On August 29, 1756, Prussian troops invaded Saxony, thus opening a war that began as the Third Silesian War, lasted seven years, resembled a first world war and was fought with more than just military means: The Seven Years’ War was the first war in human history that not only affected the ruling classes and the disputed territories but also saw the passionate involvement of the international media. It was a war that, contrary to Lessing’s hopes at the beginning of the Letters on Literature, was not merely “a bloody trial involving independent heads” that “leaves all other social classes undisturbed” (B 4, 456). In his autobiography Truth and Poetry (Dichtung und Wahrheit), Goethe later recalls the debates at the family table and the fascination that the Prussian king held for him, as for so many of his contemporaries (cf. TaP II/2; MA 16, 52–55).