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cahnStarting a couple of comments earlier than usual to mention there are a couple of new salon fics! These probably both need canon knowledge.
felis ficlets on siblings!
Siblings (541 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Summary:
Unsent Letters fic by me:
Letters for a Dead King (1981 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen (1726-1802)
Characters: Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Love/Hate, Talking To Dead People, Canonical Character Death, Dysfunctional Family
Summary:
felis ficlets on siblings!Siblings (541 words) by felisnocturna
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Summary:
Three Fills for the 2022 Three Sentence Ficathon.
Chapter One: Protective Action / Babysitting at Rheinsberg (Frederick/Fredersdorf, William+Henry+Ferdinand)
Chapter Two: Here Be Lions (Wilhelmine)
Unsent Letters fic by me:
Letters for a Dead King (1981 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen (1726-1802)
Characters: Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Love/Hate, Talking To Dead People, Canonical Character Death, Dysfunctional Family
Summary:
Just because one's king and brother is dead doesn't mean one has to stop writing to him.
Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-08 07:17 am (UTC)Peter Keith chronology *confirmation*: the various wiki pages and genealogy sites are correct that Frau von Knyphausen died in 1751! Her death date has come up in a couple contexts, and until now I've always had to say I *think* she died in 1751.
What does "a total Hans Dampf" mean? All I get when I google it is tires. I'm guessing it's not a compliment, but more specifically?
August 1752: "Als Frau kostümiert, gehe ich mit meiner Schwester nach Potsdam."
It's not even Carneval! What's with the random cross-dressing? (Quoted in German because every time I encounter something even slightly weird, I'm inclined to question my command of German, or in the case of a certain frog, even my command of English. :P)
Man, we're only on page 3 and we've already had 3 declarations of eternal love for Heinrich.
"Count Henckel (von Donnersmarck?) says at dinner that he makes himself bedcoverings out of orange peels, which makes us all laugh very much." The last bit is the only thing keeping me from questioning my German, but it's supposed to be absurd, so I'm going with it. :P
Page 4, 4th declaration of eternal love for Heinrich. This is starting to feel statistically significant.
Page 4, new entry, oh no, Heinrich is sad! Aaah, it's Reisewitz's suicide. But he's still lovable/charming even when he's sad.
Page 4, new entry, 6th eternal declaration of love.
Page 4, new entry, 7th eternal declaration of love.
I see how it goes.
Schmidt-Lötzen: No one wants to hear about Lehndorff's obsession with Heinrich.
Schmidt-Lötzen: *volume 1*
Readers: We do, we do!
Schmidt-Lötzen: *volume 2*
:P
Page 5, ooh, a tender embrace. :DDD
Page 5, next entry: Ooh, Lehndorff *returns* the tender embrace the following day! This is amaaazing, forget volume 1.
Day 12, in love with Heinrich to the point of desperation.
Gets to visit Heinrich but then he has to leave and do something else, oh noooo this is the wooorst! :'-(((
Aww, trying not to be jealous of Lamberg but can't totally master his feelings. <3
Still page 5, Heinrich cures headaches with his very existence now!
Page 6, several more Heinrich mentions, and then the famous Polterabend entry! Sex at the old place, sex at the new place. :D
January 2, 1753, loving Heinrich more than ever now!
Day 3, the love is still tender.
Tortured now by the thought that he might lose Heinrich's love. The emo is holding nothing back here.
Oh, lol, he's visiting a Bredow and there's a great crowd of people, "including a Herr Katt, who doesn't form exactly the most pleasant company for me." Mildred, student of the Katte family, sighs.
Page 7 and it's emo time! "I could be a philosopher if not for this passion for Heinrich!"
You know, Lehndorff, somehow I doubt it. <3 Never change.
"Mein lieber kleiner H."
Oh, no, Heinrich is speaking altogether too tenderly to someone named Maltzahn! Lehndorff is sad and goes home and can't sleep at night.
[Mildred, writing this at 3 am: I mean, same, but for different reasons. :P]
Lehndorff now hastening to Heinrich, who is reading in bed, and they remain together until 2 am. HMMM wonder what else happened in that bed. :P
Page 8, Heinrich is more charming than ever, but the only fly in the ointment is this Maltzahn guy that Heinrich *might* be attracted to. Lehndorff has to freak out whenever he sees them together.
Okay, I think I need to stop here, but this has been excellent font practice. I hope you were entertained,
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-08 11:07 am (UTC)What does "a total Hans Dampf" mean?
A Hans Dampf in allen Gassen is a Jack of all trades, master of none. Though who knows which expression Lehndorff uses in the French original, it's always worth recalling this is an early 20th century translation into German unless the spelling suddenly changes and we get an original German sentence thrown in between French text.
What's with the random cross-dressing?
No idea, but didn't AW do this in some masque, too? Anyway, presumably their clique thought it was hilarious now and then and did it in non-Carneval festivities, too.
"Count Henckel (von Donnersmarck?)
The one who was in Katte's regiment?
ETA: forget it, I just recalled Heinrich’s diary-keeping, Kalkreuth-loathing sidekick from the 7 Years War, who this most likely is./ETA
I see how it goes.
Schmidt-Lötzen: No one wants to hear about Lehndorff's obsession with Heinrich.
Schmidt-Lötzen: *volume 1*
Readers: We do, we do!
Schmidt-Lötzen: *volume 2*
Presumably. I mean, the original volume already includes the Heinrich passion, but volume 2 really delivers it on every page in 1752-1753. (Also all volumes sporadically in later years, of course.) Anyway, bear in mind Charlotte Pangels reads this in the 1970s and somehow still arrives at the conclusion that Lehndorff was in love with Amalie (and that Heinrich was straight). Seriously, how anyone can read any volume of Lehndorff's diaries and miss out on who was the love of his life, or on Heinrich's preferences (given Lehndorff's comments on each of Heinrich's dastardly faves) beats me. Of course, that applies to earlier historians as well, but when you're writing in the 1970s then contemporary prudery or Hohenzollern censorship is no longer an excuse.
Oh, lol, he's visiting a Bredow and there's a great crowd of people, "including a Herr Katt, who doesn't form exactly the most pleasant company for me." Mildred, student of the Katte family, sighs.
Wait till you get to all the Frau von Katte mentions once he renews relations. I remember most of them are in volume 2 as she only shows up once or twice in volume 2, with all of Lehndorff's anti-Katte bile being edited out.
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-09 05:04 am (UTC)Yep, because I own volume 1 in the Font Not of Doom, so if I'm going to practice, it should be on something where I have no other option than Font of Doom. And I wanted something with simple prose, so instead of focusing on vocabulary and grammar, I can focus on "Is this a capital V or a capital B?" (SMH.)
A Hans Dampf in allen Gassen is a Jack of all trades, master of none.
Aha, thank you!
Though who knows which expression Lehndorff uses in the French original, it's always worth recalling this is an early 20th century translation into German unless the spelling suddenly changes and we get an original German sentence thrown in between French text.
Yep, I've been keeping that in mind as I read.
No idea, but didn't AW do this in some masque, too?
Yes, and cross-dressing during balls was normal in Berlin and St. Petersburg (and perhaps other courts), but this made it sound like he was randomly cross-dressing during everyday life, while traveling! (I know women did this when they could get away with it, but the ones I'm aware of usually had a specific reason.)
ETA: forget it, I just recalled Heinrich’s diary-keeping, Kalkreuth-loathing sidekick from the 7 Years War, who this most likely is./ETA
Yeah, that's what I was assuming.
Charlotte Pangels reads this in the 1970s and somehow still arrives at the conclusion that Lehndorff was in love with Amalie
If this is love, it must be metaphysical. :P
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-10 07:01 am (UTC)So first there was another excerpt from an entry with no context, meaning I had to go back to volume 1 again to see what he was talking about. (Did you notice this when you were reading, Selena?)
Volume 2, contextless: Heinrich visits Lehndorff and tries to comfort him, but in vain. Only the Countess Bentinck manages to make him feel a little better. [Interesting!]
Volume 1, context: The saddest day of Lehndorff's life. There's a young man named Marschall, who got smallpox and died. Lehndorff took to his bed with grief. Previous entries show Lehndorff had been visiting him* and worrying about him.
But what seems to upset Lehndorff almost as much as the death, at least going by word count devoted to it: this young man's entire fortune now falls to Staatsminister Katte, the red-headed first cousin of Hans Hermann whom we've seen Lehndorff hate on before! Lehndorff says the poor young man's grandmother had economized for 86 years so her grandson could live a happy life, and now everything is going to this Katte whom she despises.
Lehndorff has dinner with said Katte, who is playing fake sad but can't hide his joy.
Lehndorff, never missing a chance to begrudge a Katte cousin an inheritance.
Now, I, of course, am wondering 1) who is this Marschall, and 2) why is Staatsminister Katte getting his entire inheritance?
I was sort of able to answer the first question, but still have no answer to the second.
Thanks to Felis's newspapers, I fiiiiinally found he was named Friedrich Albrecht Marschall von Bieberstein, he was 23, and he was a Legationsrat. But I haven't been able to turn up any geneaological details on him. Nor does anything on Katte's side make sense of a connection: the Staatsminister never married (my first thought was that this was his wife's brother), and his mother was a von Möllendorf. He also has two living older brothers.
A mystery!
Anyway, I am surprised that Heinrich, who can cure headaches by his very existence, isn't able to comfort Lehndorff when the Countess Bentinck is.
But two days later, dear friend Heinrich shows up and makes Lehndorff go for a walk with him. Lehndorff does feel somewhat better, although he's still in pain. Also, he has to sup with the stupid Staatsminister again that night, and he's bored to death.
Topic: The problem is that Staatsminister didn't tell enough stories about Hans Hermann, or told too many stories about Hans Hermann and not enough about the real hero of 1730? Discuss. :P [Either way, many lost opportunities here.]
* I take it this means Lehndorff has had smallpox? Btw, I *finally* found someone acknowledging that Louis XV had smallpox in his youth and then finally died of it in his 60s! The author says having it once doesn't *always* confer perfect and lasting immunity. Which makes sense.
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-10 08:55 am (UTC)Now and then.
Anyway, I am surprised that Heinrich, who can cure headaches by his very existence, isn't able to comfort Lehndorff when the Countess Bentinck is.
Perhaps because Lehndorff isn't in love with the Countess. At this point (1753), he's still hoping for an exclusive relationship with Heinrich, after all, and constantly switching between the ecstasy of love and the misery of jealousy. On the one hand, Heinrich visiting him to comfort and cheer him up proves he cares, otoh, maybe Heinrich casually mentions one of the other guys, or maybe he's not even alone?
Anyway, between Lehndorff's admiration, Sophie/future Catherine crushing on her as a teenager and Voltaire admiring her, Countess Bentinck must have been great company.
Topic: The problem is that Staatsminister didn't tell enough stories about Hans Hermann, or told too many stories about Hans Hermann and not enough about the real hero of 1730? Discuss. :P [
LOL. I can see either possibility. Though to be fair, even with Lehndorff being TEAM KEITH, I think his general interest in anecdotes and recent history would ensure he'd find stories about Hans Hermann interesting, if only for the Fritz connection. I mean, this is Lehndorff, who does note Fritz related tales down even if Heinrich isn't involved as well (as with Marwitz), see also Glasow or Fritz' first meeting with Henri de Catt. So would guess if the Staatsminister told any Hans Herrmann stories, he would have joted down at least some of them.
Counter suggestion: maybe the Staatsminister told Lehndorff all about the impending marital bliss of his cousin Ludolf with Demoiselle du Rosey?
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-10 09:42 am (UTC)Yeah, that had occurred to me, given all the jealousy passages.
Anyway, between Lehndorff's admiration, Sophie/future Catherine crushing on her as a teenager and Voltaire admiring her, Countess Bentinck must have been great company.
Indeed!
So would guess if the Staatsminister told any Hans Herrmann stories, he would have joted down at least some of them.
Fair!
Counter suggestion: maybe the Staatsminister told Lehndorff all about the impending marital bliss of his cousin Ludolf with Demoiselle du Rosey?
OH NOES. Lol.
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-11 05:05 am (UTC)Ah, this makes a lot of sense!
On the one hand, Heinrich visiting him to comfort and cheer him up proves he cares, otoh, maybe Heinrich casually mentions one of the other guys, or maybe he's not even alone?
LOLOLOL omg I could totally see this. DESPAIR!
Re: Lehndorff
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Date: 2022-07-11 05:04 am (UTC)The death is sad, but I totally laughed at this.
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-11 05:12 am (UTC)Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-11 05:37 am (UTC)Aww, Lehndorff finding religious comfort in the idea that there is a God who makes all these things happen according to his will.
Heinrich: the dearest of mortals. <3
Oh, wow, now he's the only friend Lehndorff has in the world.
Oh, wait, wait, wait! Another mystery is cleared up (I think).
Okay, remember back when I was reading volume 1, and Lehndorff lost a fortune to a hated Katte rival that was supposed to come to him from his "cousin"? I assumed this was cousin du Rosey, whom he was supposed to marry, but Selena pointed out that the German says "Vetter," which is male cousin. We agreed, "What are the odds that Lehndorff lost two fortunes from two cousins between 1750 and 1755 to a hated Katte rival?" and Selena speculated that the French "cousine" had an illegible -e.
Now that I've put together the entries from the two volumes (seriously, I think I'm going to have to start reading them in conjunction), the male cousin must be Marschall!
Okay, this grudge against the Katte family is starting to make sense. Ludolf gets the woman Lehndorff wanted to marry *and* her fortune, and his younger brother Heinrich Christoph, the Staatsminister, gets the fortune Lehndorff was supposed to inherit from beloved cousin Marschall von Bieberstein!
I'm still just terribly curious how Lehndorff lost out on this fortune in favor of a Katte. Fritz intervening again?
ETA: No, it can't be. It would make sense of why Lehndorff's so upset about a Katte getting the inheritance (if it was at his expense), but it doesn't work for several reasons:
1. The timing doesn't work. His hopes re his cousin's fortune are "disappearing" on March 20. On March 11, Marschall's fortune has already gone to Katte. Furthmore, Lehndorff says that the fortune has been promised to him for a long time, and cousin Marschall was only 23 and died unexpectedly of smallpox.
2. The emotions don't work: Lehndorff says he was so happy because he was going to be rich, but that doesn't fit with the unexpected pox of a beloved 23-year old whose sickbed he's been visiting regularly. (It fits with Fritz and Wilhelmine waiting for FW to kick the bucket.)
The emotional language fits much more with the female cousin marriage:
There is really nothing sadder for a person than to be in the situation of achieving good or very good circumstances, and with one blow to be robbed of this prospect. I was pleased with my situation, I had the hope of becoming rich; everything was looking good for me. Then, in the moment in which I thought to have it all, I see myself condemned to a modest fate, which is hard to bear.
So we're back to thinking "cousine" might have been misread as "cousin."
Lehndorff, your cousin relationships are very confusing, and also, why did Staatsminister Katte get Marschall's fortune? I still wonder if his had to do with Fritz, since I'm not seeing a relationship through the female line (but I also can't get a full family tree, so I could easily be missing a connection).
But man, Lehndorff seeing Staatsminister Katte get a fortune on March 11 and Ludolf on March 20...the resentment is understandable!
Re: Lehndorff - the inheritence business
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From:Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-14 10:20 am (UTC)I've also come to the conclusion that it's obligatory to read volume 1 in sync with volume 2, for context.
Example:
Volume 2: "As for me, I sneak out of the room, in order to visit my 'einziggeliebten' [sorry, this is so good I couldn't bring myself to translate it] friend for a moment."
Volume 1: "Birthday of the queen mother. Large and luxurious dinner with the queen; we dine off gold. True happiness isn't found in court feasts; boredom usually accompanies this luxury."
See, it's important to know *what* he's sneaking out of to visit his only-beloved friend! Chronology isn't just plot, it's also characterization, as I always like to say.
April 1: "Three weeks ago, I thought I was happy, now I'm the saddest of people."
April 2: "I spend the evening at home quietly and in sweet melancholy. That does not hinder me from thinking often of my dear, only friend." No, Lehndorff, I wouldn't imagine it did.
WHAT. (Liveblogging again, so you get to see my emotional reactions to things in real time.)
April 3. "Dinner with Prince Henry; the Prince of Prussia is also there. In the afternoon we go walking in the garden of Frau Marschall, where we experience a droll performance. Then we look at the books of the allegedly deceased Marschall, who has fled, and everyone takes something from among them."
Wait, Marschall faked his death so he could disappear?!
OOOHHH, this is making sense of something I read when I was trying to figure out who this guy was. (Though it does inevitably open up more questions.)
See, when I was searching for Staatsminister Katte and a Marschall, I found Samuel Marschall, a guy from East Prussia, who rose from the middle class to the nobility by impressing both FW and Fritz. His successor in certain official positions in the 1740s was Staatsminister Katte. (But not in a way that made me understand why he would get a fortune.)
So I looked at Samuel's children, but couldn't find any who died in 1753. He had a son who was a legation counselor, just like Lehndorff's Marschall was a legation counselor from East Prussia (which would make sense for a Lehndorff cousin, as the Lehndorffs are from East Prussia), but he died in 1805 and has no birthdate listed in Wikipedia.
While googling, I saw historians mentioning that famous Samuel Marschall had a no-good son who fled Berlin to escape his creditors, but I thought it couldn't be the same one as Lehndorff's, as that one died before he had a chance to do anything like that.
HE FAKED HIS DEATH. It was even in the Berlin newspaper!
Wooooow. Sorry, Lehndorff, he was in deep debt, and you were never going to get that fortune.
Detective work is fun and yields gossipy sensationalism!
Issues:
1. The other reason I didn't think the two Marschalls could be the same, besides the death dates, was that Samuel's son's name was also slightly different (Friedrich Wilhelm vs. Friedrich Albrecht) from the Marschall given in the newspapers, but these 18th century people had enough names that there's no reason these can't be the same Marschall.
2. But something that bothers me is that the Marschall von Bieberstein family is old Saxon nobility and Samuel Marschall the East Prussian was only ennobled in 1717. And there's no mention of Samuel on the von Bieberstein page nor vice versa. They really looked like two separate noble families.
3. And furthermore, I can't seem to make Catherine Rolas du Rosey be the half sister of Samuel Marschall's son, as they have no parents in common, but I've seen weirder things in genealogies, and at least there is an East Prussian connection. (This is reminding me that Kloosterhuis got Melusine's genealogy wrong, in the sense that I checked the exact source he cited and it said the opposite of what he said it said.)
[BTW, Selena, don't be surprised to see Kloosterhuis getting things wrong, I've caught him in 3 Peter Keith chronology mistakes, 1 Rottembourg chronology mistake, and 1 Melusine genealogy mistake, and that's just the things that my new-to-Prussian-history self has caught!]
Right, we have Berlin newspapers, I need to see if they ever picked up on the scandalous disappearance of the newly arrived legation counselor.
...
Okay, not that I'm seeing, but the print quality is so bad I could easily have missed it. It is neat to see the papers talking about many of the same people and events as Lehndorff, though.
What I can tell you from Google is that, at least according to modern historians, this runaway Marschall apparently fled all the way to Madrid and became a Catholic, whereupon Fritz forced his wife, who had remained in Berlin, to divorce him.
Also, point the fourth that's bothering me now: if Marschall's married and childless, why is his fortune going to anyone other than his wife? Is that how it worked?
Okay, back to the diary. At this point, it's less the font that's responsible for my slow progress of a couple pages per day and more the deep desire of my soul to be a royal detective and not a royal reader. ;)
April 6: Lehndorff attends a wonderful dinner with friends and good conversation that he says is the kind of event that *is* to his taste (unlike the kind he sneaks off from). "Had heaven not destroyed my hopes, I would have such dinners at my place."
Ooh, it's April 8th and he has a new source of grief. I don't know what it is yet, but "the advantage of big problems is that they make you insensible to the everyday little problems."
Okay, Lehndorff, you've built up the suspense. What is your new grief?
...Okay, long philosophical digression on that topic first.
Nope, a long philosophical digression on suffering is all we get. Volume 1? Nope, nothing. Onward we go.
Oh, lol, he hasn't seen Heinrich for two days--THE INHUMANITY--and now he has to swallow him up with his eyes. Oh no, and now Heinrich is saying hard words to him! Like, "It's only been two days, stop suffocating me"? We don't find out. But "O, cruel world! How I would like to escape you," says Lehndorff, who goes home full of despair.
Next day, Lehndorff gets a letter that makes him feel better, because Heinrich says he was actually mad at someone *else* and was just taking it out on Lehndorff. Immediately Lehndorff forgets everything that's been bothering him, since it has to do with this heavenly man, and does not leave Heinrich the whole day.
Good lord.
Day 16, Lehndorff loves Heinrich really unspeakably, and his low spirits and sadness are boundless. He's afraid the happy time of his life is over.
Ooh. "My beloved is sad. There are moments when I gladly see him that way; then all his beautiful characteristics come to the fore."
Back a couple days earlier in volume 1, a Frau von Mengden arrives. She's the sister of Julia Mengden, the lady-in-waiting who was in the threesome with Russian regent Anna Leopoldovna and Lynar the Sexy Saxon Envoy (whom Julia married) before Elizaveta staged a coup and put Anna in prison with EC's brother and their kids, including baby Ivan VI. Julia is in prison and will remain so until Catherine the Great comes to power.
Lol, April 15, in volume 1 (because it mentions Fritz): Lehndorff has to go to Potsdam, a trip he would make only reluctantly, "if I weren't going to find my dear prince Heinrich there." Fritz arrives, which causes terrible disagreements in the royal family; the reason is that Fritz is in a bad mood over Voltaire. (Voltaire left Prussia March 26.)
Maupertuis challenges Voltaire to a duel. Voltaire replies in a letter that makes everyone laugh and is even more biting than the Akakia.
Meh, it's not in the wiki collection of Voltaire's correspondence. But there is a letter from Freytag on April 21, directed to Fritz and saying that he's keeping an eye out for Voltaire, as per Fritz's (hm, not Fredersdorf's?) handwritten letter of April 11.
Oh, yeah. Fritz is in a bad mood.
April 25: "It is said that Prince Maximilian of Hesse died."
Mildred: Did he really, though? Or did he just fake his death to escape his creditors? I am suspicious of all reported deaths now. :P
Huh. Lehndorff trash talks a young Bredow, saying he's ugly and plays the Don Juan, and is in every respect an unpleasant mortal. Schmidt's note: "In the margin: Fifty years later he was my friend."
It is really cool to get these occasional perspectives with the benefit of hindsight.
Okay, that's all for now. Stay tuned for the next episode!
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-14 03:56 pm (UTC)Okay, Lehndorff, you've built up the suspense. What is your new grief?
At a guess, it's the dawning realisation that he and Heinrich will never be exclusive, Heinrich won't be monogamous, and not only that, but while he's Heinrich's friend, he's not even his Big Favourite/Best Friend. In short, that Heinrich doesn't and won't feel for him what Lehndorff feels for Heinrich. Now if Heinrich had simply rejected him, that realisation might have come sooner, but Heinrich being on board with friends with benefits with a nature such as Lehndorff's was bound to awaken unrealistic hopes.
(Also, I wouldn't be surprised if his unevenness of their respective emotions became blindingly obvious to Heinrich at this point, what with Lehndorff's adoration radiating to the skies, and if he didn't deliberately try some distance now and then to signal "so far and not further, I like you, especially in this rotten first year of my unwanted marriage, sex now and then is fine, but my Chevalier de Lorraine, you're not".)
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-14 05:02 pm (UTC)TWO cousins he's supposed to get a fortune from in the early 1750s but the fortune goes to a cousin of Hans Hermann instead.
TWO legation counselors from East Prussia named Friedrich von Marschall, one of whom dies in March 1753 and the other "dies" in March/April 1753.
At a guess, it's the dawning realisation that he and Heinrich will never be exclusive
*nod* That does make sense. Oh, Lehndorff.
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Date: 2022-07-16 02:36 pm (UTC)<3 Like I said below, it's totally understandable from Heinrich's side! But sad for Lehndorff in any case.
(Also, I wouldn't be surprised if his unevenness of their respective emotions became blindingly obvious to Heinrich at this point, what with Lehndorff's adoration radiating to the skies, and if he didn't deliberately try some distance now and then to signal "so far and not further, I like you, especially in this rotten first year of my unwanted marriage, sex now and then is fine, but my Chevalier de Lorraine, you're not".)
That... makes a lot of sense. Ugh, unrequited love is hard.
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From:Re: Lehndorff
From:Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-16 02:33 pm (UTC)Hee. But man, I wouldn't be surprised. I love Lehndorff a lot, and I love how constant he is in his affections, but I can see that this kind of sustained over-the-top adoration might have been hard to live with! Heinrich may not have had a good boyfriend picker, but I can see why Lehndorff wasn't the guy for him. I would have had trouble with that too, for sure. (Actually now that I think about it, my first boyfriend was kind of like that and... well, it didn't work out.)
(On the other hand, it's still aww-inducing and hilarious to read about at a remove of hundreds of years hence and I applaud Dr. Schmidt's readers yet again for asking for more.)
Maupertuis challenges Voltaire to a duel. Voltaire replies in a letter that makes everyone laugh and is even more biting than the Akakia.
Meh, it's not in the wiki collection of Voltaire's correspondence.
ahahaha hmm if it's not in his correspondence, where is it?? Or do you think that Lehndorff is reporting gossip that might not be really a thing?
Huh. Lehndorff trash talks a young Bredow, saying he's ugly and plays the Don Juan, and is in every respect an unpleasant mortal. Schmidt's note: "In the margin: Fifty years later he was my friend."
It is really cool to get these occasional perspectives with the benefit of hindsight.
Ah, yes, I love this!
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-16 02:54 pm (UTC)It is!
ahahaha hmm if it's not in his correspondence, where is it??
Besterman, maybe? Or not extant. The wiki collection is a public domain work from 1880, and it's far from complete. As the editor himself says in the preface (Google-translated):
This is not, of course, to announce something definitive. We know only too well that an enormous quantity of letters still remains to be exhumed from public or private archives. Voltaire said to Formont, on July 24, 1734: “I will not go any further, because here, my dear friend, is the thirtieth letter that I am writing today. And of these thirty letters we only know two! “One will find, says M. Henri Beaune, letters from Voltaire up to the Last Judgment.” The expression is not Voltairian, but it is significant.
Many notable collections have escaped us; many bearers have not responded to our call, at least until today. But it is not possible in such a matter to claim ever to be complete.
ETA: In general, it's best, with any collection of published correspondence, to start from the assumption that it isn't complete, and then revise that assumption only if there's evidence that it is.
Re: Lehndorff
From:Re: Lehndorff
From:Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-09 06:04 am (UTC)Sometimes wishing Heinrich were poor, so Lehndorff could dedicate his everything to him, and sometimes wishing he could perform the lowliest services for Heinrich, just so he could always be with him.
But the slightest friendliness that Heinrich shows anyone ruins Lehndorff's mood!
More tender embraces.
Some nice things about the coutness Bentinck.
Going to a ball and being convinced that many people there carry wishes for Heinrich in their hearts that are just as beautiful as the clothes they wear on their bodies, because if you know Heinrich, you can't help but love him.
No signs of Amalie so far, I must say! (She gets mentioned in passing, like when she has a birthday, but that's about it!)
Oh, no, he spotted Heinrich with someone else and he was convinced Heinrich was going home with that person! But to his great relief, he saw Heinrich leave 15 minutes later. It was only a visit, phew!
His dear H continues to be the most charming. But what if he changes how he feels toward Lehndorff? These nagging thoughts and inability to be at peace convince Lehndorff that nothing in this world is perefect.
Huh, there's a Frau v. Bismarck that he likes enough to mention in the same sentence as "my delightful H.," in the context of insisting that philosophers are wrong to say that all pleasures, including friendship, are illusory.
"Likewise, after a number of centuries, our descendants would probably have the same interest in objects from our age." Oh, Lehndorff, you have no idea how much!
That line was without context in volume 2, so I had to track down the main entry in volume 1. Apparently, the embroidered red velvet bed that was used for the first lying-together (during a royal marriage) of the Prussian kings and princes was sold, and Lehndorff regrets losing a piece of history.
Aww, Lehndorff wishes he had an experienced and unbiased friend to tell him all his faults, but says such a being doesn't exist, so one has to do without. I'm reminded of Burns: "O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!"
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-09 07:57 am (UTC)if you know Heinrich, you can't help but love him
Fritz: At this point it should be glaringly obvious why I left this delusional young man with my wife and never gave him a position anywhere near me.
That line was without context in volume 2, so I had to track down the main entry in volume 1. Apparently, the embroidered red velvet bed that was used for the first lying-together (during a royal marriage) of the Prussian kings and princes was sold, and Lehndorff regrets losing a piece of history.
Hang on, though, given that the "Kings of Prussia" as of 1752 consist of a grand total of 3, and I can't see either FW or Fritz spring the cash for such a piece of furniture, are we talking about a bed F1 bought? And given F1 became King at a time where both his marriages were in the past, presumably that means only FW/SC and Fritz/EC can have had a lying in there.
....or is Lehndorff speaking inaccurately on a technical level but does mean some bed the Princes Elector of Prussia used already?
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-09 08:08 am (UTC)LOL!
Hang on, though, given that the "Kings of Prussia" as of 1752 consist of a grand total of 3
Well, given that he said "kings and princes," and given that he talked about it as this historical artifact and compared its value to a hypothetical bed that Cleopatra or Livia slept in, I was assuming it was at *least* as old as F1. Maybe older. The Great Elector counts as a prince!
As for Fritz, I was wondering if he and EC had slept in it. Their first lying-together would have been in Brunswick, but maybe there was a separate ritual once they got back to Berlin. (Would this have been witnessed like a French royal marriage?)
And given the timing, February 1753, and the fact that Lehndorff says "princes," I wouldn't be surprised if Fritz made Heinrich and Mina lie next to each other in June 1752, and then sold it off. Ferdinand who? :P
ETA: on rereading the passage, the bed has to be pretty old, as Lehndorff refers to it as a Denkmäler and says it's a witness to "the luxury and tastes of our ancestors." So F1 at least. No one ever accused FW of luxury!
Re: Lehndorff
From:Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-11 05:10 am (UTC)Again, I salute your readers for having such good sensationalist taste! :D
Fritz: At this point it should be glaringly obvious why I left this delusional young man with my wife and never gave him a position anywhere near me.
HAHAHAHAHA it's funny because it's true!
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-11 05:08 am (UTC)Aw, Lehndorff, you are just something else. :D <3
"Likewise, after a number of centuries, our descendants would probably have the same interest in objects from our age." Oh, Lehndorff, you have no idea how much!
Thanks Lehndorff for making your diaries so very interesting! <3
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-10 02:03 pm (UTC)I don't know about
I have something to report to salon, but I haven't yet managed to find time! I've been reading the travel journal of a Scotswoman from about 1770, and she reports from an "incognito" trip by Fritz to the Low Countries, which you might be interested in. Also lots of other interesting stuff.
Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-11 05:20 am (UTC)Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-11 09:12 am (UTC)Re: Lehndorff
From:Re: Lehndorff
Date: 2022-07-11 05:02 am (UTC)Page 4, 4th declaration of eternal love for Heinrich. This is starting to feel statistically significant.
:D They keep coming! This comment has only been 8 pages and yet...
Schmidt-Lötzen: No one wants to hear about Lehndorff's obsession with Heinrich.
Schmidt-Lötzen: *volume 1*
Readers: We do, we do!
Schmidt-Lötzen: *volume 2*
*high-fives the readers* Thanks, readers, for having such good sensationalist gossip taste! We owe you!
Page 7 and it's emo time! "I could be a philosopher if not for this passion for Heinrich!"
Aw Lehndorff, you keep telling yourself that <3333 :D
Lehndorff now hastening to Heinrich, who is reading in bed, and they remain together until 2 am. HMMM wonder what else happened in that bed. :P
Page 8, Heinrich is more charming than ever, but the only fly in the ointment is this Maltzahn guy that Heinrich *might* be attracted to. Lehndorff has to freak out whenever he sees them together.
Man, this is all great. Thanks!