31 Wednesday Oct 2018
Posted in Books
Tags
handschrift, handwriting, hohenzollern, kurrent, preußen, prussia
Yet another cheapish aquisition, “Preußen unter der Königskrone”.
Inside is a nice little inscription in Kurrentschrift:
Der besten Schulerin,
Anne Steffens,
als Prämie überreicht,
von
ihrem Lehrer.
The girl’s name appears to be in Latin and not Kurrent, a different hand, or standard practice perhaps?
04 Wednesday Jan 2017
Posted in Writing
I thought I’d add this here as I was looking for a quote to submit for possible inclusion into a book about the alte deutsche Schrift and liked this, but couldn’t find an exact attribution anywhere, so found it in my own copy of ‘Fürst Bismarcks Briefe an seine Braut und Gattin‘. Eventually.
… denn ich habe Dich geheirathet um Dich in Gott und nach dem Bedürfniß meines Herzens zu lieben, und um in der fremden Welt eine Stelle für mein Herz zu haben, die all ihre dürren Winde nicht erkälten und an der ich die Wärme des heimathlichen Kaminfeuers finde, an das ich mich dränge wenn es draußen stürmt und friert …
Fürst Bismarcks Briefe an seine Braut und Gattin, J.G. Cotta`sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger, Stuttgart 1900. Letter #177, 14.5.1851, Page 277.
23 Saturday Apr 2016
Latest bit of light reading. A biography of Prussian General von Zieten by his niece Louise Johanne Leopoldine von Blumenthal published in Berlin in 1806. Heavily watermarked and annotated but solidly bound and complete with two coloured maps. I only wanted a reading copy hence I was happy to get this from Abe Books for only 40 quid. Here is an English translation (complete with scanned fingers) that I downloaded from archive.org
Several things with this one:
Firstly, it’s 210 bloody years old! Which to me is quite amazing. Where has it been all these years? Who has read it before?
Secondly there is some interesting typesetting; a small ‘e’ instead of umlauts, an indication of the use of
a small Kurrentschrift ‘e’ which went on to become the umlaut, and the strange ‘x’ symbol (image left, at the end of the first paragraph) that I’ve also seen in Friedrich Gerstäcker’s “Das Alte Haus” that seems to stand for u.s.w. There may yet be more to discover.
Thirdly it’s been heavily, really heavily annotated, in a fashion that seems to make not a lot of sense, enough to suggest that the annotator was not quite in their right mind. I feel safe enough in mentioning this because the few legible comments seem to be in Kurrentschrift, so unless like me they were a modern fan it’s unlikely that it was done after WWII and the perpetrator is most likely Mausetot. Really though, what were they thinking, and when, and where, and what else was going on around them? The image to the right is a
good example, the text looks like “seine Gemahlin” (his wife) in Kurrent, which makes sense as that’s what the passage covers, but why all the lines? Lost it, undoubtedly.
Fourthly, it’s a surprisingly interesting read, the somewhat archaic language adding to the charm. Von Zieten would appear to have been devout and patriotic, but basically an ugly, stroppy short bloke with a massive chip on his shoulder who couldn’t handle his drink. Despite, or perhaps because of, which he turned out to be a very impressive soldier, once he’d run out of superiors to have fights with. My girlfriend has always had the same sort of relationship with her bosses.
More later as I read more of it, maybe.
19 Wednesday Nov 2014
Posted in Writing
On my trip to Hannover, a pleasant enough place but somewhat spoilt for someone of my appearance by the upcoming HoGeSa rally, I was delighted to see this shop window display.
Delighted enough to go in and ask the nice lady inside in my halting German if I could take a photo. I think she doubted my sanity, as indeed do I sometimes.
Anyway, signed letters from Hesse, Bismarck and Goethe, particularly interesting to me was the Bismarck one, as a historical item in itself, and also for the lovely script, however the lady didn’t know the price. My intention was to contact them online when I got back to England, but stupidly I didn’t write the name of the shop down and now can’t find it.
Anyone recognise it?
