In April 1800 he decided to return to Saint Petersburg, but on his journey there he was arrested at the border on suspicion of being a Jacobin and was escorted to Tobolsk in Siberia. However, he had written a comedy which flattered the vanity of Emperor Paul I of Russia; he was soon brought back, presented with an estate in Vooru from the crown lands of Livonia, and appointed director of the German theatre in Saint Petersburg. Kotzebue wrote about this period in his life in the autobiographical "Das merkwürdigste Jahr meines Lebens" ("The strangest Year of my Life").