If Knobelsdorff actually served at Küstrin at some point in his military career, even if it was many years pre Fritz, I can see how the rumor got started and Manger got confused.
I'm still not quite clear on what Fritz would have done with them in 1737, if Knobelsdorff had managed to poach any
Well, in 1737, he was in Rheinsberg happily collecting an orchestra and having concerts. He and Wilhelmine keep mentioning this musician or that or such and such being outstanding (or especially annoying) in their letters around that time. Now, of course he didn't have an opera to let the singers perform in yet, but that wasn't necessary for a patron to hire singers for. He could have let them sing for himself and his guests, concert performances. (Which was how Elisabeth Gertrud Schmeling Mara always performed for him much later, for example, when he did have a Knobelsdorff-build opera for her to perform in (which she also did, but additionally there were Fritz-specific concerts).
Btw, I'm not surprised Knobelsdorff didn't get any. A) budget, and b) if you were an Italian singer in 1737, would you dare to travel to FW's Prussia?
Fritz asked Knobelsdorff to take care of Keyserlingk's daughter in 1745, together with Countess Camas. Also, Bielfeld's description of him as "common sense [bon sens] personified". Which is what Fritz praises Countess Camas for as well, so he appointed two common sense people to look after Keyserlingk's daughter, which I find interesting.
(Lehndorff: And yet!)
LOL. Well, Knobelsdorff wasn't around anymore when Adelaide started running wild, and there was a war going on where most of the adults around her were flirting and dancing with enemy officers and having affairs. BTW, when did Mrs. Keyserlingk die? Because the Fredersdorf letters mention her, but Lehndorff's diary does not. Did she die? I hope Fritz didn't take her daughter from her?
"Puppen" phrase: no, this South German has not heard it.
I have to say, it's almost like hearing Fritz talk to Wilhelmine here, almost twenty years later. Kind of makes me wonder how much Knobelsdorff influenced his view on current day Italy, although he also had Algarotti of course.
It also reminds me of something else: Winckelmann - who had a far more positive attitude towards Italy in general, though - made the same mistake Knobelsdorff makes, to wit: 90% of the statues believed to be Greek originals and thus proving the superiority of Greek sculptors over Roman ones which Winckelmann saw in Italy in the early to mid 18th century were actually, as we now can tell, Roman era copies. (Where Knobelsdorff is unusual is in claiming Greek superiority for buildings as well, especially given that as far as I know he didn't visit Greece, and the Pantheon, which even in the 18th century was available to visit, usually knocks out architect afficiniados the first time they see it. (There's a reason it got so widely copied all over the world.) (Did he make it to Naples? Because the underground water system, which worked from the time of Augustus till the mid 19th century when an earthquake did it in, is another masterpiece of Roman architecture which could be visited even then; I think Wilhelmine saw that as well when she was there.) But yes, otherwise the views very much sound like Fritz' letter to Wilhelmine. Complaining about current day Italy being held back by Catholic superstition is pretty much a trope not just for Protestant Germans; Dickens' notes on Italy a century later contain much about this as well. And there's a reason why Algarotti sought employment elsewhere for a long time. Otoh, it's worth pointing out that Laura Bassi as the first female professor at a European university happened in Bologna centuries before any German state (or Britain, or France) followed suite. And as for art, I remember Wilhelmine liking current day Italian painters (and praising them to Fritz as cheap to acquire), and Algarotti sold August III. a whole gallery of them. (Which ended up stored in Hubertusburg in the 7 Years War and then suffered the fate of the rest of Hubertusburg.)
Generally, the series of tropes:
- Greeks were superior to Romans - Christianity made Romans decline to weak/superstitious/degenerate/negative attribute of choice/Italians - the only thing of worth current day Italy produces is music
- shows up repeatedly in male Protestant Italy visitors (with the notable exception of Goethe) in the era. It's interesting that the female letter and memoirs writing visitors - Anna Amalia, Wilhelmine, Lady Mary, also Sophie in the one half a year trip she took with her husband early in the marriage - have a go at the Catholic processions and the Catholic church as well (in varying degrees of critique), but they aren't at all prone to the "the Greeks were better!" or "current day Italy/Italians are so weak compared to their past!" or "The only good thing current day Italy produces is music" tropes the men go for. Instead, you get a lot of "I live like in a dream", "I'm learning so much!" and "OMG, so much better climate!" in their initial reactions. (I mean, obviously Lady Mary after years of actually living there has more to critisize. But not those tropes.)
It's mostly interesting because one letter is from Knobelsdorff to Fredersdorf, asking for "WTF is going on?" intel on the letter Fritz wrote him and calling Fredersdorf "verehrtester Freund", which reminded me that they were freemasons together.
That is fascinating. (Also argues against Team Claus Back and Martin Stade's fictional Knobelsdorff/Fredersdorf feud in "Der Meister von Sanssouci".)
Btw, I'm not surprised Knobelsdorff didn't get any. A) budget, and b) if you were an Italian singer in 1737, would you dare to travel to FW's Prussia?
Pretty much! While he thought the opera in Florence was "the worst I've heard in Italy", he really liked the one in Venice, tried to engage one of the singers and: I didn't spare any effort to engage him, but [...] there's nothing more difficult than bringing a good castrato into a Protestant country if they aren't forced through money like in England.
Oh, and regarding music in general, opera is one thing, but for the rest of it, well: The local instrumental music has not astonished me and I wish I could let the Romans hear a Ruppin concert.
Did he make it to Naples?
No idea. There's no mention of anything south of Rome.
Given his affinity for nature, he does talk about the weather as well, though, not just the culture, and more favourably: The current season is incomparable: the day lasts eleven hours, the sky is clear and bright most of the time, and when I go hunting with the ambassador from Malta, I have to seek shadow from the sun in forests of bay and myrtle. I drew the two enclosed sketches on such an occasion, which I dare to send, and which show one the flat horizon of the region towards the sea at Ostia, and the other pines and trees in the foreground of the Apennines.
BTW, when did Mrs. Keyserlingk die? Because the Fredersdorf letters mention her, but Lehndorff's diary does not. Did she die? I hope Fritz didn't take her daughter from her?
Fritz apparently got her a position as EC's court lady after Keyserlingk's death, which explains how Countess Camas was supposed to keep an eye on the kid. She did die young, though, in 1755, when Adelaide was only eleven. (And Knobelsdorff was already dead as well. Unlike Countess Camas.)
"Puppen" phrase: no, this South German has not heard it.
Interesting! Did not expect that answer to be honest, because it's such a common phrase in my family/region, which isn't anywhere near Berlin either. I guess the fact that it did belong to Prussia way back when did make a difference!
there's nothing more difficult than bringing a good castrato into a Protestant country if they aren't forced through money like in England.
August the Strong had them in Saxony, though. :) (Yes, Poland is Catholic, but Saxony was then as mainly Protestant as it is now.) Let's face it, if you're willing to pay like House Wettin... anyway, as I recall, the following depressing RL event happened around this time in Dresden and Leipzig: a couple of Leipzig judges heard from a lawyer who wanted their judgment for a hypothetical case. Supposedly a Swedish count named Titius had been wounded in the war with the result that he could not possibly sire children anymore, though he wasn't completely incapable of sexual acts and could "give satisfaction to a woman". Was he therefore entitled to a legal marriage towards hypothetical lady Lucretia, provided all this had been explained to her? The judges said he was, whereupon the lawyer revealed his client wasn't a Swedish judge but the Castrato singer Sorlisi, performing at the Dresden opera, who wanted to marry a local Saxon girl named Dorothea. At which point the judges said NO WAY THIS IS SO PERVERSE THE ONLY REASON FOR MARRIAGE IS PROCREATION, and the whole affair ended badly for Sorlisi and Dorothea (I don't recall how bad, just that it wasn't good.)
BTW, does the WvK biography anything about whether or not Knobelsdorff despised Versailles and saw the French Revolution coming? (I.e. did the novelist(s) base this on canon or made it up.)
Oh, I hadn't heard about that story before. ... I see that they did actually get married but had to live with the threat of annulment for the rest of their lives, as well as theological and judicial faculties of several states debating their status and sex life as a precedent, pragmatism vs. dogma and all that. Oh, man. :(
BTW, does the WvK biography anything about whether or not Knobelsdorff despised Versailles and saw the French Revolution coming?
No, he has very little about the France trip in general and only refers to Fritz' eulogy as a source for it.
Aw man, that is a terrible story :( Even without felis's addendum, though I guess at least they actually did get married. Poor castratos, seems like their life was tough enough (although I guess they got to be superstar singers) :( But I guess it's sort of vaguely interesting from a sociological viewpoint that "Marriage is for procreation only!! except when it's not, and when it is or isn't totally depends on our squicks" has been a thing for that long.
(Is your icon the guy playing for Pesne in the painting? ETA: I went back and looked and I see that it is! :D )
Re: Castrati, well, some of them got to be superstar singers. In some years up to 400 boys in Italy were castrated in the hope they'd end us singers. Some were filtered out early on because the training was very tough. Others kept trying well into adulthood, and were lucky if they ended up as someone's music teacher or playing the organ in their hometown. The next level were making it into a choir or musical ensemble of some prince (either secular or clerical). Those who actually made it to the top and became international superstars whom operas and princes fought for weren't more than those who manage it today. It has to be said in order to make understandable the parents' risking this for their children (and it's not like that operation could be reversed if things didn't work out!) that this was one of the very few ways you could pre French Revolution Europe be born a peasant and still make it to the top.
Ha, okay, that makes total sense (and your note about how it wasn't more than those who manage it today is well taken -- I suppose that kind of distribution of leave/teach/ensemble/superstar is in a way similar to musicians' lots everywhere, though most don't have to lose body parts for it!) Ugh, all those poor kids!
That's really interesting that those tropes (which, now that you mention it, I am pretty sure I had seen somewhere before salon) show up in male visitors but not in female ones! I would have thought that it would be everyone. Is it that the females don't feel such a need to one-up the current-day Italians, do you think?
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timeasmymeasure
Re: A bit more Knobelsdorff (and Friends)
Date: 2021-04-01 08:00 am (UTC)I'm still not quite clear on what Fritz would have done with them in 1737, if Knobelsdorff had managed to poach any
Well, in 1737, he was in Rheinsberg happily collecting an orchestra and having concerts. He and Wilhelmine keep mentioning this musician or that or such and such being outstanding (or especially annoying) in their letters around that time. Now, of course he didn't have an opera to let the singers perform in yet, but that wasn't necessary for a patron to hire singers for. He could have let them sing for himself and his guests, concert performances. (Which was how Elisabeth Gertrud Schmeling Mara always performed for him much later, for example, when he did have a Knobelsdorff-build opera for her to perform in (which she also did, but additionally there were Fritz-specific concerts).
Btw, I'm not surprised Knobelsdorff didn't get any. A) budget, and b) if you were an Italian singer in 1737, would you dare to travel to FW's Prussia?
Fritz asked Knobelsdorff to take care of Keyserlingk's daughter in 1745, together with Countess Camas. Also, Bielfeld's description of him as "common sense [bon sens] personified". Which is what Fritz praises Countess Camas for as well, so he appointed two common sense people to look after Keyserlingk's daughter, which I find interesting.
(Lehndorff: And yet!)
LOL. Well, Knobelsdorff wasn't around anymore when Adelaide started running wild, and there was a war going on where most of the adults around her were flirting and dancing with enemy officers and having affairs. BTW, when did Mrs. Keyserlingk die? Because the Fredersdorf letters mention her, but Lehndorff's diary does not. Did she die? I hope Fritz didn't take her daughter from her?
"Puppen" phrase: no, this South German has not heard it.
I have to say, it's almost like hearing Fritz talk to Wilhelmine here, almost twenty years later. Kind of makes me wonder how much Knobelsdorff influenced his view on current day Italy, although he also had Algarotti of course.
It also reminds me of something else: Winckelmann - who had a far more positive attitude towards Italy in general, though - made the same mistake Knobelsdorff makes, to wit: 90% of the statues believed to be Greek originals and thus proving the superiority of Greek sculptors over Roman ones which Winckelmann saw in Italy in the early to mid 18th century were actually, as we now can tell, Roman era copies. (Where Knobelsdorff is unusual is in claiming Greek superiority for buildings as well, especially given that as far as I know he didn't visit Greece, and the Pantheon, which even in the 18th century was available to visit, usually knocks out architect afficiniados the first time they see it. (There's a reason it got so widely copied all over the world.) (Did he make it to Naples? Because the underground water system, which worked from the time of Augustus till the mid 19th century when an earthquake did it in, is another masterpiece of Roman architecture which could be visited even then; I think Wilhelmine saw that as well when she was there.) But yes, otherwise the views very much sound like Fritz' letter to Wilhelmine. Complaining about current day Italy being held back by Catholic superstition is pretty much a trope not just for Protestant Germans; Dickens' notes on Italy a century later contain much about this as well. And there's a reason why Algarotti sought employment elsewhere for a long time. Otoh, it's worth pointing out that Laura Bassi as the first female professor at a European university happened in Bologna centuries before any German state (or Britain, or France) followed suite. And as for art, I remember Wilhelmine liking current day Italian painters (and praising them to Fritz as cheap to acquire), and Algarotti sold August III. a whole gallery of them. (Which ended up stored in Hubertusburg in the 7 Years War and then suffered the fate of the rest of Hubertusburg.)
Generally, the series of tropes:
- Greeks were superior to Romans
- Christianity made Romans decline to weak/superstitious/degenerate/negative attribute of choice/Italians
- the only thing of worth current day Italy produces is music
- shows up repeatedly in male Protestant Italy visitors (with the notable exception of Goethe) in the era. It's interesting that the female letter and memoirs writing visitors - Anna Amalia, Wilhelmine, Lady Mary, also Sophie in the one half a year trip she took with her husband early in the marriage - have a go at the Catholic processions and the Catholic church as well (in varying degrees of critique), but they aren't at all prone to the "the Greeks were better!" or "current day Italy/Italians are so weak compared to their past!" or "The only good thing current day Italy produces is music" tropes the men go for. Instead, you get a lot of "I live like in a dream", "I'm learning so much!" and "OMG, so much better climate!" in their initial reactions. (I mean, obviously Lady Mary after years of actually living there has more to critisize. But not those tropes.)
It's mostly interesting because one letter is from Knobelsdorff to Fredersdorf, asking for "WTF is going on?" intel on the letter Fritz wrote him and calling Fredersdorf "verehrtester Freund", which reminded me that they were freemasons together.
That is fascinating. (Also argues against Team Claus Back and Martin Stade's fictional Knobelsdorff/Fredersdorf feud in "Der Meister von Sanssouci".)
Re: A bit more Knobelsdorff (and Friends)
Date: 2021-04-01 12:55 pm (UTC)Pretty much! While he thought the opera in Florence was "the worst I've heard in Italy", he really liked the one in Venice, tried to engage one of the singers and: I didn't spare any effort to engage him, but [...] there's nothing more difficult than bringing a good castrato into a Protestant country if they aren't forced through money like in England.
Oh, and regarding music in general, opera is one thing, but for the rest of it, well: The local instrumental music has not astonished me and I wish I could let the Romans hear a Ruppin concert.
Did he make it to Naples?
No idea. There's no mention of anything south of Rome.
Given his affinity for nature, he does talk about the weather as well, though, not just the culture, and more favourably: The current season is incomparable: the day lasts eleven hours, the sky is clear and bright most of the time, and when I go hunting with the ambassador from Malta, I have to seek shadow from the sun in forests of bay and myrtle. I drew the two enclosed sketches on such an occasion, which I dare to send, and which show one the flat horizon of the region towards the sea at Ostia, and the other pines and trees in the foreground of the Apennines.
BTW, when did Mrs. Keyserlingk die? Because the Fredersdorf letters mention her, but Lehndorff's diary does not. Did she die? I hope Fritz didn't take her daughter from her?
Fritz apparently got her a position as EC's court lady after Keyserlingk's death, which explains how Countess Camas was supposed to keep an eye on the kid. She did die young, though, in 1755, when Adelaide was only eleven. (And Knobelsdorff was already dead as well. Unlike Countess Camas.)
"Puppen" phrase: no, this South German has not heard it.
Interesting! Did not expect that answer to be honest, because it's such a common phrase in my family/region, which isn't anywhere near Berlin either. I guess the fact that it did belong to Prussia way back when did make a difference!
Re: A bit more Knobelsdorff (and Friends)
Date: 2021-04-02 10:03 am (UTC)August the Strong had them in Saxony, though. :) (Yes, Poland is Catholic, but Saxony was then as mainly Protestant as it is now.) Let's face it, if you're willing to pay like House Wettin... anyway, as I recall, the following depressing RL event happened around this time in Dresden and Leipzig: a couple of Leipzig judges heard from a lawyer who wanted their judgment for a hypothetical case. Supposedly a Swedish count named Titius had been wounded in the war with the result that he could not possibly sire children anymore, though he wasn't completely incapable of sexual acts and could "give satisfaction to a woman". Was he therefore entitled to a legal marriage towards hypothetical lady Lucretia, provided all this had been explained to her? The judges said he was, whereupon the lawyer revealed his client wasn't a Swedish judge but the Castrato singer Sorlisi, performing at the Dresden opera, who wanted to marry a local Saxon girl named Dorothea. At which point the judges said NO WAY THIS IS SO PERVERSE THE ONLY REASON FOR MARRIAGE IS PROCREATION, and the whole affair ended badly for Sorlisi and Dorothea (I don't recall how bad, just that it wasn't good.)
BTW, does the WvK biography anything about whether or not Knobelsdorff despised Versailles and saw the French Revolution coming? (I.e. did the novelist(s) base this on canon or made it up.)
Re: A bit more Knobelsdorff (and Friends)
Date: 2021-04-02 06:41 pm (UTC)BTW, does the WvK biography anything about whether or not Knobelsdorff despised Versailles and saw the French Revolution coming?
No, he has very little about the France trip in general and only refers to Fritz' eulogy as a source for it.
Re: A bit more Knobelsdorff (and Friends)
Date: 2021-04-07 05:11 am (UTC)(Is your icon the guy playing for Pesne in the painting? ETA: I went back and looked and I see that it is! :D )
Re: A bit more Knobelsdorff (and Friends)
Date: 2021-04-07 04:48 pm (UTC)Icon: yes, see also here for more.
Re: A bit more Knobelsdorff (and Friends)
Date: 2021-04-10 05:28 am (UTC)Re: A bit more Knobelsdorff (and Friends)
Date: 2021-04-07 05:07 am (UTC)