Apply to participate in the Hinternet Foundation Summer School,
“WHITHER THE HUMANITIES?”,
taking place in August, 2026. Application deadline June 1.
In March, 1697, Peter the Great set out from Moscow, along with a select group of councilors, for his so-called “Grand Embassy”, a two-year tour of Western Europe. The voyage was shrouded in secrecy and disguise, and was aimed at the strategic collection of information concerning primarily Dutch and German advances in science and technology. Through the usual gossip networks, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz would soon learn every detail of the Tsar’s early visit to the Königsberg court of the Elector of Prussia, Friedrich I, and of the time these two more-or-less Enlightened sovereigns spent together at Friedrich’s maison de plaisance or country home.
The philosopher remarks in a letter that during the visit the Tsar had been “very gay, and spoke familiarly with everyone”, and that he “approved of the gentleness [douceur] with which people conduct themselves in these [German] lands, and disapproves the cruelties of his own.” When the Tsar took a walk with the elector, we learn, one of the servants made a gross error of some unspecified sort in tending to this distinguished visitor. The Tsar tells the servant that if he had been in Muscovy he would have been subjected to the whip, but, since they are in a “gentle” country, he will let it pass.