Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 45

[cahn]

Unfortunately, there was then at Berlin a King who pursued one policy only, who deceived his enemies, but not his servants, and who lied without scruple, but never without necessity.

(from The King's Secret - by Duke de Broglie, grand-nephew of the subject of the book, Comte de Broglie, and grandfather of the physicist) )

Comments

Re: FS in three biographies: An Overview (2)

[mildred_of_midgard]

I hadn't heard of him before

I had seen him cited enough that it gave me a little extra willingness to believe he had a source that wasn't Fritz, especially if he was saying things not in Fritz, but it's not looking good now that we've dug in a little more.

However, I see the wiki entry also says his many historical works are "populärwissenschaftlich", meaning he writes entertainingly and without academic references or much source footnoting.

Can confirm the lack of references and footnoting!

so it's also questionable whether he would have had access to unpublished until then sources at any of the archives.

Well, wiki tells me he worked as an archivist at the Dresden state archives, so he had access to *those* unpublished archives, but yeah, Berlin and Vienna archives would have been the important ones here, and he presumably did not. If Arneth said FS sold supplies to the Prussians, *then* I'd believe it!

That is very true. I wronged them repeatedly in this regard and might to a rewatch at some point with commentary much as I did of "Der Thronfolger", now that we know so much more.

We definitely knew much less at the start of salon; it's been and continues to be an amazing journey. I'm leaning toward "Sachsens Glanz und Preußens Gloria" (whom we also wronged) with newly acquired Saxon knowledge, myself...though I need to work on my German listening comprehension first. One day!