William Tyler
The Rise and Rise of Prussia

William Tyler - The Rise and Rise of Prussia

- Welcome to today’s talk, and it’s about the rise of Prussia. I put a blurb on my blog, but I’m going to read that in a moment for you. I called it, on my blog, “Many Germanys, but only one Prussia”, and you remember that it isn’t one Germany until 1871 in unification, but before that it’s a whole range of different Germanys of various states, statelets, bishoprets, a whole mess if you like. It’s an extraordinary story which we’ve been looking at, but today we’re going to concentrate on Prussia, because it is Prussia that delivers unification in 1871, and it’s Prussia that gets more and more powerful until, in a sense, it’s Prussia, which becomes Germany by incorporating the rest of the country into what becomes Germany in 1871. They could have taken the name Prussia I suppose, but Germany comes together because of Prussia. That is why Prussia is important. In fact, I was talking to a family member of my son-in-law at the weekend and she was from Bavaria, and when she said, “What are you teaching?”, and I said, “German history,” she said, “I hope you’re teaching about Bavaria,” and I said, “Well actually I’m not. I’m talking about Prussia,” and I think if looks could kill, I would be dead. But the trouble is, it is Prussia that is the story. It’s the golden thread through German history. Now, what I wrote on my blog was this, and some of you will have read it already. You’ll have forgotten it of course, but I’m going to read it for the purposes of the many of you who won’t have read it. Jeremy Black, the author of “A Brief History of Germany”, and I regard as a very good historian, wrote in the preface to his book, “There are many Germanys that can be proffered and, therefore, differing chronologies, narratives, causations, and epiphanies.”

And that’s where we began the story a few weeks ago, many Germans. Thus in attempting to find what I call a golden thread to lead us through early modern period of Germany’s history, that is to say from 1600, shall we say onwards, there’s no better thread to follow than that of the history of Prussia, because it’s Prussia, as I’ve already said, that under Bismarck brought about the unification of Germany in 1871. Yet in telling the story of Prussia, I have to begin with two northern German states, not one. In addition to Prussia, whose capital was at Konigsburg, the present day Kaliningrad their Russian enclave within the EU at Konigsburg, there was also Brandenburg whose capital was Berlin, and of course, as we all know, Berlin became the capital of the unified Germany, but in today’s talk, we’ll see how Berlin became the capital of Prussia and not Konigsburg. Konigsburg is very far east, 100 miles or so east of Berlin. It was to be Brandenburg, later known by the name of its dominant partner, Prussia, that is the beginning of the story today. Brandenburg was one of the constituent states of the Holy Roman empire. You remember that many of the German states, almost all of them at this period, were members of the Holy Roman Empire with its capital in Vienna. Now, Prussia was not that. Prussia was part of the Kingdom of Poland, and it’s only when Poland ceases to exist as a country at the end of the 18th century that Prussia is entirely free.

So we’re talking about two northern German states, Brandenburg, capital Berlin, Prussia, capital Konigsburg, and we’re talking about two large and important political institutions, the Holy Roman Empire of which Brandenburg is a member, and the Kingdom of Poland, of which Prussia is a member. Prussia’s rise begins with a family marriage between the Hohenzollerns in Brandenburg and the Hohenzollerns in Prussia. That’s when it all began, and that is the date of a marriage, a marriage between a princess of Prussia and the elector of Brandenburg, an elector because he was one of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire, and this was a marriage between cousins. They’re both Hohenzollerns. That’s the point, and of course it’s the Hohenzollerns that we know of right through to the end of World War I. The Kaiser family is Hohenzollern, so in 1618, the two countries of, I’ll call them countries, the two states of Brandenburg and Prussia became united in what is called a personal union, that is the say through the marriage of a Hohenzollern from Prussia, female and a Hohenzollern from Brandenburg, the elector male. In 1701, they changed the name from Brandenburg Prussia to Prussia. They call themselves a kingdom, and I’ll come to why that happens, and in addition to that, they gain enormous amount of territories in Northern Germany a hodgepodge as you can see from the map that I sent through LockDown. We don’t need to go into the details of the map simply to say that Prussia has the business of bringing Brandenburg Prussia together, but also in bringing other little bits of land that the Hohenzollerns control, owned into one state, which by the time of 1871, is the very large state of Prussia. Prussia became really massive in 1795 when Poland ceased to exist.

The outstanding leader ruler of Prussia that we must look at today is Frederick II, who we more commonly call Frederick the Great, who reigned between 1740 and 1786. 1786 is just three years before, in France, revolution hits Paris. Now, my story today is of the rise and rise of Prussia, and I shall end it with the death of Frederick the Great in 1786. Three years later, the war with France begins, and at the end of that war, Napoleon is in charge of Prussia. He defeats it, but finally, with his return from the Isle of Elba in the Mediterranean in 1815, it is Prussia and Britain that bring Napoleon finally down, and the power of France simply melts away and the rise of Prussia after the hiccup of defeat by Napoleon rises more and more until unified in 1871. So let’s put all that aside and begin the story. You can legitimately start the story of the rise of Prussia with the city of Konigsburg lying hundreds of miles east of Berlin, which is to become the capital of both Prussia, and later Germany. Today, Konigsburg, as I said, is Kaliningrad, an enclave. It’s squashed between Poland and Lithuania and is one of those places which I will never be surprised to turn the news on and hear that Putin has forced his way through from Belarus, and is attempting to split off the Baltic states from the rest of NATO and the European Union. It’s a potential flash point. Now, a few weeks ago I talked about the Teutonic Knights. You remember the Christian Knights are both knights and monks who were deployed in the Holy Land to fight against Islam, but in the end, when the Crusaders were thrown out of the Holy Land of the Middle East, they sought to convert the Slavs, that is the say the Russians and the Poles to Christianity. Now in 1525, the then Grand Master of the Order of Teutonic Knights with their headquarters at Konigsburg adopted the Lutheran faith, abandoning his Catholicism, and the majority of the Teutonic Knights followed their leader.

Now, clearly they could not continue as Catholic knight monks if they were Protestant. Moreover, they took the earliest opportunity, most of them, to get married, which of course, previously as monks, Catholic monks, they could not do. The Grand Master happened to be, in 1525, a man called Albert or Albert of Hohenzollern. He’s the man that kicks the ball for Prussia. He asked Luther for advice, “What do I do?” Well, some of the knights who remain Catholic went off, but he’s got the bulk of them, and he owns Konigsburg, and and he’s in control of the land. And Luther said, simply, “Well, rule as a secular ruler and spread Lutheranism.” So he did, and he declared himself Duke of Prussia, and moreover, unlike the Teutonic Knights, who elected their Grand Master, when one died, the new one was elected, this time Albert of Hohenzollern says, “I am Duke of Prussia, but the title Duke of Prussia will be hereditary within the Hohenzollern family.” And this marks a huge change in the history of Europe. The Teutonic Knights, while they still exist as a charitable order in the Catholic church, but nothing like the mediaeval past, but the Hohenzollerns are now in charge of Prussia forever. He needed to make sure that Prussia had a formidable ally to help it, to ensure that it would continue, and it just so happened it’s who you know rather than what you know. His uncle happened to be King of Poland at the time, a man called Sigismund, and so he placed Prussia under the feudal or the lordship of Poland, hence why Prussia is part of Poland.

It was not part of the Holy Roman Empire in the same way that the Teutonic Knights were, so the Teutonic Knights become Prussia, the Grand Master becomes Duke of Prussia. The Dukedom of Prussia becomes a regulatory, and they’re allied with Poland, which guarantees their future as a semi-independent, as a semiautonomous state, if you like, exactly the same as the rest of the German states within the Holy Roman Empire. So while all that’s going on in Prussia back in Brandenburg, that is to say back in Berlin, another branch of the Hohenzollern family also converted to Protestantism in 1539, about what? 13 years after Albert of Hohenzollern did. So both the Hohenzollern families, those in Prussia and those in Brandenburg were, by the mid 16th century, Protestant, and this is very important for the later history of Germany and indeed German history today, which is still divided between Catholic and Protestants. These are Protestants. This family, the Hohenzollerns in Berlin had become Margaves, which is a German title, Prince, if you like, of Brandenburg in 1415. They were also, as I said earlier, one of the seven electors, the elector of Brandenburg, just like our George I in England was the elector of Hanover, one of the electors of the Holy Roman Empire. So there are, by the middle of the 16th century, there are two branches of the Hohenzollern family in control of, if you put the two bits together of a large part of Northern Germany and a large part of what is now Protestant Germany in contrast to, shall we say, Catholic Bavaria, which is a very large country, but Catholic. They merge in 1618, as I said, with a marriage between a princess from Prussia and the elector in Brandenburg.

So in fact, the Hohenzollern family, which later become Kaisers, are actually from Brandenburg and not from Prussia, but in 1701, they decided to drop the name Brandenburg from the title Brandenburg Prussia, and only use the title Prussia. That’s very important because Prussia is still part of Poland and not part of the rest of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. It is a way that they’re able to say, “We are different,” even though they had a foot in both camps, a foot in Poland through Prussia, and a foot in the Holy Roman Empire through Brandenburg, but Brandenburg Prussia disappears in 1701 and the title Prussia emerges. This Prussia is ruled by the Hohenzollern right the way through to the end of the First World War, and it’s ruled by them through the Brandenburg branch. It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t, two branches of the family, two states in what we now call Germany. They married cousins. They brought the two states together, and they dropped the name of one of the states, so that Prussia remains with a Brandenburg Hohenzollern leading it. It was also in 1701 that they decided that the capital would not be in Konigsburg and Berlin, but would simply be Berlin, and it’s from that date that the development of Berlin, not only in terms of size but in terms of the architecture in Berlin begins. It’s the old Berlin of central Berlin that we can recognise today.

So if I just recap on that, some of the dates are important, 1525 Albert of Hohenzollern, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights becomes Protestant. In 1539, the Brandenburg Hohenzollerns become Protestant. In 1618, there’s a personal union through marriage of Brandenburg Prussia, and in 1701, they dropped the name Brandenburg in favour of Prussia, and established the capital for all of their possessions in Berlin. We met last week the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, 1618 to 1648. Brandenburg suffered. Prussia did not suffer in quite the same way, but Brandenburg did, but it recovered. It recovered after the Peace Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 in which the Hohenzollerns were always very good at extending their land, and in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, they did expand their territory. I now move to two personalities that dominate this period. This is Frederick William, who’s known as The Great Elector, and his son Frederick II who is known as Frederick the Great, the King in Prussia. So there’s Frederick William, The Great Elector and Frederick the Great, King in Prussia, and it’s these two men that dominate Prussia, and dominate German history, and in a sense, well, not in a sense, in a very real way pushed Prussia to the forefront of European powers. It’s these two men who have to be credited with the rise of Prussia, even though the two men were very different, father and son, one from the other. Frederick William, who was elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, that’s before the whole thing comes together. He ruled from 1640 to 1688, and he’s of enormous importance. Why?

Because he was the first to begin to create what we later know as the Prussian army. We know how the Prussian army was developed, and under Bismarck, became the most powerful army in Europe, and believed it was the same, or they thought it was the same, both in 1914 and 1939. It’s the Prussian army, which becomes the basis later of the German army. It’s the beginning, many historians would say, of the militarism that characterised Germany in the latter part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, militarism, and that militarism lies with Prussia, and that’s not surprising given its background, its history of arising out of the Order of Teutonic Knights. It has a military beginning, and it’s Frederick William, ruling between 1640 and 1688, who begins the creation of a Prussian army, and it’s his son, Frederick the Great, who increases the army enormously in size and in tactics, and takes it to war. So the first thing we have to say about both these men is they were committed militarily, and to use military force to extend Prussia’s power and Prussia’s land. Land and power in a sense go together, but it isn’t only military things that Frederick William did. There were a lot of other things he did. He wasn’t, for instance, he was highly educated. His son was better educated. He was highly educated because, during the Thirty Years’ War, his family sent him to Leiden in Holland for safety’s sake, and he studied at the University of Leiden which was one, and is still one, of the leading universities in Europe.

And he learned there about war, funnily enough from his relative Frederick Henry, the Prince of Orange. He had to go back to Germany in 1640 before the end of the Thirty Years’ War to succeed his father who had died. Following the war, he began, obviously he had to, begin a building back process in Brandenburg in particular, but he did so in interesting ways. First of all, he’s the stereotype of a German in the sense that he is relentless in working hard as was his son, and determined to succeed, and he did succeed, but one of the things he did was to allow religious tolerance and to encourage people to come into Brandenburg and Prussia, Jews and indeed Catholics. He made no distinction, even though he moved from Lutheranism to Calvinism himself. One of the reasons that he becomes so hardworking, Calvinists are, I don’t quite know how to put it. I hope there are no Calvinists listening, but it’s a quite dire faith. It’s hardworking. It doesn’t have much fun in it, and Frederick William devoted his life to the fact of his reign and the restoration of the damage done by the Thirty Years’ War. He took his army to war and one of the things he managed to do during his raid was to defeat Sweden. Now, Sweden had been on the rise during the Thirty Years’ War through King Gustavus Adolphus, and he pushes Sweden. Sweden had always wanted land on the main continent of Europe, and in doing so, it threatened Prussia, and Frederick William manages to defeat them and push them out of Prussia and indeed out of Brandenburg, but he did a lot more than that, a lot, lot more. He centralised administration and he increased thereby the revenue to the crown. He advocated trade. He supported monopolies and subsidies and tariffs, and he made internal improvements. One of the big improvements he made.

You need to improve transport for trade. Now, improving transport in the mid 17th century is not an easy thing to do. The roads are appalling and we haven’t yet learned to make roads as good as the Romans did, and we don’t have railways, but we do have water, and in Germany, in Prussia, and Brandenburg, there are large rivers, and what he does there is to connect rivers by building artificial rivers, which we call canals, and that made a huge difference to trade. One of the things it enabled was for goods internally to reach the coast by using waterways, so he improved transport systems. In fact, if you go to the area in northern Germany today, you can see exactly what he did, because they’re still being used. It’s only in Britain, in Europe that we don’t use our canals, but that’s a different story ‘cause our canals are narrow. These were wide canals to fit the wider rivers, and so it was a really extraordinary development, which helps Prussian trade. When Louis XIV of France threw the Protestants out of France at the Edict of Nantes, then it is Frederick William who says, “Come to me,” and large numbers of French Protestants and Walloons, that is to say Protestants from what is today modern Belgium, went into Protestant Prussia, Brandenburg Prussia, and from being a remote area in the north of Germany, really cut off from the rest of Western Europe in that sense, it expanded enormously. Trade expanded, revenue expanded, revenue enables the military to expand. The population expanded because he welcomed people in. The Jews brought trade in. It’s really developing into what is to become, by the end of the 18th century, it’s to become this fantastic and incredible major power within Europe.

Historians have compared Frederick William, whom you might not have heard of before today, given that I guess in America and Canada and wherever else you’re listening from, and certainly in Britain, we don’t really do very much of German history, but historians have compared Frederick William to his contemporaries, Louis XIV of France, Peter the Great of Russia, and Charles the XI of Sweden. Now that’s no poor comparison to be mentioned, even in the same breath as those three, so this man is very, very important. He began to unite all the little bits of land that Prussia owned, buying up land, taking land militarily, so he’s creating, and he has this vision to create this major state in northern Germany on the very frontiers of western Europe. His tolerance of Catholics and Jews is worth noting. Now, I know Trudy has spoken about Jews in Germany, and it’s worth mentoring at this point that he was tolerant. Okay, he was tolerant because he wanted them, and he wanted them to work and by working to create, but then that’s always the way with immigrant communities who are welcomed for the skills that they bring, and the money that they can generate, and the jobs that they can generate, and indeed, that’s exactly what Frederick William was to do. In terms of the military, he introduced a proper officer corp, which they’d not really had before, a professional officer corp. He also introduced, what is very important, a Prussian general staff. Now, you might think, “Well, that’s not anything great.” It is, compared to what Britain had, and compared to what France had, and certainly as compared to what Russia had. He’s modernising, not just in weapons and drill, but in the administration. I said, he’s stereotypically German.

We think of Germans as being administratively extraordinarily competent. I’m not sure when we get to later stages of this that that stereotype hold, but it holds to Frederick William, and he’s working so hard to push Prussia forward in this way. He even toyed with the idea of creating a overseas empire to rival those of the Dutch Republic of Britain and of France, and he began by attempting to establish a West African company on a model of the Dutch East India company and the English East India company, so there is a Brandenburg and Prussian West African company. And what did it do? It entered the slave trade, taking between 17 and 30,000 Africans transported across the Atlantic. In the end, they sold, that is to say the Prussians sold, their company to the Dutch in 1721. So this toe in the water of Colonialism and Imperialism did not last long, and as I said in answer to someone last week, who put a long list of German colonies on the board, they’re all 19th century. This is the scramble for Africa and the scramble for Asia. At this period, Germany is not that involved and it withdraws from the small involvement it had. If Frederick William, The Great Elector, put Prussia on the path to success, it’s Frederick the Great, King in Prussia, who cemented Frederick Williams’ success, but he cemented it in different ways mainly. Frederick the Great, as he became known, is mostly remembered as a great soldier, and in his book called “Titans of History, Simon Sebag Montefiore in his essay on Frederick the Great writes in this way. He writes the following. If I can find it, I will read it. "With his typically rye wit, Frederick once declared, ‘that he had infected Europe with warfare just as a cocottes infects her clients.’ Introspective and self-critical, Frederick’s analysis and planning were always immaculate, his quick mind the first to seize the advantage on the battlefield.”

Now he was regarded by his family as effeminate, and indeed the likelihood that he was homosexual, is pretty proven, but he was also a great military leader, one of the greatest military leaders in European history, and he was beloved by the troops because he brought success. I want to read just one more thing. “When Napoleon reached Berlin 20 years after Frederick died, he paid homage at Frederick’s tomb. As he entered Napoleon declared to his men, ‘Hats off, gentlemen. If he were alive, we would not be here.’” If he were alive, we would not be here. Napoleon is suggesting that Frederick the Great was a greater commander, so if you were doing me an essay for a degree, you would have to answer a question like this. “Who was the greatest military leader, Frederick the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte? Discuss.” Now there’s no answer to such a question, but the fact that Napoleon said that indicates the standing that Frederick the Great had only a few years after his death. Frederick had a dream, like Bismarck had a dream in the following century, and the dream was this. I’ll use Sebag Montefiore’s words if I may, and it goes like this, “Frederick waged war to serve Prussia’s interests, but he was never militaristic. He deplored war’s effect and he abhorred hypocrisy. At other times he can firmly pragmatic. If we can gain something by being honest, we will be honest, and if we have to deceive, we will cheat.” And in a sense, that’s exactly what Bismarck is doing to a greater glory of Prussia, and the end justifies the means. Bismarck launched three wars to create a unified Germany.

Frederick, first of all gained Silesia from Poland in 1740, and Silesia is a really important part of what is to become Germany as we well know, and it began with that victory over the province of Silesia in Austria, the Austrian province of, I think I said Poland just now, the Austrian province of Silesia becomes Prussia in 1740; however, the grabbing of Silesia launched a European wide war that lasted almost two decades, and Frederick’s in the middle of that. As well as grabbing Silesia from Austria, Frederick went to war with Poland. Poland is now a very weakened state, and once during his lifetime and twice after his death, Poland is divided. Poland ceased to exist. It is in the phrase the partitioning of Poland, and the partitioning goes to Austria and to Russia, but also to Prussia, and for the first time, I think probably in places like London, they wake up to the fact that Prussia is now at the top table of European politics. Poland ceases to exist and doesn’t come back into existence again until after the First World War in 1919. So partitioned, but Prussia has taken land from Austria, it’s taken land from Prussia, and it’s, by the end of Frederick the Great’s reign, it is a powerful, powerful country. Simon Montefiore says this, “Europe’s hypocritical old guard, Vienna, Paris, Moscow, if you like, Europe’s hypocritical old guard, were quick to share in the spoils when Frederick initiated the partition of the increasingly anarchic Poland. Of the Empress Maria in Vienna, Maria Theresa, Frederick says she weeps, but she takes. She weeps tears for Poland, but she takes and grabs what she can.”

And it’s Frederick that launched all of this, so in far away London, they’re aware that Prussia of Frederick the Great has risen in the world, but in Vienna and Paris and in Moscow, they are clear that it’s risen. This is now a powerful member of the European polity, and we are not talking about Germany. We are talking about Prussia. Politically, militarily, we see the beginning of a story in which the rest doesn’t count. It’s Prussia that counts. Poland was divided in 1772 during Frederick’s lifetime and again in 1793 and 1795, and Robert Cole writes this, “After 1795, Poland disappeared all together from the map of Europe. It would not return as a nation until 1919.” Poland’s is a sad story. I guess many of you may have Polish ancestry, and you know about it. It’s finished at this point, but there’s France, and there’s home policy. Frederick the Great was a Francophile. He spoke French, although he said he spoke it like a coachman. He spoke French. He corresponded with Voltaire. He insisted on French being spoken in his court, describing German as a half barbaric language. He liked French things. He named a new palace Sanssouci in French. He’s very pro French culture, and he’s very pro French philosophy, the philosophy of what we now call the Enlightenment, and in terms of home policy, Frederick the Great was an enlightened monarch, an enlightened absolutist if you like. Again, Montefiore says, “Frederick was the first of Europe’s enlightened despots.

He was tireless in fulfilling his self-designated role as the first servant of the state. Every day he forced himself to rise at four o'clock, ordering his servants to throw a cold wet cloth in his face if he seemed reluctant.” Now the enlightened despots, like Joseph II in Austria, like here, Frederick the Great in Prussia believed that they had a duty towards their country, perhaps not towards their people so much as the country, and they worked very hard, and I suppose the last example of that is right up until the day of his death, Franz Joseph in Vienna in the middle of the First World War, also got up at the crack of dawn, put on his uniform as he did every day of his life, except when he travelled, and began to work on behalf of his empire, not I think on behalf of the people, but of the empire itself. So I’ll read on a little bit more about Frederick the Great’s enlightenment. “Even such an early start as 4:00 AM in the morning barely gave him time to do what’s all he wanted. At his court would be filled with artists, writers, musicians, and philosophers. He practised the flute four times a day.” Now, pardon me for saying so, but you really can’t imagine the Duke of Wellington practising the flute four times a day, or Napoleon practising the flute. “He held concerts after supper. He conducted a vast correspondence with philosophers and statesmen, mainly French. He wrote poetry, and he did all that whilst administering the affairs of state directly.” He was a remarkable man for the work that he managed to get through. That’s absolute monarchy at its best, but of course it did not allow for any form of, what we would today describe, as democracy. It isn’t. Some historians at the time said he was better known by his writings than for his military success.

Well, you can’t answer that question. What you can say is that he created a Prussian army, and that army is to become one of the greatest, the greatest army in Europe in the 19th century, and he’s also put Prussia on a further path of development at home, but an enlightened cultural, and you’ve been hearing stories about art music. He lights a cultural beacon. This is no Hitler. This isn’t a Bismarck. He is a one-off in Frederick the Great, and a remarkable man. Some of you will be hearing me saying that and say, “Hang on a moment, William. That’s not exactly true, is it?” Well, I know that Trudy has spoken to you about the anti-Semitism of his reign, and it would be wrong to say he wasn’t anti-Semitic, but it would be wrong to say that he was violently anti-Semitic, whatever that might mean, because he encouraged Jews who he wanted to encourage. That is to say people who had money, he welcomed in. He wasn’t bothered. He himself had I think no religious beliefs at all. He was not a Protestant, a Catholic or whatever. He welcomed the Jews for what they could bring in, which does not mean that he wasn’t anti-Semitic. He was anti-Semitic towards poor Jews but not rich Jews. I dunno how you get your head around that, but it seems to me to be a common issue in politics that you make good friends with rich Russians, but you don’t make good friends with poor Russians. Well, we know all about that in Britain, and I think you do in America as well. I just read Robert Cole, it’s just a sort of, I don’t want to tread on the fact that you’ve already heard Trudy speak, but I don’t think she’d mind if I just read out paragraph from Cole’s, “Frederick kept Prussia’s Jews in their place.” Well, that’s what I was saying. “An edict of 1750 included these provisions, a wealthy Jew could leave his protected status to only one child.

A Jew must have at least 10,000 taler to qualify for permission to live within Prussia. Certain categories of Jews could not marry or own rural property, and Rabbis and Cantors were, in the words of the edict, to be put up with.” So that’s not a sounding support for Jewish community, but neither is he engaged in pogroms, so make your own judgement , and I think some of you probably had family. In fact, I know, because Trudy said somebody wrote to her, some of you had Jewish family who were in Prussia at the time of Frederick the Great’s reign. Now the strange thing about Frederick the Great, despite his success at war and at home and in improving the position of Prussia within Europe, he remained insecure, and the answer is, I think not far to seek. It is in his homosexuality, which clearly at the time was viewed very differently than it would be today, and indeed, he had an affair when he was 18 with an officer called von Katte. Von Katte was executed at his father’s orders under Frederick’s window, and Frederick was really a prisoner in his own home until he agreed, at the age of 21, to marry, and he was married off in 1733 to another German princess, Elisabeth. She was only 17. Now, Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern, what a name to with. On their wedding night, Frederick spent one hour with his wife, and then went for a walk for the rest of the night. He resented the marriage from the first, although in fairness, he was very nice to the poor girl that had been forced on him. In 1779, so much later towards the end of his reign, Elisabeth, his wife, Queen in Prussia, is described by an Englishman, Dr. Moore, in this way, “The queen has one court day in the week when the prince’s nobility and foreign ambassadors wait upon her at five o'clock. After she’s made a tour of the circle and said a few words to each, she seats herself at the card table. The queen has her own table, and each of the princesses has one. The rest of the company shows itself a moment in each of these card tables, and then the attendance for the day is over, and they walk in the garden or form other card tables in other rooms as it pleases them, and return to Berlin at dusk.”

Where she is is at Potsdam. “Sometimes the Queen invites a good many of them to supper and then they remain til midnight. These are the only assemblies where one meets the Berlin ladies in summer.” And as for Frederick, he seldom went. He seldom met his wife. When the Seven Years War ended in 1763, he hadn’t been home to see his wife for six years, and the first thing he said, I’ll put it into modern English. “Madam, you have become even more fat.” Poor woman, poor, poor woman. He gave her a lot of money. She could do what she wanted, and she ruled while he was at war. She ruled Prussia. She’s not a shrinking violet, but it must have been terrible for her to be married to someone like Frederick. But when Frederick died, she wrote this to his successor, who was his nephew, a man called Frederick William II. And his wife wrote this, “Frederick the Great,” This sounds like Madam de Gaulle, doesn’t it? She’s referring to her husband as Frederick the Great. “Frederick The Great would’ve been adored for his great qualities had he been only a private individual. All great princes might take example from him. He reigned like the true father of his people.” That is the enlightened monarch. “He was a true friend himself, but he had many forced ones who, under the mask of attachment, separated him from those who were devoted to him, heart and soul.” I think she’s thinking of herself. “Yet these deceitful persons caused him sorrow when he discovered their falsehood, and he rendered justice to his true friends without bringing them into notice, lest he should expose them to persecution. He was generous and beneficent. He maintained his position without and in society, he was like a private gentleman.”

He is quite something. In fact, an ambassador late in his reign was at Potsdam and walking through the gardens and he saw this old gardener in sort of rather tattered clothes. He went up to talk to him, and he had a rather interesting talk, and later was presented at court to Frederick, only to discover that the person he thought was the gardener was in fact the King. So Frederick is, in many ways, I think born out of time. He might have been the person that Germany needed at a later stage in its history, but he gave Prussia and he gave Germany a view of itself, which is was an important view, one that Prussia could expand and become Germany, which is what his dream was. The Hundred Years War, Bismarck had the dream, but he also showed the Germans how they could be part, not only the military history of Europe, but of the cultural history of Europe, and that is also equally important, certainly something you cannot say of our German Kings, the Kings from Hanover in the 18th century. So he is enlightened in the very best of ways, and he lays down blueprints for a future. It is Cole who writes this, and I thought this was worth sharing. “All else taken into consideration, Frederick the Great’s ultimate objective as King was to throw off all subservient to the Hapsburg Empire,” Holy Roman Empire, which he had to give subservience to because of Brandenburg, “and indeed to replace Austria as the dominant force within Germany.”

In other words, to knock out the Holy Roman Empire, and create a German empire without Austria, with Prussia in control, a German empire, which the Holy Roman Empire was, but without Austria and replacing Vienna with Berlin, replacing Austria with Prussia, and that of course, is exactly what Bismarck does in 1871. It’s only Hitler that decides that Austria should be part of a new Germany. Neither Frederick nor Bismarck saw Austria as been part of Germany, so the Germany we have today is certainly a Germany that will be recognised by Frederick as well as Bismarck. That was what both of them were aiming for, the unification of Germany without Austria. Let me just read one more thing. “Under Frederick the Great, Prussia emerges one of the five European states to return great powers in the 18th century.” It had made it. It had made it. He died in 1786, and Prussia has its place at the top table, but three years later, revolution hits Paris, and shortly after that, an obscure army officer from Corsica launches his career, Napoleon Bonaparte. During the wars of Louis the XIV, the Sun King, both Brandenburg and Prussia remained too far away for Louis to bother about. Geography saved Brandenburg and Prussia. You know that lots of people today are writing about links between history and geography. Well, geography saved Brandenburg and Prussia from France in the 17th century, but it’s the beginning of the 19th century with Napoleon who becomes, until the end, a force that cannot be stopped.

Okay, he stopped at Leipzig, and then subsequently he stopped at Waterloo finally. Frederick was a Francophile. What would he have made of the Revolution of 1789? He would’ve been as appalled by it as the British establishment was appalled by it, and indeed, we shall see next week how Germany, that is to say Prussia begins to advance, to cut out the the cancer of Republicanism in France and fails. We also see how it fails when it meets Napoleon in the field at the Battle of Jena in 1806. But France proved under Napoleon that France could seek to destroy Prussia, and for a short time managed to do so. But France, that is Napoleon’s France, had its comeuppance in 1815 at Waterloo when a combined Prussian and British army under Wellington defeat the French. Now we’re so used, in the English speaking world, our generation at least, of thinking of Germany in black terms in terms of 1914-18, 1939-45, but the truth is, in the 19th century we were allied. After all, our kings were also electors of the Holy Roman empire, electors of Hanover. There was intermarriage between the Hanoverians and the Prussians. There was a real sense of a link between Prussia and Britain. After all, at the Battle of Waterloo, a Hanoverians regimen fought the Royal Hanoverians, but they were fighting, not with the Prussians, but with the British, because Hanover was part of the George’s empire, if you like. In Europe, they came, they were electors of Hanover. They carried the title through to 1837 when Victoria becomes Queen, and the title is lost because a woman can’t inherit, so her uncle did. So we’ve got this link between England and Germany, which is strong, and perhaps that is important to remember in the world of the 21st century.

Maybe our generation cannot view Germany in anything other than maybe the, I don’t know what word we use a suspicious light still, even though we’re a long way away from Nazi Germany, and Germany is very different today, but we still have an uneasy feeling about Germany, even though, in many respects, in terms of Britain, we have more in common with the Germans than we do with the French. But we always have the love hate relationship with the French. And it is the war with Napoleon culminating in the defeat of Prussia in 1806 at Jena that begins that long story of Franco Prussian, and subsequently Franco German clashes, which lasts from 1806 to 1945, and are only resolved by the European Union, and Britain is involved in all of those except Franco Prussian War of 1870. We’re involved in the second and the first and in the Napoleonic War, and of course at Waterloo with the Prussians.

And now we’re not involved. We were under the EU, but we have withdrawn from EU. Now what that means for the long term development of Europe, I’m not sure, but we’re left with two nations which do not easily sit together, the French and the Germans. In fact, Marie Antoinette, who was herself Austrian, so Germany in that sense said, “The King of Prussia is innately a bad neighbour,” to France she meant, “but the English will always be bad neighbours to France, and the sea has never prevented them from doing her great mischief.” So the French have always worried about a British German entente, and now we have an entente with no one within Europe, and that poses big questions, big questions. Next week then, we shall look at potential revolution in Germany as a whole, and we have to look at other states other than Prussia in 1848, as well as looking prior to that at the campaigns of Napoleon. So next week takes us into the first half of the 19th century in our story, not only of Prussia, but in our story of Germany. Thanks ever so much for listening. I’m sure there’s lots of people who want to say things.

Q&A and Comments:

Oh, somebody wants me to say, Oh, David, I spelled it wrong, did I, for you, on the blog, and in in truth, I think you can spell it either way. Prussia was Protestant, Poland was Catholic.

Was that an issue? Yes. Yes it was. “My ancestor,” says Hans, “has a certificate dated 1815 stating he was going to become a citizen of Prussia Brandenburg on payment of 10 good groschen.” How fantastic. So Hans, I’m assuming you are Jewish, and therefore he is allowed to stay provided he puts up money upfront.

Q: How does Denmark stay independent?

A: Largely by accident almost. Because of the geography of Denmark, it’s sort of out of the way. It isn’t out of the way when we get to Bismarck, and that’s a big question, but Denmark simply is not seen by Germany as Germany, obviously not because they’re Scandinavian, they’re Danish. Only Hitler is is concerned about taking a whole of Europe, so really, the Danish story is somewhat different.

“William Cromwell,” says Adrian, “modernised the English army, but not as well as Frederick.” No, but Cromwell was a long time. It was 100 years before, and the English never spent money on the army, so we always have to start all over again. That’s a different story, but you’re right.

Q: Oh, why did they choose Berlin?

A: Because of its position. Because of its position. Okay, I know it isn’t on a river. I know all of those problems, but they chose it because it was in a better position than Konigsburg, or now Kaliningrad. That’s all, and they could build there, and it was better ground and so on and so forth, so yes, Berlin was why they chose.

Q: Connection with Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs?

A: There isn’t really a connection. The Hohenzollerns are the rulers in Germany, become Kaisers in Germany. The Hapsburgs come when Napoleon gets rid of the Holy Roman Empire, it becomes the Austrian Empire, subsequent the Austrian-Hungarian, the Hapsburgs are rulers of that, so we’re talking about two distinct families with distinct geographical areas. The issue with the Hapsburgs comes with Bismarck when he goes to war with Austria, and as he prepares to unify Germany under Prussia.

No, Frederick the Great was dead before the French Revolution began, Phil. I think he would’ve been horrified, as he would’ve been horrified by the Revolution of 1848. He’s a man of his time. He’s a man of the 18th century. He’s not a man of the early 19th century.

Oh, and Stephen’s answer, Phil, Stephen’s just been very blunt. He was dead before 1789. I think I’ll take that.

Yes, Peter and Frederick got on really well. Who’s that? James, you’re quite right. Yes, absolutely Frederick rather admired Peter. I have no idea why.

Martin, bless you, Frederick the Great composed 121 flute sonatas on four flute concertos amongst other, how on earth did he have the time? Because he got up every morning. Well, when I was at boarding school, we used to have to get up and have a cold bath, but it wasn’t at 4:00 AM in the morning. It was something like 7:00 AM, and we certainly didn’t have wet flannels. Well, yes, if you didn’t get up, you had a wet flannel, but I can’t imagine. I can’t have a cold bath today. It puts the horrors into me.

Abigail, it’s a pity that he didn’t have a father-in-law or a wife like Jethro, who advised Moses not to everything himself and to appoint capable leaders. Now, yes, I said he married, he married Elisabeth of Wolfenbüttel, and he had no children for what we believe obvious reasons. You are right. The best leaders know how to delegate and they choose people if they can, who are better than themselves. And if you want a modern example of that, a modern example is Churchill and his wartime cabinet, and his wartime advisors. The sign of a weak leader is people who choose people less than them. If you are British, and we all have different views on politics, but there was an interesting article in “The Sunday Times” yesterday, in Britain, which suggested that Johnson only appointed has-beens to his cabinet on the grounds that then they couldn’t plot against him. Well, he missed on that, but that’s what was said, but the point is, one of the criteria of a good leader is, you are absolutely right. Whoever said it talked about Moses, sorry Abigail, you’re absolutely right, because of one criteria of good leader is the ability to delegate, and those of you who’ve been in leading positions in whatever business or mode of life you’ve been in, know that delegation is the most difficult thing, particularly if you make a mistake, and the person you’ve delegated to really isn’t good enough, and doesn’t do it as you want to do it, and there’s always a temptation not to help them, but to intervene, or even get rid of them.

John, a number of years ago, Danish TV produced a series about the war between Demark Prussia in 19th century. Schleswig-Holstein, then part of Denmark ceded to Prussia. Yeah, that’s the story we’re coming to with Bismarck. It’s an important story, but it isn’t the story today.

Q: No, did Frederick put restrictions on the Catholic?

A: No, he didn’t. And unlike the restrictions he put on Jews, that’s why I say the Anti-Semitism problem with Frederick is murky. No, he didn’t do it on Catholics. See, the difference being, well, I don’t know. I suppose the difference is he was brought up as a Christian, therefore he was brought up in Germany and Lutheran with anti Semitic views, but as he didn’t have any faith at all, he didn’t view Catholics as any different than the Protestants. He thought both were, well, I suppose he thought both were wrong.

Q: How can two Protestant electors be elected head of the Holy Roman Empire?

A: Because the Holy Roman Empire, as was well said, was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire. No, I know it sounds mad, but the whole thing was mad, as indeed right up until the end of the First World War was the Austria-Hungarian Empire mad. It’s one of those things that shouldn’t exist except in a book like “Alice in Wonderland”, but it actually did exist and I can’t do it. By the way, yeah John says about the war in Schleswig-Holstein in 1864, there is a feature film that deals with that. No, no, they were the children of his siblings, not his own children.

Q: Oh, that’s a very good question. Oh, it’s Yana. You always ask me difficult questions, Yana and Alfred, I dunno which one of you has asked this. This is a difficult question. To what extent did Prussia’s expansion include expansion of Lutherans, or did Prussia simply accept the presence of more Catholics in as a necessary cost of expansion?

A: Ah, well, I think the answer to that is fairly, if I read the whole of what you put, yes, he wanted Catholics because he wanted to expand. He wanted a population. Lutheranism, there would’ve been attempts to convert them, but no different than any other form of Protestantism. I’ll say more about this if you don’t mind later, because it’s a complex question when it comes to the division of Germany bring Lutheranism and Catholicism and the differences. They’ve learned to live together rather than try and convert each other, but it’s the Protestants through Prussia that held the upper hand. That’s very nice of you. Thank you, Rose.

And Sharon has said what I’ve said. Sharon, you and I think alike, bless you. Thank you, Barbara.

Oh, Michael Louis U3A, that’s down the road from me, is currently running a group on Prussia’s legacy, so thank you, William. Yeah, Prussia’s legacy is interesting. I won’t go into it now, because it’s a story for later, but Prussia no longer exists. Of course it exists. It’s there physically, and it’s there culturally, but Prussia’s name does not appear on the map.

Q: What’s going on in Bavaria and Saxony during this time?

A: Shelly, a good question, and that will be answered next week when I look at the 1848 Revolution, and we will look at Bavaria and Saxony, and you are very absolutely right because Bavaria and Saxony are the other two great states along with Prussia, and therefore they come into our story next week, and I’ll do a bit of background on it.

Oh, thank you, Rita. Oh, Rita, it’s always Rita, you come to my aid, and I feel I should be paying you a sort of fee for helping. Oh, hang on. Oh lord, I’ve lost the last point, and it looks interesting.

Rosemary, I was interested in you referring to Frederick the Great as enlightened as I’ve been reading the “Magnificent Rebels” by Andrea Wulf, which to the start of the Romantic Movement in Jena. Yeah, well, he was regarded as enlightened for all the reasons that, if you were doing an essay at university, you’d have to say what the enlightenment meant, and then you’d put Frederick against that, and he matches up. He really does match up. But as Montefiore says, he was the first of these enlightened monarchs. If you were doing an essay, you compare him, I would compare him to Joseph II in Vienna, given that they were both Germans. Sometimes we need to always remind ourselves that Austria is German. We know that Hitler was Austrian, that Austria is German. The problem with Austria is that, since 1945, it’s done an extraordinary job in distancing itself, not just from Nazism, but from the concept of being German, and it’s an extraordinary story, really, how Austria has worked hard at being this nice, friendly country with all this nice food and cream cakes and, “We’re not Germans at all,” is the message they give out, but they are.

“My fee is $1.98 Canadian,” says Rita. Well, I’m terribly sorry. I can’t transfer in Canadian from my back.

Thank everyone for nice comments. Thanks for really interesting questions. If I’ve not answered some of them properly, they will be answered in the weeks to come. Schleswig-Holstein definitely. Saxony and Bavaria certainly next week, so there’ll be quite a lot that will be coming in the future. Thanks for listening. See you next week.