A few weeks after he ascended the Prussian throne, Frederick II composed a brief erotic poem. Its subject was a night of love between a man and a woman and it was addressed to the Venetian Francesco Algarotti. In a letter to Voltaire, Frederick explained the meaning of the poem ‘La Jouissance’: it should demonstrate the ability of Northern Europeans to experience sexual pleasure as Southern Europeans do. ‘La Jouissance’ was never included in the standard editions of Frederick’s extensive poetry, neither in his own volumes, nor in those of the late 18th, 19th and 20th-centuries. Later, it was assumed by historians to have been lost. When the poem was translated for the first time into German and published in the weekly DIE ZEIT in September 2011, it sparked enormous attention in the media. It also triggered suspicion on the part of some experts, who were quick to explain the media hype with “sex sells”. In this article I explore the exciting provenance of this poem, from the 18th-century to post-war Germany, as a prime example of archival history. I also situate the genre in the tradition of light and “fugitive” poetry (“poésie fugitive”) inspired by the lyric work of such ancient Roman writers as Horace, Ovid, and Lucretius, which was in vogue in France in the mid-eighteenth century.