What is it about?
This chapter examines the private and emotional world of the Saxon Wettin dynasty in the mid-eighteenth century. Focusing on the correspondence exchanged between the sons and daughters of Augustus III of Poland and Elector of Saxony, it reconstructs how family relationships were maintained across geographical distance. Through qualitative analysis of letters written in French and German, the study explores how siblings shared memories, worries, political information, cultural impressions, and personal concerns. It argues that privacy in this dynastic context did not mean isolation or withdrawal from public life. Instead, it functioned as a shared emotional sphere sustained through regular correspondence. By analysing these epistolary networks, the chapter offers new insight into how early modern princes and princesses experienced intimacy, trust, and confidentiality within the highly public environment of European courts.
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Why is it important?
This study challenges modern assumptions about privacy by showing that, in the eighteenth century, it was not primarily associated with individual isolation but with shared emotional space. By analysing the correspondence of the Wettin siblings, the chapter demonstrates how dynastic families created spheres of intimacy, trust, and confidentiality within the highly public and political environment of European courts. The research contributes to current debates in early modern studies, the history of emotions, and privacy studies by foregrounding the emotional practices that sustained transnational dynastic networks. It shifts attention away from purely political or institutional analyses of ruling families and highlights instead the lived experience of princes and princesses as siblings, correspondents, and emotional actors.
Perspectives
This study opens new avenues for exploring privacy and emotional life in early modern Europe beyond the case of the Wettin dynasty. The epistolary practices analysed here invite comparative research on other ruling families and transnational dynastic networks, particularly in the context of cultural transfer and sibling relationships across courts. By foregrounding correspondence as a shared emotional practice rather than merely a vehicle of political information, the chapter also encourages further methodological reflection on ego-documents and the history of intimacy. Future research may deepen our understanding of how familial bonds shaped political decisions, diplomatic relations, and personal identities within European elite culture. More broadly, the study suggests that early modern courts — often perceived as entirely public and ceremonial spaces — contained complex and carefully managed spheres of confidentiality and emotional trust.
Katarzyna Kuras
Uniwersytet Jagiellonski w Krakowie
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Privacy of Princesses and Princes: Relations between Members of the Saxon House of Wettin in the Mid-Eighteenth Century, January 2026, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004749849_009.
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