selenak: (Default)
selenak ([personal profile] selenak) wrote in [personal profile] cahn 2021-05-25 06:23 am (UTC)

Re: War of the Spanish Succession: Bleinheim - Gossipy Sexuality Debate

Well, she lived into another age, getting old (also she'd been eleven years younger than her husband to begin with), and she always kept up her correspondence with her German relations, so a comment on any of the Hannovers, F1 or FW, say, would not have surprised me, but I admit I hadn't expected the Old (the not so old) Dessauer to register with her, either. Of course, if he really said in public he'd enjoy putting a bullet into her son's brain, that explains it. Liselotte had her share of criticism of Philippe II (the constant partying and screwing around, the laziness in his pre-Regent days), but she did love her son. (And was proud of him as Regent, writing angrily that he actually had done better for France in a few years than Louis in the last few decades.) She'd take a remark like this personally.

Here' the passage in her glorious baroque German for you: "Dieser Herr hat einen discours bei Turin gegen meinen Sohn geführet, so ich noch auf dem Magen und nicht verdauet habe: mit welcher lust er meinem Sohn eine Pistolkugel in den Kopf jagen wollte. A bit later, she adds: Daß dieser dolle Printz zum Czaaren geht, das wundert mich gar nicht, man findet die ursach in der commedie von Corneille: il est des noeuds secrets, il est des simpaties. Ich finde, daß sie viel simpatien haen: in Grausamkeit, und in geringer heurat."

There's also an SD comment from Liselotte, a few years earlier, 1713, in a letter to her sister Louise:

Ich gestehe, liebe Louise, ich kann nicht vertragen, Teutsche zu finden, die ihre Muttersprach so verachten, daß sie nie mit anderen Teutschen reden oder schreiben wollen, das ärgert mich recht: und die Königin in Preußen, wenn ich sie nicht von jederman loben hörte als eine gar tugendhafte Fürstin, sonsten solte ich fürchten, daß sie mit fremden Sprachen auch der fremden Länder Fehler aprobieren solt. (...)) Um wohl Frantzösch zu schreiben, muß man die Sprach wohl können, sonsten kompts doll heraus.

I take this to mean that SD, who had only just become Queen of, sorry, in Prussia, replied to a "congratulations" letter in French, and that Lieselotte, who'd spent most of her life in France, was of course fluent but still wrote the letters to German correspondents in German, thought this was pretentious, especially since the French in question wasn't even that good. Lord knows what she'd have made of Fritz!


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