cahn: (Default)
cahn ([personal profile] cahn) wrote2021-10-04 10:27 pm
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Frederick the Great and Other 18th-C Characters, Discussion Post 31

And in this post:

-[personal profile] luzula is going to tell us about the Jacobites and the '45!

-I'm going to finish reading Nancy Goldstone's book about Maria Theresia and (some of) her children Maria Christina, Maria Carolina, and Marie Antoinette, In the Shadow of the Empress, and [personal profile] selenak is going to tell us all the things wrong with the last four chapters (spoiler: in the first twenty chapters there have been many, MANY things wrong)!

-[personal profile] mildred_of_midgard is going to tell us about Charles XII of Sweden and the Great Northern War

(seriously, how did I get so lucky to have all these people Telling Me Things, this is AWESOME)

-oh, and also there will be Yuletide signups :D
felis: (House renfair)

Re: Königsmarck and Hannovers

[personal profile] felis 2021-10-20 11:51 am (UTC)(link)
It's too bad there aren't more quotes though!

If you want to get an idea via English translations, here is the English edition Selena mentions, by Wilkins. (The one that Schnath looks down on because the editor was too lazy to travel to Berlin and include the letters Ulrike stole for Fritz.) Königsmarck's first one - while away on campaign - apparently starts with "I am in extremis, and the only thing that can save me is a few lines from your incomparable hand." So, you know. Love letters! The publication is from 1901, rather dramatically presented (Chapter Title: "The Dawn of Passion"), and I have no idea re: trustworthiness of the narration in between the letters, which I have not checked at all, but the author does give you the original Lund letters. (At least as he deciphered them. The chapter before this one talks about the extensive code they used (nicknames and numbers) and gives a few examples of the author's interpretation. (Schnath probably had things to say about that.) But be that as it may, this mostly affects their talk about other people, not so much the back-and-forth about their own feelings.)

ETA: On page 361 is the SD letter that mentions the card houses for the two kids (via another letter she received, because she wasn't there to witness it). Footnote says that this and the next letter by Königsmarck are the only ones that mention little!SD and G2.
Edited 2021-10-20 12:14 (UTC)
selenak: (Default)

Re: Königsmarck and Hannovers

[personal profile] selenak 2021-10-22 05:59 am (UTC)(link)
The "forgeries" claim has long since been dismissed. It was originally made by the later Hannovers on the British throne for obvious reasons, and the online Britannica articles are decades, if not centuries behind. But seriously, by the 1920s and Schnath's time it was already generally accepted that the letters were the real deal.

(BTW, Fritz and Ulrike had no doubt about that just a measly few decades after the event, either.)