Almost a rehash of the earlier Das Erlkönig-Manöver, with Goethe and Kleist again involved in undercover activities during the Napoleonic wars. This book is set in 1806-1808.

For complicated reasons, Goethe and Kleist are travelling across Germany incognito, together with Ludwig Tieck, Wilhelm Schlegel, Madame de Staël, an Italian actress and a black poodle, all disguised as travelling players.

Löhr has fun letting his characters quote from their own (future) works, and he lets himself go a bit imagining what might happen when three major playwrights and the most famous German translator of Shakespeare have to improvise a performance of Hamlet for a rustic audience. The joke palls after a while, though, and the ending has to be very contrived to meet the historical novelist's standard constraint of not actually changing any of the bits of history we know about. ( )