Frederick William III's efforts to prevent and prohibit an act which was legally permissible raised questions about the connections between citizenship and religious affiliation, about the limits of confessional liberty in a state committed to the "freedom of conscience" of the individual subject, and about the relationship between the authority of the monarch and that of codified law in Restoration Prussia.
In mid-November 1814 King Frederick William III, who was in Vienna participating in the peace negotiations, noticed the case while perusing the official East Prussian news reports.
But the Prussia of Frederick William III neither practiced nor aspired to confessional neutrality.