Well, if anyone is a great and powerful distraction, it certainly must be Alexander von Humboldt. :) To my shame, I must confess that I am more familiar with his fictional versions, i.e. both Daniel Kehlmann's Alex and Robert Löhr's version in the hilarious and entertaining Das Erlkönig-Manöver, where he gets to hang out and have an adventure with Goethe, Schiller, Achim von Arnim and Bettine Brentano and have an affair with Heinrich von Kleist. Unlike you, I haven't tackled his actual writings yet-
Thank you so much for these pictures. That is fantastic; Quantz is another character who'd be worth a film or miniseries of his own, rising from obscurity to being one of the best known musicians and composers of his day, playing for Saxon and Prussian courts alike. (And providing us with one of the few Katte stories that aren't about his execution via the anecdote he told Nicolai about almost getting caught teaching Fritz by FW, with Katte on the lookout spotting the approaching FW in time to hide Quantz and himself and the flutes.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2025-08-31 04:04 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for these pictures. That is fantastic; Quantz is another character who'd be worth a film or miniseries of his own, rising from obscurity to being one of the best known musicians and composers of his day, playing for Saxon and Prussian courts alike. (And providing us with one of the few Katte stories that aren't about his execution via the anecdote he told Nicolai about almost getting caught teaching Fritz by FW, with Katte on the lookout spotting the approaching FW in time to hide Quantz and himself and the flutes.)