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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mildred_of_midgard

because remember, in the Nicolai version of the tale

No, I didn't remember, there are too many versions. :P Perhaps I should go refresh myself and that would help a lot.

Coffee maker. Coffee = Kaffee in German

Well, I had gotten as far as realizing that it looked like "Kaffee", but then there were so many weird letters before and after that I threw up my hands.

But in context with what you mention, yes, it makes sense now.

And likes Hungarian wine, which he in his letters to Fredersdorf mispells chronically - the word "Hungarian", I mean. Though it could also be Burgundian wine - from Bourgogne.

I was assuming Burgundian, and that influenced my choice of 'B' among all the possible capital letters it could have been, but now that you mention Hungarian, sure, it could be that too. Anything could be anything, really!

ETA: I will also note that I tried very hard to make it "Burgund" during the decipherment process, but whatever that scribble after the "n" is, it's not a "d". OTOH, if he's writing it in French, and the script for this word is French, I wouldn't expect a "d". I went back and forth on whether to put BorgonX or just Borgon, and eventually decided that "Borgon" made enough sense as "Burgundian" in French that I would omit the last scribble that I'm not sure is a letter.

Oh, and another thing, I've replaced lack - laquer - with "Wachs" because the summary from the Prussian archive says Glasow used wax to make a copy of Fredersdorf's ignet.

Makes sense! I kept looking for "Wachs" in this letter because of that summary, but I never saw it. See, transcribing gets me way down into narrow, letter-level focus, and my ability to make high-level connections is even more impaired than usual. (We all know I'm more a detail person than a big-picture person at the best of times.)

Part of the reason I'm passing these off to you for the translation and interpretation is so I can stay in that laser-focused headspace instead of having to come back out of it, read the letter, think about the letter, and then go back to trying to remember what individual characters look like when I'm staring at the next letter. The teamwork here is really allowing me to focus on the incredibly difficult task of decipherment, thank you!

v. Gartz - Mildred, could this alternatively be Gentze?

I tried to make it "Gentze", but that's a very clear 'a'. On the other hand, it could easily be Lt. von Gantz! I.e., the same person. Because it's the 18th century and what even is spelling, anyway.

OTOH, would a professional secretary have been a lieutenant? I would have assumed Gentze came from a family of middle class civil servants.

Oh, interesting, this guy--perhaps you know him?--came from a family of Prussian civil servants. Possible son of our guy? The dates work if our guy is getting married in 1757.

I've enquired in a friendly manner, calling in many favours, and giving him underhandedly many good and bad words

Ah, thank you, I could not fit these three phrases together at all!

Please assure Mrs. Fredersdorf (literally "Mrs. Treasurer, i.e. Fredersdorf's highest ranking title)

I was amused at Mrs. Treasurer!

I say, Leining, you're allowed to marry already, with no time loop required? Clearly, Fritz can't be into you.

HAHAHA, I was shocked, I tell you! And it was Fritz's idea?!

und in maXX Haus wohnen

See, this was one of those things where I knew exactly what I wanted it to be (there were several of those in this letter), to wit, the same thing you put, "my own", but even trying very hard, I can make out no "i" or "g" in maXX. It looks like "mand", which made no sense to me *at all*.

Oh, and of course the first time I read your transcription was trying to bring the coffee and wine into context with Leining's investigation, assuming Glasow had faked coffee and wine orders, but then I reread and repuzzled a couple of times, and concluded that no, there are separate issues, he's moving on to Fritz not liking the latest wine delivery.

Yep, I went through the same thought process. Though I admit to not being able to figure out as much as you did.

And then there's the "I'm allowed to marry, how about that!" bit which cracks me up. Clearly, Leining is not replacing Glasow or Fredersdorf at least in one regard...

Hee!

Edited Date: 2023-04-15 04:39 pm (UTC)

From:

selenak

See, this was one of those things where I knew exactly what I wanted it to be (there were several of those in this letter), to wit, the same thing you put, "my own", but even trying very hard, I can make out no "i" or "g" in maXX. It looks like "mand", which made no sense to me *at all*.

I was guessing “meinem” - as in. “In meinem Haus” - as this is 18th century, and a hastily written letter, “meinem” could be mispelled any way, like “mainem, “mainam”, and so forth.

Gentze: the potential groom’s last name is Leining, remember, Gentze is Fredersdorf’s former and Leining’s future secretary, status of marriage or lack of same unknown. However, I have heard of this Gentze you linked, not least he showed up as an unlikely correspondent of late 18th/early 19th legendary salonierre Rahel (nee Levin, married Varnhagen von Ense). Rahel was one of the pioneers of German-Jewish ladies trying to leave orthodoxy behind and live an intellectual and society life. Technically, she wrote no book, but her letters - she was one of the most celebrated letter writers of the day - were edited into one of the most popular books of the 19th century by her husband, who is that same Varnhagen who also wrote biographies of several Fredericians. Rahel was a liberal (hence unlikely correspondant of Gentze the conservative) and famous for her wit. She also was bff with one of the great femme fatals and courtesans of the day, Pauline, who in turn became the mistress of Heinrich’s favourite nephew Louis Ferdinand. (The one whose flirt and potential one night stand with Comte de la Roche-Raymon’s wife caused a near duel.) The Pauline/Louis Ferdinand affair was years later, after Heinrich’s death, and having met Rahel through Pauline, Louis F became also great friends with her, and the fact a Hohenzollern prince regularlyl participated in the salon of a female Jewish intellectual was basically unheard of. Alas, then Prussia fought Napoleon and Louis died and Pauline left to gallivant around Europe and Rachel had to close her salon for a few years, and when she held another salon, it was a new age and nationalism had allied with antisemitism.

On a note of: it’s a small Berlin world: Caroline’s grandson Achim von Armin, the writer, managed to antisemtically insult another Jewish-German hostess and when her brother challenged him to a duel, he refused the challenge because he was a Prussian nobleman who couldn’t possible duel with a Jew. The brother then went on to participate in the next round of the Napoleonic wars, when Prussia was among the allies to beat Napoleon, and died in battle, and as Achim von Armin had not joined the war effort, public sympathy swung completly against him, and the obvious comparaison as to who had been acting honoralble and who like a total jerk was made. Not least by Varnhagen von Ense, Rahel’s husband, who wrote a biting essay on the whole affair.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Gentze: the potential groom’s last name is Leining, remember

*facepalm*

I gave up on deciphering today for lack of sleep; I really should have given up on typing altogether, clearly. ;)

Anyway, regardless of marriage dates, maybe they're related, in that the Gentzes are civilian civil servants and thus unlikely to be Lt. G---, but one never knows. I can't really read the name.

However, I have heard of this Gentze you linked

The Wikipedia page was long enough that I figured you had! Especially with Metternich featuring prominently.

It is indeed a small Berlin world! Thank you for drawing all the connections.

Deciphering status: about half of letter 4 is deciphered, it seems to be a whole lot of fiscal details, corresponding to this part of the box bill summary:

However, the secretary Gentze, who first worked for Fredersdorf and then for Leining, thought he remembered that at least one of the bills had been paid with funds from the September 1756 coffers. And so the new secret chamberlain turned to the old one with the request "to have the Chatoulle invoices for the month of September: ap [= 1756] looked at, possibly also for the following months, and then to report to me [Leining] what is necessary."

Tomorrow, or as soon as I sleep better, my plan is to figure out how this particular hand makes letters like e, r, n, m, w, i, o, and u, and how to tell them apart, in both French and German, and then use that information to decipher a bunch more of the letter, and then we'll see where we stand.

Anyway, I can already tell it's April 14 and Leining is still asking Fredersdorf about the bills and writing "Ich habe dagegen die Ehre, mit XXXXXX hochachtung," so...SOMEBODY is not in any obvious disgrace, and I think Wegfraß never even found this material.

Btw, I did some archive searching today (easy to do on very little sleep) and turned up "Untersuchung gegen den Kriegsrat Pfeiffer und den Kolonisten-Kommissar Meschker, April 1757, Juli 1759" in the Prussian archives, and I will probably order it in the next round of orders. (Still waiting on my latest round from the order I placed over a month ago--with Peter Keith genealogy and the Groeben letters.)

The Saxon archives are also very ambiguous (at least to a non-native and slow reader of German) about whether you can place orders for copy material, but I found some information that points in the direction of maybe, so at some point when I feel up to reading reams of handwritten French (next year?), I might see if they'll send me Suhm's envoy reports from Berlin.

There are also apparently VOLUMES of investigations against Pfeiffer in the mid 1750s, or at least that's what the Brandenburg State Archive catalogue makes it look like. I may someday decide to find out if *they* make digital copies on request, but we'll see. I'm sticking with the Prussians now, since I already know they make copies, what the process is, that it's affordable*, and that this set of documents is shorter and may contain what we need, without sifting through tons of boring fiscal data that just proves what we already know. I would just love to get a specific archive document that I have looked at myself, i.e. isn't just me relying on Wegfraß and her lack of citations, to back my essay's claim that the encyclopedias are wrong.

Anyway! Fun times in archives.

* British National Archives, WHYYYY so expensive. :((