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 :)
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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