I fount at the Goethe Institut bookstore in the used book section baroness Spitzemberg's Am Hof der Hohenzollern, a small selection from her journal, which she kept from 1865 right up to her death in 1914. It should be properly called am Hof Bismarcks as it contains many long passages about her relative intimacy with the great man and seems so much to be about him, as it is about events which in this period are more or less closely connected with him. The baronin flatters, coaxes, and prods the old man often to the point of vexation, positively keeps alive recent resentment (bismarck's dismissal in 1890) in order, it seems to have something to write about, to draw directly from the warm springs of history as she often says and very much concerned that she may be distorting of falsely interpreting his words as she rereads her account of them sometimes minutes of hearing them. Still, for all the author's scrupules, the small selection of entries contains for my taste too much highlighted or proped up reference to political events, like a hostess rearanging the cushions following a lively chat between ministers after these have taken their leave (her consciousness of delivering insider information is sometimes insufferable) and not enough court anectdotes. They may be somewhat more in the integral version. She is alltogether too much the political frau and not woman enough.

That was Friday. All afternoon and much of the early evening of monday spent in the first chapters of the Phaenomenologie. What shall I say about that?