How Moltke got his job, lost it, got it again, and lost it again

[mildred_of_midgard]

Summary of Adam Gottlob Moltke's career based on Moltke: Rigets Mægtigste Mand, supplementary to the information in https://rheinsberg.dreamwidth.org/69116.html:

( Rise to power )

( In power )

( Fall from power )

( Retirement and descendants )

I enjoyed the very last sentence of the book, in which Adam Moltke steps down in 1852 and says to Frederik VII, "If Your Majesty should have need of me again, that's why I'm a Moltke."

August III.: Kurfürst von Sachsen und König von Polen

[mildred_of_midgard]

Write-up by mildred_of_midgard about Jacek Staszewski's August III: Kurfürst von Sachsen und König von Polen, published in Polish in 1989 and translated into German in 1996:

( This is how you lose the PR war )

luzula adds: Re: this bit: “he would spend his days cutting out bits of paper with a pair of scissors”, it reminds me of similar phrasing in Mrs Calderwood's journal that I reported on here. She said it of the son of Colonel Townley, when she wanted to imply that he was feminine and without much initiative. Hmm.

mildred_of_midgard: Oh, that's interesting! Do you have a sense of whether that was a literal 18th century hobby, or if it was a trope used to insult people?

luzula: An Internet search gave me these two examples of women doing papercut art at roughly the right time period! So it seems like it was actually a thing--and it looks like it was taken seriously as an art form, too.

( This is how you convert to Catholicism )

selenak: All very interesting, and it also provides context for FW‘s conviction that his favourite con man told him nothing but the truth re: the dastardly Catholic plot of murdering him and turning Fritz into a Catholic. (and remember, one of FW‘s instructions to his kids‘ teachers was that the kids should feel nothing but contempt for the Catholic religion. One of his rare pedagoical successes with Fritz.)

( Misc )