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Updated: June 13, 2025
To this day, Reinsberg stands with the air of a solid respectable Edifice; still massive, rain-tight, though long since deserted by the Princeships, by Friedrich nearly sixscore years ago, and nearly threescore by Prince Henri, Brother of Friedrich's, who afterwards had it.
"Friedrich's Life little as he expected it, that day when he started up from his ague-fit at Reinsberg, and grasped the fiery Opportunity that was shooting past is a Life of War. The chief memory that will remain of him is that of a King and man who fought consummately well. Not Peace and the Muses; no, that is denied him, though he was so unwilling, always, to think it denied!
With the outer Berlin social world, acting and reacting, Friedrich has his connections, which obscurely emerge on us now and then. Literary Eminences, who are generally of Theological vesture; any follower of Philosophy, especially if he be of refined manners withal, or known in fashionable life, is sure to attract him; and gains ample recognition at Reinsberg or on Town-visits.
And here he is at Reinsberg; bustling about, in a brisk, modestly frank and cheerful manner: well liked by everybody; by his Master very well and ever better, who grew into real regard, esteem and even friendship for him, and has much Correspondence, of a freer kind than is common to him, with little Jordan, so long as they lived together.
That flattering Reinsberg Program, it is singular how Friedrich cannot help trying it by every new chance, nor cast the notion out of him that there must be a kind of Muses'-Heaven realizable on Earth! That is the Biographic Phenomenon which has survived of those Years; and to that we will almost exclusively address ourselves, on behalf of ingenuous readers.
Many lakes and lakelets in it, as usual hereabouts; the loitering waters straggle, all over that region, into meshes of lakes. Reinsberg itself, Village and Schloss, stands on the edge of a pleasant Lake, last of a mesh of such: the SUMMARY, or outfall, of which, already here a good strong brook or stream, is called the RHEIN, Rhyn or Rein; and gives name to the little place.
It is but some ten or twelve miles off, in a northerly direction; Reinsberg being close on the frontier there. A pleasant enough morning's-drive, with the October sun shining on the silent heaths, on the many-colored woods and you.
The Crown-Prince prosecuted his Masonry, at Reinsberg or elsewhere, occasionally, for a year or two; but was never ardent in it; and very soon after his Accession, left off altogether: "Child's-play and IGNIS FATUUS mainly!" Harmless "fire," but too "fatuous;" mere flame-circles cut in the air, for infants, we know how! Lippe continued writing; but "only Secretaries now answered him" from Berlin.
Friedrich's first Letter, challenging Voltaire to correspondence, dates itself 8th August, 1736; and Voltaire's Answer the Reinsberg Household still only in its second month was probably the brightest event which had yet befallen there.
He continued, though soon with less enthusiasm, and in the end very rarely, a visitor of Friedrich's during this Reinsberg time. Patriotic English readers may as well take the few remaining vestiges, too, before quite dismissing him to Sleepy Hollow. Here they are, swept accurately together, from that Correspondence of Friedrich with Papa: "REINSBERG, 1st FEBRUARY, 1737."
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