Salondiplomati og politisk selskabelighed

Charlotte Schimmelmann i dansk historieskrivning fra Louis Bobé til New Diplomatic History

Abstract

This article traces the historiography of an elite woman and salonnière from late eighteenth-century Denmark, Charlotte Schimmelmann (1757–1816), arguing that the publication of her letters at the turn of the twentieth century has impacted contemporary historical writing on her salon and elite women’s political agency in Denmark. The article places the case of Charlotte Schimmelmann’s correspondence within the wider context of salon historiography and new diplomatic history, arguing that we must take the international research on not only the eighteenth-century salon, but also aristocratic sociability and new diplomatic history into account in order to understand Charlotte Schimmelmann’s late eighteenth-century sociability. Through examples from a reading of Charlotte Schimmelmann’s and her female circle’s full correspondence, their political and diplomatic involvement is highlighted. Several of these examples have been excluded from the published collection, prompting the second part of the article to investigate how and why the letters presented in the collection were selected for publication. Drawing on material from Louis Bobé’s personal archive, this part of the article uncovers Bobé’s basis for publishing the letters, leading to a discussion of how the publication’s emphasis on literary aspects of elite sociability has contributed to contemporary understandings of their agency.