![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI.e. "Frederick the Great and Maria Theresia: in eye witness accounts." This actually was/is a series of books devoted to a particular era or historical figure(s); the first one of those I've read was "The French Revolution: In Eye Witness Accounts". The advantage is obvious: these are all either excerpts of primary sources, written at the time, or memoirs, written none too much later, arranged by subject, many of which might be difficult to track down individually. On the down side, you're also at the mercy of the editor, in terms of what he chooses to highlight or edit out.
( Short assessment of Jessen as an editor )
All these nitpicks aside, though, it's a great source book, and in addition to containing by now familiar documents it had a lot of documents from which I only knew individual phrases, but not the entire texts, which sometimes recontextualize previously known quotes quite differently. I've excerpted some especially intriguing gems.
( Hot or Not: Portraits of an Enigma )
Since the emphasis on this collection is on the Friedrich/Maria Theresia arch nemesis relationship, we get treated to several of the things they said and wrote about each other.
( He said, she said: through the decades )
Not that Joseph's kind of being a Fritz fan ever went the Peter III. way. He believed in imitation via competition, which turned out to be even more disturbing to his mother than mere admiration would have been, since it affected the peace of her realms. Fast forward to more than a decade later, and Joseph is like Fritz in the worst way, i.e. by invading Bavaria. Here's Mom trying to argue him out of it, on March 14th, 1778, very much belying son Leopold's claim that she was half senile near the end of her life, for that letter, written two years before her death, shows Maria Theresia the politician at the top of her game:
( Maria Theresia versus War: It's on! )
The last Fritz section goes on for a while longer. Jessen has the letter from Fritz - to D'Alembert, as it turns out, dated January 6th 1781 - which has the famously revisioninstic "I was never her enemy" quote in it; what I hadn't known before reading the complete letter was that he then, bereft of his best enemy, transitions right to his next target, German literature. Writes he:
( MT and me, by Fritz, followed by: Why Shakespeare is rubbish, and German literature does not exist )
( Short assessment of Jessen as an editor )
All these nitpicks aside, though, it's a great source book, and in addition to containing by now familiar documents it had a lot of documents from which I only knew individual phrases, but not the entire texts, which sometimes recontextualize previously known quotes quite differently. I've excerpted some especially intriguing gems.
( Hot or Not: Portraits of an Enigma )
Since the emphasis on this collection is on the Friedrich/Maria Theresia arch nemesis relationship, we get treated to several of the things they said and wrote about each other.
( He said, she said: through the decades )
Not that Joseph's kind of being a Fritz fan ever went the Peter III. way. He believed in imitation via competition, which turned out to be even more disturbing to his mother than mere admiration would have been, since it affected the peace of her realms. Fast forward to more than a decade later, and Joseph is like Fritz in the worst way, i.e. by invading Bavaria. Here's Mom trying to argue him out of it, on March 14th, 1778, very much belying son Leopold's claim that she was half senile near the end of her life, for that letter, written two years before her death, shows Maria Theresia the politician at the top of her game:
( Maria Theresia versus War: It's on! )
The last Fritz section goes on for a while longer. Jessen has the letter from Fritz - to D'Alembert, as it turns out, dated January 6th 1781 - which has the famously revisioninstic "I was never her enemy" quote in it; what I hadn't known before reading the complete letter was that he then, bereft of his best enemy, transitions right to his next target, German literature. Writes he:
( MT and me, by Fritz, followed by: Why Shakespeare is rubbish, and German literature does not exist )
