cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 42

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Last post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Best I can do with the second postscript before work. Native speaker help and educated guesses welcome. Notice the speed of transcription is getting faster, though!

Da Eü. Hochwohlgeb. bey den jetzigen zeiten Ihren
Secretair Mr Gentze doch nicht nöthig haben,
und den armen [Jeusen] [günte] versorgt zu sehen
über dem da Er Eü. Hochwgb. FrancaysXX CoreX
[pandenz] geführt, so haben mich Sr. Mayt. an
gerathen einen Menschen hierzu mich an zu
nehmen; als ersuche Eü. Hochwohlgeb. mich
diesen Menschen gütigst zu überlassen.

As you can see, I'm struggling with proper names, "günte" makes no sense (I would like it to be "gut"), I'm not sure about "pandenz", and I want "als" to be "also" (for all I know, that squiggle is how you write 'so'). But I've got the gist of it: Leining is asking if he can take over some of Fredersdorf's staff, since Fredersdorf doesn't need them anymore, and so they (or at least the one guy) can be provided for.

Nothing about Glasow here, but according to the box bills summary, Gentze will play a role in the investigation!

ETA: Btw, now that I've seen "Er" and "Eu" written next to each other, the thing I was transcribing as "Er. Hochwohlgeboren" ("Er." as an abbreviation of "Euer") is now clearly "Eü. Hochwohlgeboren"; they're quite different.

I also can't quite tell what the squiggle at the end of some of the abbreviated "Hochwohlgeb" etc. is, so I'm just transcribing it with a dot to indicate that there's some abbreviation going on here. It might be an 'n', who knows. Capital letters and final letters, as Prinzsorgenfrei has warned me, are a bit of an "anything goes" situation.

Edited Date: 2023-04-14 01:52 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

Okay, here's my translation suggestion, again, involving me guessing:

As Your Grace won't be needing your Secretary Mr. Gentze in these current times, and will want to see poor Jeusen Günte (?) provided for, through whom your Grace has conducted your correspondance, His Majesty has advised me to take a man into my service; so I beseech Your Grace to kindly let me have this man.

As you can see, I'm guessing "correspondence" for "coreX(pandenz)", especially considering we know Gentze is the secretary. Jeusen Günte defeats me so far. We should get someone here who is good at scrabble. :)

Anyway, worth repeating: this is not how you write to a man who is curerntly in disgrace for embezzlement.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

As you can see, I'm guessing "correspondence" for "coreX(pandenz)", especially considering we know Gentze is the secretary.

"Correspondence", yes! Another excellent guess on your part: that could totally be an 's', and there's a squiggle that could easily be the dash for a word break, I should have caught that! So I'm now reading it as "through whom your Grace has conducted your French correspondence"! Because of course Fredersdorf would need someone.

Jeusen Günte defeats me so far. We should get someone here who is good at scrabble. :)

Haha. The problem with that is that the 'g' in Günte is lowercase! I'm also not sure about any of the letters in "Jeusen", it's like my friend writing "ouailron" for "occasion". It probably all makes perfect sense once you can read the letters.

Anyway, worth repeating: this is not how you write to a man who is curerntly in disgrace for embezzlement.

YES!

Anyway, I have just started the second letter. More later!

ETA: I have just hit the word "gantz" in the second letter. Now, he does not put an umlaut over the 'a' in that word, the 'a' is clearly shaped differently from whatever the vowel in "günte" is, and the 'z' is clearly distinct from whatever that final letter in "günte" is (and by the way, it can be really hard to tell 'u' from 'o', so that could just as easily be "gönte", and I would have put it if I could make any sense of "gönnte" in that context)...now that I know he spells "ganz" "gantz", I'm wondering if "günte" could be any form of "gantz". Because at least semantically it would make sense, although the spelling doesn't match and I can't think of any qualifying variants of "gan(t)z". (Lol, maybe he couldn't decide if he wanted "gut" or "gantz" and wrote "günte", I've been known to do things like that in my native language. :P)

ETA 2: Huh. I'm wondering if "Jeusen" is somehow "Gentze" rendered in German. Because that 'u' could be be an 'n'; by itself it looks exactly like it, and I went back and forth and only put 'u' because of the squiggle over it that I took to be an umlaut. And Gentze is written in French handwriting, and whatever "Jeusen" is, is in German. So if that's "Jensen"...yeah, German "J" is not a great match for French "G", but it's not the worst match, either...

At any rate, I need more examples of that particular final squiggle that might be an 'n' and might be a final flourish on the 'e' and might be an 'r' and might be an 's' and might be the word "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" for all I know. I think it's a lot like the final squiggle on "HochwohlgeborX", which makes me think both are "n", but who knows. I'll keep an eye out for it.

Edited Date: 2023-04-14 04:20 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

Anyway, worth repeating: this is not how you write to a man who is curerntly in disgrace for embezzlement.

Poking my head in quickly to say, yay! and yes, definitely worth repeating :D

#JusticeForFredersdorf

From:

mildred_of_midgard

You may notice I've hit a good stopping point with Peter Keith (while we wait on Herr von Knyphausen) and have moved on to my other main piece of historical research!