Frederick the Great

21.2.2: Frederick the Great

In his youth, Frederick the Great was a sensitive man with great appreciation for intellectual development, arts, and education. Despite his father’s fears, this did not prevent him from becoming a brilliant military strategist during his later reign as King of Prussia.

Learning Objective

Describe elements of Frederick II’s upbringing and his transformation into a Prussian leader

Key Points

  • Frederick, the son of Frederick William I and his wife Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, was born in Berlin in 1712. He was brought up by Huguenot governesses and tutors and learned French and German simultaneously. In spite of his father’s desire that his education be entirely religious and pragmatic, the young Frederick preferred music, literature, and French culture, which clashed with his father’s militarism.
  • Frederick found an ally in his sister, Wilhelmine, with whom he remained close for life. At age 16, he formed an attachment to the king’s 13-year-old page, Peter Karl Christoph Keith. Margaret Goldsmith, a biographer of Frederick’s, suggests the attachment was of a sexual nature and as a result Keith was sent away and Frederick temporarily relocated.
  • When he was 18, Frederick plotted to flee to England with his close friend Hans Hermann von Katte and other junior army officers. 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 leveled an accusation of treason against the pair. The king forced Frederick to watch the decapitation of Katte.
  • Frederick married Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern, a Protestant relative of the Austrian Habsburgs, in 1733. He had little in common with his bride and resented the political marriage. Once Frederick secured the throne in 1740 after his father’s death, he immediately separated from his wife.
  • Prince Frederick was 28 years old when he acceded to the throne of Prussia. His goal was to modernize and unite his vulnerably disconnected lands, which he largely succeeded at through aggressive military and foreign policies. Contrary to his father’s fears, Frederick proved himself a courageous soldier and an extremely skillful strategist.

Key Terms

The Prince
A 16th-century political treatise by the Italian diplomat and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli’s ideas on how to accrue honor and power as a leader had a profound impact on political leaders throughout the modern West. Although the work advises princes how to tyrannize, Machiavelli is generally thought to have preferred some form of free republic.
Anti-Machiavel
A 1740 essay by Frederick the Great consisting of a chapter-by-chapter rebuttal of The Prince, the 16th-century book by Niccolò Machiavelli, and Machiavellianism in general. Frederick’s argument is essentially moral in nature. His own views reflect a largely Enlightenment ideal of rational and benevolent statesmanship: the king, Frederick contends, is charged with maintaining the health and prosperity of his subjects.
enlightened absolutism
Also known as enlightened despotism or benevolent absolutism, a form of absolute monarchy or despotism inspired by the Enlightenment. The monarchs who embraced it followed the participles of rationality. Some of them fostered education and allowed religious tolerance, freedom of speech, and the right to hold private property. They held that royal power emanated not from divine right but from a social contract whereby a despot was entrusted with the power to govern in lieu of any other governments.

 

Frederick the Great: Early Childhood

Frederick, the son of Frederick William I and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, was born in Berlin in 1712. His birth was particularly welcomed by his grandfather, Frederick I, as his two previous grandsons both died in infancy. With the death of Frederick I in 1713, Frederick William became King of Prussia, thus making young Frederick the crown prince.

The new king wished for his sons and daughters to be educated not as royalty but as simple folk. He had been educated by a Frenchwoman, Madame de Montbail, who later became Madame de Rocoulle, and wanted her to educate his children. Frederick was brought up by Huguenot governesses and tutors and learned French and German simultaneously. In spite of his father’s desire that his education be entirely religious and pragmatic, the young Frederick, with the help of his tutor Jacques Duhan, secretly procured a 3,000-volume library of poetry, Greek and Roman classics, and French philosophy to supplement his official lessons. Frederick William I, popularly dubbed the Soldier-King, possessed a violent temper and ruled Brandenburg-Prussia with absolute authority. As Frederick grew, his preference for music, literature, and French culture clashed with his father’s militarism, resulting in frequent beatings and humiliation from his father.

Crown Prince

Frederick found an ally in his sister Wilhelmine, with whom he remained close for life. At age 16, he formed an attachment to the king’s 13-year-old page, Peter Karl Christoph Keith. Margaret Goldsmith, a biographer of Frederick’s, suggests the attachment was of a sexual nature. As a result, Keith was sent away to an unpopular regiment near the Dutch frontier, while Frederick was temporarily sent to his father’s hunting lodge in order “to repent of his sin.” Around the same time, he became close friends with Hans Hermann von Katte.

When he was 18, Frederick plotted to flee to England with Katte and other junior army officers. 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 leveled an accusation of treason against the pair. The king briefly threatened the crown prince with the death penalty, then considered forcing Frederick to renounce the succession in favor of his brother, Augustus William, although either option would have been difficult to justify to the Imperial Diet (general assembly) of the Holy Roman Empire. The king forced Frederick to watch the decapitation of Katte at Küstrin, leaving the crown prince to faint right before the fatal blow was struck.

Frederick was granted a royal pardon and released from his cell, although he remained stripped of his military rank. Instead of returning to Berlin, he was forced to remain in Küstrin and began rigorous schooling in statecraft and administration. 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 in 1731. The crown prince returned to Berlin after finally being released from his tutelage at Küstrin a year later.

A number of royal family members were considered candidates for marriage, but Frederick eventually married Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern, a Protestant relative of the Austrian Habsburgs, in 1733. He had little in common with his bride and resented the political marriage as an example of the Austrian interference that had plagued Prussia since 1701. Once Frederick secured the throne in 1740 after his father’s death, he immediately separated from his wife and prevented Elisabeth from visiting his court in Potsdam, granting her instead Schönhausen Palace and apartments at the Berliner Stadtschloss. In later years, Frederick would pay his wife formal visits only once a year.Recent major biographers are unequivocal that Frederick was homosexual and that his sexuality was central to his life and character.

Frederick as Crown Prince by Antoine Pesne, 1739.

Frederick would come to the throne with an exceptional inheritance: an army of 80,000 men. By 1770, after two decades of punishing war alternating with intervals of peace, Frederick doubled the size of the huge army,  which during his reign would consume 86% of the state budget.

Becoming the Leader

Frederick was restored to the Prussian Army as colonel. When Prussia provided a contingent of troops to aid Austria during the War of the Polish Succession, Frederick studied under Prince Eugene of Savoy during the campaign against France on the Rhine. Frederick William, weakened by gout brought about by the campaign and seeking to reconcile with his heir, granted Frederick Schloss Rheinsberg in Rheinsberg, north of Neuruppin. In Rheinsberg, Frederick assembled a small number of musicians, actors, and other artists. He spent his time reading, watching dramatic plays, and making and listening to music, and regarded this time as one of the happiest of his life.

The works of Niccolò Machiavelli, such as The Prince, were considered a guideline for the behavior of a king in Frederick’s age. In 1739, Frederick finished his Anti-Machiavel, an idealistic refutation of Machiavelli. Instead of promoting more democratic principles of the Enlightenment, Frederick was a proponent of enlightened absolutism. It was written in French and published anonymously in 1740, but Voltaire distributed it in Amsterdam to great popularity.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.

Prince Frederick was 28 years old when he acceded to the throne of Prussia. His goal was to modernize and unite his vulnerably disconnected lands, and he largely succeeded through aggressive military and foreign policies. Contrary to his father’s fears, Frederick proved himself a courageous soldier and an extremely skillful strategist. In fact, Napoleon Bonaparte viewed the Prussian king as the greatest tactical genius of all time. After the Seven Years’ War, the Prussian military acquired a formidable reputation across Europe. Esteemed for their efficiency and success in battle, Frederick’s army became a model emulated by other European powers, most notably Russia and France. Frederick was also an influential military theorist whose analysis emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics, mobility and logistics. Even the later military reputation of Prussia under Bismarck and Moltke rested on the weight of mid-eighteenth century military developments and the territorial expansion of Frederick the Great. Despite his dazzling success as a military commander, however, Frederick was not a fan of protracted warfare.

Attributions