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: Evolving Fritz signatures

[mildred_of_midgard]

What about the Old Dessauer, did Fritz correspond with him in French or German, do we know? There seem to be approximately one gazillion pages of correspondence between them, and I could at least ask if the archive could scan just the ones with Fritz's signature.

Re: Evolving Fritz signatures

[mildred_of_midgard]

German! They were published in 1894, Fritzian spelling and all (I see his favorite "vohr"). Haha, the opening sentence says, "A researcher who was familiar with part of the letters of Crown Prince Friedrich to Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau thought that the only thing valuable in them was the signature."

Also, I see an undated one that the editor footnotes as, "Judging by the handwriting, the letter must have been composed around 1727."

Well, that's perfect, that's exactly what we want! And it looks like we've got 1720, 1722, undated circa 1727, 1728, and then from 1731-1739 (these are only the Crown Prince letters).

Since the archive contains their correspondence until 1747, and it's all this military stuff...WHAT. The archive only contains their correspondence 1740-1747; the 1717-1740 stuff is a different Anhalt-Dessau, a Prinz Dietrich von Anhalt-Dessau? Well, maybe that's in German too. Ugh, I really need someone to go to the archive and just take pictures of Fritz's signatures and handwriting in German. I missed my chance to ask Prinzsorgenfrei when they were in the archive looking at Katte stuff in May!

Well, maybe I can ask the archive if the Prinz Dietrich stuff is in German. The 1717-1740 stuff at least might be!

Oh, interesting, looking further through the published material in 1735, his letters to the other Anhalt-Dessau princes are mostly but not exclusively in German. The 3 Dietrich letters listed are summarized, so of course I can't tell.

Still, looks like the Anhalt-Dessau correspondence might be a good place to start, after the FW correspondence.

ETA: Oh, I see, the editor says the crown prince letters are in the archive at Zerbst. Makes sense! All right, I'll see if I can find them there.

ETA 2: Remember that Manteuffel called the Alte Dessauer "Prince Moustache"? Our editor says he was called the "alten Schnurrbart"! Well, like I said last time, makes sense.