“Missed encounters” by Gottfried Schramm

Missed encounters have often been described. Queen Elizabeth of England did not visit her captive rival in the garden of Fotheringhay Castle in 1587. Nor did the imperial commander Albrecht von Wallenstein receive a Swedish subcontractor in the camp of Pilsen in 1634. But it could have happened. This series of eight described encounters has taken shape in leisure hours, which a retired Freiburg historian now has more extensively than before. The essays are not about fiction, but about history, which has really happened. Only one should read between the lines because, unfortunately, the encounters did not take place in reality. The eight "missed encounters" published by the Freiburg-based historian Prof. Dr. em. Gottfried Schramm will appear in the next few weeks as a series in the Journal of Science, Humanities, and Arts. In the first episode, the Tsarina Katharina II is visited by an anonymous guest. Will a past happiness avert an approaching mischief? [Article in German]