them if everything had gone as planned. How do we know this actually happened? Because in this case, not only do both Fassmann and Loen report it but the book of marriages of the French Community (Anne was a Huguenot from the French Colony) notes down as well that the marriage has been concluded "en chambre" before it was supposed to happen. The Berlin Address Book shows Gundling had his own house by how, and the court registers that those titles FW kept heaping on him actually came with salaries and money. And then there was that stupendous output on books during the 1720s, which are part of Sabrow's element that Gundling can't have been the non-stop alcoholic of legend. He says of course he drank, but doubts it was more than FW and Gumbkow did, not just because writing those books demands a great deal of focus and concentration (in addition to which Gundling actually did his job as Head of the Academy, as much as that was meant to be a humliation on FW's part, but he threw himself into it, initialilzing projects, publishing anthologies with essays from the members) , but also because Gundling had an autopsy. According to Wilhelmine's letter to her sister Friederike in April 1731, the autopsy showed Gundling died of "an ulcer and a hole in the stomach". Now, later 18th century writers interpreted that to mean he drank so much that his stomach burst, but that's scientific nonsense, says Sabrow. Perforation of he stomach usually happens if an ulcer isn't treated in time and eats its way through the various layers of the stomach. Basically, he thinks Gundling was undoubtedly a heavy drinker in our terms, but like FW himself (and Grumbkow, and Seckendorff) evidently not to a degree where it would have incapacitated him from working. Which he did, till the end. One of the projects he wrote about was btw something we'll see again later with Fritz and Fredersdorf - trying to foster a Brandenburg silk industry by growing mulberry trees in Brandenburg.
As I said elsewhere, he took that position that was supposed to be FW's ultimate joke on scholars seriously. Three days afterthe appointment, he called the Academy council together for a "session extraordinaire" as it says in the protocol in order to find out what had become of Leipniz' correspondence, and how far the translation projects of the society had come. Writes Sabrow: If Gundling was in Berlin - as opposed to Potsdam or Wusterhausen - he showed up regularly at the council sessions, not just in the first time of his presidency. That he didn't take his presidential duties seriously anymore after the beginning is a far spread assumption, but it doesn't hold up next to the careful protocols of the Academy Sessions: the last council session presided over by Gundling took place on August 16th 1730 and agreed on two suggestions the President made for new members of the Academy. The majority of the routine sessions did happen without the President, who came in person when the acceptance or refusal of new members were debated, or important decisions about projects were made. However, like his predecessor Leipniz he supervised the work of the society during the time of his absence via letters from Potsdam and Wusterhausen, letters through which he at times completely dominated the council sessions, aas an example from the year 1725 demonstrates: "Secretary reads from President Gundling's two writings of May 5th and May 7th in which the later talks about payment of the seal for the medical surgical college, for the building of the society courtyard, because of the changes of the handymen, because of the materials for the print of Neumann's work at Potsdam needed, and what the change of Mr. Schütz and the replacement of his position in the obervatory can be reported, and demands to know what of the above has been done, and replied do."
All this, of course, doesn't change the fact that to most people, the idea that the King's favourite chew toy now held of the office of the great Leipniz was, depending on whether they were more FW or more Fritz minded, either the ultimate joke on scholars or an unbearable humiliation of science and learning. There were still some scholars taking him seriously, but usually they were the ones living far from Prussia and only knowing Gundling via his books. To most, and certainly to all who joined the Academy in Fritz' time, he was FW's fool and joke on scholarship. And for all the times when he was treated like a guest, sitting at the King's table with his family, there were ten times when he was abused in the most horrible way. Including, sadly, his time of dying, as I wrote and translated before. But before that happened, something else did, which also forms a part of Sabrow's argument that Gundling was both compos mentis and at least partially successful in carving out an FW free parallel existence for himself: when his brother Hieronymous died in 1729, Hieronymus' last will named Gundling as the guardian for his children and executer of his last will. Now, Hieronymus, as mentioned, had been unhappily married and trying to get a separation from his wife Augusta, who supposedly openly cheated on him and was living in Berlin. Surely, asks Sabrow, if Jacob Paul in 1729 had been the non-stop drinker of legend, his brother - who had a great many friends and colleages in Halle whom he could have asked to become guardians -, would not have entrusted either the children nor the family fortune for safekeeping to him? Augusta (who had left her husband and children two years earlier which she could since she was the niece of one of the most influential Prussian trademen) sued, at which point her brother-in-law demonstrated that fool or not, he actually could wield what influence he had on FW in a devastating way in this one very personal matter. Augusta was arrested in November 1729 for loose living (remember FW's NO WHORES doctrine?) and put into Spandau. Gundling punching downward or just fuflfilling his brother's last will? You decide. In any event, Augusta remained in Spandau where she died a year after her brother-in-law.
Sabrow ends the biography with a pointed comparison of FW/Gundling to Fritz/Voltaire, complete with the quote from Fritz from November 1740 when he's haggling about Voltaire's travel expenses, along the lines of "rarely has a fool been paid so well", and a 1753 quote from Fritz where he again uses the term fool - "how much noise a fool can make in good society!" I partly agree and have written about some eerie parallels elsewhere, though of course a key difference between the two pairings is that Voltaire didn't need Fritz, not financially (because he had money himself), and not professionally. (That Gundling didn't have a "proper" university degree automatically limited the professional possiblities to him outside of Prussia even before FW destroyed his reputation.) This gave him a confidence that Gundling didn't have, and the ability to go tit for tat in the battle of pamphlets and insults. And as humiliating and frightening as the entire Frankfurt episode must have been, it was an episode, which Voltaire got out of to be Voltaire for decades more, his reputation unchanged. (I.e. if you admired him before, you admired him afterwards, and if you hated him before, well, you certainly didn't feel sorry now.) Moreover, no matter how often Fritz would rail about Voltaire being the scum of the earth as a human being, he never put down Voltaire's work, he kept his admiration for it from first to last. That's simply a different foundation than FW being at best impressed by the manfuctoring suggestions and maybe by Gundling's greater knowledge of the world (since he had travelled in foreign countries) and ability to read and interpret the world's news for him, but having nothing but contempt for the core of what was important to Gundling, his work as a scholar.
In conclusion: still a harrowing tale, and infuriating in that for such a long time, it was written off as mildly embarrassing to FW at best, not as the testimony to cruelty it is.
Alas, in the interests of me studying German ever, I'm going to have to do a block reply to all 17 (!) comments I had marked for reply in the last 2 days and say: this is all awesome, keep it coming! I'm reading avidly even when I don't reply. (Case in point: everyone in the engineering meeting 4 hours ago is comparing and contrasting local hot chicken joints, I'm on my phone learning about Gundling ;).)
Gundling's story was indeed harrowing, ouch! And objectively worse than Katte, no arguments here. (As you said, a good counterargument to the claim that aside from a little family-hitting and sentence upgrading in 1730, FW was perfectly nice and the reputation for cruelty was a misunderstanding based on the beatings, executions, bears, and wig-fire-setting. D-:) If Katte's story gives me feels, Gundling's makes me slightly queasy. Ugh, FW.
The Gundling novel sounds interesting, but between my brain's reluctance to read new fiction, the slowness of my German, and the already daunting size of my reading list, I'm not adding it to my list for now. So I'm all the more grateful to you for reading and summarizing it for us!
Please continue to feel the enthusiasm flowing through the ether even when I can't do blow by blow commentary. I will try to learn German and resume spending more time here, not just because I have a reading list but because it's starting to drive me crazy when you and felis are turning up new sources and I click on them and read a paragraph and realize I *could* read this, it would just take forever! I want to help read German sources for salon discussions too! :D
So on that note, I'm off to read some Stollberg-Rilinger. cahn, yell at me if I don't do 20 pages a day for the next week!
As you said, a good counterargument to the claim that aside from a little family-hitting and sentence upgrading in 1730, FW was perfectly nice and the reputation for cruelty was a misunderstanding based on the beatings, executions, bears, and wig-fire-setting.
It's even an argument against his severe illnesses from the late 1720s onwards leading to his worst behavior. In October 1716, when he orders Gundling to be locked up in a room with young bears and firecrackers, he's as healthy as he'll ever be, in peak physical condition. It's even before the onset of "everyone is conspiring against me!" paranoia triggered by the Clement affair in late 1718/through 1719.
I do wonder of course how Gundling survived the bears under these conditions, even if Morgenstern is right about them having been declawed. The novel has him pull an Androcles and the Lion, basically, but of course Stade had to guess as much as we do. Also, it makes me mad that so many of the later descriptions of Gundling by FW excusing historians or even by "how bad were things for the sciences in Prussia under FW!" Fredericians call Gundling "cowardly". I'd like to see how courageous these people would be living in the absolute power of someone who can and does lock them up with bears! Gundling must have been in a state of constant existential fear for most of those years with FW, and it's a minor miracle he was able to produce books and have normal conversations (when with someone like Freylinghausen as opposed to the Tobacco Parliament) during them.
Good luck with your German and the reading. As I said before, I found Stollberg-Rilinger informative but pretty dry, so you might consider switching back to Horowski again for practice?
It's even an argument against his severe illnesses from the late 1720s onwards leading to his worst behavior. In October 1716, when he orders Gundling to be locked up in a room with young bears and firecrackers, he's as healthy as he'll ever be, in peak physical condition. It's even before the onset of "everyone is conspiring against me!" paranoia triggered by the Clement affair in late 1718/through 1719.
Yes, excellent point! I've gone ahead and added a few entries for Gundling in our chronology, but if you want to add more while you still have the book, that would be great. If you still have Bronisch and want to add some Manteuffel, also welcome! I'll take care of incorporating your entries into the main chronology once you've made them. (Not making any one person do everything at one time is the only reason this chronology happened--it's too daunting otherwise.)
Knobelsdorff dates also welcome if anyone has time and interest! Felis, detective and reader, would you like write access to this document? No pressure, but if you do, just DM me with your gmail address.
it's a minor miracle he was able to produce books and have normal conversations
Agreed! Fucking hell.
Good luck with your German and the reading. As I said before, I found Stollberg-Rilinger informative but pretty dry, so you might consider switching back to Horowski again for practice?
It's definitely dry, and I have been considering switching to something else. Otoh, it is very informative and I'm learning things I'm glad to have learned, and the syntax is noticeably easier than Horowski. (I wasn't expecting that based on your descriptions, but you are a fluent reader to whom syntax complexity is not a concern. ;)) I think I'm going to stick with it for a bit longer and see what happens.
If I start feeling that the dryness is interfering with my all-important German acquisition, I'll look around. I wish my Orieux and Fahlenkamp books would arrive! Why must mail from Germany take so long? :-(
Welp, after the hubristic claims of being able to handle Stollberg-Rilinger, I hit the financial reforms yesterday, and now you must yell at me, cahn. Though I will try to make the page count up today, because I have SKIPPED to the next chapter. :P
Because I can handle dry, and I can handle being inundated with new vocabulary from a new domain, but dry and boring are two different things, and boring + tons of new vocab proved fatal.
Now I'm onto her sex life and policing of other people's sex lives, though, so I have no excuse. :P
okay, I am OFFICIALLY YELLING AT YOU. How are you ever going to tell me about the Greeks and Romans if you skip your reading?? :P (Well, just kidding about the Greeks and Romans. I mean mostly.)
I consider myself yelled at, thank you! And yes, one day I want to tell you about the Greeks (and hope for Selena to tell us both about the Romans)!
But for now, I want to tell you about all the things on my German reading list, which means I need to be able to read my German reading list!
Thank you. :) I did meet quota yesterday, though I only partly made up for Friday's deficit due to financial reforms.
ETA: Though I should warn you, if we ever have a Classics salon, the evidence is infinitesimal compared to what we have for Fritz, so it will be a rather different experience. There will be no finding out if Lehndorff's wife ever had to see the phosphor inscription on his wallpaper. ;)
When I was reading histories of Alexander the Great two years ago, right before Fritz salon, I was frustrated that people would cite Plutarch uncritically even when contrary evidence existed. Plutarch, I might add, is one of our main sources for AtG...writing 400 years after Alexander died, and drawing heavily on the now lost memoirs of Ptolemy. Who was a friend and general of Alexander, which sounds promising, until you realize that he was Pharoah of Egypt by right of conquest, and was writing his memoirs to justify his rule with reference to the late Alexander.
Documentary evidence from the archives? Alexander's correspondence? What's that?
And yet historians will not only assert facts without mentioning caveats about their sources, they'll draw conclusions about individual people's *personalities* from the most minute details of these works, when, if you consider how few witnesses there must have been and how many mouths a detail must have had to go through to get to Ptolemy in the first place, and the biases inherent in the nature of the evidence...
One historian rather defensively said that if we can't trust our sources, we have no business doing Athenian history at all, to which my reaction is, "Well, you certainly have no business doing Athenian history the way you're doing it."
selenak, I may have said this, but one of the things I appreciate most about salon with you (and now you too, felis! and gambitten, whenever you come back) is that you share my priorities about the quality of our evidence and largely my opinions about how one determines the quality of evidence). I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have stayed in salon this long if you weren't such a rigorously critical thinker. :)
the evidence is infinitesimal compared to what we have for Fritz
All this is very true, but there is the occasional research gold still. Also, for the Romans: cook books!
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have stayed in salon this long if you weren't such a rigorously critical thinker. :)
Imagine me blushing. I definitely have been called a gossipy sensationalist far more often. <3, also, I am in awe of your detective research skills, language acquiring abilities and, to quote Hamilton lyrics, top notch brain in general!
Like mildred says, I am in awe of your (and mildred_of_midgard's, and felis's, and gambitten's) rigorous critical thinking skills! Though I am also loving the gossipy sensationalism and honestly probably that keeps me in salon just as much as the critical thinking, much as I love it and am benefiting from it <3 :)
Which is a classic stress and possibly anxiety related illness and makes perfect sense to me.
Good for him that he managed at least some kind of parallel life with his wife and his studies, but double damn on all the tormenters for dragging his wife into it as well, i.e. not even letting them marry in peace and sending her to Berlin at the end to go through with the mock funeral.
Which is a classic stress and possibly anxiety related illness and makes perfect sense to me.
The science of the role stress plays in gastric ulcers is currently under debate, but without having read more than a few of the papers and being agnostic on the subject myself, I can say that I'm willing to believe that stress never made anyone's chances of surviving a chronic illness *better*.
Okay, I just wanted to reply to this before turning over the new post because GUNDLING.
I'm glad that he got his marriage tobe not the disaster that was planned, and really glad that Sabrow finds evidence that he was a serious guy and not just FW's chew toy (which was all I really knew about him before all the stuff you read about him in this post, and I suppose if you'd asked me I would have assumed that he wasn't particularly serious).
Augusta (who had left her husband and children two years earlier which she could since she was the niece of one of the most influential Prussian trademen) sued, at which point her brother-in-law demonstrated that fool or not, he actually could wield what influence he had on FW in a devastating way in this one very personal matter.
Wow. I mean 3/4 of me is like "so this is probably one of those things where the woman suffers dramatically because this is the 18th C" and then the other 1/4 of me is like "but don't underestimate Gundling because he's the fool!" I suppose it's a sort of weird intersectionality of sorts...
Moreover, no matter how often Fritz would rail about Voltaire being the scum of the earth as a human being, he never put down Voltaire's work, he kept his admiration for it from first to last.
Yeah, that was the first thing that came to mind for me when you brought up the comparison, and why Voltaire didn't really strike me as a parallel to begin with.
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Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
As I said elsewhere, he took that position that was supposed to be FW's ultimate joke on scholars seriously. Three days afterthe appointment, he called the Academy council together for a "session extraordinaire" as it says in the protocol in order to find out what had become of Leipniz' correspondence, and how far the translation projects of the society had come. Writes Sabrow: If Gundling was in Berlin - as opposed to Potsdam or Wusterhausen - he showed up regularly at the council sessions, not just in the first time of his presidency. That he didn't take his presidential duties seriously anymore after the beginning is a far spread assumption, but it doesn't hold up next to the careful protocols of the Academy Sessions: the last council session presided over by Gundling took place on August 16th 1730 and agreed on two suggestions the President made for new members of the Academy. The majority of the routine sessions did happen without the President, who came in person when the acceptance or refusal of new members were debated, or important decisions about projects were made. However, like his predecessor Leipniz he supervised the work of the society during the time of his absence via letters from Potsdam and Wusterhausen, letters through which he at times completely dominated the council sessions, aas an example from the year 1725 demonstrates: "Secretary reads from President Gundling's two writings of May 5th and May 7th in which the later talks about payment of the seal for the medical surgical college, for the building of the society courtyard, because of the changes of the handymen, because of the materials for the print of Neumann's work at Potsdam needed, and what the change of Mr. Schütz and the replacement of his position in the obervatory can be reported, and demands to know what of the above has been done, and replied do."
All this, of course, doesn't change the fact that to most people, the idea that the King's favourite chew toy now held of the office of the great Leipniz was, depending on whether they were more FW or more Fritz minded, either the ultimate joke on scholars or an unbearable humiliation of science and learning. There were still some scholars taking him seriously, but usually they were the ones living far from Prussia and only knowing Gundling via his books. To most, and certainly to all who joined the Academy in Fritz' time, he was FW's fool and joke on scholarship. And for all the times when he was treated like a guest, sitting at the King's table with his family, there were ten times when he was abused in the most horrible way. Including, sadly, his time of dying, as I wrote and translated before. But before that happened, something else did, which also forms a part of Sabrow's argument that Gundling was both compos mentis and at least partially successful in carving out an FW free parallel existence for himself: when his brother Hieronymous died in 1729, Hieronymus' last will named Gundling as the guardian for his children and executer of his last will. Now, Hieronymus, as mentioned, had been unhappily married and trying to get a separation from his wife Augusta, who supposedly openly cheated on him and was living in Berlin. Surely, asks Sabrow, if Jacob Paul in 1729 had been the non-stop drinker of legend, his brother - who had a great many friends and colleages in Halle whom he could have asked to become guardians -, would not have entrusted either the children nor the family fortune for safekeeping to him? Augusta (who had left her husband and children two years earlier which she could since she was the niece of one of the most influential Prussian trademen) sued, at which point her brother-in-law demonstrated that fool or not, he actually could wield what influence he had on FW in a devastating way in this one very personal matter. Augusta was arrested in November 1729 for loose living (remember FW's NO WHORES doctrine?) and put into Spandau. Gundling punching downward or just fuflfilling his brother's last will? You decide. In any event, Augusta remained in Spandau where she died a year after her brother-in-law.
Sabrow ends the biography with a pointed comparison of FW/Gundling to Fritz/Voltaire, complete with the quote from Fritz from November 1740 when he's haggling about Voltaire's travel expenses, along the lines of "rarely has a fool been paid so well", and a 1753 quote from Fritz where he again uses the term fool - "how much noise a fool can make in good society!" I partly agree and have written about some eerie parallels elsewhere, though of course a key difference between the two pairings is that Voltaire didn't need Fritz, not financially (because he had money himself), and not professionally. (That Gundling didn't have a "proper" university degree automatically limited the professional possiblities to him outside of Prussia even before FW destroyed his reputation.) This gave him a confidence that Gundling didn't have, and the ability to go tit for tat in the battle of pamphlets and insults. And as humiliating and frightening as the entire Frankfurt episode must have been, it was an episode, which Voltaire got out of to be Voltaire for decades more, his reputation unchanged. (I.e. if you admired him before, you admired him afterwards, and if you hated him before, well, you certainly didn't feel sorry now.) Moreover, no matter how often Fritz would rail about Voltaire being the scum of the earth as a human being, he never put down Voltaire's work, he kept his admiration for it from first to last. That's simply a different foundation than FW being at best impressed by the manfuctoring suggestions and maybe by Gundling's greater knowledge of the world (since he had travelled in foreign countries) and ability to read and interpret the world's news for him, but having nothing but contempt for the core of what was important to Gundling, his work as a scholar.
In conclusion: still a harrowing tale, and infuriating in that for such a long time, it was written off as mildly embarrassing to FW at best, not as the testimony to cruelty it is.
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Gundling's story was indeed harrowing, ouch! And objectively worse than Katte, no arguments here. (As you said, a good counterargument to the claim that aside from a little family-hitting and sentence upgrading in 1730, FW was perfectly nice and the reputation for cruelty was a misunderstanding based on the beatings, executions, bears, and wig-fire-setting. D-:) If Katte's story gives me feels, Gundling's makes me slightly queasy. Ugh, FW.
The Gundling novel sounds interesting, but between my brain's reluctance to read new fiction, the slowness of my German, and the already daunting size of my reading list, I'm not adding it to my list for now. So I'm all the more grateful to you for reading and summarizing it for us!
Please continue to feel the enthusiasm flowing through the ether even when I can't do blow by blow commentary. I will try to learn German and resume spending more time here, not just because I have a reading list but because it's starting to drive me crazy when you and
So on that note, I'm off to read some Stollberg-Rilinger.
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
It's even an argument against his severe illnesses from the late 1720s onwards leading to his worst behavior. In October 1716, when he orders Gundling to be locked up in a room with young bears and firecrackers, he's as healthy as he'll ever be, in peak physical condition. It's even before the onset of "everyone is conspiring against me!" paranoia triggered by the Clement affair in late 1718/through 1719.
I do wonder of course how Gundling survived the bears under these conditions, even if Morgenstern is right about them having been declawed. The novel has him pull an Androcles and the Lion, basically, but of course Stade had to guess as much as we do. Also, it makes me mad that so many of the later descriptions of Gundling by FW excusing historians or even by "how bad were things for the sciences in Prussia under FW!" Fredericians call Gundling "cowardly". I'd like to see how courageous these people would be living in the absolute power of someone who can and does lock them up with bears! Gundling must have been in a state of constant existential fear for most of those years with FW, and it's a minor miracle he was able to produce books and have normal conversations (when with someone like Freylinghausen as opposed to the Tobacco Parliament) during them.
Good luck with your German and the reading. As I said before, I found Stollberg-Rilinger informative but pretty dry, so you might consider switching back to Horowski again for practice?
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Yes, excellent point! I've gone ahead and added a few entries for Gundling in our chronology, but if you want to add more while you still have the book, that would be great. If you still have Bronisch and want to add some Manteuffel, also welcome! I'll take care of incorporating your entries into the main chronology once you've made them. (Not making any one person do everything at one time is the only reason this chronology happened--it's too daunting otherwise.)
Knobelsdorff dates also welcome if anyone has time and interest! Felis, detective and reader, would you like write access to this document? No pressure, but if you do, just DM me with your gmail address.
it's a minor miracle he was able to produce books and have normal conversations
Agreed! Fucking hell.
Good luck with your German and the reading. As I said before, I found Stollberg-Rilinger informative but pretty dry, so you might consider switching back to Horowski again for practice?
It's definitely dry, and I have been considering switching to something else. Otoh, it is very informative and I'm learning things I'm glad to have learned, and the syntax is noticeably easier than Horowski. (I wasn't expecting that based on your descriptions, but you are a fluent reader to whom syntax complexity is not a concern. ;)) I think I'm going to stick with it for a bit longer and see what happens.
If I start feeling that the dryness is interfering with my all-important German acquisition, I'll look around. I wish my Orieux and Fahlenkamp books would arrive! Why must mail from Germany take so long? :-(
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Because I can handle dry, and I can handle being inundated with new vocabulary from a new domain, but dry and boring are two different things, and boring + tons of new vocab proved fatal.
Now I'm onto her sex life and policing of other people's sex lives, though, so I have no excuse. :P
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
But for now, I want to tell you about all the things on my German reading list, which means I need to be able to read my German reading list!
Thank you. :) I did meet quota yesterday, though I only partly made up for Friday's deficit due to financial reforms.
ETA: Though I should warn you, if we ever have a Classics salon, the evidence is infinitesimal compared to what we have for Fritz, so it will be a rather different experience. There will be no finding out if Lehndorff's wife ever had to see the phosphor inscription on his wallpaper. ;)
When I was reading histories of Alexander the Great two years ago, right before Fritz salon, I was frustrated that people would cite Plutarch uncritically even when contrary evidence existed. Plutarch, I might add, is one of our main sources for AtG...writing 400 years after Alexander died, and drawing heavily on the now lost memoirs of Ptolemy. Who was a friend and general of Alexander, which sounds promising, until you realize that he was Pharoah of Egypt by right of conquest, and was writing his memoirs to justify his rule with reference to the late Alexander.
Documentary evidence from the archives? Alexander's correspondence? What's that?
And yet historians will not only assert facts without mentioning caveats about their sources, they'll draw conclusions about individual people's *personalities* from the most minute details of these works, when, if you consider how few witnesses there must have been and how many mouths a detail must have had to go through to get to Ptolemy in the first place, and the biases inherent in the nature of the evidence...
One historian rather defensively said that if we can't trust our sources, we have no business doing Athenian history at all, to which my reaction is, "Well, you certainly have no business doing Athenian history the way you're doing it."
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
All this is very true, but there is the occasional research gold still. Also, for the Romans: cook books!
I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have stayed in salon this long if you weren't such a rigorously critical thinker. :)
Imagine me blushing. I definitely have been called a gossipy sensationalist far more often. <3, also, I am in awe of your detective research skills, language acquiring abilities and, to quote Hamilton lyrics, top notch brain in general!
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Indeed! I think there is a responsible way to do ancient history, and it involves cookbooks. :D
I definitely have been called a gossipy sensationalist far more often.
That's why our
band namesalon name is Gossipy Sensationalists With Scholarly Instincts! They're not mutually exclusive, as I myself prove.<3, also, I am in awe of your detective research skills, language acquiring abilities and, to quote Hamilton lyrics, top notch brain in general!
<3
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
Which is a classic stress and possibly anxiety related illness and makes perfect sense to me.
Good for him that he managed at least some kind of parallel life with his wife and his studies, but double damn on all the tormenters for dragging his wife into it as well, i.e. not even letting them marry in peace and sending her to Berlin at the end to go through with the mock funeral.
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
The science of the role stress plays in gastric ulcers is currently under debate, but without having read more than a few of the papers and being agnostic on the subject myself, I can say that I'm willing to believe that stress never made anyone's chances of surviving a chronic illness *better*.
Re: Martin Sabrow's Gundling Biography: II
I'm glad that he got his marriage tobe not the disaster that was planned, and really glad that Sabrow finds evidence that he was a serious guy and not just FW's chew toy (which was all I really knew about him before all the stuff you read about him in this post, and I suppose if you'd asked me I would have assumed that he wasn't particularly serious).
Augusta (who had left her husband and children two years earlier which she could since she was the niece of one of the most influential Prussian trademen) sued, at which point her brother-in-law demonstrated that fool or not, he actually could wield what influence he had on FW in a devastating way in this one very personal matter.
Wow. I mean 3/4 of me is like "so this is probably one of those things where the woman suffers dramatically because this is the 18th C" and then the other 1/4 of me is like "but don't underestimate Gundling because he's the fool!" I suppose it's a sort of weird intersectionality of sorts...
Moreover, no matter how often Fritz would rail about Voltaire being the scum of the earth as a human being, he never put down Voltaire's work, he kept his admiration for it from first to last.
Yeah, that was the first thing that came to mind for me when you brought up the comparison, and why Voltaire didn't really strike me as a parallel to begin with.