in the summer of 1746, nor to a large celebration that the king gave in August 1749 in honor of his mother in Sanssouci. In 1763, when after the Seven Years' War, Frederick saw his wife for the first time in six years, he only told her: "Madame have become more stout" and then turned to his waiting sisters. Despite his lack of interest in her person, he demanded that she should be respected in her capacity as a Queen, but his separation from her along with her aroused pity made it hard for her to receive respect from the nobility: on one occasion, the opera singers refused to appear at her concert and she forced him to demand that she be treated with respect. In many aspects her situation was similar to that of her sister-in-law, Princess Wilhelmina, the neglected wife of the king's brother Prince Henry, only that the queen consort had an important representational task. Influence During the Seven Years' War, the King was permanently absent from the capital for six years, which made the Queen become the symbol of Prussian resilience in the capital during the crisis, and was often greeted by cheering crowds when she appeared in public. When Berlin was threatened in 1757, it was Elisabeth who took the responsibility for the royal house and ordered for its evacuation to Magdeburg. She was able to return to Berlin in 1758, but was again forced to evacuate in 1760. It was on the first of these occasions that she saw Sanssouci for the first time. Elisabeth was interested in political literature and authored several translations under the pseudonym "Constance". After the death of her friend Sophie Caroline von Camas in 1766, she published a French translation of Le Chrétien dans la Solitude. Her translations of the Réflexions sur l'etat des affaires publiques en 1778 aroused public patriotism during the War of Bavarian Succession. Her political works were included in the royal library and the King presented her with his own ideas. Elisabeth successfully introduced silk cultivation to Prussia and was involved in charity, to which she contributed 23,000 thalers out of her allowance of 40,000 thalers, more than half her income. She said of herself: "God has graciously kept me, so that I need not reproach myself for any action by which any person has with my knowledge been hurt." Elisabeth is noted to have