Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T06:26:44.200Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Between Brother and Sister: Hanover and Berlin (February 1698–February 1705)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

Get access

Summary

In the following seven years, Leibniz's life was illuminated by a rising star: the electress of Brandenburg and (from 1701) queen of Prussia, Sophie Charlotte. The demise of Ernst August coincided with a steady increase in the importance of the late duke's daughter for Leibniz's personal and intellectual life. Over a relatively short period of time, an exceptionally close bond was established between him and Sophie Charlotte. The electress and queen continuously implored Leibniz to visit her in Berlin and Lützenburg, her summer residence, because she did not “have a living soul with whom to converse” and considered herself as “one of your disciples”. As for Leibniz, he wrote that his visits to Sophie Charlotte gave him “a leisure which I do not have at all elsewhere.” Back in Hanover, however, the great esteem and affection of the electress of Brandenburg was neatly counterbalanced by the attitude of her brother, the new elector, Georg Ludwig, who manifested not the least appreciation of his employee's kaleidoscopic activities and interests: in his considered opinion Leibniz was wasting his time fluttering from one place to another at the service of too many patrons instead of concentrating on the main assignment, for which he was handsomely paid, the history of the Guelfs. He complained sarcastically on one occasion: “Leibniz, for whom the Queen [Sophie Charlotte] pines so much, is not here … If one asks why he is never seen, he always has the excuse that he is working on his invisible book, the existence of which, it seems to me, will require as much trouble to prove as Jaquelot has taken with the [lost] book of Moses”.

Type
Chapter
Information
Leibniz
An Intellectual Biography
, pp. 381 - 457
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×