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A recurring topic of Scheidt’s letters is his work for Göttingen’s learned journals – the GGA and, later, the short-lived Relationes de libris novis. Early on, he explained what his approach as reviewer would be. Later he pointed to some complaints that his articles elicited. Many of his reviews for the GGA, he noted, came at the request of Münchhausen, who often sent them to Haller and asked that they be published right away. An error in one of his reviews, which spoke of Ducaten rather than Reichsthaler, pained him, and he hoped it would be corrected in a future issue of the GGA. When it turned out that one of his reviews duplicated someone else’s, he declared that he would always be happy to see the other review printed rather than his own. The proposed Latin journal Relationes could benefit the reputation of the university, he held, and he promised to contribute to it if he had any leisure, but he also suggested that compensation for reviewers would be necessary.
In his first letter, dated 5 March 1751, Scheidt thanked Haller for the invitation to become a foreign member of the new Gesellschaft (Sozietät) der Wissenschaften (GdW) in Göttingen, of which Haller was the architect and designated president. In August 1761 Münchhausen solicited Scheidt’s views on Haller’s claim that the long suspended publication of its Commentarii was damaging the GdW. In a pro memoria Scheidt suggested that profits from the publication of the GGA might be used to subsidize a publisher of the Commentarii. Münchhausen forwarded the pro memoria to Haller.
While in Copenhagen, Scheidt developed a high regard for the Danish nation and its current king, Frederick V, whom he had tutored while he was still the crown prince. Later, from Hanover, he asked Haller to ensure that the GGA contained nothing that might offend the king, who received a copy of the journal. He also recommended to Haller’s care young Danes who were studying at Göttingen.
Scheidt evinced a fondness for that town’s young university, where he had for a while studied and taught. In early 1755 Johann David Michaelis, who corresponded regularly with both Haller and Scheidt, asked Scheidt to talk with Münchhausen about the possibility of Haller’s eventual return to Göttingen. As a man who admired Haller and was on good terms with Münchhausen, Scheidt spoke to the minister and reported in a letter to Michaelis on the substance of the conversation. Michaelis promptly forwarded the encouraging letter to Haller.