Frederick the Great was King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786
and was known as an enlightened despot. Born on January 24, 1712, in Berlin, he
was the son of Frederick William I (1688–1740) and Sophia Dorothea (1687–1757),
daughter of the future King George I of Hanover and Britain. Frederick William
treated his artistically and linguistically gifted son abominably and quashed
his emerging liberal tendencies; he had the boy trained in military matters
from the age of six.
While attempting a flight to his mother’s family in England
to escape his father’s omnipresent control, Frederick was caught, arrested, and
forced to watch the execution of his friend and accomplice Hans Hermann von
Katte on November 6, 1730. Frederick was court-martialed, temporarily
imprisoned, and banned from court. As a result, Frederick suffered a nervous
breakdown but thereafter obeyed all his father’s commands. By this time the
focus on military affairs had become an overpowering obsession that would
eventually stand him in good stead.
Frederick’s politically arranged marriage to Elizabeth of
Brunswick-Bevern in 1733 failed. Although the couple remained married, they did
not have a conventional marriage. Frederick refrained from having any other
relationships with women. His father gave him Château Rheinsberg, near Berlin.
There, Frederick was happy for the first time in his life and pursued the study
of the arts and became enthralled with Enlightenment ideals. He wrote
Anti-Machiave in 1739 and began corresponding with Voltaire, whom he greatly
admired. He also studied the biographies and strategies of military leaders.
Frederick succeeded to the throne upon Frederick William’s
death on May 31, 1740. Prussia only had a population of about two million
people, but the abundant treasury allowed Frederick the luxury to make
significant changes. He never believed in the divine right of kings, but he
could be a despot at times. He quickly realized that his far-flung
territories—scattered across northern Germany, and often not contiguous—required
modernization, and he implemented major reforms to benefit his people.
Frederick made major improvements in the army, the infrastructure, the judicial
system, finance, and the education system. He abolished torture and tolerated
religious differences, which earned him the gratitude of his people. He had
Sans-Souci palace built in the rococo style and lived there for six months
every year. Under Frederick’s enlightened guidance, Berlin became the leading
center for art, culture, and research. He wrote poetry and over 30 books and
became the symbol of Prussian patriotism.
Frederick’s outstanding military training provided him with
excellent leadership skills that would be respected by friend and foe alike,
though many reigning houses initially considered him insignificant. This
assumption was to be permanently shattered by the beginning of the Seven Years’
War (1756–1763). Frederick’s primary goals were to expand Prussian influence
through territorial expansion; his brilliant campaign strategies in various
battles achieved this goal. During the War of the Austrian Succession
(1740–1748), he annexed parts of Austrian Upper and Lower Silesia. At the same
time he instituted more reforms at home: land was reclaimed from swamps for
agricultural purposes, and he introduced the turnip and the potato into
Prussian agriculture and encouraged German immigration. He placed only minor
restrictions on domestic trade and used high protective tariffs to protect
Prussia’s nascent industry. Canals were built, and the existing system of
indirect taxation was reorganized.
On the diplomatic front, Frederick made peace with Tsar
Peter III of Russia in an alliance that made possible the three eventual
partitions of Poland. The end result of his maneuverings was that by the
conclusion of the Seven Years’ War, Prussia had become Europe’s leading power
and retained all its conquests. As a result of his impressive battlefield
record, Frederick was by this time recognized across Europe as a military
genius. Astute diplomacy followed this period of fighting; Frederick instigated
the Peace of Hubertusburg on February 15, 1763, and the War of the Bavarian
Succession from 1778 to 1779, primarily to prevent Austria from annexing
Bavaria. On June 23, 1785, he established the Fürstenbund, a league of rulers,
to restrain the designs of Austrian emperor Joseph II. Frederick financially
supported Russia in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1767.
Frederick died on August 17, 1786, at Sans-Souci in Potsdam.
Remembered as Frederick the Great, this imposing ruler genuinely cared for his
subjects, who were themselves devoted to their country. He succeeded in making
Prussia the most powerful country in The Holy Roman Empire: by the time he
died, Frederick had six million subjects and Prussia’s size had increased by
75,000 square kilometers.
FURTHER READING: Asprey, Robert B. Frederick the Great. New
York: Ticknor & Fields, 1986; Duffy, Christopher. Frederick the Great: A
Military Life. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985; Gaxotte, Pierre.
Frederick II the Great. Translated by R. A. Bell. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1975; Gooch, George P. Frederick II: King of Prussia, 1712–1786. Hamden,
CT: Archon Books, 1962; Mitford, Nancy. Frederick the Great. London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1970; Palmer, Alan W. Frederick the Great. London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1974; Ritter, G. Frederick the Great: A Historical Profile.
Translated by Peter Paret. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1968.
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