Frederick II of Prussia

Frederick II (; 24 January 1712 - 17 August 1786) was a King in Prussia (1740-1786) from the Hohenzollern dynasty. As a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, he was Frederick IV Margrave of Brandenburg. He was also the sovereign prince of the Principality of Neuchatel. Victorious in war, he became known as Frederick the Great () and was nicknamed der alte Fritz ("Old Fritz").
When he was young, Frederick was mostly interested in music and philosophy and not military affairs. Frederick tried to escape from his strict father, Frederick William I, with childhood friend, Hans Hermann von Katte. When they were captured Frederick was forced to watch von Kattel's execution. Many historians consider him to be bisexual and perhaps possibly celibate in his later life. After the death of Frederick William I in 1740, Frederick the Great only attended his wife with formal visits once a year.
Shortly after becoming King in Prussia, he attacked Austria and claimed Silesia during the Silesian Wars. Near the end of his life, Frederick united most of his separated parts of his kingdom through the First Partition of Poland.
For years Frederick exchanged letters with Voltaire. He modernized the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service and promoted religious tolerance. Frederick patronized the arts and philosophers, and wrote flute music. Frederick is buried at his favorite residence, Sanssouci in Potsdam. Because he died childless, Frederick was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William II of Prussia, son of his brother, Prince Augustus William of Prussia.
Crown Prince
In 1732, Queen Sophia Dorothea tried to arrange a dual marriage of Frederick and his sister Wilhelmina with Amelia and Frederick, the children of her brother, King George II of Great Britain. Fearing an alliance between Prussia and Great Britain, Field Marshal von Seckendorff, the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, bribed Field Marshal von Grumbkow, the Prussian Minister of War, and Benjamin Reichenbach, Prussian ambassador in London. They pair discreetly slandered the British and Prussian courts in the eyes of the two kings. Angered by the idea of the marriage Frederick William made impossible demands to the British, such as Prussia acquiring Julich and Berg, leading to the collapse of the marriage proposal.
After von Kattel died Frederick was granted a royal pardon and released from his cell on 18 November, but he was not given back his military rank. Instead of returning to Berlin, however, he was forced to stay in Kustrin and began learning statecraft and administration for the War and Estates Departments on 20 November. Tensions eased slightly when Frederick William visited Kustrin a year later, and Frederick was allowed to visit Berlin on the occasion of his sister Wilhelmina's marriage to Margrave Frederick of Bayreuth on 20 November 1731. The crown prince returned to Berlin after finally being released from Kustrin on 26 February 1732.
Frederick William considered marrying Frederick to Elisabeth of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the niece of Empress Anna of Russia, but this plan was opposed by Prince Eugene of Savoy. Frederick himself proposed marrying Maria Theresa of Austria in return for renouncing the succession. Instead, Eugene persuaded Frederick William, through Seckendorff, that the crown prince marry Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern, a Protestant relative of the Austrian Habsburgs. Although Frederick wrote to his sister that, "There can be neither love nor friendship between us," and he considered suicide, he went along with the wedding on 12 June 1733. He had little in common with his bride and resented the political marriage as an example of the Austrian interference which had plagued Prussia since 1701. Once Frederick secured the throne in 1740, he would not let Elisabeth visit his court in Potsdam, and instead gave her Schonhausen Palace and apartments at the Berliner Stadtschloss. Frederick bestowed the title of the heir to the throne, "Prince of Prussia", on his brother Augustus William; despite this, his wife remained devoted to him.
Frederick was given back a rank in the Prussian Army as Colonel of the Regiment von der Goltz, stationed near Nauen and Neuruppin. When Prussia gave troops to help Austria during the War of the Polish Succession, Frederick studied under Prince Eugene of Savoy during the campaign against France on the Rhine. Frederick William, weakened by gout brought about by the campaign, gave Frederick Schloss Rheinsberg in Rheinsberg, north of Neuruppin. In Rheinsberg, Frederick assembled a small number of musicians, actors and other artists. He spent his time reading, watching dramatic plays, making and listening to music, and regarded this time as one of the happiest of his life. Frederick formed the "Bayard Order" to discuss warfare with his friends; Heinrich August de la Motte Fouque was made the grand master of the gatherings.
The works of Niccolo Machiavelli, such as The Prince, were considered a guideline for the behaviour of a king in Frederick's age. In 1739, Frederick finished his Anti-Machiavel, which put another point of view. It was published anonymously in 1740, but Voltaire distributed it in Amsterdam.
Frederick's years dedicated to the arts instead of politics ended upon the 1740 death of Frederick William and his inheritance of the Kingdom of Prussia.
Reign (1740-1786)
When Frederick ascended the throne as "King in Prussia" in 1740, Prussia consisted of scattered territories, including Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg in the west of the Holy Roman Empire; Brandenburg, Hither Pomerania, and Farther Pomerania in the east of the Empire; and the former Duchy of Prussia, outside of the Empire bordering the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was titled King in Prussia because this was only part of historic Prussia; he was to declare himself King of Prussia after acquiring most of the rest in 1772.
Warfare and Conquest
Frederick's goal was to modernize and unite his vulnerably disconnected lands; toward this end, he fought wars mainly against Austria, whose Habsburg dynasty reigned as Holy Roman Emperors, almost continuously from the 15th century until 1806. Frederick established Prussia as the fifth and smallest European great power by using the resources his frugal father had cultivated.
The First Silesian War (1740-1742), part of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), resulted in Frederick conquering the Polish part of Silesia. Austria attempted to recover Silesia in the Second Silesian War (1744-1745), but Frederick was victorious again and forced Austria to stick to the previous peace terms. Prussian possession of Silesia gave the kingdom control over the Oder River.
Habsburg Austria and Bourbon France, traditional enemies, allied together in the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 following the collapse of the Anglo-Austrian Alliance. Frederick swiftly made an alliance with Great Britain at the Convention of Westminster. As neighboring countries began conspiring against him, Frederick was determined to strike first. On 29 August 1756 his well-prepared army crossed the frontier and invaded Saxony, thus beginning the Seven Years' War which lasted until 1763. He faced widespread criticism for his attack on neutral Saxony and for his forcible incorporation of the Saxon forces into the Prussian army following the Siege of Pirna in October 1756.
Facing a coalition which included Austria, France, Russia, Saxony, and Sweden, and having only Great Britain and Hanover as his allies, Frederick narrowly kept Prussia in the war despite having his territories frequently invaded.
The sudden death of Empress Elizabeth of Russia put her pro-Prussian nephew Peter III in power. This led to the collapse of the anti-Prussian coalition. Although Frederick did not gain any territory in the ensuing Treaty of Hubertusburg, he was able to keep Silesia. Prussia became popular in many German-speaking territories.
Late in his life Frederick also involved Prussia in the smaller War of the Bavarian Succession in 1778, in which he stopped Austrian attempts to exchange the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria. When Emperor Joseph II| tried the scheme again in 1784, Frederick created the Furstenbund, making Germans see him as a defender of German liberties, in contrast to his earlier role of attacking the imperial Habsburgs.
Frederick frequently led his military forces personally and had six horses shot from under him during battle. Frederick is often admired as one of the greatest tactical geniuses of all time, especially for his usage of the oblique order of battle. Even more important were his operational successes, especially preventing the unification of numerically superior opposing armies and being at the right place at the right time to keep enemy armies out of Prussian core territory. In a letter to his mother Maria Theresa, the Austrian co-ruler Emperor Joseph II wrote,
Modernization of Prussia
Frederick transformed Prussia from a European backwater into an economically strong and politically reformed state. His conquest of Silesia, which provided Prussia's new industries with raw materials, helped boost industrial production and development, and he protected these industries with high tariffs and a minimum of restrictions on internal domestic trade. The modernizing mechanisms and technology of the state also enabled Frederick, in 1747, to undertake a massive six-year drainage and "reclamation" program in the country's northern marsh-land. This rationalist-mided program, which Frederick saw as the "taming" and "conquering" of "useless" and "barbarous" nature, created roughly 150,000 acres of arable farmland, but also eliminated vast swaths of natural habitat, destroyed the region's biodiversity, and displaced numerous indigenous communities. With the help of French experts, Frederick also reorganized Prussia's taxation policy, implementing a system of indirect taxation, which was more lucrative than the previous policy of direct taxation. Frederick also commissioned the eminent Prussian merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky to help promote trade. Gotzkowsky directed Frederick to reform the Prussian system of toll levies and import restrictions, and to construct a major a silk factory in an effort to compete with the French silk trade. In 1763, when Gotzkowsky went bankrupt during an Amsterdam-based financial crisis, Frederick took over a porcelain factory of his.
Frederick also presided over national currency reform during his reign. The effects of the Seven Years' War and the acquisition of Silesia had transformed the economy, depreciating the national currency and leading to high nation-wide inflation. The Prussian Mint Edict of May 1763 revalued the national currency, stabilizing the rates of highly depreciated coinage and mandating that the payments of taxes be in currency of prewar value. Other European rulers soon undertook similar monetary reforms, which helped to lower region-wide prices.
Frederick also presided over other important modernization efforts in Prussia, including the establishment of a modern governmental bureaucracy, the cultivation of one of Europe's most highly-regarded educational systems, and the abolition torture and corporal punishment.
After the acquisition of Royal Prussia (West Prussia) in 1772, Frederick also changed his title from the "King in Prussia," which had been the royal title used since the coronation of Frederick I, to the "King of Prussia," underscoring the increasing prominence of his state and his own importance as a ruler.
Religious Tolerance
Frederick was generally a champion of religious tolerance, including accepting Jesuits, fleeing the suppression of Pope Clement XIV, as teachers in Silesia, Warmia, and the Netze District. He was interested in attracting many skills to his country, whether from Jesuit teachers, Huguenot citizens, or Jewish merchants and bankers, particularly from Spain. He wanted development throughout the country. As an example of this practical-minded but not fully unprejudiced tolerance, Frederick wrote in his Testament politique that:
Jews on the Polish border were therefore encouraged to perform all the trade they could and received all the protection and support from the king as any other Prussian citizen. The success in integrating the Jews into those areas of society that Frederick encouraged them in can be seen by the role played by Gerson von Bleichroder in financing Bismarck's efforts to reunite Germany.
As under Frederick much wasteland was made arable Prussia was looking for new colonists. Frederick repeatedly emphasized that nationality and religion were of no concern to him.
Architecture
Frederick had famous buildings constructed in his capital, Berlin, most of which still exist today, such as the Berlin State Opera, the Royal Library (today the State Library Berlin), St. Hedwig's Cathedral, and Prince Henry's Palace (now the site of Humboldt University). However, the king preferred spending his time in his summer residence Potsdam, where he built the palace of Sanssouci, the most important work of Northern German rococo. Sanssouci, which translates from French as "carefree" or "without worry", was a refuge for Frederick. "Frederician Rococo" developed under Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff.
Later years
Near the end of his life Frederick spent more and more time alone. His circle of friends at Sanssouci gradually died off without replacements, and Frederick became increasingly critical and arbitrary, to the frustration of the civil service and officer corps. The people of Berlin always cheered the king when he returned to the city from provincial tours or military reviews, but Frederick took no pleasure from his popularity with the common folk, preferring instead the company of his pet Italian greyhounds, whom he referred to as his 'marquises de Pompadour' as a jibe at Madame de Pompadour. Frederick died in an armchair in his study in the palace of Sanssouci on 17 August 1786.
Frederick had wished to be buried next to his greyhounds on the vineyard terrace on the side of the corps de logis of Sanssouci. His nephew and successor Frederick William II instead ordered the body be entombed next to his father in the church of the Potsdam garrison. Near the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler ordered the coffins of Frederick and Frederick William I, as well as those of Paul von Hindenburg and his wife, transferred first to an underground bunker near Berlin, then hidden in a salt mine close to the town of Bernrode, Germany, to protect them from destruction. The US Army discovered the four coffins on 27 April 1945, behind a 6-foot-thick (1.8 m) masonry wall deep within the mine, and moved them to the basement of Marburg Castle, a collection point for recovered Nazi "treasure". As part of a secret project dubbed "Operation Bodysnatch", the US Army relocated both kings first to the Elisabeth Church of Marburg and then on to Burg Hohenzollern close to the town of Hechingen. After German reunification, the body of Frederick William was entombed in the Kaiser Friedrich Mausoleum in Sanssouci's Church of Peace.
On the 205th anniversary of his death, on 17 August 1991, Frederick's casket lay in state in the court of honor of Sanssouci, covered by a Prussian flag and escorted by a Bundeswehr guard of honour. After nightfall, Frederick's body was finally laid to rest on the terrace of the vineyard of Sanssouci, according to his last will without pomp and at night ("... Im ubrigen will ich, was meine Person anbetrifft, in Sanssouci beigesetzt werden, ohne Prunk, ohne Pomp und bei Nacht..." (1757)).
Quotes
"I speak French to my ambassadors, English to my accounts, Italian to my Mistress, Latin to my God, and German to my horse."
"An educated people can be easily governed."
Frederick in popular culture
Places
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, is named after the King of Prussia Inn, itself named in honor of Frederick.
Prussia Street in Dublin, Ireland, is named after Frederick the Great.
German films
The Great King () is a 1942 German drama movie directed by Veit Harlan and starring Otto Gebuhr. It depicts the life of Frederick the Great. It received the rare "movie of the Nation" distinction. Otto Gebuhr also played the King in many other movies.
Films with Otto Gebuhr as Frederick the Great
1920: Die Tanzerin Barbarina - director: Carl Boese
1921-23: Fridericus Rex - director: Arzen von Cserepy
Teil 1 - Sturm und Drang
Teil 2 - Vater und Sohn
Teil 3 - Sanssouci
Teil 4 - Schicksalswende
1926: Die Muhle von Sans Souci - director: Siegfried Philippi
1928: Der alte Fritz - 1. Teil Friede - director: Gerhard Lamprecht
1928: Der alte Fritz - 2. Teil Ausklang - director: Gerhard Lamprecht
1930: Das Flotenkonzert von Sanssouci -director: Gustav Ucicky
1932: Die Tanzerin von Sans Souci - director: Friedrich Zelnik
1933: Der Choral von Leuthen - director: Carl Froelich
1936. Heiteres und Ernstes um den grossen Konig - director: Phil Jutzi
1936: Fridericus - director: Johannes Meyer
1937: Das schone Fraulein Schragg - director: Hans Deppe
1942: Der grosse Konig - director: Veit Harlan
In the 2004 German movie Der Untergang, Adolf Hitler is shown sitting in a dark room forlornly gazing at a painting of Frederick, possibly a reference to the dictator's fading hopes for another Miracle of the House of Brandenburg.
American films
In the 1970 movie Patton, General Patton incorrectly cites Frederick the Great as saying, "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!" ("Audacity, audacity -- always audacity!")
Although Frederick is never seen on screen, he is mentioned several times in Stanley Kubrick's 1975 movie Barry Lyndon. In the movie, he is referred to as "The great and illustrious Frederick" and his army is both praised and criticized. For example, a quote from the film: "During the five years which the war had now lasted, the great and illustrious Frederick had so exhausted the males of his kingdom that he had to employ scores of recruiters who hesitated no crime, including kidnapping, to keep supplied those brilliant regiments of his with food for powder."
Titles and styles
24 January 1712 - 31 May 1740 His Royal Highness the Crown Prince
31 May 1740 - 19 February 1772 His Majesty the King in Prussia
19 February 1772 - 17 August 1786 His Majesty the King of Prussia
References
Further reading
2 vols.
Other websites
Digital edition of Frederick the Great's Works by Trier University Library (in German and French)
Voltaire and Frederick the Great by Lytton Strachey
Story about Frederick and Madame de Pompadour
Free scores at the Mutopia Project
1712 births
1786 deaths
People from Berlin
House of Hohenzollern
Kings and Queens of Prussia
Electors and Electresses
Crown Princes and Princesses of Prussia
LGBT royalty
18th-century German composers