Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20

[cahn]

Yuletide signups so far:
3 requests for Frederician RPF, 2 offers
2 requests for Circle of Voltaire RPF, 3 offers !! :D :D

(I am so curious as to who the third person is!)

Comments

Re: Holes in the moon and magic castles, or: odds and ends in the Wilhelmine-Fritz correspondence

[mildred_of_midgard]

Per Carlyle (following Varnhagen von Ense), the sequence of events went like this:

April 11: Fredersdorf writes to Freytag to await Voltaire in Frankfurt, obtain the key, the ordre pour le mérite, and the book, and detain and arrest him if necessary.

May 31: Voltaire arrives.

June 1: Freytag has Voltaire's room searched. Voltaire says he doesn't know where the book is, somewhere in Leipzig or Hamburg, but not with him. He gives his word of honor to send for it and not to leave Frankfurt until it arrives and he hands it over.

June 18: Voltaire's luggage arrives, but Freytag's not clear on what exactly Fredersdorf wants him to look for. So he asks Voltaire to wait three days until he can get clarification from Potsdam.

June 20: Voltaire tries to blow town, is caught, this is when things get bad for him and Madame Denis.

July 7: After much kerfluffle, the trunk is obtained by Freytag, Voltaire leaves town.

I do feel like Wilhelmine could have handled this better. And since it's not clear to me that Voltaire refused to hand over the poems in the first place, it's quite possible that this would have been a non-issue.