After receiving news, early in January, 1842, of renewed delay, I at last heard that by the end of February the work would be ready for performance.  I was seriously uneasy at this, as I was afraid of not being able to accomplish the journey by that date.  But this news also was soon contradicted, and the honest Fischer informed me that my opera had had to be postponed till the autumn of that year.  I realised fully that it would never be performed if I could not be present in person at Dresden.  When eventually in March Count Redern, the director of the Theatre Royal in Berlin, told me that my Fliegender Hollander had been accepted for the opera there, I thought I had sufficient reason to return to Germany at all costs as soon as possible.

I had already had various experiences as to the views of German managers on this work.  Relying on the plot, which had pleased the manager of the Paris Opera so much, I had sent the libretto in the first instance to my old acquaintance Ringelhardt, the director of the Leipzig theatre.  But the man had cherished an undisguised aversion for me since my Liebesverbot.  As he could not this time possibly object to any levity in my subject, he now found fault with its gloomy solemnity and refused to accept it.  As I had met Councillor Kustner, at that time manager of the Munich Court Theatre, when he was making arrangements about La Reine de Chypre in Paris, I now sent him the text of the Dutchman with a similar request.  He, too, returned it, with the assurance that it was not suited to German stage conditions, or to the taste of the German public.  As he had ordered a French libretto for Munich, I knew what he meant.  When the score was finished, I sent it to Meyerbeer in Berlin, with a letter for Count Redern, and begged him, as he had been unable to help me to anything in Paris, in spite of his desire to do so, to be kind enough to use his influence in Berlin in favour of my composition.  I was genuinely astonished at the truly prompt acceptance of my work two months later, which was accompanied by very gratifying assurances from the Count, and I was delighted to see in it a proof of Meyerbeer’s sincere and energetic intervention in my favour.  Strange to say, on my return to Germany soon afterwards, I was destined to learn that Count Redern had long since retired from the management of the Berlin Opera House, and that Kustner of Munich had already been appointed his successor; the upshot of this was that Count Redern’s consent, though very courteous, could not by any means be taken seriously, as the realisation of it depended not on him but on his successor.  What the result was remains to be seen.