1740 and All That

Earlier in the year, mildred_of_midgard got in touch with one Wolfgang Buwert, a local historian in Frankfurt an der Oder, who had written an article demonstrating that Fredersdorf had been stationed in Frankfurt an der Oder, not Küstrin, when he met Fredersdorf, and therefore that the most likely story of their meeting is the December student concert put on for Fritz in 1731, rather than the other story, in which Fredersdorf was a soldier at Küstrin (sometimes even supposedly one of Fritz's guards).

Buwert acknowledges that we can't rule out that Schwerin sent Fredersdorf to Fritz as a favor, but he strongly prefers the Frankfurt a.d.O. origin story.

( Selena summarizes Buwert )

( Mildred points out details from Buwert )

Then we turned up Volz's review of Richter's edition of the correspondence, as cited in Buwert.

( Selena summarizes Volz )

We also turned up the 1762 pamphlet cited by Buwert.

( Selena summarizes the 1762 Pamphlet )

And then Buwert put Mildred in touch with Dirk Fahlenkamp, author of this recent collection of the Fritz/Fredersdorf correspondence with plenty of commentary and gorgeous images. Fahlenkamp's book claimed that Fredersdorf was dismissed for embezzlement. Mildred and Buwert, unable to track down the source for this claim (Buwert confirms it's not in Weise 1944 either), asked Fahlenkamp what his source was.

Wikipedia.

So the embezzlement claim is getting more unsubstantiated by the day.

ETA: See our discovery of Wikipedia's source.