Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 44

[cahn]

Not only are these posts still going, there is now (more) original research going on in them deciphering and translating letters in archives that apparently no one has bothered to look at before?? (Which has now conclusively exonerated Fritz's valet/chamberlain Fredersdorf from the charge that he was dismissed because of financial irregularities and died shortly thereafter "ashamed of his lost honor," as Wikipedia would have it. I'M JUST SAYING.)

Comments

Re: Archive updates

[mildred_of_midgard]

There seems to be a letter to Ariane from Algarotti in 1751, and a few undated ones from Maupertuis to Ariane and/or Peter. Maupertuis has the WORST handwriting in French. It's gonna be rough. I'd rather have well-written Kurrent. :P

*some time later*

Oh, hey, Leining's signature is showing up on official documents giving Carl Ernst aka Peter Carl jobs.

There's also a genealogy that at least answers one outstanding question I had about the gaps in the other two! Both Formey and the document from the Prussian archive agree that a George Keith married a Stuart, but neither would tell me who. This one tells me it was the daughter of Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox.

Beautiful, that's been bugging me since I turned up the eulogy in June of 2020. ;)

Re: Archive updates

[selenak]

Maupertuis has the WORST handwriting in French. It's gonna be rough. I'd rather have well-written Kurrent. :P

And there's an explanation as to why Maupertuis' biography reads so much more drily - his biographers had so much trouble decyphering his letters and only bothered with a few! :)

Re: Archive updates

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ha! Clearly. :P

I should be fair to Peter, the handwriting's not *that* bad. It's partly a function of me not being fluent in French, and partly a function of the blotches and crossing out and squeezing the new words over the scribbled out words/blotches in between lines. The handwriting per se not nearly as bad as Maupertuis'. :P But unlike Peter's letters to Fritz, I can't eyeball this, and unlike Suhm's letters, I can't even fully sight-read it with concentration. I have to transcribe with lots of Xs, and hope it makes sense when I come back for a second pass.

Whereas with Maupertuis, I'm afraid it will be entirely X's by the time I'm done. :P Peter's is better, though I expect there will still be some Xs if I don't want to spend 30 minutes on single words.

Really, the most useful thing I could do if I want to really do archival research, is take another 1-2 years of studying French and German; so much handwriting is easier if you can immediately think of all the possibilities, than if you have to go character by character.