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A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 12:59 pm (UTC)At least I don't have any more papers to write rn.
Anyway, I've been to Wust twice this year, once two days ago (what does it say about me that I drove 500km for a dead guy's 291st Jahrgedächtnis...?), and have apparently been promoted to the local historical association's transcription specialist because they don't have anyone who can read Kurrent and I can. So now I have some 18th century documents on my desk at home. Which I still can't believe. Some bills, some official documents with Prussian seals, a letter to Hans Heinrich from 1705, a letter to his wife from 1743, and an envelope of a letter to one of the younger sons with a seal from another Katte. I have yet to transcribe them, but I'll notify you if I find anything fun :D Also there's more where this came from which i could possibly get. Needless to say I'm hyped and will actually pass away immediately if the next stack of unorganized documents contains a letter that mentions new stuff on Katte jr.
Speaking of Katte, I got an article about the punishment methods at his boarding school by a Thomas Grunewald, don't know if you've already covered that...? I haven't read the whole thing yet, but what I've seen is very interesting. Teen Katte, along with some other students, got reprimanded for throwing snow and "wird besonders ermahnt, weil er sich vieles sagen lassen kann, aber nachher so tut als sei nichts gewesen". He also got investigated for trading things with his classmates and being "nicht genügsam erwecket"
Finally, I made some art during the last few months. I don't remember if I shared my latest comic with you...? It's not even that new, but I sorta forgot... Anyway:
Silly comic featuring Fritz and Algarotti
And two Kattes. It's rather obvious which one was made in a medium i know how to use and which one was an experiment with new things... They both have their charm, even though both faces didn't turn out the way I usually want my Kattes to look. The coloured pencil one was gifted to the people in Wust and will apparently end up on some wall there :'D
Oil Pastels:
and coloured pencils:
Alright, this was my quick dump of stuff that could be interesting :'D I might make more coloured pencil portraits in the near future, I'd like to have a proper, nice looking picture of Fredersdorf... Maybe I'll make it a small series of Fritz and his boyfriends, I kinda like the portrait on white background look ^^ Anyway, I hope y'all are doing well :D
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 02:12 pm (UTC)We were just admiring your guide to Fritzian siblings that Selena pointed us to and wondering where you were and hoping you would come back. But I wasn't expecting THIS! :DDD
Anyway, I've been to Wust twice this year, once two days ago (what does it say about me that I drove 500km for a dead guy's 291st Jahrgedächtnis...?)
That you are LUCKY and also dedicated and also MY HERO! (
We extremely need your help with the paleographical side of things, and now you're telling us the Wust association does too??! OMG! I have two sets of historical documents (one Fredersdorf, one Peter Keith) that if we can figure out how to get them from the archives, I will legit pay you for a transcription.
ALSO! See if the Wust people can help you get a copy of Martin von Katte's unpublished manuscripts on the Katte family and on Hans Hermann! They form the basis for Kloosterhuis' Katte monograph, but I haven't been able to get them! Tell them I'm writing an article. (I am, probably. :P)
Also also, one of the reasons I've been eagerly waiting for you to come back is that we need some transcription help with this very short record! Top of the right hand page, the one that starts v. Keith. That's Peter's widow's death record, turned up courtesy of
Felis and Selena were able to read all but a few words. This discussion has what Felis was able to interpret. Can you help?
Speaking of Katte, I got an article about the punishment methods at his boarding school by a Thomas Grunewald, don't know if you've already covered that...? I haven't read the whole thing yet, but what I've seen is very interesting.
We don't know this, please share! Is it online? If not, can you scan a copy?
"wird besonders ermahnt, weil er sich vieles sagen lassen kann, aber nachher so tut als sei nichts gewesen".
LOLOL, oh Katte. Was this Francke's Pietest pedagogium at Halle?
Finally, I made some art during the last few months. I don't remember if I shared my latest comic with you...? It's not even that new, but I sorta forgot... Anyway:
I had not seen this! LOLOL Algarotti, Fritz needs a sex therapist, clearly!
Speaking of constructive criticism, since we know that 1) Andrew Mitchell was one the "tastiest dish" for Algarotti, 2) Fritz showed some of his poetry to Mitchell, Selena has embraced as headcanon my joke that Fritz and Mitchell obviously talked about how their ex Algarotti was hot stuff, and also Mitchell critiqued the orgasm poem for realism wrt Algarotti's orgasms. :'D
Your art is so great. <3 If you'd come back in time for Rare Male Slash Exchange, I would have begged for your help with the flyer in my modern-day Fritzian corporate AU. Instead, I ended up with this ridiculous thing and had the characters mock my graphic design skills or lack thereof in-universe, lol. :'D
Speaking of fic, I read your road-trip fic and loved it! I didn't leave a comment solely because in order to quote my favorite parts, I would have had to reread the fic, and you have to understand that my German, while massively improved over 2 years ago, is extreeeemely slow and painful. I'm working on it and plan to leave a juicy comment with quotes once I can do so without it taking two weeks! (Also, it was super useful for teaching me some modern vocabulary, since all the vocab I have is for things like "fortress" and "bloodletting", not "seatbelt", lol forever, but also takes me even longer than usual to read for that reason.)
Btw, I'm currently reading Kloosterhuis, and once I'm finished, I'm going to try Zeithain again. (Zeithain will be much better German practice, but I wanted to do it in this order, because I wanted to see what Roes fictionalized vs. drew from history.)
The coloured pencil one was gifted to the people in Wust and will apparently end up on some wall there :'D
OMG! Btw, if you're tight with the local historical association and talk Katte portraits with them, do you want to tell them that the Katte portrait they do have on the wall is almost certainly Catt, per our discussion here?
In other news, I'm currently trying to turn some of our historical research into publishable articles! This is why I need help getting materials from the archives and then someone to transcribe them. :D
Article 1: Biographical sketch of Peter Keith. According to the Prussian archives, there's an unpublished correspondence that appears to be between him and Fritz, 1745-1750. (I know you don't know French, but I have someone who can almost certainly help with that part!) Kloosterhuis also gives two different months for his marriage to Ariane, and he gives the citation the marriage record, and I'd love to get a copy of that as well.
Article 2: Thanks to my persistent detective work,
Your art is going straight into Rheinsberg!
Meanwhile, if any of our German speakers want to see if it's possible to order online from the Prussian archives, I would appreciate the help. When
If not, we'll have to wait, and I will let you know, transcription specialist
Also, your kattestrophe blog says there's a Fritz & Co. Discord. What kinds of conversations happen there? Is there anyone there who might be interested in joining salon?
We missed you, but you have come back with a bang! Please keep us apprised of your transcription findings!
ETA: Speaking of Rare Male Slash Exchange, I meant to note that Selena wrote me a lovely Peter Keith fic in which Algarotti finds that some Germans, even traumatized ones without a lot of recent experience, are great in bed. :D (Peter, setting a standard that Fritz couldn't live up to? Lol!) But I see from the kudos that you've already found it. :)
In other news, we also turned up Wilhelmine's travel diary from her Italy visit. I'm halfway cleaning up the OCR so we can run it through Google Translate and see if there's anything interesting. So far no, but you never know! There will also be some Fritz & Wilhelmine letters, but I'm not sure if they're ones that have already been found elsewhere by salon or not.
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 04:28 pm (UTC)I have two sets of historical documents (one Fredersdorf, one Peter Keith) that if we can figure out how to get them from the archives, I will legit pay you for a transcription.
I'd love to try! I am by no means infallible (and some handwritings are more hellish than others...), but I'd do my best (and i have more friends who know Kurrent and who could potentially help). Anything to get more stuff on Keith and Fredersdorf. Lots of people have been wanting transcriptions lately, maybe I should just do that full time :'D I've been coddled by the late 19th century and people with good handwriting lately, so I'm still a little sluggish when it comes to the worse parts, but I'll get back into the rhythm of it ^^
See if the Wust people can help you get a copy of Martin von Katte's unpublished manuscripts on the Katte family and on Hans Hermann!
I've been wanting those too and have already asked them about that when I visited in August! They gave me the e-mail adress of Dr. Maria von Katte and I've been trying to construct a proper e-mail since :D I'm an anxious mess though, so i haven't sent anything off yet. Still trying my best not to sound too weird. "Hello, I am emotionally attached to your dead distant cousin and I'd like nothing more than to read his private mail. The brochure from Wust says he wrote a letter to his, quote, "Engelsschwesterken" when he was a child and I just about died and need more context for this." I hoped that she would show up to the thing on Saturday (apparently she does vistit Wust at times) so I could ask in person and use my big shiny student eyes to convince her to help me, but she didn't (show up, that is).
I have not dared to mention that the pic in the church is of de Catt, I'm not sure if we are on that level of friendship yet :'DD It's such an awkward thing to bring up. My friend and i were considering telling them when we visited last year, but alas...
Also also, one of the reasons I've been eagerly waiting for you to come back is that we need some transcription help with this very short record!
Oh boy, gotta love registries. Not the worst handwriting I've seen, I'll see what I can do :D The currency could/should be Reichst(h)aler I think...? The word in front of Queen is reigning, the first line of the heirs column says "ein Majorenner Sohn, (der)", so "one adult son". I'm reading Steckfluß too; that would be a pulmonary edema, so it would make sense. I'm at work right now, so I'm not in the best headspace to concentrate on this, but I'll get back to it later :D
The article about the Franckesche Stiftungen is here. Apparently it's partially a reaction to Roes' depiction of the school in Zeithain :'D Dr. Grunewald did not like that one, according to the Wust people. The list of crimes and punishments is in the appendix; there's also a list of names that's proof that Katte's friend Holtzendorff really was in Glaucha around the same time (I was wondering, since he's 3 to 4 years older than Katte...), the 19th century book that Kloosterhuis used as a source on him didn't mention that :DD I'd love to find out more about Holtzendorff other than "FW hated him, he was possibly a bit of a ho, and he dropped out of the Gens d'armes to basically become a banker"
I read your road-trip fic and loved it!
Aaah, thank you! :DD I'm still working on chapter 3, getting shit done is not my strong suit. There will be a proper kiss eventually, I promise! :'D If you want more old timey german and more Katte there's the one shot i wrote... :'D aka The Sad Thing I Published as opposed to The Modern AU Where Things Go Less Wrong. Speaking of that oneshot, there was a speaker in Wust who restores crypts for a living (very nice man, super interesting conversation, offered me an internship) and apparently the one in Golzow, where Katte's sister (and her husband, Rochow. The historically relevant of the two.) is buried, has been subject to, uh... incredible violence. I'm talking heads ripped off of mummies. I guess poor Fredersdorf was lucky after all, his coffin may have been destroyed, but at least from what I know *all* of his bones are buried somehwere on the churchyard of Zernikow... Also also one of Katte's nephews on that side apparently got murdered by a servant. Fun times in the Mittelmark :'D
The discord server is a fun bunch of people, they're all very sweet :D Mostly around my age, so early 20s. We talk about pretty much everything, there's proper historical work and discussions as well as a lot of memery and injokes (like Fritz and Voltaire's slightly demonic child, born of a Frev era conspiracy theory: The Hatred of Christianity, Prince/ss of Prussia). And fic writing. And more art. One of us is an animation student and made an animatic staring Voltaire (with appearances from Algarotti and Maupertuis) using his song from the weird musical :D I'll tell them you'd be happy to have new contributors over here. Gotta admit though, the salon is a little intimidating to, I quote, "humble shitposters" :'D
I saw Wilhelmine's travel diary too, thought about buying it :DD Good to see you've got it covered!
I'll keep an eye out for the prussian archives too ^^
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 05:53 pm (UTC)You will if I have anything to say about it!!! :DDD
My face is hurting from all the smiling today.
I've been wanting those too and have already asked them about that when I visited in August! They gave me the e-mail adress of Dr. Maria von Katte
!!!!
You're way ahead of me. Asking for this has been on my to-do list for a while, but...yeah. I know how it feels to be super awkward about asking.
The brochure from Wust says he wrote a letter to his, quote, "Engelsschwesterken" when he was a child and I just about died and need more context for this."
ZOMG, yes, we extremely need this.
I hoped that she would show up to the thing on Saturday (apparently she does vistit Wust at times) so I could ask in person and use my big shiny student eyes to convince her to help me, but she didn't (show up, that is).
Oh, man. You know the other thing we need? Apparently at least one painting by Hans Hermann survives and is in the Katte collection and was on display in an exhibition some years ago, but I've never even seen a picture of it so I don't know what it's even a painting of!
But manuscripts come first, definitely get your hands on all the manuscripts and letters you can. :D
I'm not sure if we are on that level of friendship yet :'DD
Ahahhaha, yes, wait until you're interning for the crypt restorer guy. (Doooo iiiit! Although also definitely get a job at the auction house, just in case something comes along! It's still too bad about the book you found online that Katte owned and inscribed. Even with my recent raise and offer to help buy salon books, though, 2000 euros for a book is a bit outside my price range. :'D)
I'm at work right now, so I'm not in the best headspace to concentrate on this, but I'll get back to it later :D
Awesome, thank you!
The article about the Franckesche Stiftungen is here. Apparently it's partially a reaction to Roes' depiction of the school in Zeithain :'D Dr. Grunewald did not like that one, according to the Wust people.
Lololol, that's hilarious! Well, we found indirect evidence that Hans Heinrich had no problem with Hans Hermann playing the flute, so we consider that slander. :'D
Aaah, thank you! :DD I'm still working on chapter 3, getting shit done is not my strong suit.
I can't throw stones! My fic output has been woeful lately. I really just want someone to nag and encourage me about the two nonfiction articles-in-progress. It's sooo tedious looking up tons of references in two languages I barely know, half of them in a font that makes me cry. This is not going to get done unless someone is asking me every week, "Hey, Mildred, when it's it going to be done? The world needs more Keith and Fredersdorf!"
If you want more old timey german and more Katte there's the one shot i wrote... :'D aka The Sad Thing I Published
Oh, right! Also on my to-read list when my German is just a little better. (I couldn't resist the road trip, even though I had to download it and convert it to a pdf to be able to read it--road trips are my jam!)
apparently the one in Golzow, where Katte's sister (and her husband, Rochow. The historically relevant of the two.) is buried, has been subject to, uh... incredible violence. I'm talking heads ripped off of mummies.
Wow. I didn't know where she was buried, thank you! And zomg. Is her head ripped off, do you know?
If you know/find out where Peter Keith was buried, let us know! It's kind of funny we know his even more obscure wife's burial place, but not his.
I'll tell them you'd be happy to have new contributors over here. Gotta admit though, the salon is a little intimidating to, I quote, "humble shitposters" :'D
Hee, but we welcome humble shitposting! We have come up with playlists and sorted them into Hogwarts houses and whatnot!
I'm afraid to go over to Discord both because I'm working 40 hours again these days, and also because I'm of the opinion that all Frederician discussion should take place in salon where we can track it and consolidate it in Rheinsberg. :D
I saw Wilhelmine's travel diary too, thought about buying it :DD Good to see you've got it covered!
Nag me and the digitizing and translating will go faster! I respond well to external encouragement when I have to do super tedious things!
I'll keep an eye out for the prussian archives too ^^
Sweet! You are the best and welcome back! Please don't be intimidated by us and spend as much time here being as frivolous as you want! (And also transcriber, ilu so much, tell us everything!)
Also, get us those manuscripts! I have a very specific point I need to research about whether Katte went to Madrid like Kloosterhuis said Martin von Katte said Hans Heinrich said he did, or not!
(Now that I'm reading Kloosterhuis, researching his sources on Rottembourg is on my to-do list, because I need to compare their reliability to the reliability of the sources that are telling me Rottembourg wasn't in Madrid that year. Also the Schulenburgs, I need to research the contradictions between Kloosterhuis' genealogy and Wikipedia's. So much salon, so little time! My number one priority is I need to finish studying German so I can start studying French!)
Oh, if the Wust people have any definitive proof for the claim that Ludolf von Katte married Mme. du Rosey in 1755, that would be awesome. Lehndorff says his hopes of marrying her are fading in 1753, so if it took her another 2 years to marry Ludolf, that would be super interesting.
Schulenburgs and Rottembourgs
Date: 2021-11-10 05:17 pm (UTC)I found the book Kloosterhuis cited for this claim. Snippet view shows me it does indeed say 1727-1734 in Madrid, and there's a footnote I can't view. Since the book costs 75 euros, I've put in a request with my local Interlibrary Loan, and we'll see what happens. (I send them such obscure requests that 50% get canceled because they can't find a library willing to lend, but this one seems easier to acquire, so fingers crossed.) It's a 2004 secondary source that seems reputable, but my 19th century collection of instructions to French ambassadors still seems more reliable. But until I see the footnote, I will reserve judgment.
Also the Schulenburgs, I need to research the contradictions between Kloosterhuis' genealogy and Wikipedia's.
This one I tracked down, and it really looks like Wikipedia is right and Kloosterhuis is wrong! (Oh, how the mighty have fallen. :P)
Kloosterhuis:
Über seine Großmutter väterlicherseits, Eva Auguste von Stammer, war Hans Hermann von Katte mit dieser altadligen Familie verwandt, denn deren Schwester Anna Elisabeth hatte den brandenburgischen Kammerpräsidenten Gustav Adolf von der Schulenburg geheiratet. Von dessen Kindern war insbesondere Matthias Johann von der Schulenburg...berühmt geworden; nicht minder seine Schwester Ehrengard Melusine unter dem Titel einer Herzogin von Kendal.
Through his paternal grandmother, Eva Auguste von Stammer, Hans Hermann von Katte was related with this old noble family, since her sister Anna Elisabeth had married the Brandenburg chamber-president Gustav Adolf von der Schulenburg. Of their children, Matthias Johann von der Schulenburg especially became famous; not less his sister Ehrengard Melusine under the title Duchess of Kendal.
He cites Georg Schmidt, Das Geschlecht von der Schulenburg, II. Teil: Die Stammreihe, Beetzendorf 1899, 416 – 418.
I tracked that down on FamilySearch, and the page in question says his first wife was Petronella Ottilie Schwenken, and his second wife was Anna Elisabeth von Stammer. The children of the first marriage include Matthias Johann and Ehrengard Melusine. The children of the second marriage do not. The fact that Melusine's mother was the wife named Petronella is also way more consistent with her daughter being Petronella than her being descended from the other wife.
So in this case, Kloosterhuis' source doesn't say what he says it does.
There's also the part where he might be right, but he's not telling me where to find the info that Anna Elisabeth and Eva Auguste were sisters. Schmidt says Anna Elisabeth's parents were Jürgen Arnd auf Wörmlitz, Wedelitz, and Ballenstedt, and Anna Elisabeth von Königsmarck. Schmidt says nothing about Eva Auguste's parentage, but this other 19th century, possibly wrong, source (Nachrichten zur Geschichte des Geschlechts derer von Rochow und ihrer Besitzungen, by Adolph Friedrich August von Rochow, 1861) says Eva Auguste's parents were Hans Heinrich von Stammer and Margarethe Judith von Benningsen.
So even now that I've gotten away from Wikipedia and online genealogy sites that probably draw on Wikipedia or vice versa, I'm still not seeing how Eva Auguste and Anna Elisabeth were related. And all evidence points to Melusine and Katte being related by marriage, not blood. Evidently they kept close enough ties for him to call her "Aunt", but that kind of thing happens in families.
(And yes, I will get to the Melusine write-up at some point, now that I'm winding down on the Great Northern War. Also SDC!)
Melusine
Date: 2021-11-10 08:16 pm (UTC)Of most interest to salon:
Melusine was apparently a stickler when it came to proper behavior. We've seen that she was a regular churchgoer, and increasingly devout in her later years, and Hatton speculates that her breaking the silence about her illegitimate daughters in her will is because of the religious context of the will, where she didn't feel she could tell a lie.
New examples have emerged: G1 appears to have been more forgiving than Melusine of their eldest daughter, who took lovers and was divorced when her husband caught her in flagrante. G1 granted the divorce and gave her a title (Gräfin von Delitz). In later years, he gave her a small palace, and in a record in which he's drawing a money order from the Hanoverian treasury for her use, George asks that this 'be done without the knowledge of the Duchess of Kendal' (i.e. her mother Melusine).
Moreover:
She disapproved so strongly of the gambling habits of Philip Dormer Stanhope 4th earl of Chesterfield, who married young Melusine, that he was too scared to confess his losses at cards during a visit to Bath: he pretended he had not played at all.
In her will:
The sums donated to nephews and nieces were quite modest (£300 to each); and the somewhat straitlaced attitude of Melusine as she got older (which we have already noticed in her dislike of gambling for high stakes) is evident in her leaving out one nephew from the list of bequests with the explanation that she did so because he had married against his parents' wishes.
Why is this relevant? Well, Selena pointed out that historical Katte was obviously willing to brave (relative) poverty in exile for Fritz, since he had to know Aunt Melusine might not be willing to host/bankroll him indefinitely.
But now that I've read these examples, I'm not convinced she would have given a deserter and flouter of his father's wishes anything! Remember, Hans Heinrich didn't want his son leaving Prussian service for British even without it being desertion. (And Hans Hermann was reprimanded for overstaying his leave.)
And this is of course relevant to any AU in which he shows up in England in 1730. :D (As an out for the author who needs one, there's always Petronella/young Melusine, whom he was infatuated1, and who might have found a way to get him some money.)
Speaking of Petronella/young Melusine, Hatton tells me that she and her mother were inseparable, and that they continued living together even after young Melusine married Chesterfield. And that young Melusine seems not to have lived with her husband:
Young Melusine's marriage seems to have made little difference: there is hardly a mention of her in Chesterfield, Letters, and her husband's biographers have concluded that, though he behaved towards her with great politeness in society, they lived more or less apart. The duchess of Kendal could not have approved of him; in her will of 1743 she makes sure that he cannot touch any of the money left to the younger Melusine.
Things you would not have guessed!
1. The original Selena summary said "had a fling with", but the text reads "umschwärmte". I take it to mean he was admiring her, with no implications as to whether or not she reciprocated. And while my German admittedly misses a lot of nuances like this, summarizing from memory is also a feature of Selena summaries (just like Mildred summaries), so I'm asking. Do we know from "umschwärmte" whether they had a fling?
Tangent: Oh, and this is interesting. Rereading that passage, Kloosterhuis describes Petronella Melusine as a relative ("Verwandte") of the duchess of Kendal, not a daughter. He cites Schmidt again, who, remember, is writing in 1899. And remember that Hatton told us that the equation of the "nieces" of Melusine with her illegitimate children by G1 was recent as of 1978.
Ooh, Schmidt is saying that that the ADB erroneously says that she was the illegitimate daughter of G1 and Melusine. And Kloosterhuis seems to be going along with this. Okay, guys, but Hatton cites evidence and you don't, so...Schmidt might be 19th century whitewashing and Kloosterhuis might be trustingly following him. Evidence or it didn't happen!
(I may not be able to read entire books or even essays in old-fashioned German font yet, but I can do detective work like this now, which is a huge step forward in terms of my productivity!)
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 06:11 pm (UTC)I endorse this career choice! I can't employ you full-time, but I can pay you ad hoc for specific projects dear to my heart (once I get the actual documents). :D
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 06:13 pm (UTC)Oh, yey. I haven't read it yet (see really really slow German), but I glanced at the first couple pages, and I notice Claudia Jarzebowski is cited! Selena read us one of her essays on Wilhelmine!
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 06:15 pm (UTC)How much did you find it for? Because I paid $150 to snag it while I could, because the next cheapest copy I could find was like $500 for the full 3-volume set. Do you use book-finding sites that I could be using?
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 07:40 pm (UTC)Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 08:17 pm (UTC)And lol, I was a bit surprised at your apparent willingness to spend $150 or more on her diary. ;)
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 08:25 pm (UTC)here
Like I said, it's a super tiny publishing house and the cover is an affront to good taste. Also it only has 104 pages which seems odd considering the version in three parts...? I'm really not sure what this is. I actually don't remember how i found it either :'D
Wilhelmine travel diary + Italy letters
Date: 2021-11-08 11:10 pm (UTC)104 pages sounds about right, actually; the three volumes include 2 unrelated volumes and only the third is Wilhelmine. Which is why I really, really didn't want to pay $500 for two books I didn't want and one I did. The Wilhelmine diary is only about 50 pages long, plus there are about 100 pages of letters between her and Fritz. I'm guessing the German translation doesn't include the letters, although there is a lot of blank space in the original volume, so the German publishers might have condensed the 168 pages down to 104.
If the German translation doesn't include the letters,
Re: Wilhelmine travel diary + Italy letters
From:Re: Wilhelmine travel diary + Italy letters
From:Re: Wilhelmine travel diary + Italy letters
From:Re: Wilhelmine travel diary + Italy letters
From:Re: Wilhelmine travel diary + Italy letters
From:Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 02:59 pm (UTC)Since you're now salon's official transcriber, if there are any books or other materials that would either aid you in your noble Katte endeavors, or generally be of interest to salon, that I could help pay for, let me know! I got a raise last month and as official salon librarian, am offering to help buy books for the cause. :D
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 04:42 pm (UTC)Thank you for the offer! I'm always trying to complete my Katte/trial collection, but most of what I find is really cheap, no need to complicate things ^^ Just got the book of different monarchs' letters related to the trial and am trying to get my hands on Kriegsgericht in Köpenick. Have been for months. The seller had some problems locating his copy :'D Speaking of books, i did an internship at an auction house for books and prints and might start a job there at some point, that would give me access to some great historical books and books about books :D I did find a complete (?) list of Katte-fiction, but i think i lost the photo i took of it... will have to check that book again
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 06:07 pm (UTC)Hee, no pressure! You're way ahead of some of us who can read a little German, slowly, barely read anything in Fraktur or any of its related godawful fonts, and no handwriting at all!
Thank you for the offer! I'm always trying to complete my Katte/trial collection, but most of what I find is really cheap, no need to complicate things ^^
Okay, let me know! It doesn't have to be strictly Katte, as long as it's of great interest to salon.
Just got the book of different monarchs' letters related to the trial
Oh, cool. I got that one a while back.
and am trying to get my hands on Kriegsgericht in Köpenick. Have been for months.
Huh. I haven't tried for that one, but it seems like there are several copies for sale when I search for it. I take it it's harder to find than it looks? If there's a more expensive copy that might be easier to acquire, lmk.
The seller had some problems locating his copy :'D
Omg, that keeps happening to me! Well, technically it happened once, but it happened at the same time as Amazon said they were out of stock of a related book and had no idea when it would be back in stock, and shortly before I received a rare book and instead received a really common book by a very similar title, same author, same year of publication! :'D (This is me trying and struggling to get my hands on a bunch of mostly out-of-print books mostly in another language I can't read (Italian) on the eighteenth-century Medici.)
Anyway. Onward and upward with the valiant quest!
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-08 07:46 pm (UTC)Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-09 07:17 pm (UTC)reminds me that on Salon's wishlist for the archives are the supposedly anatomically explicit Gröben letters!
Re: A mixture of stuff, mostly Katte related
Date: 2021-11-11 04:00 am (UTC)The comic is adorable, of course :D The pics of Katte are really neat! I like the colors in the oil pastel one a lot... I have no vocabulary to talk about art, but the way it's different shades of the same hue, it almost looks like it's glowing, which seems sort of fitting for Katte :) And the colored pencils, man. I mean drawing in general is sort of like magic to me, especially drawing people, this is amazing! I also really like the way this is shaded <333333 I would love to see a colored pencil portrait of Fredersdor! :D
Italians are the dishiest, no lie
Date: 2021-11-17 08:56 pm (UTC)Okay, so, I'm just starting to dig into the batshit Medici, but in the interests of sharing the gossipy sensationalism bit by bit so I don't get overwhelmed by having to write everything up when I'm done with a bunch of books, I feel the need to share this bit of hilarity that doesn't require much context.
Context is modern biographer of Giuliano Dami talking about how almost everything we know about Giuliano is probably a lie since it comes from a tabloid equivalent and not the archives. And even archives are iffy. But the one thing we can be sure we know, is this guy was HOT.
Why?
Non è dettato da retorica nazionalistica o campanilistica affermare che l'Italia intera, la Toscana in particolare e Firenze soprattutto, non sono soltanto culla di bellezze artistiche ma anche patria di un incantevole popolo dalle armoniose forme, senza pari al mondo.
It is not dictated by nationalistic or parochial rhetoric to affirm that the whole of Italy, Tuscany in particular and Florence above all, are not only the cradle of artistic beauty but also the home of an enchanting people with harmonious shapes, unparalleled in the world.
Says the Florentine. :D
Fritz: Venetians. Definitely Venetians.
Algarotti: Venetian or Florentine, either way, we're more passionate than you northerners!
Nel tardo Seicento, a Firenze come nel contado, quale che fosse allora il concetto di bellezza fisica, la presenza di un bel giovane non era certamente una rarità degna di essere tramandata ai posteri.
In the late seventeenth century, in Florence as in the countryside, whatever the concept of physical beauty was then, the presence of a handsome young man was certainly not a rarity worthy of being handed down to posterity.
So if contemporaries keep pointing out that Giuliano Dami was so hot that he rose from obscurity to the top of the pecking order in Tuscany, by seducing Grand Duke Gian Gastone de' Medici, the guy who had upward of 300 male prostitutes, we know Giuliano must have been REALLY SOMETHING.
Several things in this preface have made me ROFL and also think, "This might not be the most objective historian ever." But at least he prints hundreds of pages of primary sources, so I'll take what I can get. There aren't exactly a ton of Giuliano Dami bios out there.
Other ways in which the author (Alberto Bruschi) caused my eyebrows to go up:
1. Acknowledge that he's a novelist at heart trying to write history. Fine, so far. Many people are good at both! Some of us in salon, even, to differing degrees. But then he produces pages of what is apparently self-therapy trying to convince himself to stick to the facts. The entire passage reads as though he's inventing the genre of history, and trying to convince a readership that has never read anything but novels that it's okay and possibly even advantageous to write history, and not elaborate it with made up details and dialogues.
As someone who picked up this book expecting history, this felt a little unnecessary. Or like something you write for yourself as self-therapy but then don't print. :P But okay. You do you, Bruschi.
(Horowski gives us the best of both worlds, and that's why I love him.)
2. Open and close the book by interpreting Giuliano's life through the lens of the author's personal devout Catholicism. Well, I guess it doesn't hurt for the reader to know the author feels *that* strongly on the subject before setting out?
I'm only a few pages into the book because I took the opportunity of my interlinear translation to try to beef up my Italian a little. I saw the final sentence only because I was preparing the digitized file. At some point I'll probably start just reading the English.
At any rate, will report back when I have more info!
The tabloid translated into English by Harold Acton, devout believer of tabloids, btw, was hilarious and also OMGWTF D:. Both the tabloid proper and the two prefaces. I'm only holding off on fully reporting on it because I want to have read the 1990s archive-oriented history first, so I can critique it properly.
But for now I'll just report, from the 1930 prefaces, that not only was GG's wife super ugly, anyone who knows how ugly a German widow can be will sympathize with GG and his alcoholism, gambling, and over-the-top sexual profligacy. Just FYI,
*facepalm*
(See also: why I haven't finished the book on G1 and the GNW. Things like this are super distracting!)
Re: Italians are the dishiest, no lie
Date: 2021-11-20 03:31 pm (UTC)Algarotti: Venetian or Florentine, either way, we're more passionate than you northerners!
Various Tsarinas and their lovers would like to doubt that theory. In particular, Poniatowski, Grigorii Orlov and Potemkin in a rare, unparalleled example of unanimous agreement. Catherine just laughs. So do both Annas.
Re: Italians are the dishiest, no lie
Date: 2021-11-20 04:48 pm (UTC)It's even worse than that. This isn't Acton, this is his buddy Norman Douglas who wrote an introduction to the volume for him. Anna Maria Franziska can't catch a break! (So far, Alberto Bruschi's not a big fan of her either, but I haven't yet read his bio of her.)
ETA: And I forgot to add that when I looked up Norman Douglas when I was first trying to track down a copy of this book, I discovered that he fled England on bail in 1917 because of child rape accusations, went to Italy, fled to France in 1937 for the same reason. But ugly Germans are the worst, amirite?
Catherine just laughs. So do both Annas.
Hee! But did any of them ever have an Italian for comparison, Algarotti and Alberto Bruschi ask?
Gian Gastone: Speaking as an Italian with extensive experience of both, I thought northerners, especially Germans, were totally passionate when they were in the Ruspanti. Just not my wife.
Re: Italians are the dishiest, no lie
Date: 2021-11-20 05:50 pm (UTC)1897 kaufte er am Posillipo bei Neapel, Italien, eine Villa (Villa Maya). Er begann ein Verhältnis mit dem 15-jährigen Bruder seiner damaligen 16-jährigen Geliebten.
Okay then. Also, in his later divorce he got the two kids, because his wife's infidelity. At least he didn't lock up his wife? But yeah. I bet Giuliano Dami's age when meeting Gian Gastone wasn't a problem for him...
Giuliano Dami's age
Date: 2021-11-20 06:16 pm (UTC)Ha, I had missed that. Perhaps!
I bet Giuliano Dami's age when meeting Gian Gastone wasn't a problem for him...
Ah, but this is one of the things I was going to talk about today! GG has been exonerated! For lo, this happened:
Bruschi: The anonymous manuscript claims, and other historians repeat, that Giuliano accompanied GG on his way to his wedding in Bohemia, meaning GG arrived with his lover in tow (and therefore wasn't committed to his marriage from the get-go). But nobody has ever asked how old Giuliano was at the time!
Mildred: Me, me! I asked! And was appalled by the answer.
Bruschi: The anonymous manuscript, while it gives all sorts of juicy (and unreliable, slanderous) details about Giuliano's origins, leaves out the most basic fact: when was he born? And I can tell you that he was born in 1683, meaning he would have been 14 when the wedding took place. Now, first of all, nobody takes a 14-yo as a companion on a trip like this.
Me: Your faith in human nature exceeds mine. Also, they don't necessarily have had to have been sexually involved at the time. Giuliano could have just been one lackey in a sizable retinue that wasn't necessarily hand-picked to consist 100% of people having sexual relations with the prince. But go on.
Bruschi: And second of all, I have documentary evidence showing that Giuliano was still in Italy, employed by an Italian noble, in 1703, meaning when he was 20. He didn't enter GG's service until his early 20s.
Me: Woot! Must tell salon and clear GG's name!
ETA: I must add that Bruschi is attempting to clear GG's name of having entered an arranged marriage to a complete stranger with no intention of being sexually faithful to her. I, who heartily disapprove of the double standard toward women but am reluctant to condemn human beings for finding emotional and sexual satisfaction outside of a cold-bloodedly arranged marriage, am more concerned about whether he was RAPING a CHILD or not.
Son of ETA: Oh, and in conclusion, Norman Douglas may or may not have known how old Giuliano would have been when he allegedly accompanied GG to his wedding, since Giuliano's name and age aren't in the manuscript that Acton published, nor, I think, in Acton's book?, and Bruschi hadn't published yet, but I think we can safely say Douglas wouldn't have minded if he did know. Ugh.
Re: Giuliano Dami's age
Date: 2021-11-21 12:48 am (UTC)Okay, this was hilarious :P
Bruschi: And second of all, I have documentary evidence showing that Giuliano was still in Italy, employed by an Italian noble, in 1703, meaning when he was 20. He didn't enter GG's service until his early 20s.
Me: Woot! Must tell salon and clear GG's name!
Ah, excellent!
I, who heartily disapprove of the double standard toward women but am reluctant to condemn human beings for finding emotional and sexual satisfaction outside of a cold-bloodedly arranged marriage, am more concerned about whether he was RAPING a CHILD or not.
YEP
(geez, Norman Douglas, though! :( )