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cahnI'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)
Re: I'm alive
Date: 2023-01-23 04:34 pm (UTC)No worries, we all remember our university days! And best of luck and many cheers from all of us to you.
I'll write my Bachelor's thesis on depictions of the trial of 1730 in literature in the summer semester
That sounds AWESOME, and I suspect at least two of us (me and
I was told you have some scans I could take a look at? ^^
We do! Oh frabjous day!
This is the most urgent one.
This is the most likely context for it, and I'd appreciate both a second pair of eyes on what I got and some help on what I didn't.
This is also something I'd appreciate a second pair of eyes on.
If you DM me your email address, I can send you some death records too. Otherwise, it might take me a bit to get them uploaded.
And now you can in good conscience tell Dr. Maria von Katte that you're collaborating on a biographical essay of Peter von Keith and thus you have a serious business scholarly need for her typescript of her father's manuscript on the Kattes! Lol.
Thaaaank yoooou! <333
Re: I'm alive
Date: 2023-01-25 09:19 pm (UTC)Thank you, thank you! :D I'm currently still stuck on two other papers due in March (one about Dürer, almost done, one about witch trials in Dortmund and Witten, shoot me please), but after that I'll hopefully produce something somewhat nice that I can share with people. I sure hope it will be good, I don't want to embarrass myself :'D I'm still deciding which texts I'll actually take a look at. There are far too many to cover them all the way I want to and I'm still on the fence about whether I should leave either Burte's Katte or Ernst's Preußengeist out in favour of the truly... special "Vater und Sohn" by a Mr Joachim von der Goltz which I have not yet read completely but which includes a goodbye letter from Katte to Fritz that is truly astounding in its awfulness :'D
On a completely different note, I am currently working as research assistant for a history project at my uni, fancy talk for "I did transcripts of personal files, then I checked publication dates of old dissertations and now I'm reading newspapers on microfilm". In one newspaper from 1927 I found an article about how some men in Mecklenburg dressed up as Fritz, his ADC, and master of ceremonies and terrorized the local Finanzamt until it had to shut down for the day. Thought you might find that funny too :'D
Now for the scans. Boy, this would be far easier if my French was any good. Defrosted my questionable skills from secondary school for this :'D
What I could make out on the most urgent one was:
que quelque bonne volonté que le Roy sau? [could theoretically also be f instead of s, but the ligatures on the fs generally look different, so I veer towards s]
avoir pour luy* d'autres despenses indispen-
sables l'oblies event apendant d'luy du
qu'il faudrit qu'il pnt [context wise maybe ont? could be a short form of something else] patience jusqu'au
S. M. sau?[same word as last word line1?] ?iver qlqs ? favorable
pour l'aider
*dont ?[possibly currency?] luy? donné des marques
Some of the ligatures are a little confusing to me [WHY is there a ligature for ' ????]. This kind of makes me angry, if I had this handwriting for a German or English letter it would be no problem at all :'D I'll try to take another look at this one and a first look at the others in the next few days. The handwriting on those is really pretty, what a dream! I currently have more Katte stuff here, mostly correspondence of Katharina Elisabeth/Hans Hermann's stepmom from the 40s. Her handwriting is pretty solid, but the punctuation, or lack thereof, is kind of driving me insane. There is a letter about some ongoing legal battle with some farmers (not sure what side they're on so far) and at some point she says that one of the witnesses is 70 and ill and will die soon anyway? :'D As for Hans Hermann, so far he only appears in a tailor's bill from 1728 in the line "dem Herrn Kornetten zwei Paar Hosen". Good for him, new pants for 3RTL each.
As for Dr. von Katte, I don't know if going through me would be the smart thing to do because I am honestly terrible at staying on top of correspondence. I'd suggest maybe going through Mr Schulz of the GuM in Wust, because I know he is allowed to share her info with interested people. If I give you my e-mail, maybe you could namedrop me for... idk, the connection bonus? They do know and like me in Wust, they put one of my drawings up and invite me to their field trips :D I finally met Dr. von Katte in person in November and she is the sweetest! She read the school chapter from the manuscript; great fun.
Re: I'm alive
Date: 2023-01-25 10:39 pm (UTC)OMG, this sounds amazing, I can't wait!
In one newspaper from 1927 I found an article about how some men in Mecklenburg dressed up as Fritz, his ADC, and master of ceremonies and terrorized the local Finanzamt until it had to shut down for the day. Thought you might find that funny too :'D
I absolutely find it funny!
What I could make out on the most urgent one was:
This is great, this is more than I got, and once I have a chance to do a close comparison I'm hopeful I can help fill in some blanks. My French is, uh, also questionable secondary school, but I've been brushing up on it lately
for Eugene of Savoy gossip. You've given me more material to work with, thanks so much!And if we get as far as we can on our own, I also have a Facebook friend I don't know well, but well enough to ask her to double check what we came up with and fill in blanks here and there, and she's a native speaker of French.
The handwriting on those is really pretty, what a dream!
Right? I've been telling everyone. Peter, you were a great person with great handwriting, and you deserve not to be forgotten. I will finish your biography!
I currently have more Katte stuff here, mostly correspondence of Katharina Elisabeth/Hans Hermann's stepmom from the 40s.
Oh, yay, we want all the deets when you've finished!
I'd suggest maybe going through Mr Schulz of the GuM in Wust, because I know he is allowed to share her info with interested people. If I give you my e-mail, maybe you could namedrop me for... idk, the connection bonus?
I have received your DM, and I am happy to take care of the correspondence! I will name-drop you with pleasure. :'D
They do know and like me in Wust, they put one of my drawings up and invite me to their field trips :D I finally met Dr. von Katte in person in November and she is the sweetest! She read the school chapter from the manuscript; great fun.
Those are all three awesome sentences!
This is a great update, we're all happy to hear from you, and best of luck with school! You will be hearing from me by email. :D
Re: I'm alive
Date: 2023-01-26 01:18 am (UTC)Kattes and their legal battles
Date: 2023-01-26 05:37 am (UTC)I read a bit further and about the whole "trip to the Danube" thing; I think Kloosterhuis does mention Vienna; at least he quotes Katte saying something to a relative in Vienna (specifically quoted as "im Gespräch mit [...] in Wien am 30. April 1730", p. 56 footnote 186).
As for Katte and Fritz not having a lot of time to get to know each other, Katte also spent part of the summer of 1729 in Magdeburg with the army :'D He may have already gotten closer to Fritz by that point, Kloosterhuis treats it as a hypothesis for why Katte is so enthusiastic about his role in a possible war. My personal other ideas are that he is either overcompensating for the almost soft-desertion of early '29 or that he and Holtzendorff are lying through their teeth to distract from the almost soft-desertion of early '29 to calm Hans Heinrich down a bit.
Re: Kattes and their legal battles
Date: 2023-01-26 01:45 pm (UTC)Two legal battles and a fratricidal duel in the 1740s! Definitely "may you live in interesting times."
I think Kloosterhuis does mention Vienna; at least he quotes Katte saying something to a relative in Vienna
Ah, I had not made the connection, thank you! Maybe he says "Danube" because Katte made part of the journey by water? I know people did that.
My personal other ideas are that he is either overcompensating for the almost soft-desertion of early '29 or that he and Holtzendorff are lying through their teeth to distract from the almost soft-desertion of early '29 to calm Hans Heinrich down a bit.
Hahaha, very plausible and in-character!
Mind you, in a very militaristic culture, a lot of people who would otherwise not be gung ho about war per se end up gung ho about not being more cowardly than everyone else. Peter Keith was basically shamed into asking to please be allowed to go to war because he couldn't take the peer pressure any longer. So I could definitely see Katte having a sincere hawkish moment. Psychology is weird.
Re: I'm alive
Date: 2023-01-28 06:35 pm (UTC)Also, I just want to point out that people said the same thing about Cardinal Fleury: "Suuure, let him be Louis XV's de facto prime minister, he's 73 and I/my guy can make a bid for his job soon," and then it was 15 years later and he was almost 90, and French courtiers were WTFing all over the place. :D
Transcription attempts
Date: 2023-01-28 11:51 pm (UTC)I'm going to guess that this is "cependant", which means "however" and occurs every other sentence in the French book I'm currently reading (Louis XI bio).
l'oblies event
My French is admittedly not great, and my handwriting-reading is worse, but I read this as one word, a third person plural of "obliger": "oblige..ent": Could it be a badly or old-fashioned spelled or written "obligeront", "obligèrent", or "obligeraient"?
sau?
Could this be "saurait"? Admittedly, I think my German may be interfering here by supplying "know", but hey, sometimes the two languages have things in common! [ETA: And, duh, this was likely written by a native speaker of German anyway.]
Ah, wait, I think I'm getting closer by adding some punctuation:
que quelque bonne volonté que le Roy saurait avoir pour lui, d'autres despenses indispensables l'obligeraient, cependant, d'lui du qu'il faudrit qu'il ont patience jusqu'au Sa. Majeste saurait ?iver quelques ? favorable pour l'aider
That whatever goodwill the King knows to have for him* [Keith], some other necessary expenses oblige him [Fritz?], nevertheless, from him [Keith?] that it is necessary that he [Keith] have patience until His Majesty will know [infinitive] some [noun] favorable to help him.
* I.e., "Despite the goodwill that the King has for him..."
"Expenses" is why "oblige" is in the plural! I was confused because I was trying to make "bonne volonté" the subject. But of course Fritz is claiming he has other necessary expenses that prevent him from doing anything right now.
The missing bit at the end I'm going to guess is along the lines of "Fritz will know when circumstances allow him to give Keith something to help him."
Which was apparently the case, because we have Hanway's story of Fritz surprising him with money just a few months later! (It's amazing that we read that story back in the first couple months of salon, and three years later, we have the context!)
Okay, I reserve the right to retract any of these readings tomorrow, and I hope we can supplement them further. But at least I'm now reasonably sure it's saying "Not now, hopefully later." Which is what I *suspected* all along, but I'm much more confident now, and we're much closer to an exact reading now, thanks to you!
ETA: And, tongue-in-cheek, this feels very relevant right now:
Despite the goodwill which the Royal Detective has toward the Royal Reader, other necessary reading material (such as puzzling out handwriting, and German and French practice, and archive catalogs for finding material to order, and Louis XIV gossip) requires of Selena that she have patience until the Royal Detective will know when she has time to read and reply to the Byzantine tales.
;)
Re: Transcription attempts
Date: 2023-01-29 02:46 pm (UTC)I spent much of the night struggling with "ont" being a plural, and with the "o" looking like a "p" to both of us, and a short form did occur to me: "prend", because that "t" looks to me like it could be a "d".
Then it would be "prend patience", which French wiktionary assures me is a thing. I'm not *sure* about the indicative there, but hey, what little French grammar I had is decades behind me.
I also remembered belatedly that "ai" is usually written "oi" in this period, so my proposed "saurait" would likely be "sauroit", which I think fits the handwriting better.
Re: Transcription attempts
Date: 2023-01-29 05:51 pm (UTC)