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: I FOUND PETER'S MEMOIRS

[felis]

\o/

Nice. :D

For what it's worth, I think remembering the month/season of an event correctly is much easier than the exact year, there's way more circumstantial memory to place things. Speaking of - is there a date saying when exactly he wrote these memoirs?

Re: I FOUND PETER'S MEMOIRS

[mildred_of_midgard]

Season, yes, my first thought was that I bet he remembered traveling all the way across Germany in January! Month...well, I have more trouble telling January apart from February than I do 1999 from 2000.

Yes, there is a date! I was going to tell you about it, because it's an interesting and not at all surprising date: 1 June, 1752. It's almost 10 years after he married Ariane (August 1742), and he's just turned 41 years old (on May 24). So while middle-aged Fritz is taking up with shiny red Porsches chamber hussars, middle-aged Peter is looking back at his life, taking stock on it, and reflecting.