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Frederick the Great

January 07, 2023

Frederick II (German: Friedrich II.; 24 January 1712 – 17 August 1786) was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772, and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Silesian wars, his re-organisation of the Prussian Army, the First Partition of Poland, and his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment. Frederick was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia, declaring himself King of Prussia after annexing Royal Prussia from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772. Prussia greatly increased its territories and became a major military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as Frederick the Great (German: Friedrich der Große) and was nicknamed "Old Fritz" (German: "Der Alte Fritz").

Frederick the Great
Portrait by Johann Georg Ziesenis, 1763.
Reign31 May 1740 – 17 August 1786
PredecessorFrederick William I
SuccessorFrederick William II
Born(1712-01-24)24 January 1712
Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia
Died17 August 1786(1786-08-17) (aged 74)
Potsdam, Kingdom of Prussia
Burial
Sanssouci, Potsdam
SpouseElisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern
HouseHohenzollern
FatherFrederick William I of Prussia
MotherSophia Dorothea of Hanover
Signature

In his youth, Frederick was more interested in music and philosophy than in the art of war, which led to clashes with his authoritarian father, Frederick William I of Prussia. However, upon ascending to the Prussian throne, he attacked and annexed the rich Austrian province of Silesia in 1742, winning military acclaim for himself and Prussia. He became an influential military theorist whose analyses emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics, mobility and logistics.

Frederick was a supporter of enlightened absolutism, stating that the ruler should be the first servant of the state. He modernised the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service, and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation. He reformed the judicial system and made it possible for men of lower status to become judges and senior bureaucrats. Frederick also encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Prussia, although he enacted oppressive measures against Catholics in Silesia and Polish Prussia. He supported the arts and philosophers he favoured, and allowed freedom of the press and literature. Frederick was almost certainly homosexual, and his sexuality has been the subject of much study. He is buried at his favourite residence, Sanssouci in Potsdam. Because he died childless, he was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William II.

Nearly all 19th-century German historians made Frederick into a romantic model of a glorified warrior, praising his leadership, administrative efficiency, devotion to duty and success in building Prussia into a great power in Europe. Frederick remained an admired historical figure through Germany's defeat in World War I, and the Nazis glorified him as a great German leader pre-figuring Adolf Hitler, who personally idolised him. His reputation became less favourable in Germany after World War II, partly due to his status as a Nazi symbol. Regardless, historians in the 21st century tend to view Frederick as an outstanding military leader and capable monarch, whose commitment to enlightenment culture and administrative reform built the foundation that allowed the Kingdom of Prussia to contest the Austrian Habsburgs for leadership among the German states.

Early life

Frederick was the son of Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Hanover.[1] He was born sometime between 11 and 12 p.m. on 24 January 1712 in the Berlin Palace and was baptised with the single name Friedrich by Benjamin Ursinus von Bär on 31 January.[2] The birth was welcomed by his grandfather, Frederick I, as his two previous grandsons had both died in infancy. With the death of Frederick I in 1713, his son Frederick William I became King in Prussia, thus making young Frederick the crown prince. Frederick had nine siblings who lived to adulthood. He had six sisters. The eldest was Wilhelmine, who became his closest sibling.[3] He also had three younger brothers, including Augustus William and Henry.[4] The new king wished for his children to be educated not as royalty, but as simple folk. They were tutored by a French woman, Madame de Montbail, who had also educated Frederick William.[5]

Frederick William I, popularly dubbed the "Soldier King", had created a large and powerful army that included a regiment of his famous "Potsdam Giants"; he carefully managed the kingdom's wealth and developed a strong centralised government. He also had a violent temper and ruled Brandenburg-Prussia with absolute authority.[6] In contrast, Frederick's mother Sophia, whose father, George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg, had succeeded to the British throne as King George I in 1714, was polite, charismatic and learned.[7] The political and personal differences between Frederick's parents created tensions,[8] which affected Frederick's attitude toward his role as a ruler, his attitude toward culture, and his relationship with his father.[9]

During his early youth, Frederick lived with his mother and sister Wilhelmine,[9] although they regularly visited their father's hunting lodge at Königs Wusterhausen.[10] Frederick and his older sister formed a close relationship,[9] which lasted until her death in 1758.[11] Frederick and his sisters were brought up by a Huguenot governess and tutor and learned French and German simultaneously. In spite of his father's desire that his education be entirely religious and pragmatic, the young Frederick developed a preference for music, literature, and French culture. Frederick Wilhelm thought these interests were effeminate,[12] as they clashed with his militarism, resulting in his frequent beating and humiliation of Frederick.[13] Nevertheless, Frederick, with the help of his tutor in Latin, Jacques Duhan, procured for himself a three thousand volume secret library of poetry, Greek and Roman classics, and philosophy to supplement his official lessons.[14]

Although his father, Frederick William I, had been raised a Calvinist in spite of the Lutheran state faith in Prussia, he feared he was not one of God's elect. To avoid the possibility of his son Frederick being motivated by the same concerns, the king ordered that his heir not be taught about predestination. In spite of his father's intention, Frederick appeared to have adopted a sense of predestination for himself.[15]

Crown Prince

 
24-year-old Frederick, Crown Prince of Prussia, painting by Antoine Pesne, 1736
See also: Sexuality of Frederick the Great

At age 16, Frederick formed an attachment to the king's 17-year-old page, Peter Karl Christoph von Keith. Wilhelmine recorded that the two "soon became inseparable. Keith was intelligent, but without education. He served my brother from feelings of real devotion, and kept him informed of all the king's actions."[16] Wilhelmine would further record that "Though I had noticed that he was on more familiar terms with this page than was proper in his position, I did not know how intimate the friendship was." As Frederick was almost certainly homosexual,[17][18] his relationship with Keith may have been homoerotic, although the extent of their intimacy remains ambiguous.[19] When Frederick William heard rumours of their relationship, Keith was sent away to an unpopular regiment near the Dutch frontier.[20]

In the mid-1720s, Queen Sophia Dorothea attempted to arrange the marriage of Frederick and his sister Wilhelmine to her brother King George II's children Amelia and Frederick, who was the heir apparent.[21] Fearing an alliance between Prussia and Great Britain, Field Marshal von Seckendorff, the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, bribed the Prussian Minister of War, Field Marshal von Grumbkow, and the Prussian ambassador in London, Benjamin Reichenbach. The pair undermined the relationship between the British and Prussian courts using bribery and slander.[22] Eventually Frederick William became angered by the idea of the effete Frederick being married to an English wife and under the influence of the British court.[23] Instead, he signed a treaty with Austria, which vaguely promised to acknowledge Prussia's rights to the principalities of Jülich-Berg, which led to the collapse of the marriage proposal.[24]

Katte affair

Soon after his relationship with Keith ended, Frederick became close friends with Hans Hermann von Katte, a Prussian officer several years older than Frederick who became one of his boon companions and may have been his lover.[25] After the English marriages became impossible, Frederick plotted to flee to England with Katte and other junior army officers.[26] While the royal retinue was near Mannheim in the Electorate of the Palatinate, Robert Keith, who was Peter Keith's brother and also one of Frederick's companions, had an attack of conscience when the conspirators were preparing to escape and begged Frederick William for forgiveness on 5 August 1730.[27] Frederick and Katte were subsequently arrested and imprisoned in Küstrin. Because they were army officers who had tried to flee Prussia for Great Britain, Frederick William levelled an accusation of treason against the pair. The king briefly threatened the crown prince with execution, then considered forcing Frederick to renounce the succession in favour of his brother, Augustus William, although either option would have been difficult to justify to the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire.[28] The king forced Frederick to watch the beheading of his confidant Katte at Küstrin on 6 November, leading the crown prince to faint just before the fatal blow.[29]

Frederick was granted a royal pardon and released from his cell on 18 November 1730, although he remained stripped of his military rank.[30] Rather than being permitted to return to Berlin, he was forced to remain in Küstrin and began rigorous schooling in statecraft and administration for the War and Estates Departments. Tensions eased slightly when Frederick William visited Küstrin a year later, and Frederick was allowed to visit Berlin on the occasion of his sister Wilhelmine's marriage to Margrave Frederick of Bayreuth on 20 November 1731.[31] The crown prince returned to Berlin after finally being released from his tutelage at Küstrin on 26 February 1732 on condition that he marry Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern.[32]

Marriage and War of the Polish Succession

 
Frederick's marriage to Elisabeth Christine on 12 June 1733 at Schloss Salzdahlum

Initially, Frederick William considered marrying Frederick to Elisabeth of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the niece of Empress Anna of Russia, but this plan was ardently opposed by Prince Eugene of Savoy. Frederick himself proposed marrying Maria Theresa of Austria in return for renouncing the succession.[33] Instead, Eugene persuaded Frederick William, through Seckendorff, that the crown prince should marry Elisabeth Christine, who was a Protestant relative of the Austrian Habsburgs.[34] Frederick wrote to his sister that, "There can be neither love nor friendship between us",[35] and he threatened suicide,[36] but he went along with the wedding on 12 June 1733. He had little in common with his bride, and the marriage was resented as an example of the Austrian political interference that had plagued Prussia.[37] Nevertheless, during their early married life, the royal couple resided at the Crown Prince's Palace in Berlin. Later, Elisabeth Christine accompanied Frederick to Schloss Rheinsberg, where at this time she played an active role in his social life.[38] After his father died and he had secured the throne, Frederick separated from Elisabeth. He granted her the Schönhausen Palace and apartments at the Berliner Stadtschloss, but he prohibited Elisabeth Christine from visiting his court in Potsdam. Frederick and Elisabeth Christine had no children, and Frederick bestowed the title of the heir to the throne, "Prince of Prussia", on his brother Augustus William. Nevertheless, Elisabeth Christine remained devoted to him. Frederick gave her all the honours befitting her station, but never displayed any affection. After their separation, he would only see her on state occasions.[39] These included visits to her on her birthday and were some of the rare occasions when Frederick did not wear military uniform.[40]

 
Rheinsberg Palace, Frederick's residence from 1736 to 1740

In 1732, Frederick was restored to the Prussian Army as Colonel of the Regiment von der Goltz, stationed near Nauen and Neuruppin.[41] When Prussia provided a contingent of troops to aid the Army of the Holy Roman Empire during the War of the Polish Succession, Frederick studied under Prince Eugene of Savoy during the campaign against France on the Rhine;[42] he noted the weakness of the Imperial Army under Eugene's command, something that he would capitalise on at Austria's expense when he later took the throne.[43] Frederick William, weakened by gout and seeking to reconcile with his heir, granted Frederick Schloss Rheinsberg in Rheinsberg, north of Neuruppin. At Rheinsberg, Frederick assembled a small number of musicians, actors and other artists. He spent his time reading, watching and acting in dramatic plays, as well as composing and playing music.[44] Frederick formed the Bayard Order to discuss warfare with his friends; Heinrich August de la Motte Fouqué was made the grand master of the gatherings.[45] Later, Frederick regarded this time as one of the happiest of his life.[46]

Reading and studying the works of Niccolò Machiavelli, such as The Prince, was considered necessary for any king in Europe to rule effectively. In 1739, Frederick finished his Anti-Machiavel, an idealistic rebuttal of Machiavelli. It was written in French—as were all of Frederick's works—and published anonymously in 1740, but Voltaire distributed it in Amsterdam to great popularity.[47] 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. Frederick and his father were more or less reconciled at the latter's death, and Frederick later admitted, despite their constant conflict, that Frederick William had been an effective ruler: "What a terrible man he was. But he was just, intelligent, and skilled in the management of affairs... it was through his efforts, through his tireless labour, that I have been able to accomplish everything that I have done since."[48]

Inheritance

 
Europe at the time when Frederick came to the throne in 1740, with Brandenburg–Prussia in violet.
 
Europe at the time of Frederick's death in 1786, with Brandenburg–Prussia in violet, shows that Prussia's territory has been greatly extended by his Silesian Wars, his inheritance of East Frisia and the First Partition of Poland.

In one defining respect Frederick would come to the throne with an exceptional inheritance. Frederick William I had left him with a highly militarised state. Prussia was the twelfth largest country in Europe in terms of population, but its army was the fourth largest: only the armies of France, Russia and Austria were larger.[49] Prussia had one soldier for every 28 citizens, whereas Great Britain only had one for every 310, and the military absorbed 86% of Prussia's state budget.[50] Moreover, the Prussian infantry trained by Frederick William I were, at the time of Frederick's accession, arguably unrivalled in discipline and firepower. By 1770, after two decades of punishing war alternating with intervals of peace, Frederick had doubled the size of the huge army he had inherited. The situation is summed up in a widely translated and quoted aphorism attributed to Mirabeau, who asserted in 1786 that "La Prusse n'est pas un pays qui a une armée, c'est une armée qui a un pays"[51] ("Prussia was not a state in possession of an army, but an army in possession of a state").[52] By using the resources his frugal father had cultivated, Frederick was eventually able to establish Prussia as the fifth and smallest European great power.[53]

Prince Frederick was twenty-eight years old when his father Frederick William I died and he ascended to the throne of Prussia.[54] Before his accession, Frederick was told by D'Alembert, "The philosophers and the men of letters in every land have long looked upon you, Sire, as their leader and model."[55] Such devotion, consequently, had to be tempered by political realities. When Frederick ascended the throne as the third "King in Prussia" in 1740, his realm 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 Kingdom of Prussia, the former Duchy of Prussia, outside of the Empire bordering the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was titled King in Prussia because his kingdom included only part of historic Prussia; he was to declare himself King of Prussia after the First Partition of Poland in 1772.[56]

Reign

The major battles of
Frederick the Great
[Interactive fullscreen map]
  First Silesian War
  Second Silesian War
  Third Silesian War

War of the Austrian Succession

Main articles: First Silesian War and Second Silesian War

When Frederick became king, he was faced with the challenge of overcoming Prussia's weaknesses, vulnerably disconnected holdings with a weak economic base.[57] To strengthen Prussia's position, he fought wars mainly against Austria, whose Habsburg dynasty had reigned as Holy Roman Emperors continuously since the 15th century.[58] Thus, upon succeeding to the throne on 31 May 1740,[59] Frederick declined to endorse the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, a legal mechanism to ensure the inheritance of the Habsburg domains by Maria Theresa of Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI. Upon the death of Charles VI on 29 October 1740,[60] Frederick disputed the 23-year-old Maria Theresa's right of succession to the Habsburg lands, while simultaneously asserting his own right to the Austrian province of Silesia based on a number of old, though ambiguous, Hohenzollern claims to parts of Silesia.[61]

Accordingly, the First Silesian War (1740–1742, part of the War of the Austrian Succession) began on 16 December 1740 when Frederick invaded and quickly occupied almost all of Silesia within seven weeks.[54] Though Frederick justified his occupation on dynastic grounds,[62] the invasion of this militarily and politically vulnerable part of the Habsburg empire also had the potential to provide substantial long-term economic and strategic benefits.[63] The occupation of Silesia added one of the most densely industrialised German regions to Frederick's kingdom and gave it control over the navigable Oder River.[64] It nearly doubled Prussia's population and increased its territory by a third.[65] It also prevented Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, from seeking to connect his own disparate lands through Silesia.[66]

 
Portrait of Frederick the Great during his early reign, by Antoine Pesne, 18th century

In late March 1741, Frederick set out on campaign again to capture the few remaining fortresses within the province that were still holding out. He was surprised by the arrival of an Austrian army, which he fought at the Battle of Mollwitz on 10 April 1741.[67] Though Frederick had served under Prince Eugene of Savoy, this was his first major battle in command of an army. In the course of the fighting, Frederick's cavalry was disorganised by a charge of the Austrian horse. Believing his forces had been defeated, Frederick galloped away to avoid capture,[68] leaving Field Marshal Kurt Schwerin in command to lead the disciplined Prussian infantry to victory. Frederick would later admit to humiliation at his abdication of command[69] and would state that Mollwitz was his school.[70] Disappointed with the performance of his cavalry, whose training his father had neglected in favour of the infantry, Frederick spent much of his time in Silesia establishing a new doctrine for them.[71]

Encouraged by Frederick's victory at Mollwitz, the French and their ally, the Electorate of Bavaria, entered the war against Austria in early September 1741 and marched on Prague.[72] Meanwhile, Frederick, as well as other members of the League of Nymphenburg, sponsored the candidacy of his ally Charles of Bavaria to be elected Holy Roman Emperor. In late November, the Franco-Bavarian forces took Prague and Charles was crowned King of Bohemia.[73] Subsequently, he was elected as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII on 24 January 1742. After the Austrians pulled their army out of Silesia to defend Bohemia, Frederick pursued them and blocked their path to Prague.[74] The Austrians counter-attacked on 17 May 1742, initiating the Battle of Chotusitz. In this battle, Frederick's retrained cavalry proved more effective than at Mollwitz,[75] but once more it was the discipline of the Prussian infantry that won the field[76] and allowed Frederick to claim a major victory.[77] This victory, along with the Franco-Bavarian forces capturing Prague, forced the Austrians to seek peace. The terms of the Treaty of Breslau between Austria and Prussia, negotiated in June 1742, gave Prussia all of Silesia and Glatz County, with the Austrians retaining only the portion called Austrian or Czech Silesia.[78]

 
Battle of Hohenfriedberg, Attack of the Prussian Infantry, by Carl Röchling

By 1743, the Austrians had subdued Bavaria and driven the French out of Bohemia. Frederick strongly suspected Maria Theresa would resume war in an attempt to recover Silesia. Accordingly, he renewed his alliance with France and preemptively invaded Bohemia in August 1744, beginning the Second Silesian War.[79] In late August 1744, Frederick's army had crossed the Bohemian frontier, marched directly to Prague, and laid siege to the city, which surrendered on 16 September 1744 after a three-day bombardment.[80] Frederick's troops immediately continued marching into the heart of central Bohemia,[69] but Saxony had now joined the war against Prussia.[81] Although the combined Austrian and Saxon armies outnumbered Frederick's forces, they refused to directly engage with Frederick's army, harassing his supply lines instead. Eventually, Frederick was forced to withdraw to Silesia as winter approached.[82] In the interim, Frederick also successfully claimed his inheritance to the minor territory of East Frisia on the North Sea coast of Germany, occupying the territory after its last ruler died without issue in 1744.[83]

In January 1745, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII of Bavaria died,[84] taking Bavaria out of the war and allowing Maria Theresa's husband Francis of Lorraine to be eventually elected Holy Roman Emperor.[85] Now able to focus solely on Frederick's army, the Austrians, who were reinforced by the Saxons, crossed the mountains to invade Silesia. After allowing them across,[a] Frederick pinned them down and decisively defeated them at the Battle of Hohenfriedberg on 4 June 1745.[87] Frederick subsequently advanced into Bohemia and defeated a counterattack by the Austrians at the Battle of Soor.[88] Frederick then turned towards Dresden when he learned the Saxons were preparing to march on Berlin. However, on 15 December 1745, Prussian forces under the command of Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau soundly defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Kesselsdorf.[89] After linking up his army with Leopold's, Frederick occupied the Saxon capitol of Dresden, forcing the Saxon elector, Augustus III, to capitulate.[90]

Once again, Frederick's victories on the battlefield compelled his enemies to sue for peace. Under the terms of the Treaty of Dresden, signed on 25 December 1745, Austria was forced to adhere to the terms of the Treaty of Breslau giving Silesia to Prussia.[91] It was after the signing of the treaty that Frederick, then 33 years old, first became known as "the Great".[92]

Seven Years' War

Main article: Third Silesian War

Though Frederick had withdrawn from the War of the Austrian Succession once Austria guaranteed his possession of Silesia,[93] Austria remained embroiled in the war until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Less than a year after the treaty was signed, Maria Theresa was once more seeking allies, particularly Russia and France, to eventually renew the war with Prussia to regain Silesia.[94] In preparation for a new confrontation with Frederick, the Empress reformed Austria's tax system and military.[95] During the ten years of peace that followed the signing of the Treaty of Dresden, Frederick also prepared to defend his claim on Silesia by further fortifying the province and expanding his army,[96] as well as reorganising his finances.[97]

 
Battle of Rossbach, a tactical victory for Frederick

In 1756, Frederick attempted to forestall Britain's financing of a Russian army on Prussia's border by negotiating an alliance with Britain at the Convention of Westminster, in which Prussia would protect Hanover against French attack and Britain would no longer subsidise Russia. This treaty triggered the Diplomatic Revolution in which Habsburg Austria and Bourbon France, who had been traditional enemies, allied together with Russia to defeat the Anglo-Prussian coalition.[98] To strengthen his strategic position against this coalition,[99] on 29 August 1756, Frederick's well-prepared army preemptively invaded Saxony.[100] His invasion triggered the Third Silesian War and the larger Seven Years' War, both of which lasted until 1763. He quickly captured Dresden, besieged the trapped Saxon army in Pirna, and continued marching the remainder of his army toward North Bohemia, intending to winter there.[101] At the Battle of Lobositz he claimed a close victory against an Austrian army that was aiming to relieve Pirna,[102] but afterward withdrew his forces back to Saxony for the winter.[103] When the Saxon forces in Pirna finally capitulated in October 1756, Frederick forcibly incorporated them into his own army.[104] This action, along with his initial invasion of neutral Saxony brought him widespread international criticism;[105] but the conquest of Saxony also provided him with significant financial, military, and strategic assets that helped him sustain the war.[106]

In the early spring of 1757, Frederick once more invaded Bohemia.[107] He was victorious against the Austrian army at the Battle of Prague on 6 May 1757, but his losses were so great he was unable to take the city itself, and settled for besieging it instead.[108] A month later on 18 June 1757, Frederick suffered his first major defeat at the Battle of Kolín,[109] which forced him to abandon his invasion of Bohemia. When the French and the Austrians pursued him into Saxony and Silesia in the fall of 1757, Frederick defeated and repulsed a much larger Franco-Austrian army at the Battle of Rossbach[110] and another Austrian army at the Battle of Leuthen.[111] Frederick hoped these two victories would force Austria to negotiate, but Maria Theresa was determined not to make peace until she had recovered Silesia, and the war continued.[112] Despite its strong performance, the losses suffered from combat, disease and desertion had severely reduced the quality of the Prussian army.[113]

 
Frederick leading his troops at the Battle of Zorndorf, by Carl Röchling

In the remaining years of the war, Frederick faced a coalition of enemies including Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and the Holy Roman Empire,[114] supported only by Great Britain and its allies Hesse, Brunswick, and Hanover.[115] In 1758 Frederick once more took the initiative by invading Moravia. By May, he had laid siege to Olomouc; but, the Austrians were able to hold the town and destroyed Frederick's supply train, forcing him to retreat into Silesia.[116] In the meantime, the Russian army had advanced within 100 miles (160 km) east of Berlin. In August, he fought the Russian forces to a draw at the Battle of Zorndorf, in which nearly a third of Frederick's soldiers were casualties.[117] He then headed south to face the Austrian army in Saxony. There, he was defeated at the Battle of Hochkirch on 14 October, although the Austrian forces were not able to exploit their victory.[118]

During the 1759 campaign, the Austrian and Russian forces took the initiative, which they kept for the remainder of the war.[119] They joined and once more advanced on Berlin. Frederick's army, which consisted of a substantial number of quickly recruited, half-trained soldiers,[120] attempted to check them at the Battle of Kunersdorf on 12 August, where he was defeated and his troops were routed.[121] Almost half his army was destroyed, and Frederick almost became a casualty when a bullet smashed a snuffbox he was carrying.[122] Nevertheless, the Austro-Russian forces hesitated and stopped their advance for the year, an event Frederick later called the "Miracle of the House of Brandenburg".[123] Frederick spent the remainder of the year in a futile attempt to manoeuvre the Austrians out of Saxony, where they had recaptured Dresden. [124] His effort cost him further losses when his general Friedrich August von Finck capitulated at Maxen on 20 November.[125]

At the beginning of 1760, the Austrians moved to retake Silesia, where Frederick defeated them at the Battle of Liegnitz on 15 August.[126] The victory did not allow Frederick to regain the initiative or prevent Russian and Austrian troops from raiding Berlin in October to extort a ransom from the city.[127] At the end of the campaign season, Frederick fought his last major engagement of the war.[128] He won a marginal victory at the Battle of Torgau on 3 November,[129] which secured Berlin from further raids.[130] In this battle, Frederick became a casualty when he was hit in the chest by a spent bullet.[131]

By 1761, both the Austrian and Prussian military forces were so exhausted that no major battles were fought between them. Frederick's position became even more desperate in 1761 when Britain, having achieved victory in the American and Indian theatres of the war, ended its financial support for Prussia after the death of King George II, Frederick's uncle.[132] The Russian forces also continued their advance, occupying Pomerania and parts of Brandenburg. With the Russians slowly advancing towards Berlin, it looked as though Prussia was about to collapse.[133] On 6 January 1762, Frederick wrote to Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein, "We ought now to think of preserving for my nephew, by way of negotiation, whatever fragments of my territory we can save from the avidity of my enemies".[134]

The sudden death of Empress Elizabeth of Russia in January 1762 led to the succession of the Prussophile Peter III, her German nephew, who was also the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.[135] This led to the collapse of the anti-Prussian coalition; Peter immediately promised to end the Russian occupation of East Prussia and Pomerania, returning them to Frederick. One of Peter III's first diplomatic endeavours was to seek a Prussian title; Frederick obliged. Peter III was so enamoured of Frederick that he not only offered him the full use of a Russian corps for the remainder of the war against Austria, he also wrote to Frederick that he would rather have been a general in the Prussian army than Tsar of Russia.[136] More significantly, Russia's about-face from an enemy of Prussia to its patron rattled the leadership of Sweden, who hastily made peace with Frederick as well.[137] With the threat to his eastern borders over, and France also seeking peace after its defeats by Britain, Frederick was able to fight the Austrians to a stalemate and finally brought them to the peace table. While the ensuing Treaty of Hubertusburg simply returned the European borders to what they had been before the Seven Years' War, Frederick's ability to retain Silesia in spite of the odds earned Prussia admiration throughout the German-speaking territories. A year following the Treaty of Hubertusburg, Catherine the Great, Peter III's widow and usurper, signed an eight-year alliance with Prussia, albeit with conditions that favoured the Russians.[138]

 
Frederick and his soldiers after the Battle of Hochkirch in 1758, by Carl Röchling

Frederick's ultimate success in the Seven Years' War came at a heavy financial cost to Prussia. Part of the burden was covered by the Anglo-Prussian Convention, which gave Frederick an annual £670,000 in British subsidies from 1758 till 1762.[139] These subsidies ceased when Frederick allied with Peter III,[140] partly because of the changed political situation[141] and also because of Great Britain's decreasing willingness to pay the sums Frederick wanted.[142] Frederick also financed the war by devaluing the Prussian coin five times; debased coins were produced with the help of Leipzig mintmasters, Veitel Heine Ephraim, Daniel Itzig and Moses Isaacs.[143] He also debased the coinage of Saxony and Poland.[144] This debasement of the currency helped Frederick cover over 20 per cent of the cost of the war, but at the price of causing massive inflation and economic upheaval throughout the region.[145] Saxony, occupied by Prussia for most of the conflict, was left nearly destitute as a result.[146] While Prussia lost no territory, the population and army were severely depleted by constant combat and invasions by Austria, Russia and Sweden. The best of Frederick's officer corps were also killed in the conflict. Although Frederick managed to bring his army up to 190,000 men by the time the economy had largely recovered in 1772, which made it the third-largest army in Europe, almost none of the officers in this army were veterans of his generation and the King's attitude towards them was extremely harsh.[147] During this time, Frederick also suffered a number of personal losses. Many of his closest friends and family members— including his brother Augustus William,[148] his sister Wilhelmine, and his mother— had died while Frederick was engaged in the war.[149]

First Partition of Poland

Main articles: First Partition of Poland and Prussian Partition
 
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth after the First Partition (1772)

Frederick sought to acquire and economically exploit Polish Prussia as part of his wider aim of enriching his kingdom.[150] As early as 1731 Frederick had suggested that his country would benefit from annexing Polish territory,[151] and had described Poland as an "artichoke, ready to be consumed leaf by leaf".[152] By 1752, he had prepared the ground for the partition of Poland–Lithuania, aiming to achieve his goal of building a territorial bridge between Pomerania, Brandenburg, and his East Prussian provinces.[153] The new territories would also provide an increased tax base, additional populations for the Prussian military, and serve as a surrogate for the other overseas colonies of the other great powers.[154]

Poland was vulnerable to partition due to poor governance, as well as the interference of foreign powers in its internal affairs.[155] Frederick himself was partly responsible for this weakness by opposing attempts at financial and political reform in Poland,[150] and undermining the Polish economy by inflating its currency by his use of Polish coin dies. The profits exceeded 25 million thalers, twice the peacetime national budget of Prussia.[156] He also thwarted Polish efforts to create a stable economic system by building a customs fort at Marienwerder on the Vistula, Poland's major trade artery,[150] and by bombarding Polish customs ports on the Vistula.[157]

Frederick also used Poland's religious dissension to keep the kingdom open to Prussian control.[158] Poland was predominantly Roman Catholic, but approximately ten per cent of Poland's population, 600,000 Eastern Orthodox and 250,000 Protestants, were non-Catholic dissenters. During the 1760s, the dissenters' political importance was out of proportion to their numbers. Although dissenters still had substantial rights, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had increasingly been reducing their civic rights after a period of considerable religious and political freedom.[159] Soon Protestants were barred from public offices and the Sejm (Polish Parliament).[160] Frederick took advantage of this situation by becoming the protector of Protestant interests in Poland in the name of religious freedom.[161] Frederick further opened Prussian control by signing an alliance with Catherine the Great who placed Stanisław August Poniatowski, a former lover and favourite, on the Polish throne.[162]

 
King Frederick II, by Anna Dorothea Therbusch, 1772

After Russia occupied the Danubian Principalities in 1769–70, Frederick's representative in Saint Petersburg, his brother Prince Henry, convinced Frederick and Maria Theresa that the balance of power would be maintained by a tripartite division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth instead of Russia taking land from the Ottomans. They agreed to the First Partition of Poland in 1772, which took place without war. Frederick acquired most of Royal Prussia, annexing 38,000 square kilometres (15,000 sq mi) and 600,000 inhabitants. Although Frederick's share of the partition was the smallest of the partitioning powers, the lands he acquired had roughly the same economic value as the others and had great strategic value.[163] The newly created province of West Prussia connected East Prussia and Farther Pomerania and granted Prussia control of the mouth of the Vistula River, as well as cutting off Poland's sea trade. Maria Theresa had only reluctantly agreed to the partition, to which Frederick sarcastically commented, "she cries, but she takes".[164]

Frederick undertook the exploitation of Polish territory under the pretext of an enlightened civilising mission that emphasised the supposed cultural superiority of Prussian ways.[165] He saw Polish Prussia as barbaric and uncivilised,[166] describing the inhabitants as "slovenly Polish trash"[167] and comparing them unfavourably with the Iroquois.[164] His long-term goal was to remove the Poles through Germanisation, which included appropriating Polish Crown lands and monasteries,[168] introducing a military draft, encouraging German settlement in the region, and implementing a tax policy that disproportionately impoverished Polish nobles.[169]

War of the Bavarian Succession

Main article: War of the Bavarian Succession

Late in his life Frederick involved Prussia in the low-scale War of the Bavarian Succession in 1778, in which he stifled Austrian attempts to exchange the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria.[170] For their part, the Austrians tried to pressure the French to participate in the War of Bavarian Succession since there were guarantees under consideration related to the Peace of Westphalia, clauses which linked the Bourbon dynasty of France and the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty of Austria. Unfortunately for the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, the French were unwilling to provide manpower and resources to the endeavour since they were already providing support to the American revolutionaries on the North American continent.[171] Frederick ended up as a beneficiary of the American Revolutionary War, as Austria was left more or less isolated.[172]

Moreover, Saxony and Russia, both of which had been Austria's allies in the Seven Years' War, were now allied with Prussia.[173] Although Frederick was weary of war in his old age, he was determined not to allow Austrian dominance in German affairs.[174] Frederick and Prince Henry marched the Prussian army into Bohemia to confront Joseph's army, but the two forces ultimately descended into a stalemate, largely living off the land and skirmishing rather than actively attacking each other.[175] Frederick's longtime rival Maria Theresa, who was Joseph's mother and his co-ruler, did not want a new war with Prussia, and secretly sent messengers to Frederick to discuss peace negotiations.[176] Finally, Catherine II of Russia threatened to enter the war on Frederick's side if peace was not negotiated, and Joseph reluctantly dropped his claim to Bavaria.[177] When Joseph tried the scheme again in 1784, Frederick created the Fürstenbund (League of Princes), allowing himself to be seen as a defender of German liberties, in contrast to his earlier role of attacking the imperial Habsburgs. To stop Joseph II's attempts to acquire Bavaria, Frederick enlisted the help of the Electors of Hanover and Saxony along with several other minor German princes. Perhaps even more significant, Frederick benefited from the defection of the senior prelate of the German Church, the Archbishop of Mainz, who was also the arch-chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, which further strengthened Frederick and Prussia's standing amid the German states.[178]

Policies

Administrative modernisation

 
Portrait by Wilhelm Camphausen, 1870

In his earliest published work, the Anti-Machiavel,[179] and his later Testament politique (Political Testament),[180] Frederick wrote that the sovereign was the first servant of the state.[b] Acting in this role, Frederick helped transform Prussia from a European backwater to an economically strong and politically reformed state.[183] He protected his industries with high tariffs and minimal restrictions on domestic trade. He increased the freedom of speech in press and literature,[184] abolished most uses of judicial torture,[185] and reduced the number of crimes that could be punished by the death sentence.[186] Working with his Grand Chancellor Samuel von Cocceji, he reformed the judicial system and made it more efficient, and he moved the courts toward greater legal equality of all citizens by removing special courts for special social classes.[187] The reform was completed after Frederick's death, resulting in the Prussian Law Code of 1794, which balanced absolutism with human rights and corporate privilege with equality before the law. Reception to the law code was mixed as it was often viewed as contradictory.[188]

Frederick strove to put Prussia's fiscal system in order. In January 1750, Johann Philipp Graumann was appointed as Frederick's confidential adviser on finance, military affairs, and royal possessions, as well as the Director-General of all mint facilities.[189] Graumann's currency reform slightly lowered the silver content of Prussian thaler from 1⁄12 Cologne mark of silver to 1⁄14,[190] which brought the metal content of the thaler into alignment with its face value,[191] and it standardised the Prussian coinage system.[189] As a result, Prussian coins, which had been leaving the country nearly as fast as they were minted,[190] remained in circulation in Prussia.[192] In addition, Frederick estimated that he earned about one million thalers in profits on the seignorage.[190] The coin eventually became universally accepted beyond Prussia and helped increase industry and trade.[191] A gold coin, the Friedrich d'or, was also minted to oust the Dutch ducat from the Baltic trade.[193] However, the fixed ratio between gold and silver led to the gold coins being perceived as more valuable, which caused them to leave circulation in Prussia. Being unable to meet Frederick's expectations for profit, Graumann was removed in 1754.[193]

Although Frederick's debasement of the coinage to fund the Seven Years' War left the Prussian monetary system in disarray,[192] the Mint Edict of May 1763 brought it back to stability by fixing rates at which depreciated coins would be accepted and requiring tax payments in currency of prewar value. Many other rulers soon followed the steps of Frederick in reforming their own currencies – this resulted in a shortage of ready money, thus lowering prices.[194] The functionality and stability of the reform made the Prussian monetary system the standard in Northern Germany.[195]

Around 1751 Frederick founded the Emden Company to promote trade with China. He introduced the lottery, fire insurance, and a giro discount and credit bank to stabilise the economy.[196] One of Frederick's achievements after the Seven Years' War included the control of grain prices, whereby government storehouses would enable the civilian population to survive in needy regions, where the harvest was poor.[197] He commissioned Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky to promote the trade and – to take on the competition with France – put a silk factory where soon 1,500 people found employment. Frederick followed Gotzkowsky's recommendations in the field of toll levies and import restrictions. When Gotzkowsky asked for a deferral during the Amsterdam banking crisis of 1763, Frederick took over his porcelain factory, now known as KPM.[198]

Frederick modernised the Prussian civil service and promoted religious tolerance throughout his realm to attract more settlers in East Prussia. With the help of French experts, he organised a system of indirect taxation, which provided the state with more revenue than direct taxation; though French officials administering it may have pocketed some of the profit.[199] In 1781, Frederick made coffee a royal monopoly and employed disabled soldiers, the coffee sniffers, to spy on citizens illegally roasting coffee, much to the annoyance of the general population.[200]

Though Frederick started many reforms during his reign, his ability to see them to fulfilment was not as disciplined or thorough as his military successes.[201]

Religion

 
St. Hedwig's Cathedral, the first Roman Catholic church built in Berlin since the Reformation, was erected by the sanction of Frederick, who also sketched its design.[202]

In contrast to his devoutly Calvinist father, Frederick was a religious sceptic, who has been described as a deist.[203][c] Frederick was pragmatic about religious faith. Three times during his life, he presented his own confession of Christian faith: during his imprisonment after Katte's execution 1730, after his conquest of Silesia in 1741, and just before the start of the Seven Years' War in 1756; in each case, these confessions also served personal or political goals.[206]

He tolerated all faiths in his realm, but Protestantism remained the favoured religion, and Catholics were not chosen for higher state positions.[207] Frederick wanted development throughout the country, adapted to the needs of each region. He was interested in attracting a diversity of skills to his country, whether from Jesuit teachers, Huguenot citizens, or Jewish merchants and bankers. Frederick retained Jesuits as teachers in Silesia, Warmia, and the Netze District, recognising their educational activities as an asset for the nation.[208] He continued to support them after their suppression by Pope Clement XIV.[209] He befriended the Roman Catholic Prince-Bishop of Warmia, Ignacy Krasicki, whom he asked to consecrate St. Hedwig's Cathedral in 1773.[210] He also accepted countless Protestant weavers from Bohemia, who were fleeing from the devoutly Catholic rule of Maria Theresa, granting them freedom from taxes and military service.[211] Constantly looking for new colonists to settle his lands, he encouraged immigration by repeatedly emphasising that nationality and religion were of no concern to him. This policy allowed Prussia's population to recover very quickly from its considerable losses during Frederick's three wars.[212]

Though Frederick was known to be more tolerant of Jews and Roman Catholics than many neighbouring German states, his practical-minded tolerance was not fully unprejudiced. Frederick wrote in his Testament politique:

We have too many Jews in the towns. They are needed on the Polish border because in these areas Hebrews alone perform trade. As soon as you get away from the frontier, the Jews become a disadvantage, they form cliques, they deal in contraband and get up to all manner of rascally tricks which are detrimental to Christian burghers and merchants. I have never persecuted anyone from this or any other sect; I think, however, it would be prudent to pay attention, so that their numbers do not increase.[213]

The success in integrating the Jews into areas of society where Frederick encouraged them can be seen by Gerson von Bleichröder's role during the 19th century in financing Otto von Bismarck's efforts to unite Germany.[214] Frederick was also less tolerant of Catholicism in his occupied territories. In Silesia, he disregarded canon law to install clergy who were loyal to him.[215] In Polish Prussia, he confiscated the Roman Catholic Church's goods and property,[168] making clergy dependent on the government for their pay and defining how they were to perform their duties.[216]

Like many leading figures in the Age of Enlightenment, Frederick was a Freemason,[217] having joined during a trip to Brunswick in 1738.[218] His membership legitimised the group's presence in Prussia and protected it against charges of subversion.[219] In 1786, he became the First Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree, his double-headed eagle emblem was also used for 32nd and 33rd degree Masons following the adoption of seven additional degrees to the Masonic Rite.[220]

Frederick's religious views were sometimes criticised. His views resulted in his condemnation by the anti-revolutionary French Jesuit, Augustin Barruel. In his 1797 book, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du Jacobinisme (Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism), Barruel described an influential conspiracy theory that accused King Frederick of taking part in a plot which led to the outbreak of the French Revolution and having been the secret "protector and adviser" of fellow-conspirators Voltaire, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, and Denis Diderot, who all sought "to destroy Christianity" and foment "rebellion against Kings and Monarchs".[221]

Environment and agriculture

 
Frederick the Great inspects the potato harvest outside Neustettin (now Szczecinek, Poland), Eastern Pomerania

Frederick was keenly interested in land use, especially draining swamps and opening new farmland for colonisers who would increase the kingdom's food supply. He called it Peuplierungspolitik (peopling policy). About twelve hundred new villages were founded in his reign.[222] He told Voltaire, "Whoever improves the soil, cultivates land lying waste and drains swamps, is making conquests from barbarism".[223] Using improved technology enabled him to create new farmland through a massive drainage programme in the country's Oderbruch marshland. This programme created roughly 60,000 hectares (150,000 acres) of new farmland, but also eliminated vast swaths of natural habitat, destroyed the region's biodiversity, and displaced numerous native plant and animal communities. Frederick saw this project as the "taming" and "conquering" of nature,[224] considering uncultivated land "useless",[225] an attitude that reflected his enlightenment era, rationalist sensibilities.[226] He presided over the construction of canals for bringing crops to market, and introduced new crops, especially the potato and the turnip, to the country. For this, he was sometimes called Der Kartoffelkönig (the Potato King).[227]

Frederick's interest in land reclamation may have resulted from his upbringing. As a child, his father, Frederick William I, made young Frederick work in the region's provinces, teaching the boy about the area's agriculture and geography. This created an interest in cultivation and development that the boy retained when he became ruler.[228]

Frederick founded the first veterinary school in Prussia. Unusually for the time and his aristocratic background, he criticised hunting as cruel, rough and uneducated. When someone once asked Frederick why he did not wear spurs when riding his horse, he replied, "Try sticking a fork into your naked stomach, and you will soon see why."[29] He loved dogs and his horse and wanted to be buried with his greyhounds. In 1752 he wrote to his sister Wilhelmine that people indifferent to loyal animals would not be devoted to their human comrades either, and that it was better to be too sensitive than too harsh. He was also close to nature and issued decrees to protect plants.[229]

Arts and education

 
The Flute Concert of Sanssouci by Adolph Menzel, 1852, depicts Frederick playing the flute in his music room at Sanssouci as C. P. E. Bach accompanies him on a fortepiano by Gottfried Silbermann

Frederick was a patron of music,[230] and the court musicians he supported included C. P. E. Bach, Carl Heinrich Graun and Franz Benda.[231] A meeting with Johann Sebastian Bach in 1747 in Potsdam led to Bach's writing The Musical Offering.[232] He was also a talented musician and composer in his own right, playing the transverse flute,[233] as well as composing 121 sonatas for flute and continuo, four concertos for flute and strings, four sinfonias,[234] three military marches and seven arias.[235] Additionally, the Hohenfriedberger Marsch was allegedly written by Frederick to commemorate his victory in the Battle of Hohenfriedberg during the Second Silesian War.[236] His flute sonatas were often composed in collaboration with Johann Joachim Quantz,[237] who was Frederick's occasional music tutor in his youth[238] and joined his court as composer and flute maker in 1741.[239] Frederick's flute sonatas are written in the Baroque style in which flute plays the melody, sometimes imitating operatic vocal styles like the aria and recitative, while the accompaniment was usually played by just one instrument per part to highlight the delicate sound of the flute.[240]

Frederick also wrote sketches, outlines and libretti for opera that were included as part of the repertoire for the Berlin Opera House. These works, which were often completed in collaboration with Graun,[d] included the operas Coriolano (1749), Silla (1753), Montezuma (1755), and Il tempio d'Amore (1756).[242] Frederick saw opera as playing an important role in imparting enlightenment philosophy, using it to critique superstition and the Pietism that still held sway in Prussia.[243] He also attempted to broaden access to opera by making admission to it free.[244]

Frederick also wrote philosophical works,[245] publishing some of his writings under the title of The Works of a Sans-Souci Philosopher.[246] Frederick corresponded with key French Enlightenment figures, including Voltaire, who at one point declared Frederick to be a philosopher-king,[247] and the Marquis d'Argens, whom he appointed as Royal Chamberlain in 1742 and later as the Director of the Prussian Academy of Arts and Berlin State Opera.[248] His openness to philosophy had its limits. He did not admire the encyclopédistes or the French intellectual avant-garde of his time,[249] though he did shelter Rousseau from persecution for a number of years. Moreover, once he ascended the Prussian throne, he found it increasingly difficult to apply the philosophical ideas of his youth to his role as king.[250]

Like many European rulers of the time who were influenced by the prestige of Louis XIV of France and his court,[251] Frederick adopted French tastes and manners,[252] though in Frederick's case, the extent of his Francophile tendencies might also have been a reaction to the austerity of the family environment created by his father, who had a deep aversion for France and promoted an austere culture for his state.[253] He was educated by French tutors,[254] and almost all the books in his library, which covered topics as diverse as mathematics, art, politics, the classics, and literary works by 17th century French authors, were written in French.[255] French was Frederick's preferred language for speaking and writing, though he had to rely on proofreaders to correct his difficulties with its spelling.[256]

 
Frederick the Great by Anton Graff, 1781.

Though Frederick used German as his working language with his administration and with the army, he claimed to have never learned it properly[257] and never fully mastered speaking or writing it.[258] He also disliked the German language,[259] thinking it was inharmonious and awkward.[260] He once commented that German authors "pile parenthesis upon parenthesis, and often you find only at the end of an entire page the verb on which depends the meaning of the whole sentence".[261] He considered the German culture of his time, particularly literature and theatre, to be inferior to that of France; believing that it had been hindered by the devastation of the Thirty Years' War.[262] He suggested that it could eventually equal its rivals, but this would require a complete codification of the German language, the emergence of talented German authors and extensive patronage of the arts by Germanic rulers. This was a project he believed would take a century or more.[263] Frederick's love of French culture was not without limits either. He disapproved of the luxury and extravagance of the French royal court. He also ridiculed German princes, especially the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, Augustus III, who imitated French sumptuousness.[264] His own court remained quite Spartan, frugal and small and restricted to a limited circle of close friends,[265] a layout similar to his father's court, though Frederick and his friends were far more culturally inclined than Frederick William.[266]

Despite his distaste for the German language, Frederick did sponsor the Königliche Deutsche Gesellschaft (Royal German Society), founded in Königsberg in 1741, the aim of which was to promote and develop the German language. He allowed the association to be titled "royal" and have its seat at the Königsberg Castle, but he does not seem to have taken much interest in the work of the society. Frederick also promoted the use of German instead of Latin in the field of law, as in the legal document Project des Corporis Juris Fridericiani (Project of the Frederician Body of Laws), which was written in German with the aim of being clear and easily understandable.[267] Moreover, it was under his reign that Berlin became an important centre of German enlightenment.[268]

Architecture and the fine arts

 
South, or garden façade and corps de logis of Sanssouci

Frederick had many famous buildings constructed in his capital, Berlin, most of which still stand 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).[269] A number of the buildings, including the Berlin State Opera House, a wing of Schloss Charlottenburg,[270] and the renovation of Rheinsburg during Frederick's residence were built in a unique Rococo style that Frederick developed in collaboration with Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff.[271] This style became known as Frederician Rococo and is epitomised by Frederick's summer palace, Sanssouci (French for "carefree" or "without worry"),[272] which served as his primary residence and private refuge.[273]

As a great patron of the arts, Frederick was a collector of paintings and ancient sculptures; his favourite artist was Jean-Antoine Watteau. His sense of aesthetics can be seen in the picture gallery at Sanssouci, which presents architecture, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts as a unified whole. The gilded stucco decorations of the ceilings were created by Johann Michael Merck (1714–1784) and Carl Joseph Sartori (1709–1770). Both the wall panelling of the galleries and the diamond shapes of the floor consist of white and yellow marble. Paintings by different schools were displayed strictly separately: 17th-century Flemish and Dutch paintings filled the western wing and the gallery's central building, while Italian paintings from the High Renaissance and Baroque were exhibited in the eastern wing. Sculptures were arranged symmetrically or in rows in relation to the architecture.[274]

 
The Round Table of King Frederick II in Sanssouci by Adolph Menzel with Voltaire, Algarotti, La Mettrie, the Keith brothers[e] and Marquis d'Argens. Frederick is seated at the center, facing Voltaire (in the purple coat, leaning forward).

Science and the Berlin Academy

When Frederick ascended the throne in 1740, he reinstituted the Prussian Academy of Sciences (Berlin Academy), which his father had closed down as an economy measure. Frederick's goal was to make Berlin a European cultural centre that rivalled London and Paris in the arts and sciences.[259] To accomplish this goal, he invited numerous intellectuals from across Europe to join the academy, made French the official language and made speculative philosophy the most important topic of study.[277] The membership was strong in mathematics and philosophy and included Immanuel Kant, D'Alembert, Pierre Louis de Maupertuis, and Étienne de Condillac. However the Academy was in a crisis for two decades at mid-century,[268] due in part to scandals and internal rivalries such as the debates between Newtonianism and Leibnizian views, and the personality conflict between Voltaire and Maupertuis. At a higher level Maupertuis, director of the Berlin Academy from 1746 to 1759 and a monarchist, argued that the action of individuals was shaped by the character of the institution that contained them, and they worked for the glory of the state. By contrast d' Alembert took a republican rather than monarchical approach and emphasised the international Republic of Letters as the vehicle for scientific advance.[278] By 1789, the academy had gained an international repute while making major contributions to German culture and thought. For example, the mathematicians he recruited for the Berlin Academy – including Leonhard Euler, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Johann Heinrich Lambert, and Johann Castillon – made it a world-class centre for mathematical research.[279] Other intellectuals attracted to the philosopher's kingdom were Francesco Algarotti, d'Argens, and Julien Offray de La Mettrie.[277]

 
Frederick the Great and his staff at the Battle of Leuthen, by Hugo Ungewitter

Military theory

Contrary to his father's fears, Frederick became a capable military commander. With the exception of his first battlefield experience at the Battle of Mollwitz, Frederick proved himself courageous in battle.[280] He frequently led his military forces personally and had a number of horses shot from under him during battle.[281] During his reign he commanded the Prussian Army at sixteen major battles and various sieges, skirmishes and other actions, ultimately obtaining almost all his political objectives. He is often admired for his tactical skills, especially for his use of the oblique order of battle,[282] an attack focused on one flank of the opposing line, allowing a local advantage even if his forces were outnumbered overall.[283] Even more important were his operational successes, especially the use of interior lines to prevent the unification of numerically superior opposing armies and defend the Prussian core territory.[284]

Napoleon Bonaparte saw the Prussian king as a military commander of the first rank;[285] after Napoleon's victory over the Fourth Coalition in 1807, he visited Frederick's tomb in Potsdam and remarked to his officers, "Gentlemen, if this man were still alive I would not be here".[286] Napoleon frequently "pored through Frederick's campaign narratives and had a statuette of him placed in his personal cabinet".[287]

 
Frederick in a Waffenrock (army tunic)

Frederick's most notable military victories on the battlefield were the Battle of Hohenfriedberg, a tactical victory, fought during the War of Austrian Succession in June 1745;[288] the Battle of Rossbach, where Frederick defeated a combined Franco-Austrian army of 41,000 with only 21,000 soldiers (10,000 dead for the Franco-Austrian side with only 550 casualties for Prussia);[289] and the Battle of Leuthen, a follow-up victory to Rossbach[290] in which Frederick's 39,000 troops inflicted 22,000 casualties, including 12,000 prisoners, on Charles of Lorraine's Austrian force of 65,000.[291]

Frederick the Great believed that creating alliances was necessary, as Prussia did not have the resources of nations like France or Austria. Though his reign was regularly involved in war, he did not advocate for protracted warfare. He stated that for Prussia, wars should be short and quick: long wars would destroy the army's discipline, depopulate the country, and exhaust its resources.[292]

Frederick was an influential military theorist whose analysis emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics, mobility and logistics.[293] Austrian co-ruler, Emperor Joseph II wrote, "When the King of Prussia speaks on problems connected with the art of war, which he has studied intensively and on which he has read every conceivable book, then everything is taut, solid and uncommonly instructive. There are no circumlocutions, he gives factual and historical proof of the assertions he makes, for he is well versed in history."[294]

Robert Citino describes Frederick's strategic approach:

"In war … he usually saw one path to victory, and that was fixing the enemy army in place, maneuvering near or even around it to give himself a favorable position for the attack, and then smashing it with an overwhelming blow from an unexpected direction. He was the most aggressive field commander of the century, perhaps of all time, and one who constantly pushed the limits of the possible.[295]
 
Frederick before the Battle of Torgau, 1760

The historian Dennis Showalter argues: "The King was also more consistently willing than any of his contemporaries to seek decision through offensive operations."[296] Yet, these offensive operations were not acts of blind aggression; Frederick considered foresight to be among the most important attributes when fighting an enemy, stating that the discriminating commander must see everything before it takes place, so nothing will be new to him.[297]

Much of the structure of the more modern German General Staff owed its existence and extensive structure to Frederick, along with the accompanying power of autonomy given to commanders in the field.[298] According to Citino, "When later generations of Prussian-German staff officers looked back to the age of Frederick, they saw a commander who repeatedly, even joyfully, risked everything on a single day's battle – his army, his kingdom, often his very life."[295] As far as Frederick was concerned, there were two major battlefield considerations – speed of march and speed of fire.[299] So confident in the performance of men he selected for command when compared to those of his enemy, Frederick once quipped that a general considered audacious in another country would be ordinary in Prussia because Prussian generals will dare and undertake anything that is possible for men to execute.[300]

After the Seven Years' War, the Prussian military acquired a formidable reputation across Europe.[301] Esteemed for their efficiency and success in battle, the Prussian army of Frederick became a model emulated by other European powers, most notably by Russia and France.[302] To this day, Frederick continues to be held in high regard as a military theorist and has been described as representing the embodiment of the art of war.[303]

Later years and death

 
Grave of Frederick at Sanssouci with potatoes, where he was buried only after the German reunification. (He wished to rest next to his dogs, but this was originally ignored.)

Near the end of his life, Frederick grew increasingly solitary. His circle of close friends at Sanssouci gradually died off with few replacements, and Frederick became increasingly critical and arbitrary, to the frustration of the civil service and officer corps. Frederick was immensely popular among the Prussian people because of his enlightened reforms and military glory; the citizens of Berlin always cheered him when he returned from administrative or military reviews. Over time, he was nicknamed Der Alte Fritz (The Old Fritz) by the Prussian people, and this name became part of his legacy.[304] Frederick derived little pleasure from his popularity with the common people, preferring instead the company of his pet Italian greyhounds,[305] whom he referred to as his "marquises de Pompadour" as a jibe at the French royal mistress.[306] Even in his late 60s and early 70s when he was increasingly crippled by asthma, gout and other ailments, he rose before dawn, drank six to eight cups of coffee a day, "laced with mustard and peppercorns", and attended to state business with characteristic tenacity.[307]

On the morning of 17 August 1786, Frederick died in an armchair in his study at Sanssouci, aged 74. He left instructions that he should 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 Frederick's body to be entombed next to his father, Frederick William I, in the Potsdam Garrison Church. Near the end of World War II, German dictator Adolf Hitler ordered Frederick's coffin to be hidden in a salt mine as protection from destruction. The United States Army relocated the remains to Marburg in 1946; in 1953, the coffins of Frederick and his father were moved to Burg Hohenzollern.[308]

On the 205th anniversary of his death, on 17 August 1991, Frederick's coffin lay in state in the court of honour at Sanssouci, covered by a Prussian flag and escorted by a Bundeswehr guard of honour. After nightfall, Frederick's body was finally laid to rest in the terrace of the vineyard of Sanssouci—in the still existing crypt he had built there—without pomp, in accordance with his will.[309][f] Visitors to his grave often place potatoes on his gravestone in honour of his role in promoting the use of the potato in Prussia.[311]

Historiography and legacy

 
Frederick quoted by the Nazi propaganda poster Wochenspruch der NSDAP on 24 August 1941. Translation: "Now we have to think of leading the war in a way that we spoil the desire of the enemies to break the peace once again."

Frederick's legacy has been subject to a wide variety of interpretations.[312] For instance, Thomas Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great (8 vol. 1858–1865) emphasised the power of one great "hero", in this case Frederick, to shape history.[313] In German memory, Frederick became a great national icon and many Germans said he was the greatest monarch in modern history. These claims particularly were popular in the 19th century.[314] For example, German historians often made him the romantic model of a glorified warrior, praising his leadership, administrative efficiency, devotion to duty and success in building up Prussia to a leading role in Europe.[315] Frederick's popularity as a heroic figure remained high in Germany even after World War I.[316]

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis glorified Frederick as a precursor to Adolf Hitler and presented Frederick as holding out hope that another miracle would again save Germany at the last moment.[317] In an attempt to legitimise the Nazi regime, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels commissioned artists to render fanciful images of Frederick, Bismarck, and Hitler together in order to create a sense of a historical continuum amongst them.[318] Throughout World War II, Hitler often compared himself to Frederick the Great,[319] and he kept a copy of Anton Graff's portrait of Frederick with him to the end in the Führerbunker in Berlin.[320]

After the defeat of Germany after 1945, the role of Prussia in German history was minimised. Compared to the pre-1945 period, Frederick's reputation was downgraded in both East[321] and West Germany,[322] partly due to the Nazis' fascination with him and his supposed connection with Prussian militarism.[323] During the second half of the 20th century, political attitudes towards Frederick's image were ambivalent, particularly in communist East Germany.[324] For example, immediately after World War II images of Prussia were removed from public spaces,[325] including Frederick's equestrian statue on the Unter den Linden, but in 1980 his statue was once more re-erected on its original location.[326] Since the end of the Cold War, Frederick's reputation has continued to grow in the now reunified Germany.[327]

In the 21st century the view of Frederick as a capable and effective leader also remains strong among military historians;[328] though, the originality of his achievements remains a topic of debate,[329] as many were based on developments already under way.[330] He has also been studied as a model of servant leadership in management research[331] and is held in high regard for his patronage of the arts.[332] He has been seen as an exemplar of enlightened absolutism,[333] though this label has been questioned in the 21st century as many enlightenment principles directly contrast with his military reputation.[334]

Works by Frederick the Great

Selected works in English

  • The History of My Own Times. Posthumous Works of Frederic II. King of Prussia. Vol. 1. Translated by Holcroft, Thomas. London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson. 1789 [1746].
  • The History of the Seven Years War, Part I. Posthumous Works of Frederic II. King of Prussia. Vol. 2. Translated by Holcroft, Thomas. London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson. 1789 [1788].
  • The History of the Seven Years War, Part 2. Posthumous Works of Frederic II. King of Prussia. Vol. 3. Translated by Holcroft, Thomas. London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson. 1789 [1788].
  • Memoirs from the Peace of Hubertsburg to the Partition of Poland. Posthumous Works of Frederic II. King of Prussia. Vol. 4. Translated by Holcroft, Thomas. London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson. 1789 [1788].
  • Military Instructions from the King of Prussia to His Generals. Translated by Foster, T. London: J. Cruttwell. 1818 [1747].
  • Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg to Which are Added Four Dissertations. London: J. Nourse. 1758 [1750].

Collections

  • Preuss, J. D. E., ed. (1846–1857). Œuvres de Frédéric Le Grand [Works of Frederick the Great] (in French). (31 vols.)
  • Droysen, Johann Gustav, ed. (1879–1939). Politische Correspondenz Friedrich's des Großen [Political Correspondence of Frederick the Great] (in German). (46 vols.)

Editions of music

  • Spitta, Philipp, ed. (1889). Musikalische Werke: Friedrichs des Grossen [Musical works: Frederick the Great] (in German). Vol. i–iii. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. OCLC 257496423.
  • Lensewski, Gustav, ed. (1925). Friedrich der Grosse: Kompositionen [Friedrich the Great: Compositions] (in German). Berlin.

References

Informational notes

  1. ^ According to the French diplomat Louis Guy Henri de Valori, when he asked Frederick why he allowed the Saxon and Prussian forces to cross the mountains unopposed in the first place, Frederick answered: "mon ami, quand on veut prendre des souris, il faut tenir la souricière ouverte, ils entreront et je les battrai." ("My friend, when you want to catch mice, you have to keep the mousetrap open, they will enter and I will batter them.")[86]
  2. ^ In the second printing of the Anti-Machiavel, Voltaire changed premier domestique (first servant) to premier Magistrat (first magistrate). Compare Frederick's words from the handwritten manuscript[181] to Voltaire's edited 1740 version.[182]
  3. ^ He remained critical of Christianity.[204] See Frederick's De la Superstition et de la Religion (Superstition and Religion) in which he says in the context of Christianity in Brandenburg: "It is a shame to human understanding, that at the beginning of so learned an age as the XVIIIth [18th century] all manner of superstitions were yet subsisting."[205]
  4. ^ Frederick's relationship to Graun is illustrated by his comment upon hearing news of Graun's death in Berlin, which he received eight days after the Battle of Prague: "Eight days ago, I lost my best field-marshal (Schwerin), and now my Graun. I shall create no more field-marshals or conductors until I can find another Schwerin and another Graun."[241]
  5. ^ The Keith brothers depicted in Adolph Menzel's painting The Round Table of King Frederick II in Sanssouci are George Keith and James Francis Edward Keith, Scottish soldiers in exile who joined Frederick's entourage after 1745.[275] They are unrelated to the Keith brothers, Peter and Robert, who were Frederick's companions when he was Crown Prince.[276]
  6. ^ In his 1769 will, Frederick wrote "I have lived as a philosopher and wish to be buried as such, without pomp or parade...Let me be deposited in the vault which I had constructed for myself, on the upper terrace of San Souci."[310]

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  18. ^ Bernd Krysmanski, "Evidence for the homosexuality and the anal erotic desires of the Prussian king", in Does Hogarth Depict Old Fritz Truthfully with a Crooked Beak? — The Pictures Familiar to Us from Pesne to Menzel Don’t Show This, ART-dok (University of Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net, 2022), 24-30. https://doi.org/10.11588/artdok.00008019
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  179. ^ Frederick II 1740a.
  180. ^ Frederick II 1752.
  181. ^ Frederick II 1740b, p. 10: Il se trouve que le souverain, bien loin d'être le maître absolu des peuples qui sont sous sa domination, n'en est en lui-même que le premier domestique.[It turns out that the sovereign, far from being the absolute master of the peoples who are under his domination, is himself only the first servant.]
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  191. ^ a b Bundesbank 2013.
  192. ^ a b Shaw 1895, pp. 202–203.
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  200. ^ Liberles 2012, p. 29.
  201. ^ Ozment 2005, p. 141.
  202. ^ St. Hedwig's Cathedral 2019: Die Hedwigskirche...war die erste katholische Kirche, die in der Residenzstadt Friedrichs des Großen nach der Reformation gebaut werden durfte...Der Bau geschah auf Wunsch der katholischen Gemeinde und mit der Zustimmung Friedrichs des Großen. [The Hedwig Church...was the first Roman Catholic church that was allowed to be built in the royal seat of Frederick the Great after the Reformation...The construction was carried out with the sanction of Frederick the Great.]
  203. ^ Bonney & Trim 2006, p. 154; Fraser 2001, p. 58; MacDonogh 2000, p. 241.
  204. ^ Mitford 1970, p. 75.
  205. ^ Frederick II 1750b.
  206. ^ Kloes 2016, pp. 102–108.
  207. ^ Holborn 1982, p. 274.
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  212. ^ Ritter 1936, p. 180.
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  214. ^ Stern 1977, p. 19.
  215. ^ Fay 1945, p. 528.
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  217. ^ Waite 1921, p. 306.
  218. ^ Kugler 1840, p. 124.
  219. ^ Melton2001, p. 267.
  220. ^ Gaffney 2020.
  221. ^ Barruel 1799, p. 1.
  222. ^ Blackbourn 2006, p. 50.
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  225. ^ Blackbourn 2006, p. 43.
  226. ^ Blackbourn 2006, p. 19.
  227. ^ The Potato King 2012: Entgegen der weitverbreiteten Meinung habe Friedrich II. die Kartoffel nicht in Preußen eingeführt...Allerdings habe sich Friedrich sehr um ihre Verbreitung gekümmert. [Contrary to popular opinion, Friedrich II did not introduce the potato in Prussia...However, Frederick took great care in spreading it.]
  228. ^ Blackbourn 2006, pp. 31–32.
  229. ^ Das Gupta 2013.
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  243. ^ Forment 2012, p. 1.
  244. ^ Terne 2008, : Der Berliner Neubau sollte hingegen grundsätzlich allen Berlinern und den auswärtigen Besuchern der preußischen Hauptstadt zugänglich sein...Der Eintritt in die Oper war unentgeltlich...[The new Berlin building [The Opera House] was intended for all Berliners and foreign visitors to the Prussian capital...Admission to the opera was free...]
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  247. ^ Aramayo 2019, pp. 75–76.
  248. ^ Sgard 2013.
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  264. ^ Frederick II 1750a.
  265. ^ MacDonogh 2000, pp. 134–135.
  266. ^ Clark 2006, p. 188.
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  309. ^ Jones 1991.
  310. ^ Frederick II 1769, p. 70.
  311. ^ Earle 2020, p. 54.
  312. ^ Valentin 1934, pp. 115–123.
  313. ^ Bentley 2002, pp. 398–400, 414–415.
  314. ^ Gooch 1947, p. 343.
  315. ^ Valentin 1934, pp. 117–120.
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  318. ^ Craig 1978, p. 543.
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  322. ^ Clark 2006, pp. 678–680.
  323. ^ Lau 2012: Der einvernehmliche Konsens der Anti-Hitler-Koalition des Zweiten Weltkrieges und Siegermächte über Preußen wurde durch deren Memorandum vom 8. August 1946 im Alliierten Kontrollrat zusammengefasst: "Es muss nicht eigens betont werden, dass Preußen in den letzten 200 Jahren eine Bedrohung für die Sicherheit Europas dargestellt hat.[The consensus of the anti-Hitler coalition of the Second World War and the victorious powers over Prussia was summarized in their memorandum of August 8, 1946 in the Allied Control Council: "It goes without saying that Prussia has been a threat to security for the past 200 years"...]; Munn 2014, p. .
  324. ^ Lau 2012: Die offizielle Sicht der DDR auf Friedrich II. und Preußen war keineswegs eine Einbahnstraße. [The GDR's official view of Frederick II and Prussia was by no means a one-way street.]; Munn 2014, p. .
  325. ^ Lau 2012...in der SBZ/DDR die Herrschaftszeichen des "reaktionären Preußentums" keinen Platz im öffentlichen Raum haben durften. [...in the Soviet Zone / GDR the symbols of "reactionary Prussia" were allowed to have no place in public space.]
  326. ^ Elkins & Hofmeister 1988, pp. 10–11; Curry 2019, pp. .
  327. ^ Clark 2006, p. 686; Curry 2019, p. ; Heilbrunn 2012.
  328. ^ Citino 2010; Fraser 2001, p. 4.
  329. ^ Krimmer & Simpson 2011, p. 2.
  330. ^ Storring 2017, pp. .
  331. ^ Langhof & Güldenberg 2019, Introduction; Langhof & Güldenberg 2020, pp. 32–68.
  332. ^ Donoghue 2016.
  333. ^ Blanning 2016, p. 431.
  334. ^ Paret 2012, pp. 29–33.

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January 07, 2023
frederick, great, frederick, german, friedrich, january, 1712, august, 1786, king, prussia, from, 1740, until, 1772, king, prussia, from, 1772, until, death, 1786, most, significant, accomplishments, include, military, successes, silesian, wars, organisation, . Frederick II German Friedrich II 24 January 1712 17 August 1786 was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772 and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786 His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Silesian wars his re organisation of the Prussian Army the First Partition of Poland and his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment Frederick was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia declaring himself King of Prussia after annexing Royal Prussia from the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772 Prussia greatly increased its territories and became a major military power in Europe under his rule He became known as Frederick the Great German Friedrich der Grosse and was nicknamed Old Fritz German Der Alte Fritz Frederick the GreatPortrait by Johann Georg Ziesenis 1763 King in of Prussia Elector of BrandenburgReign31 May 1740 17 August 1786PredecessorFrederick William ISuccessorFrederick William IIBorn 1712 01 24 24 January 1712Berlin Kingdom of PrussiaDied17 August 1786 1786 08 17 aged 74 Potsdam Kingdom of PrussiaBurialSanssouci PotsdamSpouseElisabeth Christine of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel BevernHouseHohenzollernFatherFrederick William I of PrussiaMotherSophia Dorothea of HanoverSignatureIn his youth Frederick was more interested in music and philosophy than in the art of war which led to clashes with his authoritarian father Frederick William I of Prussia However upon ascending to the Prussian throne he attacked and annexed the rich Austrian province of Silesia in 1742 winning military acclaim for himself and Prussia He became an influential military theorist whose analyses emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy tactics mobility and logistics Frederick was a supporter of enlightened absolutism stating that the ruler should be the first servant of the state He modernised the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation He reformed the judicial system and made it possible for men of lower status to become judges and senior bureaucrats Frederick also encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Prussia although he enacted oppressive measures against Catholics in Silesia and Polish Prussia He supported the arts and philosophers he favoured and allowed freedom of the press and literature Frederick was almost certainly homosexual and his sexuality has been the subject of much study He is buried at his favourite residence Sanssouci in Potsdam Because he died childless he was succeeded by his nephew Frederick William II Nearly all 19th century German historians made Frederick into a romantic model of a glorified warrior praising his leadership administrative efficiency devotion to duty and success in building Prussia into a great power in Europe Frederick remained an admired historical figure through Germany s defeat in World War I and the Nazis glorified him as a great German leader pre figuring Adolf Hitler who personally idolised him His reputation became less favourable in Germany after World War II partly due to his status as a Nazi symbol Regardless historians in the 21st century tend to view Frederick as an outstanding military leader and capable monarch whose commitment to enlightenment culture and administrative reform built the foundation that allowed the Kingdom of Prussia to contest the Austrian Habsburgs for leadership among the German states Contents 1 Early life 2 Crown Prince 2 1 Katte affair 2 2 Marriage and War of the Polish Succession 3 Inheritance 4 Reign 4 1 War of the Austrian Succession 4 2 Seven Years War 4 3 First Partition of Poland 4 4 War of the Bavarian Succession 5 Policies 5 1 Administrative modernisation 5 2 Religion 5 3 Environment and agriculture 5 4 Arts and education 5 4 1 Architecture and the fine arts 5 4 2 Science and the Berlin Academy 6 Military theory 7 Later years and death 8 Historiography and legacy 9 Works by Frederick the Great 10 References 11 External linksEarly life EditFrederick was the son of Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia and his wife Sophia Dorothea of Hanover 1 He was born sometime between 11 and 12 p m on 24 January 1712 in the Berlin Palace and was baptised with the single name Friedrich by Benjamin Ursinus von Bar on 31 January 2 The birth was welcomed by his grandfather Frederick I as his two previous grandsons had both died in infancy With the death of Frederick I in 1713 his son Frederick William I became King in Prussia thus making young Frederick the crown prince Frederick had nine siblings who lived to adulthood He had six sisters The eldest was Wilhelmine who became his closest sibling 3 He also had three younger brothers including Augustus William and Henry 4 The new king wished for his children to be educated not as royalty but as simple folk They were tutored by a French woman Madame de Montbail who had also educated Frederick William 5 Frederick William I popularly dubbed the Soldier King had created a large and powerful army that included a regiment of his famous Potsdam Giants he carefully managed the kingdom s wealth and developed a strong centralised government He also had a violent temper and ruled Brandenburg Prussia with absolute authority 6 In contrast Frederick s mother Sophia whose father George Louis of Brunswick Luneburg had succeeded to the British throne as King George I in 1714 was polite charismatic and learned 7 The political and personal differences between Frederick s parents created tensions 8 which affected Frederick s attitude toward his role as a ruler his attitude toward culture and his relationship with his father 9 During his early youth Frederick lived with his mother and sister Wilhelmine 9 although they regularly visited their father s hunting lodge at Konigs Wusterhausen 10 Frederick and his older sister formed a close relationship 9 which lasted until her death in 1758 11 Frederick and his sisters were brought up by a Huguenot governess and tutor and learned French and German simultaneously In spite of his father s desire that his education be entirely religious and pragmatic the young Frederick developed a preference for music literature and French culture Frederick Wilhelm thought these interests were effeminate 12 as they clashed with his militarism resulting in his frequent beating and humiliation of Frederick 13 Nevertheless Frederick with the help of his tutor in Latin Jacques Duhan procured for himself a three thousand volume secret library of poetry Greek and Roman classics and philosophy to supplement his official lessons 14 Although his father Frederick William I had been raised a Calvinist in spite of the Lutheran state faith in Prussia he feared he was not one of God s elect To avoid the possibility of his son Frederick being motivated by the same concerns the king ordered that his heir not be taught about predestination In spite of his father s intention Frederick appeared to have adopted a sense of predestination for himself 15 Crown Prince Edit 24 year old Frederick Crown Prince of Prussia painting by Antoine Pesne 1736 See also Sexuality of Frederick the Great At age 16 Frederick formed an attachment to the king s 17 year old page Peter Karl Christoph von Keith Wilhelmine recorded that the two soon became inseparable Keith was intelligent but without education He served my brother from feelings of real devotion and kept him informed of all the king s actions 16 Wilhelmine would further record that Though I had noticed that he was on more familiar terms with this page than was proper in his position I did not know how intimate the friendship was As Frederick was almost certainly homosexual 17 18 his relationship with Keith may have been homoerotic although the extent of their intimacy remains ambiguous 19 When Frederick William heard rumours of their relationship Keith was sent away to an unpopular regiment near the Dutch frontier 20 In the mid 1720s Queen Sophia Dorothea attempted to arrange the marriage of Frederick and his sister Wilhelmine to her brother King George II s children Amelia and Frederick who was the heir apparent 21 Fearing an alliance between Prussia and Great Britain Field Marshal von Seckendorff the Austrian ambassador in Berlin bribed the Prussian Minister of War Field Marshal von Grumbkow and the Prussian ambassador in London Benjamin Reichenbach The pair undermined the relationship between the British and Prussian courts using bribery and slander 22 Eventually Frederick William became angered by the idea of the effete Frederick being married to an English wife and under the influence of the British court 23 Instead he signed a treaty with Austria which vaguely promised to acknowledge Prussia s rights to the principalities of Julich Berg which led to the collapse of the marriage proposal 24 Katte affair Edit Soon after his relationship with Keith ended Frederick became close friends with Hans Hermann von Katte a Prussian officer several years older than Frederick who became one of his boon companions and may have been his lover 25 After the English marriages became impossible Frederick plotted to flee to England with Katte and other junior army officers 26 While the royal retinue was near Mannheim in the Electorate of the Palatinate Robert Keith who was Peter Keith s brother and also one of Frederick s companions had an attack of conscience when the conspirators were preparing to escape and begged Frederick William for forgiveness on 5 August 1730 27 Frederick and Katte were subsequently arrested and imprisoned in Kustrin Because they were army officers who had tried to flee Prussia for Great Britain Frederick William levelled an accusation of treason against the pair The king briefly threatened the crown prince with execution then considered forcing Frederick to renounce the succession in favour of his brother Augustus William although either option would have been difficult to justify to the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire 28 The king forced Frederick to watch the beheading of his confidant Katte at Kustrin on 6 November leading the crown prince to faint just before the fatal blow 29 Frederick was granted a royal pardon and released from his cell on 18 November 1730 although he remained stripped of his military rank 30 Rather than being permitted to return to Berlin he was forced to remain in Kustrin and began rigorous schooling in statecraft and administration for the War and Estates Departments Tensions eased slightly when Frederick William visited Kustrin a year later and Frederick was allowed to visit Berlin on the occasion of his sister Wilhelmine s marriage to Margrave Frederick of Bayreuth on 20 November 1731 31 The crown prince returned to Berlin after finally being released from his tutelage at Kustrin on 26 February 1732 on condition that he marry Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick Bevern 32 Marriage and War of the Polish Succession Edit Frederick s marriage to Elisabeth Christine on 12 June 1733 at Schloss Salzdahlum Initially Frederick William considered marrying Frederick to Elisabeth of Mecklenburg Schwerin the niece of Empress Anna of Russia but this plan was ardently opposed by Prince Eugene of Savoy Frederick himself proposed marrying Maria Theresa of Austria in return for renouncing the succession 33 Instead Eugene persuaded Frederick William through Seckendorff that the crown prince should marry Elisabeth Christine who was a Protestant relative of the Austrian Habsburgs 34 Frederick wrote to his sister that There can be neither love nor friendship between us 35 and he threatened suicide 36 but he went along with the wedding on 12 June 1733 He had little in common with his bride and the marriage was resented as an example of the Austrian political interference that had plagued Prussia 37 Nevertheless during their early married life the royal couple resided at the Crown Prince s Palace in Berlin Later Elisabeth Christine accompanied Frederick to Schloss Rheinsberg where at this time she played an active role in his social life 38 After his father died and he had secured the throne Frederick separated from Elisabeth He granted her the Schonhausen Palace and apartments at the Berliner Stadtschloss but he prohibited Elisabeth Christine from visiting his court in Potsdam Frederick and Elisabeth Christine had no children and Frederick bestowed the title of the heir to the throne Prince of Prussia on his brother Augustus William Nevertheless Elisabeth Christine remained devoted to him Frederick gave her all the honours befitting her station but never displayed any affection After their separation he would only see her on state occasions 39 These included visits to her on her birthday and were some of the rare occasions when Frederick did not wear military uniform 40 Rheinsberg Palace Frederick s residence from 1736 to 1740 In 1732 Frederick was restored to the Prussian Army as Colonel of the Regiment von der Goltz stationed near Nauen and Neuruppin 41 When Prussia provided a contingent of troops to aid the Army of the Holy Roman Empire during the War of the Polish Succession Frederick studied under Prince Eugene of Savoy during the campaign against France on the Rhine 42 he noted the weakness of the Imperial Army under Eugene s command something that he would capitalise on at Austria s expense when he later took the throne 43 Frederick William weakened by gout and seeking to reconcile with his heir granted Frederick Schloss Rheinsberg in Rheinsberg north of Neuruppin At Rheinsberg Frederick assembled a small number of musicians actors and other artists He spent his time reading watching and acting in dramatic plays as well as composing and playing music 44 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 45 Later Frederick regarded this time as one of the happiest of his life 46 Reading and studying the works of Niccolo Machiavelli such as The Prince was considered necessary for any king in Europe to rule effectively In 1739 Frederick finished his Anti Machiavel an idealistic rebuttal of Machiavelli It was written in French as were all of Frederick s works and published anonymously in 1740 but Voltaire distributed it in Amsterdam to great popularity 47 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 Frederick and his father were more or less reconciled at the latter s death and Frederick later admitted despite their constant conflict that Frederick William had been an effective ruler What a terrible man he was But he was just intelligent and skilled in the management of affairs it was through his efforts through his tireless labour that I have been able to accomplish everything that I have done since 48 Inheritance Edit Europe at the time when Frederick came to the throne in 1740 with Brandenburg Prussia in violet Europe at the time of Frederick s death in 1786 with Brandenburg Prussia in violet shows that Prussia s territory has been greatly extended by his Silesian Wars his inheritance of East Frisia and the First Partition of Poland In one defining respect Frederick would come to the throne with an exceptional inheritance Frederick William I had left him with a highly militarised state Prussia was the twelfth largest country in Europe in terms of population but its army was the fourth largest only the armies of France Russia and Austria were larger 49 Prussia had one soldier for every 28 citizens whereas Great Britain only had one for every 310 and the military absorbed 86 of Prussia s state budget 50 Moreover the Prussian infantry trained by Frederick William I were at the time of Frederick s accession arguably unrivalled in discipline and firepower By 1770 after two decades of punishing war alternating with intervals of peace Frederick had doubled the size of the huge army he had inherited The situation is summed up in a widely translated and quoted aphorism attributed to Mirabeau who asserted in 1786 that La Prusse n est pas un pays qui a une armee c est une armee qui a un pays 51 Prussia was not a state in possession of an army but an army in possession of a state 52 By using the resources his frugal father had cultivated Frederick was eventually able to establish Prussia as the fifth and smallest European great power 53 Prince Frederick was twenty eight years old when his father Frederick William I died and he ascended to the throne of Prussia 54 Before his accession Frederick was told by D Alembert The philosophers and the men of letters in every land have long looked upon you Sire as their leader and model 55 Such devotion consequently had to be tempered by political realities When Frederick ascended the throne as the third King in Prussia in 1740 his realm 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 Kingdom of Prussia the former Duchy of Prussia outside of the Empire bordering the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth He was titled King in Prussia because his kingdom included only part of historic Prussia he was to declare himself King of Prussia after the First Partition of Poland in 1772 56 Reign EditThe major battles of Frederick the Great Interactive fullscreen map First Silesian War Second Silesian War Third Silesian War War of the Austrian Succession Edit Main articles First Silesian War and Second Silesian War When Frederick became king he was faced with the challenge of overcoming Prussia s weaknesses vulnerably disconnected holdings with a weak economic base 57 To strengthen Prussia s position he fought wars mainly against Austria whose Habsburg dynasty had reigned as Holy Roman Emperors continuously since the 15th century 58 Thus upon succeeding to the throne on 31 May 1740 59 Frederick declined to endorse the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 a legal mechanism to ensure the inheritance of the Habsburg domains by Maria Theresa of Austria daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI Upon the death of Charles VI on 29 October 1740 60 Frederick disputed the 23 year old Maria Theresa s right of succession to the Habsburg lands while simultaneously asserting his own right to the Austrian province of Silesia based on a number of old though ambiguous Hohenzollern claims to parts of Silesia 61 Accordingly the First Silesian War 1740 1742 part of the War of the Austrian Succession began on 16 December 1740 when Frederick invaded and quickly occupied almost all of Silesia within seven weeks 54 Though Frederick justified his occupation on dynastic grounds 62 the invasion of this militarily and politically vulnerable part of the Habsburg empire also had the potential to provide substantial long term economic and strategic benefits 63 The occupation of Silesia added one of the most densely industrialised German regions to Frederick s kingdom and gave it control over the navigable Oder River 64 It nearly doubled Prussia s population and increased its territory by a third 65 It also prevented Augustus III King of Poland and Elector of Saxony from seeking to connect his own disparate lands through Silesia 66 Portrait of Frederick the Great during his early reign by Antoine Pesne 18th century In late March 1741 Frederick set out on campaign again to capture the few remaining fortresses within the province that were still holding out He was surprised by the arrival of an Austrian army which he fought at the Battle of Mollwitz on 10 April 1741 67 Though Frederick had served under Prince Eugene of Savoy this was his first major battle in command of an army In the course of the fighting Frederick s cavalry was disorganised by a charge of the Austrian horse Believing his forces had been defeated Frederick galloped away to avoid capture 68 leaving Field Marshal Kurt Schwerin in command to lead the disciplined Prussian infantry to victory Frederick would later admit to humiliation at his abdication of command 69 and would state that Mollwitz was his school 70 Disappointed with the performance of his cavalry whose training his father had neglected in favour of the infantry Frederick spent much of his time in Silesia establishing a new doctrine for them 71 Encouraged by Frederick s victory at Mollwitz the French and their ally the Electorate of Bavaria entered the war against Austria in early September 1741 and marched on Prague 72 Meanwhile Frederick as well as other members of the League of Nymphenburg sponsored the candidacy of his ally Charles of Bavaria to be elected Holy Roman Emperor In late November the Franco Bavarian forces took Prague and Charles was crowned King of Bohemia 73 Subsequently he was elected as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII on 24 January 1742 After the Austrians pulled their army out of Silesia to defend Bohemia Frederick pursued them and blocked their path to Prague 74 The Austrians counter attacked on 17 May 1742 initiating the Battle of Chotusitz In this battle Frederick s retrained cavalry proved more effective than at Mollwitz 75 but once more it was the discipline of the Prussian infantry that won the field 76 and allowed Frederick to claim a major victory 77 This victory along with the Franco Bavarian forces capturing Prague forced the Austrians to seek peace The terms of the Treaty of Breslau between Austria and Prussia negotiated in June 1742 gave Prussia all of Silesia and Glatz County with the Austrians retaining only the portion called Austrian or Czech Silesia 78 Battle of Hohenfriedberg Attack of the Prussian Infantry by Carl Rochling By 1743 the Austrians had subdued Bavaria and driven the French out of Bohemia Frederick strongly suspected Maria Theresa would resume war in an attempt to recover Silesia Accordingly he renewed his alliance with France and preemptively invaded Bohemia in August 1744 beginning the Second Silesian War 79 In late August 1744 Frederick s army had crossed the Bohemian frontier marched directly to Prague and laid siege to the city which surrendered on 16 September 1744 after a three day bombardment 80 Frederick s troops immediately continued marching into the heart of central Bohemia 69 but Saxony had now joined the war against Prussia 81 Although the combined Austrian and Saxon armies outnumbered Frederick s forces they refused to directly engage with Frederick s army harassing his supply lines instead Eventually Frederick was forced to withdraw to Silesia as winter approached 82 In the interim Frederick also successfully claimed his inheritance to the minor territory of East Frisia on the North Sea coast of Germany occupying the territory after its last ruler died without issue in 1744 83 In January 1745 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII of Bavaria died 84 taking Bavaria out of the war and allowing Maria Theresa s husband Francis of Lorraine to be eventually elected Holy Roman Emperor 85 Now able to focus solely on Frederick s army the Austrians who were reinforced by the Saxons crossed the mountains to invade Silesia After allowing them across a Frederick pinned them down and decisively defeated them at the Battle of Hohenfriedberg on 4 June 1745 87 Frederick subsequently advanced into Bohemia and defeated a counterattack by the Austrians at the Battle of Soor 88 Frederick then turned towards Dresden when he learned the Saxons were preparing to march on Berlin However on 15 December 1745 Prussian forces under the command of Leopold of Anhalt Dessau soundly defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Kesselsdorf 89 After linking up his army with Leopold s Frederick occupied the Saxon capitol of Dresden forcing the Saxon elector Augustus III to capitulate 90 Once again Frederick s victories on the battlefield compelled his enemies to sue for peace Under the terms of the Treaty of Dresden signed on 25 December 1745 Austria was forced to adhere to the terms of the Treaty of Breslau giving Silesia to Prussia 91 It was after the signing of the treaty that Frederick then 33 years old first became known as the Great 92 Seven Years War Edit Main article Third Silesian War Though Frederick had withdrawn from the War of the Austrian Succession once Austria guaranteed his possession of Silesia 93 Austria remained embroiled in the war until the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle in 1748 Less than a year after the treaty was signed Maria Theresa was once more seeking allies particularly Russia and France to eventually renew the war with Prussia to regain Silesia 94 In preparation for a new confrontation with Frederick the Empress reformed Austria s tax system and military 95 During the ten years of peace that followed the signing of the Treaty of Dresden Frederick also prepared to defend his claim on Silesia by further fortifying the province and expanding his army 96 as well as reorganising his finances 97 Battle of Rossbach a tactical victory for Frederick In 1756 Frederick attempted to forestall Britain s financing of a Russian army on Prussia s border by negotiating an alliance with Britain at the Convention of Westminster in which Prussia would protect Hanover against French attack and Britain would no longer subsidise Russia This treaty triggered the Diplomatic Revolution in which Habsburg Austria and Bourbon France who had been traditional enemies allied together with Russia to defeat the Anglo Prussian coalition 98 To strengthen his strategic position against this coalition 99 on 29 August 1756 Frederick s well prepared army preemptively invaded Saxony 100 His invasion triggered the Third Silesian War and the larger Seven Years War both of which lasted until 1763 He quickly captured Dresden besieged the trapped Saxon army in Pirna and continued marching the remainder of his army toward North Bohemia intending to winter there 101 At the Battle of Lobositz he claimed a close victory against an Austrian army that was aiming to relieve Pirna 102 but afterward withdrew his forces back to Saxony for the winter 103 When the Saxon forces in Pirna finally capitulated in October 1756 Frederick forcibly incorporated them into his own army 104 This action along with his initial invasion of neutral Saxony brought him widespread international criticism 105 but the conquest of Saxony also provided him with significant financial military and strategic assets that helped him sustain the war 106 In the early spring of 1757 Frederick once more invaded Bohemia 107 He was victorious against the Austrian army at the Battle of Prague on 6 May 1757 but his losses were so great he was unable to take the city itself and settled for besieging it instead 108 A month later on 18 June 1757 Frederick suffered his first major defeat at the Battle of Kolin 109 which forced him to abandon his invasion of Bohemia When the French and the Austrians pursued him into Saxony and Silesia in the fall of 1757 Frederick defeated and repulsed a much larger Franco Austrian army at the Battle of Rossbach 110 and another Austrian army at the Battle of Leuthen 111 Frederick hoped these two victories would force Austria to negotiate but Maria Theresa was determined not to make peace until she had recovered Silesia and the war continued 112 Despite its strong performance the losses suffered from combat disease and desertion had severely reduced the quality of the Prussian army 113 Frederick leading his troops at the Battle of Zorndorf by Carl Rochling In the remaining years of the war Frederick faced a coalition of enemies including Austria France Russia Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire 114 supported only by Great Britain and its allies Hesse Brunswick and Hanover 115 In 1758 Frederick once more took the initiative by invading Moravia By May he had laid siege to Olomouc but the Austrians were able to hold the town and destroyed Frederick s supply train forcing him to retreat into Silesia 116 In the meantime the Russian army had advanced within 100 miles 160 km east of Berlin In August he fought the Russian forces to a draw at the Battle of Zorndorf in which nearly a third of Frederick s soldiers were casualties 117 He then headed south to face the Austrian army in Saxony There he was defeated at the Battle of Hochkirch on 14 October although the Austrian forces were not able to exploit their victory 118 During the 1759 campaign the Austrian and Russian forces took the initiative which they kept for the remainder of the war 119 They joined and once more advanced on Berlin Frederick s army which consisted of a substantial number of quickly recruited half trained soldiers 120 attempted to check them at the Battle of Kunersdorf on 12 August where he was defeated and his troops were routed 121 Almost half his army was destroyed and Frederick almost became a casualty when a bullet smashed a snuffbox he was carrying 122 Nevertheless the Austro Russian forces hesitated and stopped their advance for the year an event Frederick later called the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg 123 Frederick spent the remainder of the year in a futile attempt to manoeuvre the Austrians out of Saxony where they had recaptured Dresden 124 His effort cost him further losses when his general Friedrich August von Finck capitulated at Maxen on 20 November 125 At the beginning of 1760 the Austrians moved to retake Silesia where Frederick defeated them at the Battle of Liegnitz on 15 August 126 The victory did not allow Frederick to regain the initiative or prevent Russian and Austrian troops from raiding Berlin in October to extort a ransom from the city 127 At the end of the campaign season Frederick fought his last major engagement of the war 128 He won a marginal victory at the Battle of Torgau on 3 November 129 which secured Berlin from further raids 130 In this battle Frederick became a casualty when he was hit in the chest by a spent bullet 131 By 1761 both the Austrian and Prussian military forces were so exhausted that no major battles were fought between them Frederick s position became even more desperate in 1761 when Britain having achieved victory in the American and Indian theatres of the war ended its financial support for Prussia after the death of King George II Frederick s uncle 132 The Russian forces also continued their advance occupying Pomerania and parts of Brandenburg With the Russians slowly advancing towards Berlin it looked as though Prussia was about to collapse 133 On 6 January 1762 Frederick wrote to Count Karl Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein We ought now to think of preserving for my nephew by way of negotiation whatever fragments of my territory we can save from the avidity of my enemies 134 The sudden death of Empress Elizabeth of Russia in January 1762 led to the succession of the Prussophile Peter III her German nephew who was also the Duke of Holstein Gottorp 135 This led to the collapse of the anti Prussian coalition Peter immediately promised to end the Russian occupation of East Prussia and Pomerania returning them to Frederick One of Peter III s first diplomatic endeavours was to seek a Prussian title Frederick obliged Peter III was so enamoured of Frederick that he not only offered him the full use of a Russian corps for the remainder of the war against Austria he also wrote to Frederick that he would rather have been a general in the Prussian army than Tsar of Russia 136 More significantly Russia s about face from an enemy of Prussia to its patron rattled the leadership of Sweden who hastily made peace with Frederick as well 137 With the threat to his eastern borders over and France also seeking peace after its defeats by Britain Frederick was able to fight the Austrians to a stalemate and finally brought them to the peace table While the ensuing Treaty of Hubertusburg simply returned the European borders to what they had been before the Seven Years War Frederick s ability to retain Silesia in spite of the odds earned Prussia admiration throughout the German speaking territories A year following the Treaty of Hubertusburg Catherine the Great Peter III s widow and usurper signed an eight year alliance with Prussia albeit with conditions that favoured the Russians 138 Frederick and his soldiers after the Battle of Hochkirch in 1758 by Carl Rochling Frederick s ultimate success in the Seven Years War came at a heavy financial cost to Prussia Part of the burden was covered by the Anglo Prussian Convention which gave Frederick an annual 670 000 in British subsidies from 1758 till 1762 139 These subsidies ceased when Frederick allied with Peter III 140 partly because of the changed political situation 141 and also because of Great Britain s decreasing willingness to pay the sums Frederick wanted 142 Frederick also financed the war by devaluing the Prussian coin five times debased coins were produced with the help of Leipzig mintmasters Veitel Heine Ephraim Daniel Itzig and Moses Isaacs 143 He also debased the coinage of Saxony and Poland 144 This debasement of the currency helped Frederick cover over 20 per cent of the cost of the war but at the price of causing massive inflation and economic upheaval throughout the region 145 Saxony occupied by Prussia for most of the conflict was left nearly destitute as a result 146 While Prussia lost no territory the population and army were severely depleted by constant combat and invasions by Austria Russia and Sweden The best of Frederick s officer corps were also killed in the conflict Although Frederick managed to bring his army up to 190 000 men by the time the economy had largely recovered in 1772 which made it the third largest army in Europe almost none of the officers in this army were veterans of his generation and the King s attitude towards them was extremely harsh 147 During this time Frederick also suffered a number of personal losses Many of his closest friends and family members including his brother Augustus William 148 his sister Wilhelmine and his mother had died while Frederick was engaged in the war 149 First Partition of Poland Edit Main articles First Partition of Poland and Prussian Partition The Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth after the First Partition 1772 Frederick sought to acquire and economically exploit Polish Prussia as part of his wider aim of enriching his kingdom 150 As early as 1731 Frederick had suggested that his country would benefit from annexing Polish territory 151 and had described Poland as an artichoke ready to be consumed leaf by leaf 152 By 1752 he had prepared the ground for the partition of Poland Lithuania aiming to achieve his goal of building a territorial bridge between Pomerania Brandenburg and his East Prussian provinces 153 The new territories would also provide an increased tax base additional populations for the Prussian military and serve as a surrogate for the other overseas colonies of the other great powers 154 Poland was vulnerable to partition due to poor governance as well as the interference of foreign powers in its internal affairs 155 Frederick himself was partly responsible for this weakness by opposing attempts at financial and political reform in Poland 150 and undermining the Polish economy by inflating its currency by his use of Polish coin dies The profits exceeded 25 million thalers twice the peacetime national budget of Prussia 156 He also thwarted Polish efforts to create a stable economic system by building a customs fort at Marienwerder on the Vistula Poland s major trade artery 150 and by bombarding Polish customs ports on the Vistula 157 Frederick also used Poland s religious dissension to keep the kingdom open to Prussian control 158 Poland was predominantly Roman Catholic but approximately ten per cent of Poland s population 600 000 Eastern Orthodox and 250 000 Protestants were non Catholic dissenters During the 1760s the dissenters political importance was out of proportion to their numbers Although dissenters still had substantial rights the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth had increasingly been reducing their civic rights after a period of considerable religious and political freedom 159 Soon Protestants were barred from public offices and the Sejm Polish Parliament 160 Frederick took advantage of this situation by becoming the protector of Protestant interests in Poland in the name of religious freedom 161 Frederick further opened Prussian control by signing an alliance with Catherine the Great who placed Stanislaw August Poniatowski a former lover and favourite on the Polish throne 162 King Frederick II by Anna Dorothea Therbusch 1772 After Russia occupied the Danubian Principalities in 1769 70 Frederick s representative in Saint Petersburg his brother Prince Henry convinced Frederick and Maria Theresa that the balance of power would be maintained by a tripartite division of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth instead of Russia taking land from the Ottomans They agreed to the First Partition of Poland in 1772 which took place without war Frederick acquired most of Royal Prussia annexing 38 000 square kilometres 15 000 sq mi and 600 000 inhabitants Although Frederick s share of the partition was the smallest of the partitioning powers the lands he acquired had roughly the same economic value as the others and had great strategic value 163 The newly created province of West Prussia connected East Prussia and Farther Pomerania and granted Prussia control of the mouth of the Vistula River as well as cutting off Poland s sea trade Maria Theresa had only reluctantly agreed to the partition to which Frederick sarcastically commented she cries but she takes 164 Frederick undertook the exploitation of Polish territory under the pretext of an enlightened civilising mission that emphasised the supposed cultural superiority of Prussian ways 165 He saw Polish Prussia as barbaric and uncivilised 166 describing the inhabitants as slovenly Polish trash 167 and comparing them unfavourably with the Iroquois 164 His long term goal was to remove the Poles through Germanisation which included appropriating Polish Crown lands and monasteries 168 introducing a military draft encouraging German settlement in the region and implementing a tax policy that disproportionately impoverished Polish nobles 169 War of the Bavarian Succession Edit Main article War of the Bavarian Succession Late in his life Frederick involved Prussia in the low scale War of the Bavarian Succession in 1778 in which he stifled Austrian attempts to exchange the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria 170 For their part the Austrians tried to pressure the French to participate in the War of Bavarian Succession since there were guarantees under consideration related to the Peace of Westphalia clauses which linked the Bourbon dynasty of France and the Habsburg Lorraine dynasty of Austria Unfortunately for the Austrian Emperor Joseph II the French were unwilling to provide manpower and resources to the endeavour since they were already providing support to the American revolutionaries on the North American continent 171 Frederick ended up as a beneficiary of the American Revolutionary War as Austria was left more or less isolated 172 Moreover Saxony and Russia both of which had been Austria s allies in the Seven Years War were now allied with Prussia 173 Although Frederick was weary of war in his old age he was determined not to allow Austrian dominance in German affairs 174 Frederick and Prince Henry marched the Prussian army into Bohemia to confront Joseph s army but the two forces ultimately descended into a stalemate largely living off the land and skirmishing rather than actively attacking each other 175 Frederick s longtime rival Maria Theresa who was Joseph s mother and his co ruler did not want a new war with Prussia and secretly sent messengers to Frederick to discuss peace negotiations 176 Finally Catherine II of Russia threatened to enter the war on Frederick s side if peace was not negotiated and Joseph reluctantly dropped his claim to Bavaria 177 When Joseph tried the scheme again in 1784 Frederick created the Furstenbund League of Princes allowing himself to be seen as a defender of German liberties in contrast to his earlier role of attacking the imperial Habsburgs To stop Joseph II s attempts to acquire Bavaria Frederick enlisted the help of the Electors of Hanover and Saxony along with several other minor German princes Perhaps even more significant Frederick benefited from the defection of the senior prelate of the German Church the Archbishop of Mainz who was also the arch chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire which further strengthened Frederick and Prussia s standing amid the German states 178 Policies EditAdministrative modernisation Edit Portrait by Wilhelm Camphausen 1870 In his earliest published work the Anti Machiavel 179 and his later Testament politique Political Testament 180 Frederick wrote that the sovereign was the first servant of the state b Acting in this role Frederick helped transform Prussia from a European backwater to an economically strong and politically reformed state 183 He protected his industries with high tariffs and minimal restrictions on domestic trade He increased the freedom of speech in press and literature 184 abolished most uses of judicial torture 185 and reduced the number of crimes that could be punished by the death sentence 186 Working with his Grand Chancellor Samuel von Cocceji he reformed the judicial system and made it more efficient and he moved the courts toward greater legal equality of all citizens by removing special courts for special social classes 187 The reform was completed after Frederick s death resulting in the Prussian Law Code of 1794 which balanced absolutism with human rights and corporate privilege with equality before the law Reception to the law code was mixed as it was often viewed as contradictory 188 Frederick strove to put Prussia s fiscal system in order In January 1750 Johann Philipp Graumann was appointed as Frederick s confidential adviser on finance military affairs and royal possessions as well as the Director General of all mint facilities 189 Graumann s currency reform slightly lowered the silver content of Prussian thaler from 1 12 Cologne mark of silver to 1 14 190 which brought the metal content of the thaler into alignment with its face value 191 and it standardised the Prussian coinage system 189 As a result Prussian coins which had been leaving the country nearly as fast as they were minted 190 remained in circulation in Prussia 192 In addition Frederick estimated that he earned about one million thalers in profits on the seignorage 190 The coin eventually became universally accepted beyond Prussia and helped increase industry and trade 191 A gold coin the Friedrich d or was also minted to oust the Dutch ducat from the Baltic trade 193 However the fixed ratio between gold and silver led to the gold coins being perceived as more valuable which caused them to leave circulation in Prussia Being unable to meet Frederick s expectations for profit Graumann was removed in 1754 193 Although Frederick s debasement of the coinage to fund the Seven Years War left the Prussian monetary system in disarray 192 the Mint Edict of May 1763 brought it back to stability by fixing rates at which depreciated coins would be accepted and requiring tax payments in currency of prewar value Many other rulers soon followed the steps of Frederick in reforming their own currencies this resulted in a shortage of ready money thus lowering prices 194 The functionality and stability of the reform made the Prussian monetary system the standard in Northern Germany 195 Around 1751 Frederick founded the Emden Company to promote trade with China He introduced the lottery fire insurance and a giro discount and credit bank to stabilise the economy 196 One of Frederick s achievements after the Seven Years War included the control of grain prices whereby government storehouses would enable the civilian population to survive in needy regions where the harvest was poor 197 He commissioned Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky to promote the trade and to take on the competition with France put a silk factory where soon 1 500 people found employment Frederick followed Gotzkowsky s recommendations in the field of toll levies and import restrictions When Gotzkowsky asked for a deferral during the Amsterdam banking crisis of 1763 Frederick took over his porcelain factory now known as KPM 198 Frederick modernised the Prussian civil service and promoted religious tolerance throughout his realm to attract more settlers in East Prussia With the help of French experts he organised a system of indirect taxation which provided the state with more revenue than direct taxation though French officials administering it may have pocketed some of the profit 199 In 1781 Frederick made coffee a royal monopoly and employed disabled soldiers the coffee sniffers to spy on citizens illegally roasting coffee much to the annoyance of the general population 200 Though Frederick started many reforms during his reign his ability to see them to fulfilment was not as disciplined or thorough as his military successes 201 Religion Edit St Hedwig s Cathedral the first Roman Catholic church built in Berlin since the Reformation was erected by the sanction of Frederick who also sketched its design 202 In contrast to his devoutly Calvinist father Frederick was a religious sceptic who has been described as a deist 203 c Frederick was pragmatic about religious faith Three times during his life he presented his own confession of Christian faith during his imprisonment after Katte s execution 1730 after his conquest of Silesia in 1741 and just before the start of the Seven Years War in 1756 in each case these confessions also served personal or political goals 206 He tolerated all faiths in his realm but Protestantism remained the favoured religion and Catholics were not chosen for higher state positions 207 Frederick wanted development throughout the country adapted to the needs of each region He was interested in attracting a diversity of skills to his country whether from Jesuit teachers Huguenot citizens or Jewish merchants and bankers Frederick retained Jesuits as teachers in Silesia Warmia and the Netze District recognising their educational activities as an asset for the nation 208 He continued to support them after their suppression by Pope Clement XIV 209 He befriended the Roman Catholic Prince Bishop of Warmia Ignacy Krasicki whom he asked to consecrate St Hedwig s Cathedral in 1773 210 He also accepted countless Protestant weavers from Bohemia who were fleeing from the devoutly Catholic rule of Maria Theresa granting them freedom from taxes and military service 211 Constantly looking for new colonists to settle his lands he encouraged immigration by repeatedly emphasising that nationality and religion were of no concern to him This policy allowed Prussia s population to recover very quickly from its considerable losses during Frederick s three wars 212 Though Frederick was known to be more tolerant of Jews and Roman Catholics than many neighbouring German states his practical minded tolerance was not fully unprejudiced Frederick wrote in his Testament politique We have too many Jews in the towns They are needed on the Polish border because in these areas Hebrews alone perform trade As soon as you get away from the frontier the Jews become a disadvantage they form cliques they deal in contraband and get up to all manner of rascally tricks which are detrimental to Christian burghers and merchants I have never persecuted anyone from this or any other sect I think however it would be prudent to pay attention so that their numbers do not increase 213 The success in integrating the Jews into areas of society where Frederick encouraged them can be seen by Gerson von Bleichroder s role during the 19th century in financing Otto von Bismarck s efforts to unite Germany 214 Frederick was also less tolerant of Catholicism in his occupied territories In Silesia he disregarded canon law to install clergy who were loyal to him 215 In Polish Prussia he confiscated the Roman Catholic Church s goods and property 168 making clergy dependent on the government for their pay and defining how they were to perform their duties 216 Like many leading figures in the Age of Enlightenment Frederick was a Freemason 217 having joined during a trip to Brunswick in 1738 218 His membership legitimised the group s presence in Prussia and protected it against charges of subversion 219 In 1786 he became the First Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree his double headed eagle emblem was also used for 32nd and 33rd degree Masons following the adoption of seven additional degrees to the Masonic Rite 220 Frederick s religious views were sometimes criticised His views resulted in his condemnation by the anti revolutionary French Jesuit Augustin Barruel In his 1797 book Memoires pour servir a l histoire du Jacobinisme Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism Barruel described an influential conspiracy theory that accused King Frederick of taking part in a plot which led to the outbreak of the French Revolution and having been the secret protector and adviser of fellow conspirators Voltaire Jean le Rond d Alembert and Denis Diderot who all sought to destroy Christianity and foment rebellion against Kings and Monarchs 221 Environment and agriculture Edit Frederick the Great inspects the potato harvest outside Neustettin now Szczecinek Poland Eastern Pomerania Frederick was keenly interested in land use especially draining swamps and opening new farmland for colonisers who would increase the kingdom s food supply He called it Peuplierungspolitik peopling policy About twelve hundred new villages were founded in his reign 222 He told Voltaire Whoever improves the soil cultivates land lying waste and drains swamps is making conquests from barbarism 223 Using improved technology enabled him to create new farmland through a massive drainage programme in the country s Oderbruch marshland This programme created roughly 60 000 hectares 150 000 acres of new farmland but also eliminated vast swaths of natural habitat destroyed the region s biodiversity and displaced numerous native plant and animal communities Frederick saw this project as the taming and conquering of nature 224 considering uncultivated land useless 225 an attitude that reflected his enlightenment era rationalist sensibilities 226 He presided over the construction of canals for bringing crops to market and introduced new crops especially the potato and the turnip to the country For this he was sometimes called Der Kartoffelkonig the Potato King 227 Frederick s interest in land reclamation may have resulted from his upbringing As a child his father Frederick William I made young Frederick work in the region s provinces teaching the boy about the area s agriculture and geography This created an interest in cultivation and development that the boy retained when he became ruler 228 Frederick founded the first veterinary school in Prussia Unusually for the time and his aristocratic background he criticised hunting as cruel rough and uneducated When someone once asked Frederick why he did not wear spurs when riding his horse he replied Try sticking a fork into your naked stomach and you will soon see why 29 He loved dogs and his horse and wanted to be buried with his greyhounds In 1752 he wrote to his sister Wilhelmine that people indifferent to loyal animals would not be devoted to their human comrades either and that it was better to be too sensitive than too harsh He was also close to nature and issued decrees to protect plants 229 Arts and education Edit The Flute Concert of Sanssouci by Adolph Menzel 1852 depicts Frederick playing the flute in his music room at Sanssouci as C P E Bach accompanies him on a fortepiano by Gottfried Silbermann Frederick was a patron of music 230 and the court musicians he supported included C P E Bach Carl Heinrich Graun and Franz Benda 231 A meeting with Johann Sebastian Bach in 1747 in Potsdam led to Bach s writing The Musical Offering 232 He was also a talented musician and composer in his own right playing the transverse flute 233 as well as composing 121 sonatas for flute and continuo four concertos for flute and strings four sinfonias 234 three military marches and seven arias 235 Additionally the Hohenfriedberger Marsch was allegedly written by Frederick to commemorate his victory in the Battle of Hohenfriedberg during the Second Silesian War 236 His flute sonatas were often composed in collaboration with Johann Joachim Quantz 237 who was Frederick s occasional music tutor in his youth 238 and joined his court as composer and flute maker in 1741 239 Frederick s flute sonatas are written in the Baroque style in which flute plays the melody sometimes imitating operatic vocal styles like the aria and recitative while the accompaniment was usually played by just one instrument per part to highlight the delicate sound of the flute 240 Frederick also wrote sketches outlines and libretti for opera that were included as part of the repertoire for the Berlin Opera House These works which were often completed in collaboration with Graun d included the operas Coriolano 1749 Silla 1753 Montezuma 1755 and Il tempio d Amore 1756 242 Frederick saw opera as playing an important role in imparting enlightenment philosophy using it to critique superstition and the Pietism that still held sway in Prussia 243 He also attempted to broaden access to opera by making admission to it free 244 Frederick also wrote philosophical works 245 publishing some of his writings under the title of The Works of a Sans Souci Philosopher 246 Frederick corresponded with key French Enlightenment figures including Voltaire who at one point declared Frederick to be a philosopher king 247 and the Marquis d Argens whom he appointed as Royal Chamberlain in 1742 and later as the Director of the Prussian Academy of Arts and Berlin State Opera 248 His openness to philosophy had its limits He did not admire the encyclopedistes or the French intellectual avant garde of his time 249 though he did shelter Rousseau from persecution for a number of years Moreover once he ascended the Prussian throne he found it increasingly difficult to apply the philosophical ideas of his youth to his role as king 250 Like many European rulers of the time who were influenced by the prestige of Louis XIV of France and his court 251 Frederick adopted French tastes and manners 252 though in Frederick s case the extent of his Francophile tendencies might also have been a reaction to the austerity of the family environment created by his father who had a deep aversion for France and promoted an austere culture for his state 253 He was educated by French tutors 254 and almost all the books in his library which covered topics as diverse as mathematics art politics the classics and literary works by 17th century French authors were written in French 255 French was Frederick s preferred language for speaking and writing though he had to rely on proofreaders to correct his difficulties with its spelling 256 Frederick the Great by Anton Graff 1781 Though Frederick used German as his working language with his administration and with the army he claimed to have never learned it properly 257 and never fully mastered speaking or writing it 258 He also disliked the German language 259 thinking it was inharmonious and awkward 260 He once commented that German authors pile parenthesis upon parenthesis and often you find only at the end of an entire page the verb on which depends the meaning of the whole sentence 261 He considered the German culture of his time particularly literature and theatre to be inferior to that of France believing that it had been hindered by the devastation of the Thirty Years War 262 He suggested that it could eventually equal its rivals but this would require a complete codification of the German language the emergence of talented German authors and extensive patronage of the arts by Germanic rulers This was a project he believed would take a century or more 263 Frederick s love of French culture was not without limits either He disapproved of the luxury and extravagance of the French royal court He also ridiculed German princes especially the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland Augustus III who imitated French sumptuousness 264 His own court remained quite Spartan frugal and small and restricted to a limited circle of close friends 265 a layout similar to his father s court though Frederick and his friends were far more culturally inclined than Frederick William 266 Despite his distaste for the German language Frederick did sponsor the Konigliche Deutsche Gesellschaft Royal German Society founded in Konigsberg in 1741 the aim of which was to promote and develop the German language He allowed the association to be titled royal and have its seat at the Konigsberg Castle but he does not seem to have taken much interest in the work of the society Frederick also promoted the use of German instead of Latin in the field of law as in the legal document Project des Corporis Juris Fridericiani Project of the Frederician Body of Laws which was written in German with the aim of being clear and easily understandable 267 Moreover it was under his reign that Berlin became an important centre of German enlightenment 268 Architecture and the fine arts Edit South or garden facade and corps de logis of Sanssouci Frederick had many famous buildings constructed in his capital Berlin most of which still stand 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 269 A number of the buildings including the Berlin State Opera House a wing of Schloss Charlottenburg 270 and the renovation of Rheinsburg during Frederick s residence were built in a unique Rococo style that Frederick developed in collaboration with Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff 271 This style became known as Frederician Rococo and is epitomised by Frederick s summer palace Sanssouci French for carefree or without worry 272 which served as his primary residence and private refuge 273 As a great patron of the arts Frederick was a collector of paintings and ancient sculptures his favourite artist was Jean Antoine Watteau His sense of aesthetics can be seen in the picture gallery at Sanssouci which presents architecture painting sculpture and the decorative arts as a unified whole The gilded stucco decorations of the ceilings were created by Johann Michael Merck 1714 1784 and Carl Joseph Sartori 1709 1770 Both the wall panelling of the galleries and the diamond shapes of the floor consist of white and yellow marble Paintings by different schools were displayed strictly separately 17th century Flemish and Dutch paintings filled the western wing and the gallery s central building while Italian paintings from the High Renaissance and Baroque were exhibited in the eastern wing Sculptures were arranged symmetrically or in rows in relation to the architecture 274 The Round Table of King Frederick II in Sanssouci by Adolph Menzel with Voltaire Algarotti La Mettrie the Keith brothers e and Marquis d Argens Frederick is seated at the center facing Voltaire in the purple coat leaning forward Science and the Berlin Academy Edit When Frederick ascended the throne in 1740 he reinstituted the Prussian Academy of Sciences Berlin Academy which his father had closed down as an economy measure Frederick s goal was to make Berlin a European cultural centre that rivalled London and Paris in the arts and sciences 259 To accomplish this goal he invited numerous intellectuals from across Europe to join the academy made French the official language and made speculative philosophy the most important topic of study 277 The membership was strong in mathematics and philosophy and included Immanuel Kant D Alembert Pierre Louis de Maupertuis and Etienne de Condillac However the Academy was in a crisis for two decades at mid century 268 due in part to scandals and internal rivalries such as the debates between Newtonianism and Leibnizian views and the personality conflict between Voltaire and Maupertuis At a higher level Maupertuis director of the Berlin Academy from 1746 to 1759 and a monarchist argued that the action of individuals was shaped by the character of the institution that contained them and they worked for the glory of the state By contrast d Alembert took a republican rather than monarchical approach and emphasised the international Republic of Letters as the vehicle for scientific advance 278 By 1789 the academy had gained an international repute while making major contributions to German culture and thought For example the mathematicians he recruited for the Berlin Academy including Leonhard Euler Joseph Louis Lagrange Johann Heinrich Lambert and Johann Castillon made it a world class centre for mathematical research 279 Other intellectuals attracted to the philosopher s kingdom were Francesco Algarotti d Argens and Julien Offray de La Mettrie 277 Frederick the Great and his staff at the Battle of Leuthen by Hugo UngewitterMilitary theory EditContrary to his father s fears Frederick became a capable military commander With the exception of his first battlefield experience at the Battle of Mollwitz Frederick proved himself courageous in battle 280 He frequently led his military forces personally and had a number of horses shot from under him during battle 281 During his reign he commanded the Prussian Army at sixteen major battles and various sieges skirmishes and other actions ultimately obtaining almost all his political objectives He is often admired for his tactical skills especially for his use of the oblique order of battle 282 an attack focused on one flank of the opposing line allowing a local advantage even if his forces were outnumbered overall 283 Even more important were his operational successes especially the use of interior lines to prevent the unification of numerically superior opposing armies and defend the Prussian core territory 284 Napoleon Bonaparte saw the Prussian king as a military commander of the first rank 285 after Napoleon s victory over the Fourth Coalition in 1807 he visited Frederick s tomb in Potsdam and remarked to his officers Gentlemen if this man were still alive I would not be here 286 Napoleon frequently pored through Frederick s campaign narratives and had a statuette of him placed in his personal cabinet 287 Frederick in a Waffenrock army tunic Frederick s most notable military victories on the battlefield were the Battle of Hohenfriedberg a tactical victory fought during the War of Austrian Succession in June 1745 288 the Battle of Rossbach where Frederick defeated a combined Franco Austrian army of 41 000 with only 21 000 soldiers 10 000 dead for the Franco Austrian side with only 550 casualties for Prussia 289 and the Battle of Leuthen a follow up victory to Rossbach 290 in which Frederick s 39 000 troops inflicted 22 000 casualties including 12 000 prisoners on Charles of Lorraine s Austrian force of 65 000 291 Frederick the Great believed that creating alliances was necessary as Prussia did not have the resources of nations like France or Austria Though his reign was regularly involved in war he did not advocate for protracted warfare He stated that for Prussia wars should be short and quick long wars would destroy the army s discipline depopulate the country and exhaust its resources 292 Frederick was an influential military theorist whose analysis emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy tactics mobility and logistics 293 Austrian co ruler Emperor Joseph II wrote When the King of Prussia speaks on problems connected with the art of war which he has studied intensively and on which he has read every conceivable book then everything is taut solid and uncommonly instructive There are no circumlocutions he gives factual and historical proof of the assertions he makes for he is well versed in history 294 Robert Citino describes Frederick s strategic approach In war he usually saw one path to victory and that was fixing the enemy army in place maneuvering near or even around it to give himself a favorable position for the attack and then smashing it with an overwhelming blow from an unexpected direction He was the most aggressive field commander of the century perhaps of all time and one who constantly pushed the limits of the possible 295 Frederick before the Battle of Torgau 1760 The historian Dennis Showalter argues The King was also more consistently willing than any of his contemporaries to seek decision through offensive operations 296 Yet these offensive operations were not acts of blind aggression Frederick considered foresight to be among the most important attributes when fighting an enemy stating that the discriminating commander must see everything before it takes place so nothing will be new to him 297 Much of the structure of the more modern German General Staff owed its existence and extensive structure to Frederick along with the accompanying power of autonomy given to commanders in the field 298 According to Citino When later generations of Prussian German staff officers looked back to the age of Frederick they saw a commander who repeatedly even joyfully risked everything on a single day s battle his army his kingdom often his very life 295 As far as Frederick was concerned there were two major battlefield considerations speed of march and speed of fire 299 So confident in the performance of men he selected for command when compared to those of his enemy Frederick once quipped that a general considered audacious in another country would be ordinary in Prussia because Prussian generals will dare and undertake anything that is possible for men to execute 300 After the Seven Years War the Prussian military acquired a formidable reputation across Europe 301 Esteemed for their efficiency and success in battle the Prussian army of Frederick became a model emulated by other European powers most notably by Russia and France 302 To this day Frederick continues to be held in high regard as a military theorist and has been described as representing the embodiment of the art of war 303 Later years and death Edit Grave of Frederick at Sanssouci with potatoes where he was buried only after the German reunification He wished to rest next to his dogs but this was originally ignored Near the end of his life Frederick grew increasingly solitary His circle of close friends at Sanssouci gradually died off with few replacements and Frederick became increasingly critical and arbitrary to the frustration of the civil service and officer corps Frederick was immensely popular among the Prussian people because of his enlightened reforms and military glory the citizens of Berlin always cheered him when he returned from administrative or military reviews Over time he was nicknamed Der Alte Fritz The Old Fritz by the Prussian people and this name became part of his legacy 304 Frederick derived little pleasure from his popularity with the common people preferring instead the company of his pet Italian greyhounds 305 whom he referred to as his marquises de Pompadour as a jibe at the French royal mistress 306 Even in his late 60s and early 70s when he was increasingly crippled by asthma gout and other ailments he rose before dawn drank six to eight cups of coffee a day laced with mustard and peppercorns and attended to state business with characteristic tenacity 307 On the morning of 17 August 1786 Frederick died in an armchair in his study at Sanssouci aged 74 He left instructions that he should 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 Frederick s body to be entombed next to his father Frederick William I in the Potsdam Garrison Church Near the end of World War II German dictator Adolf Hitler ordered Frederick s coffin to be hidden in a salt mine as protection from destruction The United States Army relocated the remains to Marburg in 1946 in 1953 the coffins of Frederick and his father were moved to Burg Hohenzollern 308 On the 205th anniversary of his death on 17 August 1991 Frederick s coffin lay in state in the court of honour at Sanssouci covered by a Prussian flag and escorted by a Bundeswehr guard of honour After nightfall Frederick s body was finally laid to rest in the terrace of the vineyard of Sanssouci in the still existing crypt he had built there without pomp in accordance with his will 309 f Visitors to his grave often place potatoes on his gravestone in honour of his role in promoting the use of the potato in Prussia 311 Historiography and legacy Edit Frederick quoted by the Nazi propaganda poster Wochenspruch der NSDAP on 24 August 1941 Translation Now we have to think of leading the war in a way that we spoil the desire of the enemies to break the peace once again Frederick s legacy has been subject to a wide variety of interpretations 312 For instance Thomas Carlyle s History of Frederick the Great 8 vol 1858 1865 emphasised the power of one great hero in this case Frederick to shape history 313 In German memory Frederick became a great national icon and many Germans said he was the greatest monarch in modern history These claims particularly were popular in the 19th century 314 For example German historians often made him the romantic model of a glorified warrior praising his leadership administrative efficiency devotion to duty and success in building up Prussia to a leading role in Europe 315 Frederick s popularity as a heroic figure remained high in Germany even after World War I 316 Between 1933 and 1945 the Nazis glorified Frederick as a precursor to Adolf Hitler and presented Frederick as holding out hope that another miracle would again save Germany at the last moment 317 In an attempt to legitimise the Nazi regime Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels commissioned artists to render fanciful images of Frederick Bismarck and Hitler together in order to create a sense of a historical continuum amongst them 318 Throughout World War II Hitler often compared himself to Frederick the Great 319 and he kept a copy of Anton Graff s portrait of Frederick with him to the end in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin 320 After the defeat of Germany after 1945 the role of Prussia in German history was minimised Compared to the pre 1945 period Frederick s reputation was downgraded in both East 321 and West Germany 322 partly due to the Nazis fascination with him and his supposed connection with Prussian militarism 323 During the second half of the 20th century political attitudes towards Frederick s image were ambivalent particularly in communist East Germany 324 For example immediately after World War II images of Prussia were removed from public spaces 325 including Frederick s equestrian statue on the Unter den Linden but in 1980 his statue was once more re erected on its original location 326 Since the end of the Cold War Frederick s reputation has continued to grow in the now reunified Germany 327 In the 21st century the view of Frederick as a capable and effective leader also remains strong among military historians 328 though the originality of his achievements remains a topic of debate 329 as many were based on developments already under way 330 He has also been studied as a model of servant leadership in management research 331 and is held in high regard for his patronage of the arts 332 He has been seen as an exemplar of enlightened absolutism 333 though this label has been questioned in the 21st century as many enlightenment principles directly contrast with his military reputation 334 Works by Frederick the Great EditSelected works in English The History of My Own Times Posthumous Works of Frederic II King of Prussia Vol 1 Translated by Holcroft Thomas London G G J amp J Robinson 1789 1746 The History of the Seven Years War Part I Posthumous Works of Frederic II King of Prussia Vol 2 Translated by Holcroft Thomas London G G J amp J Robinson 1789 1788 The History of the Seven Years War Part 2 Posthumous Works of Frederic II King of Prussia Vol 3 Translated by Holcroft Thomas London G G J amp J Robinson 1789 1788 Memoirs from the Peace of Hubertsburg to the Partition of Poland Posthumous Works of Frederic II King of Prussia Vol 4 Translated by Holcroft Thomas London G G J amp J Robinson 1789 1788 Military Instructions from the King of Prussia to His Generals Translated by Foster T London J Cruttwell 1818 1747 Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg to Which are Added Four Dissertations London J Nourse 1758 1750 Collections Preuss J D E ed 1846 1857 Œuvres de Frederic Le Grand Works of Frederick the Great in French 31 vols Droysen Johann Gustav ed 1879 1939 Politische Correspondenz Friedrich s des Grossen Political Correspondence of Frederick the Great in German 46 vols Editions of music Spitta Philipp ed 1889 Musikalische Werke Friedrichs des Grossen Musical works Frederick the Great in German Vol i iii Leipzig Breitkopf amp Hartel OCLC 257496423 Lensewski Gustav ed 1925 Friedrich der Grosse Kompositionen Friedrich the Great Compositions in German Berlin References EditInformational notes According to the French diplomat Louis Guy Henri de Valori when he asked Frederick why he allowed the Saxon and Prussian forces to cross the mountains unopposed in the first place Frederick answered mon ami quand on veut prendre des souris il faut tenir la souriciere ouverte ils entreront et je les battrai My friend when you want to catch mice you have to keep the mousetrap open they will enter and I will batter them 86 In the second printing of the Anti Machiavel Voltaire changed premier domestique first servant to premier Magistrat first magistrate Compare Frederick s words from the handwritten manuscript 181 to Voltaire s edited 1740 version 182 He remained critical of Christianity 204 See Frederick s De la Superstition et de la Religion Superstition and Religion in which he says in the context of Christianity in Brandenburg It is a shame to human understanding that at the beginning of so learned an age as the XVIIIth 18th century all manner of superstitions were yet subsisting 205 Frederick s relationship to Graun is illustrated by his comment upon hearing news of Graun s death in Berlin which he received eight days after the Battle of Prague Eight days ago I lost my best field marshal Schwerin and now my Graun I shall create no more field marshals or conductors until I can find another Schwerin and another Graun 241 The Keith brothers depicted in Adolph Menzel s painting The Round Table of King Frederick II in Sanssouci are George Keith and James Francis Edward Keith Scottish soldiers in exile who joined Frederick s entourage after 1745 275 They are unrelated to the Keith brothers Peter and Robert who were Frederick s companions when he was Crown Prince 276 In his 1769 will Frederick wrote I have lived as a philosopher and wish to be buried as such without pomp or parade Let me be deposited in the vault which I had constructed for myself on the upper terrace of San Souci 310 Citations Schieder 1983 p 1 MacDonogh 2000 p 28 Gooch 1947 p 217 Schieder 1983 p 39 Kugler 1840 pp 21 22 Asprey 1986 pp 14 15 MacDonogh 2000 pp 16 17 Kugler 1840 pp 20 21 Fraser 2001 pp 12 13 Ritter 1936 pp 24 25 a b c Lavisse 1892 pp 128 220 Kugler 1840 pp 54 55 Mitford 1970 pp 28 29 Schieder 1983 p 7 Christian 1888 pp 11 12 MacDonogh 2000 p 47 Mitford 1970 p 19 Showalter 1986 p xiv Kugler 1840 pp 39 38 MacDonogh 2000 p 47 Ritter 1936 pp 26 27 MacDonogh 2000 p 37 Fraser 2001 p 58 MacDonogh 2000 p 35 Ritter 1936 p 54 Wilhelmine 1888 p 83 Blanning 2015 32 50 34 00 Blanning 2016 p 193 Bernd Krysmanski Evidence for the homosexuality and the anal erotic desires of the Prussian king in Does Hogarth Depict Old Fritz Truthfully with a Crooked Beak The Pictures Familiar to Us from Pesne to Menzel Don t Show This ART dok University of Heidelberg arthistoricum net 2022 24 30 https doi org 10 11588 artdok 00008019 Ashton 2019 p 113 Asprey 1986 pp 42 43 MacDonogh 2000 p 49 Berridge 2015 p 21 Reiners 1960 pp 29 31 Schieder 1983 pp 20 21 Mitford 1970 pp 21 24 Reiners 1960 p 31 Asprey 1986 p 28 Fraser 2001 p 25 Kugler 1840 pp 41 42 Asprey 1986 pp 51 53 Blanning 2015 3 55 4 56 Simon 1963 p 76 Mitford 1970 p 61 de Catt 1884 pp 60 61 MacDonogh 2000 p 63 Reiners 1960 p 41 a b Mitford 1970 p 61 Reiners 1960 p 52 Kugler 1840 p 94 Asprey 1986 pp 88 89 MacDonogh 2000 pp 86 89 Reddaway 1904 p 44 Reiners 1960 p 63 Crompton 2003 p 508 MacDonogh 2000 p 88 Mitford 1970 p 71 Reddaway 1904 pp 44 46 Kugler 1840 pp 119 122 Reiners 1960 p 69 Locke 1999 p 8 Kugler 1840 p 96 Kugler 1840 pp 108 113 Reiners 1960 p 71 Kugler 1840 p 122 Kugler 1840 p 123 Hamilton 1880 p 316 MacDonogh 2000 p 125 Duffy 1985 p 20 Ergang 1941 p 38 Sontheimer 2016 pp 106 107 Bei der Thronbesteigung von Friedrich II kam in Preussen auf 28 Bewohner ein Soldat in Grossbritannien auf 310 Da Preussen nur 2 24 Millionen Bewohner hatte war die Armee mit 80000 Mann noch relativ klein verschlang aber 86 Prozent des Staatshaushalts Upon Frederick II s accession to the throne Prussia had one soldier for every 28 inhabitants Great Britain for every 310 Since Prussia had only 2 24 million residents the army was still relatively small with 80 000 men but devoured 86 of the state budget Baron 2015 Billows 1995 p 17 Longman 1899 p 19 a b Luvaas 1966 p 3 Crompton 2003 p 510 Kugler 1840 pp 544 545 Fraser 2001 pp 55 56 Fraser 2001 pp 16 18 Asprey 1986 p 141 Asprey 1986 p 154 MacDonogh 2000 p 152 Schieder 1983 p 96 Weeds 2015 p 55 Clark 2006 pp 192 193 Duffy 1985 pp 22 23 Kugler 1840 p 1 160 Clark 2006 pp 192 193 Duffy 1985 pp 22 23 Clark 2006 p 192 Kulak 2015 p 64 Clark 2006 pp 192 193 Asprey 1986 pp 196 203 Asprey 1986 p 203 a b Luvaas 1966 p 4 Luvaas 1966 p 46 Luvaas 1966 p 4 Ritter 1936 p 84 Asprey 1986 p 220 Asprey 1986 p 228 Asprey 1986 p 236 Mitford 1970 p 110 Fraser 2001 p 124 Kugler 1840 p 195 Duffy 1985 pp 44 49 Fraser 2001 p 126 Asprey 1986 p 258 Luvaas 1966 p 4 Fraser 2001 p 121 Kugler 1840 p 196 Asprey 1986 p 279 Asprey 1986 pp 290 293 Duffy 1985 pp 51 52 Fraser 2001 p 165 Asprey 1986 pp 294 297 Duffy 1985 pp 52 55 Asprey 1986 p 285 Duffy 1985 p 58 Kugler 1840 p 217 Valori 1820 p 226 Asprey 1986 pp 321 324 Duffy 1985 pp 60 65 Fraser 2001 pp 178 183 Asprey 1986 pp 334 338 Duffy 1985 pp 68 69 Showalter 2012 pp 120 123 Kugler 1840 pp 237 239 Fraser 2001 p 195 Kugler 1840 p 240 Asprey 1986 p 347 Kugler 1840 p 242 Schieder 1983 p 114 Clark 2006 p 197 Crankshaw 1970 p 188 Fraser 2001 p 204 Fraser 2001 p 229 MacDonogh 2000 pp 246 247 Ritter 1936 p 103 Ropes 1891 p 171 Duffy 1985 p 83 Longman 1899 pp 98 00 MacDonogh 2000 p 248 Ropes 1891 p 173 Asprey 1986 pp 430 434 Mitford 1970 p 200 Duffy 1985 p 108 Fraser 2001 p 325 Longman 1899 p 102 Schieder 1983 p 127 Ritter 1936 p 104 Ropes 1891 p 174 Longman 1899 p 134 Mitford 1970 pp 203 204 Ritter 1936 p 108 Asprey 1986 pp 455 457 Longman 1899 pp 117 120 Kugler 1840 pp 338 342 MacDonogh 2000 pp 264 265 Fraser 2001 pp 370 375 Mitford 1970 pp 212 213 MacDonogh 2000 p 267 Mitford 1970 p 217 Redman 2014 p 171 Ritter 1936 p 109 Rose 1914a p 85 Fraser 2001 pp 384 385 Kugler 1840 pp 368 369 Ritter 1936 pp 115 116 Asprey 1986 pp 498 499 Gooch 1947 p 47 Schieder 1983 pp 130 131 Fraser 2001 pp 403 404 MacDonogh 2000 pp 278 280 Asprey 1986 p 509 Fraser 2001 p 409 Schieder 1983 p 131 Asprey 1986 pp 507 508 Ritter 1936 p 120 Fraser 2001 p 419 MacDonogh 2000 p 286 Gooch 1947 p 409 Mitford 1970 p 244 Fraser 2001 p 419 Ritter 1936 p 122 Asprey 1986 p 523 Fraser 2001 pp 420 421 Kugler 1840 pp 425 427 Fraser 2001 p 423 Ritter 1936 p 122 Asprey 1986 pp 538 539 MacDonogh 2000 p 296 Mitford 1970 p 246 Ritter 1936 p 123 Schieder 1983 pp 132 133 Gooch 1947 pp 53 45 Asprey 1986 pp 541 542 Mitford 1970 p 248 Ritter 1936 p 123 Asprey 1986 p 542 Fraser 2001 p 444 Gooch 1947 pp 53 54 Kugler 1840 p 460 Asprey 1986 pp 550 551 Longman 1899 p 225 Rose 1914b p 270 Fraser 2001 p 456 Mitford 1970 p 252 Bain 1911 p 285 Anderson 2001 p 492 Anderson 2001 pp 492 493 Anderson 2001 p 493 Stone 2006 p 82 Szabo 2008 p 99 Middleton 1692 p 206 Spencer 1956 pp 100 112 Schweizer 1989 p 97 Hertz 2008 p 74 Henderson 1963 p 40 Lowenstein 1994 p 26 Clark 2006 p 199 Duffy 1985 p 245 Mitford 1970 pp 217 218 Schieder 1983 p 146 a b c Scott 2001 p 176 MacDonogh 2000 p 78 Clark 2006 p 231 Friedrich 2000 p 189 Hagen 1976 pp 118 119 Konopczynski 1919 pp 28 33 Lukowski 2013 p 176 Davies 1996 p 663 Konopczynski 1919 p 34 Scott 2001 p 177 Teter 2005 pp 57 58 Scott 2001 pp 177 178 Hodgetts 1914 pp 228 230 Kaplan 1962 pp 188 189 a b Ritter 1936 p 192 Clark 2006 p 239 Egremont 2011 p 36 Kakel 2013 p 213 a b Konopczynski 1919 p 46 Hagen 1976 p 119 Stollberg Rillinger 2018 p 130 Haworth 1904 pp 473 474 Hassall 1896 pp 342 343 MacDonogh 2000 pp 373 374 Ritter 1936 pp 196 197 MacDonogh 2000 pp 373 374 Schieder 1983 pp 175 176 Asprey 1986 pp 620 621 MacDonogh 2000 pp 373 374 Ritter 1936 pp 196 197 Kugler 1840 p 556 Ritter 1936 pp 196 197 Ritter 1936 pp 196 197 Blanning 2016 p 339 Frederick II 1740a Frederick II 1752 Frederick II 1740b p 10 Il se trouve que le souverain bien loin d etre le maitre absolu des peuples qui sont sous sa domination n en est en lui meme que le premier domestique It turns out that the sovereign far from being the absolute master of the peoples who are under his domination is himself only the first servant Frederick II 1740c p 2 Sainte Beuve 1877 pp 255 257 Clark 2006 p https archive org details ironkingdomrised00chri page 256 256 Mitford 1970 p 88 Asprey 1986 p 145 MacDonogh 2000 p 140 Clark 2006 p 252 Weil 1960 p 240 Schieder 1983 p 186 a b Schui 2013 p 92 a b c Tuttle 1888 pp 89 90 a b Bundesbank 2013 a b Shaw 1895 pp 202 203 a b Adler 2020 p 120 Henderson 1963 p 48 Schui 2013 p 93 Schieder 1983 p 207 Ritter 1936 p 178 Henderson 1963 p 68 Henderson 1963 pp 63 69 70 Liberles 2012 p 29 Ozment 2005 p 141 St Hedwig s Cathedral 2019 Die Hedwigskirche war die erste katholische Kirche die in der Residenzstadt Friedrichs des Grossen nach der Reformation gebaut werden durfte Der Bau geschah auf Wunsch der katholischen Gemeinde und mit der Zustimmung Friedrichs des Grossen The Hedwig Church was the first Roman Catholic church that was allowed to be built in the royal seat of Frederick the Great after the Reformation The construction was carried out with the sanction of Frederick the Great Bonney amp Trim 2006 p 154 Fraser 2001 p 58 MacDonogh 2000 p 241 Mitford 1970 p 75 Frederick II 1750b Kloes 2016 pp 102 108 Holborn 1982 p 274 MacDonogh 2000 pp 364 366 Fraser 2001 p 241 MacDonogh 2000 p 363 Brunhouse 2006 p 419 Ritter 1936 p 180 MacDonogh 2000 p 347 Stern 1977 p 19 Fay 1945 p 528 Philippson 1905 pp 227 228 Waite 1921 p 306 Kugler 1840 p 124 Melton2001 p 267 Gaffney 2020 Barruel 1799 p 1 Blackbourn 2006 p 50 Blackbourn 2006 p 45 Blackbourn 2006 p 75 Blackbourn 2006 p 43 Blackbourn 2006 p 19 The Potato King 2012 Entgegen der weitverbreiteten Meinung habe Friedrich II die Kartoffel nicht in Preussen eingefuhrt Allerdings habe sich Friedrich sehr um ihre Verbreitung gekummert Contrary to popular opinion Friedrich II did not introduce the potato in Prussia However Frederick took great care in spreading it Blackbourn 2006 pp 31 32 Das Gupta 2013 Kennedy amp Bourne 2006 p 318 Pulver 1912 p 599 Reilly 1975 p xxv Gaines 2006 pp 1 12 Oleskiewicz 2012 p 25 Walthall 1986 pp 5 10 Bourke 1947 p 74 IMSLP 2018 Loewy 1990 p 118 Mitford 1970 p 163 Reilly 1975 pp xix xxiii Asprey 1986 p 42 Kugler 1840 p 55 MacDonogh 2000 p 39 Reilly 1975 pp https archive org details onplayingflute00quan page n23 xxii xxiii Oleskiewicz 2012 pp 22 24 Pulver 1912 p 600 Forment 2012 Table 1 pp 3 4 Forment 2012 p 1 Terne 2008 paras lt 4 gt lt 5 gt Der Berliner Neubau sollte hingegen grundsatzlich allen Berlinern und den auswartigen Besuchern der preussischen Hauptstadt zuganglich sein Der Eintritt in die Oper war unentgeltlich The new Berlin building The Opera House was intended for all Berliners and foreign visitors to the Prussian capital Admission to the opera was free Lifschitz 2021 pp vii xlii Aramayo 2019 pp 63 64 Aramayo 2019 pp 75 76 Sgard 2013 Israel 2006 p 535 Aramayo 2019 pp 13 14 Kugler 1840 p 22 Schieder 1983 pp 3 4 Fraser 2001 p 20 Reddaway 1904 p 50 Ashton 2019 pp 121 122 Kugler 1840 p 30 Reddaway 1904 p 28 Mitford 1970 p 22 MacDonogh 2000 p 117 Gooch 1947 p 112 MacDonogh 2000 p 31 Fraser 2001 p 234 Mitford 1970 p 20 a b Smeall 2010 p 227 Gundolf 1972 pp 210 217 MacDonogh 2000 p 370 Gooch 1947 p 151 MacDonogh 2000 pp 369 370 Gooch 1947 p 152 Frederick II 1750a MacDonogh 2000 pp 134 135 Clark 2006 p 188 Klippel 1999 p 48 a b Dilthey 1927 pp 177 197 Ladd 2018 p 53 Hamilton 1880 pp 129 134 Schieder 1983 p 6 Kaufmann 1995 p 400 Asprey 1986 p 388 Gooch 1947 p 127 Mitford 1970 p 159 ArtDaily 2013 MacDonogh 2000 p 193 Mitford 1970 pp 30 166 167 a b Aarsleff 1989 pp 193 206 Terrall 1990 pp 333 364 Cajori 1927 p 2 112 Duffy 1985 p 323 Showalter 1986 pp xviii xix Snyder 1971 p 4 Duffy 1985 p 309 Duffy 1985 p 303 Koch 1978 p 126 Koch 1978 p 160 Clark 2006 p 307 Asprey 1986 p 325 Duffy 1985 p 144 Duffy 1985 p 148 Duffy 1985 p 153 Connelly 2002 p 10 Luvaas 1966 pp 18 22 Reiners 1960 pp 247 248 a b Citino 2005 p 36 Showalter 1996 p 67 Connelly 2002 p 42 Goerlitz 1957 pp 5 7 Goerlitz 1957 p 7 Connelly 2002 p 13 Goerlitz 1957 p 5 Stone 2006 p 86 Strachan 2000 p 83 Richard 1913 p 383 Ritter 1936 p 200 MacDonogh 2000 p 366 MacDonogh 2000 p 380 Alford 2000 p 102 Jones 1991 Frederick II 1769 p 70 Earle 2020 p 54 Valentin 1934 pp 115 123 Bentley 2002 pp 398 400 414 415 Gooch 1947 p 343 Valentin 1934 pp 117 120 Gooch 1947 pp 370 371 Kershaw 2000 pp 610 611 Craig 1978 p 543 Kershaw 2000 p 277 Hoffmann 1997 p 49 MacDonogh 2000 p 6 Clark 2006 pp 678 680 Lau 2012 Der einvernehmliche Konsens der Anti Hitler Koalition des Zweiten Weltkrieges und Siegermachte uber Preussen wurde durch deren Memorandum vom 8 August 1946 im Alliierten Kontrollrat zusammengefasst Es muss nicht eigens betont werden dass Preussen in den letzten 200 Jahren eine Bedrohung fur die Sicherheit Europas dargestellt hat The consensus of the anti Hitler coalition of the Second World War and the victorious powers over Prussia was summarized in their memorandum of August 8 1946 in the Allied Control Council It goes without saying that Prussia has been a threat to security for the past 200 years Munn 2014 p 12 Lau 2012 Die offizielle Sicht der DDR auf Friedrich II und Preussen war keineswegs eine Einbahnstrasse The GDR s official view of Frederick II and Prussia was by no means a one way street Munn 2014 p 6 Lau 2012 in der SBZ DDR die Herrschaftszeichen des reaktionaren Preussentums keinen Platz im offentlichen Raum haben durften in the Soviet Zone GDR the symbols of reactionary Prussia were allowed to have no place in public space Elkins amp Hofmeister 1988 pp 10 11 Curry 2019 pp 39 40 Clark 2006 p 686 Curry 2019 p 44 Heilbrunn 2012 Citino 2010 Fraser 2001 p 4 Krimmer amp Simpson 2011 p 2 Storring 2017 pp 279 284 Langhof amp Guldenberg 2019 Introduction Langhof amp Guldenberg 2020 pp 32 68 Donoghue 2016 Blanning 2016 p 431 Paret 2012 pp 29 33 Sources BooksAdler Simon 2020 Political Economy in the Habsburg Monarchy 1750 1774 The Contribution of Ludwig Zinzendorf Cham Switzerland Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978 3 030 31006 6 OCLC 1144785160 Alford Kenneth D 2000 Nazi Plunder Great Treasure Stories of World War II Da Capo Press ISBN 978 0 306 82090 8 OCLC 883414554 Anderson Fred 2001 Crucible of War The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in British North America 1754 1766 New York Vintage Books ISBN 978 0 375 70636 3 OCLC 906979201 Aramayo Roberto R 2019 The Chimera of the Philosopher King Around the Kantian Distinction between the Moral Politician and Political Moralist The Dilemmas of Power or the Frustrated Love Affair between Ethics and Politics PDF Madrid Ediciones Alamanda OCLC 1154081295 Asprey Robert B 1986 Frederick the Great The Magnificent Enigma New York Ticknor amp Fields ISBN 978 0 89919 352 6 OCLC 1018166962 Bain Robert Nisbet 1911 Elizabeth Petrovna In Chisholm Hugh ed Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 9 11th ed Cambridge University Press Barruel Augustin 1799 The Antichristian Conspiracy Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism Vol I Hartford CT Hudson amp Goodwin OCLC 745190442 Bentley Michael 2002 Companion to Historiography Oxfordshire UK Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 0 203 99145 9 OCLC 1113786932 Berridge Vanessa 2015 The Princess s Garden Royal Intrigue and the Untold Story of Kew Amberley Publishing Limited ISBN 978 1 4456 4336 6 OCLC 958484538 Billows Richard 1995 Kings and Colonists Aspects of Macedonian Imperialism Leiden Netherlands E J Brill ISBN 978 90 04 10177 7 OCLC 465569961 Blackbourn David 2006 The Conquest of Nature Water landscape and the making of modern Germany New York W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0 393 06212 0 OCLC 939012570 Blanning T C W 2016 Frederick the Great King of Prussia New York Random House ISBN 978 1 4000 6812 8 OCLC 994869052 Bonney Richard Trim David J B 2006 Persecution and Pluralism Calvinists and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe 1550 1700 Peter Lang ISBN 978 3 03910 570 0 OCLC 799969494 Brunhouse Jay 2006 Maverick Guide to Berlin London UK Pelican Publishing ISBN 978 1 58980 301 5 OCLC 68263059 Citino Robert M 2005 The German Way of War From the Thirty Years War to the Third Reich Lawrence KS University Press of Kansas ISBN 978 0 7006 1624 4 OCLC 255036325 Princess Christian of Schleswig Holstein 1888 Introduction Memoirs of Wilhelmine Margravine of Baireuth By Wilhelmine of Prussia Margravine of Brandenburg Bayreuth Translated by Princess Christian of Schleswig Holstein New York Harper amp Brothers pp 5 14 Clark Christopher 2006 Iron Kingdom The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600 1947 Cambridge MA Belknap Press of Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 02385 7 OCLC 988484180 Crompton Louis 2003 Homosexuality and Civilization Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 03006 0 OCLC 727025329 Connelly Owen 2002 On War and Leadership The Words of Combat Commanders from Frederick the Great to Norman Schwarzkopf Princeton NJ Princeton University Press ISBN 0 691 03186 X OCLC 636080992 Craig Gordon Alexander 1978 Germany 1866 1945 Oxford UK Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 822113 5 OCLC 3730700 Crankshaw Edward 1970 Maria Theresa New York Viking ISBN 0582107849 OCLC 72324206 Davies Norman 1996 Europe A History Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 820171 7 OCLC 851818872 Dilthey Wilhelm 1972 1927 Frederick and the Academy In Paret Peter ed Frederick the Great A Profile New York Hill and Wang ISBN 0 8090 4678 4 OCLC 1147898734 Duffy Christopher 1985 Frederick the Great A Military Life London Routledge amp Kegan Paul ISBN 978 0 7100 9649 4 OCLC 851984981 Earle Rebecca 2020 Feeding the People The Politics of the Potato Cambridge England Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 108 48406 0 OCLC 1157281407 Egremont Max 2011 Forgotten Land Journeys among the Ghosts of East Prussia New York Farrar Straus and Giroux ISBN 978 0 374 53356 4 OCLC 812066422 Elkins T H Hofmeister B 2005 1988 Berlin The Spatial Structure of a Divided City Oxfordshire UK Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 1 135 83505 7 OCLC 230766184 Ergang Robert 2017 1941 The Potsdam Fuhrer Frederick William I Father of Prussian Militarism Borodino Books ISBN 978 1 78720 424 9 OCLC 982450924 Fraser David 2001 Frederick the Great King of Prussia New York Fromm International ISBN 978 0 88064 261 3 OCLC 316869398 Friedrich Karin 2000 The Other Prussia Royal Prussia Poland and Liberty 1569 1772 Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 58335 0 OCLC 827756844 Gaines James R 2006 Evening in the Palace of Reason Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment New York Harper Perennial ISBN 978 0 00 715658 0 OCLC 1114563339 Goerlitz Walter 1957 1950 History of the German General Staff 1657 1945 New York Frederick a Praeger OCLC 638655829 Gooch G P 1990 1947 Frederick the Great the Ruler the Writer the Man London Dorset Press ISBN 0 88029 481 7 OCLC 945677799 Gundolf Friedrich 1972 Frederick s Essay on German Literature In Paret Peter ed Frederick the Great A Profile New York Hill and Wang ISBN 0 8090 4678 4 OCLC 1147898734 Hamilton Andrew 1880 The Queen Rheinsberg Memorials of Frederick the Great and Prince Henry of Prussia Vol I London John Murray OCLC 831959319 Hassall Arthur 1896 The Balance of Power 1715 1789 Periods of European History New York Macmillan OCLC 1013337056 Henderson W O 1963 Studies in the Economic Policy of Frederick the Great Oxfordshire UK Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 0 415 38203 8 OCLC 762511848 Hertz Deborah 2008 How Jews Became Germans The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 15003 2 OCLC 1054870517 Hodgetts E A Brayley 1914 The Life of Catherine the Great of Russia New York Bretano s OCLC 752702416 Hoffmann Hilmar 1997 The Triumph of Propaganda Film and National Socialism 1933 1945 Volume 1 Berghahn Books ISBN 978 1 57181 122 6 OCLC 833642907 Holborn Hajo 1982 A History of Modern Germany 1648 1840 Vol 1 Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 00796 0 OCLC 1043227086 Kakel Carroll P 2013 The Holocaust as Colonial Genocide Hitler s Indian Wars in the Wild East New York Springer ISBN 978 1 137 39169 8 OCLC 865160408 Kaplan Herbert H 1962 The First Partition of Poland New York Columbia University Press OCLC 59019600 Kaufmann Thomas DaCosta 1995 Court Cloister and City The Art and Culture of Central Europe 1450 1800 Chicago University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 42729 4 OCLC 904781018 Kennedy Michael Bourne Joyce eds 2006 1985 The Oxford Dictionary of Music New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 861459 3 OCLC 315814951 Kershaw Ian 2000 Hitler 1936 1945 Nemesis New York W W Norton ISBN 0 393 04994 9 OCLC 759932866 Koch H W 1978 A History of Prussia New York Barnes amp Noble Books ISBN 978 0 88029 158 3 OCLC 878984854 Konopczynski Wladyslaw 1919 A Brief Outline of Polish History Translated by Benett Francis Geneva Imprimerie Atar OCLC 1041592137 Krimmer Elizabeth Simpson Patricia Anne 2011 Introduction In Krimmer Elizabeth Simpson Patricia Anne eds Enlightened War German Theories and Cultures of Warfare from Frederick the Great to Clausewitz Rochester N Y Camden House ISBN 978 1 282 99415 7 OCLC 642845346 Kugler Franz Theodor 1845 1840 History of Frederick the Great Comprehending a Complete History of the Silesian Campaigns and the Seven Years War Translated by Moriarty Edward Aubrey Illustrated by Menzel Adolph London Henry G Bohn OCLC 249507287 Kulak Teresa 2015 The Economy and Socioeconomic Processes in the Silesia Region from the Mid 18th Century to 1918 In Harc Lucyna Wiszewski Przemyslaw Zerelik Roscislaw eds Silesia under the Authority of the Hohenzollerns 1741 1918 PDF Cuius regio Ideological and Territorial Cohesion of Silesia c 1000 2000 Vol 3 Wroclaw Poland eBooki com pl OCLC 1073799048 Archived from the original PDF on 26 July 2020 Ladd Brian 2018 The Ghosts of Berlin Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape Chicago University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 55872 1 OCLC 1039503412 Lavisse Ernest 1892 The Conflict between Father and Son The Youth of Frederick the Great Translated by Coleman Mary Bushnell Chicago Griggs and Company OCLC 560874037 Liberles Robert 2012 Jews Welcome Coffee Tradition and Innovation in Early Modern Germany Brandeis University Press ISBN 978 1 61168 246 5 OCLC 793207865 Lifschitz Avi 2021 Introduction Frederick the Great s Philosophical Writings By King Frederick II of Prussia Translated by Scholar Angela Princeton NJ Princeton University Press ISBN 9780691176420 OCLC 1151104252 Locke Ian 1999 Magnificent Monarchs London MacMillan p 8 ISBN 978 0 330 37496 5 OCLC 40982247 Longman Frederick 1899 Frederick the Great and the Seven Years War F W Longman OCLC 3555337 Lowenstein Steven M 1994 The Berlin Jewish Community Enlightenment Family and Crisis 1770 1830 Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 535942 8 OCLC 468053530 Lukowski Jerzy Tadeusz 2013 1991 Liberty s Folly The Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Eighteenth Century 1697 1795 Routledge p 176 ISBN 978 1 136 10364 3 OCLC 469802840 Luvaas Jay 1999 1966 Introduction Frederick the Great on the Art of War By King Frederick II of Prussia Translated by Luvaas Jay ed New York Free Press ISBN 0 306 80908 7 OCLC 1023180593 MacDonogh Giles 2000 Frederick the Great A Life in Deed and Letters New York St Martin s Griffin ISBN 0 312 25318 4 OCLC 247328824 Melton James Van Horn 2001 The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe Cambridge UK Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 46969 2 OCLC 1267424369 Middleton Richard 1985 1692 The Bells of Victory The Pitt Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years War 1757 1762 Cambridge UK Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 26546 1 OCLC 185308412 Mitford Nancy 1984 1970 Frederick the Great New York E P Dutton ISBN 0 525 48147 8 OCLC 317097274 Ozment Steven 2005 A Mighty Fortress A New History of the German People New York Harper Perennial ISBN 978 0 06 093483 5 OCLC 876581764 Philippson Martin 1905 The First Partition of Poland and the War of the Bavarian Succession In Wright John Henry tr ed The Age of Frederick the Great A History of All Nations from the Earliest Times Being a Universal Historical Library Vol XV Philadelphia Lea Brothers amp Co OCLC 7148407 Reddaway William Fiddian 1904 Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia New York G P Putnam s Sons OCLC 1154299633 Redman Herbert J 2014 Frederick the Great and the Seven Years War 1756 1763 Jefferson North Carolina McFarland amp Company ISBN 978 0 7864 7669 5 OCLC 911211481 Reilly Robert R 1975 Introduction On Playing the Flute By Quantz Johann Joachim Translated by Reilly Edward R New York Schirmer OCLC 993453962 Reiners Ludwig 1960 Frederick the Great A Biography New York G P Putnam amp Sons OCLC 221946415 Richard Ernst 1913 History of German Civilization A General Survey New York Macmillan Publishers OCLC 551574 Ritter Gerhard 1974 1936 Frederick the Great A Historical Profile Translated by Peter Peret Berkeley University of California Press OCLC 969781207 Sainte Beuve Charles Augustin 1877 1865 Frederic the Great Monday Chats Translated by Mathews William Chicago Knight amp Leonard OCLC 226414234 Schieder Theodor 2000 1983 Frederick the Great Edited and translated by Berkeley Sabina and Scott H M New York Addison Wesley Longmann ISBN 0 582 01768 8 OCLC 50663120 Schui Florian 2013 Rebellious Prussians Urban Political Culture Under Frederick the Great and His Successors Oxford UK Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 959396 5 OCLC 868492693 Schweizer Karl W 1989 England Prussia and the Seven Years War Studies in Alliance Policies and Diplomacy Edwin Mellen Press ISBN 978 0 88946 465 0 OCLC 925033688 Scott Hamish 2001 The Emergence of the Eastern Powers 1756 1775 Cambridge UK Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 79269 1 OCLC 45888917 Shaw William Arthur 1895 The History of Currency 1252 1894 Being an Account of the Gold and Silver Moneys and Monetary Standards of Europe and America Together with an Examination of the Effects of Currency and Exchange Phenomena on Commercial and National Progress and Well being London Wilson amp Milne OCLC 472824658 Showalter Dennis E 1986 Foreword Frederick the Great The Magnificent Enigma By Asprey Robert B New York Ticknor amp Fields ISBN 978 0 89919 352 6 OCLC 1018166962 Showalter Dennis E 1996 The Wars of Frederick the Great Longman ISBN 978 0 582 06259 7 OCLC 32236821 Showalter Dennis E 2012 Frederick the Great A Military History Barnsley UK Pen amp Sword Books ISBN 978 1 78303 479 6 OCLC 848270249 Simon Edith 1963 The Making of Frederick the Great Boston Little Brown and Company OCLC 633592760 Snyder Louis 1971 Introduction In Snyder Louis ed Frederick the Great Englewood Cliffs Prentice Hall ISBN 978 0 13 330605 7 OCLC 111960 Stern Fritz Richard 1977 Gold and Iron Bismarck Bleichroder and the Building of the German Empire Knopf ISBN 978 0 394 49545 3 OCLC 895758966 Stollberg Rillinger Barbara 2018 The Holy Roman Empire A Short History Princeton NJ Princeton University Press ISBN 978 0 691 17911 7 OCLC 1077613642 Stone David 2006 Fighting for the Fatherland The Story of the German Soldier from 1648 to the Present Day Herndon VA Potomac Books ISBN 978 1 84486 036 4 OCLC 255309021 span, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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