Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 42

[cahn]

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.

Comments

Re: Leining to Fredersdorf: Letter 1

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'm not yet at the point where it would be feasible to put in an archive

Ugh, typo: I mean "put me in an archive."

Which point I am proving as I struggle through letter 3: it's substantially different from letters 1 and 2, and 4 looks different still.

Persevering with lots of Xs that I hope to fill in later!

Looks like we're still talking about the seal from letter 2, btw. I think Leining is returning it to Fredersdorf? We'll see! And letter 4 definitely mentions Glasow, so I intend to wrestle that one this weekend.

ETA: Just finished the first pass through letter 3, and I'm starting to suspect it's by a different hand. The 'a's are completely different, more French-like than German-like, and I think a number of the letters are more French-like. Perhaps not coincidentally, there's more French in this letter. Instead of German addresses and valedictions, it has a bunch of French (you'll see). I think Leining had a secretary who was more comfortable in French than German. I suspect it's a little too soon to be this Gentze guy already? But someone.

The date and location are also written differently. On letters 1 and 2:

Lockewitz
der 3te Aprill 1757

On letter 3:

Lockewitz [der] 10te Aprill
1757

So, not quite back to square one, but a definite setback in my speed and ease of transcription. Now I'll start going back over the letter to see if I can figure out more of this secretary's characteristics. Right now the transcription is a big mess of Xs and brackets. Wish me luck!

Daughter of ETA: Argh, I'm pretty close to having something I'm ready to hand over to German speakers for letter 3, but I must go to bed. Tomorrow morning!