cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 44

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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.)

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

...You guys, screenshots coming soon, but the handwriting is pretty identical to the Fredersdorf letters ("alle", for example), and the signature is a much closer match for the Fredersdorf letters than the Gröben letters! It's definitely Fritz, and it may be 1750s Fritz. (Wouldn't that turn everything we thought we knew about their relationship on its head.)

That said, aside from the signature, I haven't done a close comparison of 1730s vs. 1750s handwriting--and I haven't checked the dates on the Fredersdorf letters either, since the facsimiles don't have them, and I'll have to cross-check the text to assign them dates. There may not be a big difference between 1734 and 1745, say. I'll see if I can find a 1750s Fredersdorf facsimile, figure out which of the Gröben letters Fritz wrote and which he dictated, and see if there are noticeable differences. (There may not be.)

From:

felis

The facsimiles are usually the letters right next to the page, so the first one in the first Richter book (p.39) is 1745 and the third (p. 125) is 1753.