![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnUnfortunately, 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) )
(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) )
Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-16 05:37 pm (UTC)I was finally able to get scans of everything the Danish state archives have from and to Løvenørn from August 1730 to the end of 1730. Good news: that gives us almost 200 pages of material, including the FW-dictated "Fritz, c'est le Prince" one. Bad news: it doesn't include the ONE letter that was the reason I was willing to pay $350 (*grumbles*--German archives are cheaper) for the archive to do the scanning for me; the one Stefan Hartmann cites as saying that Katte broke into tears when his death sentence was read to him.
The Danish archivist says there is no report from November 5, 1730, and though she didn't look closely through Løvenørn's personal archives, she did a quick skim and couldn't find anything from that date either.
She said I can get the archive to do a more thorough dig through the personal archives by making another prepayment of $350, but they can't guarantee finding what I'm looking for. I have declined at this time.
Hartmann died in 2016 and cannot be contacted for clarification on where on earth he found this November 5, 1730 report. (You know me, I will contact scholars if I'm motivated enough.)
Curses, foiled again!
That said, we do have a ton of new envoy report material, and this is why I need to focus on improving my French and German, because I am not painstakingly hand-transcribing 200 pages of Løvenørn material, 10000 pages of Suhm and Manteuffel material, and 1500 pages of Peter Keith material (not to mention all the Kiekemal material) the way I did the letters to Fredersdorf and Lt. Groeben--I need to be able to sight read.
If I ever *can* sight read reams of text all at once, maybe someday *I* will go to Copenhagen and *I* will look for this elusive letter about Katte! (Which needs to be published, because no one believes he broke down into tears when his death sentence was read; because Wilhelmine says the opposite.)
ETA: Okay, because we found this entertaining, I couldn't resist sharing:
Re: Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-18 06:54 am (UTC)350 Dollars, OMG! So sorry that was a bust on the Katte letter account.
Re: Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-18 07:08 am (UTC)[ETA: Okay, I cleaned up the image itself to remove the stray squiggles from other words, and I changed the color of the banner to match the background of the image as closely as I could (and changed the title text color for greater contrast with the new banner color. I still don't like the alignment of the title, "1740 and All That", but I don't immediately see where to change it. Anyway, it looks moderately better now, I think.]
German archives charge per page scanned! So if you get 180 images, you pay $90 (or $45 if you double them), and you only pay once the scans are ready. Danish and British archives charge for labor, and it's the labor rate of an educated professional, so you're going to pay for 3 hours of research up front for them to hunt through the archives and then do the scanning, and it's not going to work out to the same as a 50-cent per image rate.
Makes me glad I'm doing research on German history. You guys apparently fund your archives much, much better.
ETA 2: It occurred to me that the letter might actually be in the von Johnn section of the archive, and I asked how much it would cost for them to tell me if there is a von Johnn section, and they were like, 3.5 hours. *head banging against desk* It is legit getting cheaper to fly from the US to Copenhagen than it is to order scans online.
Oh HEY.
Re: Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-18 05:33 pm (UTC)Oh sure, I visit those archives all the time! Err, no. But I am in Malmö a few times a year, which is just across the strait. I would certainly consider helping you out, if I could! But do they really let just anyone paw through the archives? And wouldn't I need some expertise in order to know where to look and how to recognize whether it's new and interesting to you?
Hmm, I do have a fannish friend who works for the Royal Library of Denmark, who has on occasion helped me get access to 18th century stuff--but that was books/articles that were cataloged in the library, not stuff in archives, which I imagine is a lot more work to find. And I suppose the archives and the library are separate organizations.
Also, I have not forgotten that I said I would look through the Swedish-language stuff on the Finnish Sex Machine! I have just not, er, managed to make it happen yet.
Re: Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-18 09:29 pm (UTC)Heee! Yeah, I figured. But the answer to my real question-behind-the-question is encouraging, thank you!
I would certainly consider helping you out, if I could!
<3!
But do they really let just anyone paw through the archives?
Yes, most archives do and this is no exception. My understanding is that state archives are publicly owned material and they are legally required to allow the public access, exceptions being 1. Restrictions based on sensitive material, like living persons, 2. If the preservation state of the material really doesn't allow it to be safely handled.
The way these archives usually work is you place an order for the material you're interested in beforehand, then you schedule a date in the reading room, they bring the box(es) of material out to the reading room for you, and you can go through the papers in the box at your leisure in the reading room.
The only "expertise" required would be following their rules on handling the material, which are usually things like how flat to lay the document on the table; what assistance tools to use/not use; pencils not pens; don't use moisturizers or other products on your hands before your visit (because the chemicals might seep into the paper), etc. But those rules are meant to be things laypeople can follow.
And wouldn't I need some expertise in order to know where to look and how to recognize whether it's new and interesting to you?
Nope! I have a date for the letter I'm interested in. The way I envision this arrangement working would be that I would help you or your friend order the material that would be brought out to the reading room, then you just have to go through it looking in the margins for anything dated November 5, 1730, and copy anything you find with that date (using your phone camera or the scanner in the reading room or whatever is most convenient). You don't have to know French or German or read the material at all! The dates are usually pretty easy to identify and read, and hopefully each folder is largely in chronological order anyway, in case an individual digit is hard to read, e.g. if it could be 1730 or 1736.
The only tricky part would be whether their online catalog is useful enough to allow us to narrow it down to a reasonable amount of material to be brought out to the reading room. The German archives are quite good about this, but if it's going to take the Danish archivists 3.5 hours of research just to tell me if there *is* a particular section of the archive pertaining to Johnn (something I would expect to be able to find out for free online myself at a German archive)...
Still, it'd be worth a try!
Okay, I was initially concerned that their website says you have to bring your Danish health insurance card, but now I have found the part that says, "Foreign users are issued a special card from the security officer upon presentation of a valid photo ID."
If you or your friend are interested, you would have my eternal gratitude!
Also, it looks like the reading room is the same as the one for the library your friend works at: "The Reading Room – the Research Reading Room – is shared with the Royal Library." Your friend might have some experience working with archival material, and if not, they certainly have a colleague who does!
Also, I have not forgotten that I said I would look through the Swedish-language stuff on the Finnish Sex Machine! I have just not, er, managed to make it happen yet.
No worries! I have yet to make a lot of things happen that I've said I would do. So say we all.
(Unrelated: Ugh, the new Rheinsberg banner looks *awful* on mobile. If people want me to set it back the way it was, or make further changes, let me know.)
Re: Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-19 10:08 am (UTC)Re: Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-20 05:44 am (UTC)Good news: I was able to identify a section of the archive entitled: "Brandenburg-Preussen: Legationssekretær Christian August von Johnns gesandtskabsarkiv: Kopibøger over relationer (1728 - 1730)" so you should only have one set of material to go through. Hopefully that means it's quick. (3.5 hours my foot.) Honestly, now that we've been able to narrow it down this much, I'll probably ask you to scan everything from November 1730, as there's probably not a ton. (Løvenørn has ~50 pages from October; Johnn in November is probably a comparable order of magnitude, as that's when he took over for Løvenørn.)
The rules for visiting the reading room, pretty standard: https://www.rigsarkivet.dk/rigsarkivets-laesesale/reglement-for-brug-af-forskningslaesesalen. Looks like, as I predicted, you can use your camera and the reading room scanner.
Eeee, I hope this works out and my hunch is correct that the November 5 letter ended up in the Johnn section of the archive! But even if not, having the handwritten original of his report on Katte's execution, even if we've already read the published version, would have an amazing cool factor. :D :D :D
I also hope getting familiarity with archives is cool for you and maybe even useful to your own research someday! The British archives I've looked at are roughly comparable to the Danish royal archives, so if you ever end up looking into unpublished Jacobite material, or, idk, doing your family history in Sweden*, or something, you will have relevant experience.
* The Danish archive has more emphasis on how to use them for genealogical research than most archives I've looked at.
Re: Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-20 01:40 pm (UTC)There is one thing I've been curious about, which is: a fair number of Jacobite refugees came to Gothenburg (my home town) after Culloden, where they got a lot of help from a merchant called Peter Samuelsson Bagge (he was associated with the Hats, the French-leaning party). When I was a kid, my family rented half of a big house owned by people named Bagge. So of course it has led me to wonder whether these Bagges were related, and if so, how many degrees of separation I am from those Jacobite refugees! The Bagge who owned that house died fairly recently at almost the age of 100. Incidentally, one of his sons is a musician who often performs the songs of Carl Michael Bellman (the most well-known songwriter of 18th century Sweden).
Re: Jacobite material, I do really wish that some of the women involved in the ’45 had written memoirs! Margaret Ogilvy, for example. I wonder if there might be unpublished material by female Jacobites in archives somewhere…
Re: Danish archives
Date: 2023-10-22 12:39 am (UTC)Oh, interesting! Do you have an Ancestry.com account?
Re: Jacobite material, I do really wish that some of the women involved in the ’45 had written memoirs! Margaret Ogilvy, for example. I wonder if there might be unpublished material by female Jacobites in archives somewhere…
There might be! But if they're in British archives, your future self's hands-on experience in reading rooms will come in handy, because British archives *also* charge you an arm and a leg, in my experience.
If you make a list of these women and which, if any of them, ended up in exile abroad, I'll keep an eye out!