„Quand je serais lá je serai sans souci “ wrote Frederick the Great in 1744 „Sans, Souci.“
What do these words, inscribed on the cornice of the palace in Potsdam, actually mean? No contemporary notation, no spelling mistakes – so why the comma, why the full stop?
The historian Dieter Kittsteiner submitted a research report entitled "The comma of Sans, Souci." (Manutius Verlag, Heidelberg 2001, ISBN 3934877087). Its two main hypotheses are that the punctuation marks could, on the one hand, be interpreted as 18thcentury ciphers, whereby the comma could stand for Calvinism and the full stop for Deism or Naturalism, which would result in the following interpretation: "Without strict protestant religion – which Frederick’s father also represented – one becomes a carefree deist." The second hypothesis assumes that the comma should be understood literally as a "virgule" (solidus, comma, dash). "A delicate subject” – Kittsteiner assumes that the Crown Prince had perhaps contracted a malady during his wilder years, which, incorrectly treated, robbed him of his potency. Sarcastically formulated, this could translate as "Carefree without a solidus".
Did Dieter Kittsteiner. practise "science or parody"? He certainly succeeded in producing an in-depth study, which took German comma-related research to a new level, and this despite the difficult conditions Kittsteiner points to in the imprint. "Printed without the support of the German Research Association."
