Frederick the Great: King of Prussia

I am a general reader who came to this with almost no knowledge about Frederick or Prussian history and is as such a reader that I say that this is what I read biography for. In the first place, despite what some of the raters who admitted they never finished the book, I loved Blanning's writing. I found it lively and still informative. Frederick's character came alive through the author's prose. Secondly, Frederick is was a fascinating subject, full of contradictions. He was one the one hand, one of the most intellectual and forward thinking monarchs of his age but on the other hand, he was a cruel despot who treated people appallingly. He was hostile to received religion but permitted his subjects to worship as they would so long as they didn't harm others. This open mindedness however did not extend to Jews. He asserted all people should be treated equally but was misogonistic to an extreme that was outrageous even for his times. He is considered a great military leader but as Blanning points out, committed enormous blunders from which he survived only by sheer luck.Blanning explores all of these contradictions fully and with an open mind. The structure of the book furthers this exploration. The first half of the chapters tells the story of Frederick's childhood and chronological life focusing on his military career and his building programs. He then goes back and discusses in a non-chronological manner other subjects: culture, intellectual life, the nature of his court, his relationship with his family and friends, and the economic life of Prussia during his reign. Because of Frederick's nature, this structure works especially well in this biography. All in all, I recommend this highly to anyone interested in European history.

I spent the first 5 years of my diplomatic career in Germany. It is difficult not be impressed by Germany. It is fabulously wealthy with the most amazing art, music and architecture. It has the best Universities. Its autobahns have to be seen to be believed. It is safe. Everything is efficient and runs on time.And yet, there is the everlasting stain of the Holocaust and its superefficient killing machine. Trying to comprehend the reason behind evil on that scale makes German history particularly compelling. A few figures dominate that history. Hitler, of course towers above the rest because of the sheer magnitude of suffering that he wrought. This is reflected in the volume of writing about him and World War II. Less is available about figures like Bismarck and Frederick the Great.Much has also been written about Prussia. The Kings of Prussia ran the most competent administrative system of the 18th and 19th centuries. Although much of erstwhile Prussia is now in Poland, Germany’s fabled efficiency has Prussian genes. The war-like spirit that led to two World Wars and the mighty fighting machine that Germany unleashed during these wars also have Prussian origins. This book is about Frederick the Great who in the course of his reign (1740-177 ) turned Prussia into a major power.Frederick was an extraordinary man. He was exceptionally dutiful, exceptionally intelligent and exceptionally gifted. His record as an administrator was exalted. His military record, although less stellar, was still exceptional. That was about par for the house of Hohenzollern.What made him Frederick the Great was his extraordinary boldness and extraordinary tenacity. He also stood out from amongst his royal contemporaries because of his beliefs. Like most of them, he was no democrat. He believed unabashedly in the Divine Rights of royalty and the superior position of aristocrats. To that extent he was a typical despot. But he believed that this elevated position had to be sanctified by sacrifice. Aristocrats were expected to join the military and lead from the front. In an age where officers with swords drawn placed themselves ahead of their men while charging at the enemy, this meant appalling casualty rates amongst the ranks of the nobility. Even so, that class was unflinching in its loyalty to Frederick. His record in granting what are today called “civil liberties” was prodigious. He knew the Bible by heart but was brazenly atheist and gave complete religious freedom. He was tolerant of criticism. He was almost flagrantly homosexual. He worked ceaselessly to ensure that German peasantry had access to a modern justice system with codified laws and, trained judges and lenient sentencing. Unfailingly courteous – he raised his hat to everyone he passed, including commoners – he listed carefully to grievances and did his utmost to redress them. He was a cultivated intellectual who put together a brilliant court and counted Rousseau and Voltaire amongst his friends. He was a patron of the arts and was himself an accomplished musician and even a composer; an energetic art collector, a bibliophile and competent poet and writer. This, and more, earned him the title of the “model” enlightened despot.The book rises above the ordinary when it links the darker side of his character to the tragedy of Germany in the 20th century. He was a militarist. He glorified war. He thought little of throwing the lives of his men away in battle. He cultivated the German virtues of obedience and order with ominous consequences for history. He spoke only French but was an avowed German and Prussian nationalist and was avaricious when expanding his territories. By providing freedom of religion and relative freedom of speech he avoided the revolutionary tumult of France. This provided immediate stability and allowed Germany the space to grow its economy and its institutions. It also had the ultimately unfortunate result of thwarting the growth of democracy and constitutionalism which only came after the World Wars. The combination of militarism, nationalism, territorial ambition and the tradition of obedience lay at the heart of the suffering that engulfed Europe in the first half of the 20th century.His character flaws were as remarkable as his abilities. His father was a psychopath who treated his son with the greatest cruelty. Frederick in turn treated his wife, his brothers and his nephews with almost equal malice.The author does a superb job in reconstructing this turbulent and momentous life. His light touch and felicitous choice of words can only arise from uncommon mastery over the subject of this biography and his times. It is a great book about a most extraordinary man and a legacy that contained great achievements and great flaws.

This is a very balanced treatment, with the warts and hypocrisies as evident as Frederick the Great's many accomplishments. FtG is one of those pivotal actors in history, clawing his way to the top tier of the great European powers while moderating many of Prussia's worst societal excesses; a man of the people who despised the lower classes, improving their conditions and opportunities while preserving aristocratic privilege. He even published the Anti-Machiavel, where he argued for justice and the avoidance of offensive wars of conquest, literally at the moment that he conquered Silesia, ensuring that he would have to fight for it during his entire 46-year reign. Though it is a lot to cover in one volume, Blanning succeeds brilliantly.FtG began life under a brutish father, Frederick William, who found him deficient in every way and took every opportunity to bully and humiliate him. He despised FtG's interest in music, philosophy, and even relaxation with his male friends. In spite of this, he schooled FtG in the military arts and left him a full treasury. Once FtG came into his own in an 1840 royal marriage and then his ascession, he went his own way, proving himself more competent, audacious and forward-looking than his father, if the equal to him in cruelty.His first major initiative was to claim a chunk of the Austrian Empire in a contiguous territory, Silesia. Not only did this create a buffer zone, but it fulfilled the economic needs of Prussia, essentially supplying it with raw materials, manufactured imports that were re-directed from Austria, and not least, the prestige of a major conquest. If in the first 2 Silesian wars FtG completely depleted the treasure left by his father, he succeeded in establishing Prussia as a first-rate power alongside France and Russia. This was the work of a political and military master, though the Seven Years War - also about Silesia ultimately - almost brought about his downfall in a series of disastrous encounters in what became a prolonged war of attrition. (He was saved by a combination of dynastic succession in Russia and the exhaustion of Austria and France.)To accomplish all this, FtG was lucky in that he inherited a militarized society from his father: the entire Prussian state was geared towards strengthening the army and cavalry, which operated not seasonally but year round; most aristocrats (the Junkers) had no way to live exclusively off their land, so had to undertake military or bureaucratic careers; the drilling regimen and discipline were second to none. FtG took this apparatus over and doubled down until he had the finest army in Europe, which answered to his command alone.Though an avid student of Enlightenment philosophy, FtG was the strongest autocrat since Louis XIV. He controlled everything, never allowing his spheres of power to cross lines in the hands of underlings. While this conferred on him the advantages of a unified command, it also warped his perspective, often resulting in foreseeable military disasters that his generals had tried to warn him about. That being said, when he focused on something - from agricultural productivity to the administrative machinery of justice - he could bring significant, at times fundamental, improvements, which added to his legacy as a great reformer. He even established the Berlin porcelain industry, 25% of which was paid for by his requirement that all Jews wishing to marry were obligated to purchase an entire set. (He was a relatively tolerant antisemite.)FtG often intervened in current affairs for political reasons, endearing himself to the common people even when contravening the cause of justice or the rule of law. Ubiquitous in society, he was known for doffing his hat to everyone he encountered (highly unusual at the time), making sure that all petitions to him were answered, protecting dissidents from other countries even when he disagreed with them (e.g. Rousseau), and improving the lot of peasants in innumerable ways that were progressive for their time. He had the human touch that many populists employ. Of course, he moved quickly to squash internal dissent, even while advocating a free press that he selectively censored. At a minimum, he succeeded in forging an inchoate sense of national identity - his subjects ostensibly wanted to obey him and did not merely submit to his directives from fear.On a personal level, he was an extremely difficult man, in the end as tyranical a bully as his father. Not hesitating to publicly humiliate family members or claim credit for the accomplishments of others, Blanning portrays him as a genuine monster. For example, when his wife's brother died during one of his Silesian campaigns, he did not bother to write a letter of condolence, indeed he rarely invited her to official functions he attended. He also kept a coterie of favorite catamites around himself, jettisoning them as coldly as he chose them. His relationship with Voltaire is one of the key relationships of his life, first as a fawning follower and later forcing him to edit his writings in French, ending in alienation.This book is a great pleasure to read. Blanning's style is as elegant as it is subtly balanced on the pros and cons of FtG. He covers the bare bones of the military episodes, but always with an eye to explaining the politics behind them and never to excess of tactical detail, which was perfect for my level of interest. If I have one criticism, it is that Blanning did not provide a very clear sense of the historiography of FtG, how he was viewed through differing times.Recommended warmly.

A monarch that, due to his towering intellectuality was so far ahead of his time that it is hard to believe that in that age monarchs like him actually existed. Together with Marcus Aurelius, of whom Frederick was a great admirer, the closest we ever got to the platonic understanding of a philosopher king.I took this biography to Berlin and read most of it while I was there. I toured much of his palaces and buildings while I was actually reading this and this together do bring things to live making my admiration for FTG even more. However, this admiration is not always shared by the author of this book. Planning, the fine writer he is who obviously knows his stuff, is not always equally positive about FTG and often directly or between the lines one can sense a level of unnecessary bitterness, which I thought was odd, ad he time and time actually describes things that can only be admired and are clear proof of a rare level of enlightened spirit amongst monarch.However, when reading beside all of this prejudicious comments, there is still enough to enjoy and learn I would add. For a better understanding I would recommend to read Clarke's Iron Kingdom first and then read this.

Tim Blanning’s inspiring biography of Frederick II deals with each of the facets of this enigmatic man in turn. It seems a good arrangement. Frederick turns out not to be quite the tactical hero that Napoleon, for one, believed him to be, but his strategies paid off after the capture of Silesia and the Seven Years War. Despite the language of his Prussian subjects, he always insisted on speaking in French. Although seen as a hero of the Protestant world, he cared nothing for their religion either. He hardly ever held court and often refused to listen to his advisors. He had been so affected by his father as a young man that he was equally harsh with his closest, including the nephew destined to succeed him. Mostly surrounded by men, he openly acknowledged his sexuality. He became an important player in the Age of Enlightenment, inviting Voltaire and others to live there in exile, assigning tolerance and liberties to the public sphere, ending torture, and ensuring equality before the law, although without disrupting the status quo. One sees why reading about Frederick the Great is so essential for understanding the evolution towards the modern world. A great book.

I really had great hopes for this book. Frederick the Great is a fascinating figure, but unfortunately Tim Banning isn't a fascinating writer. Rather the contrary. This book was extrememly tedious to read, especially the parts on the Seven Years War and other wars fought. There is no background to these wars. I had no idea, really, what was going on. There is no life to this book. The book drags and never seems to pick up. Unfortunate, really, since there are so few books out their on Prussian and German history in English. Hopefully, I'll find another. I would avoid this one unless you are already an expert on eighteenth century history.

As a key learner of the early modern period in Europe, this book was a solid, but not spectacular insight into the life of a figure who's actions led to one of the watershed moments of Europe, the rise of Prussia, and the steady decline of royalist France and the Habsburg Empire, and the complete destruction of the once great Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. A truly interesting, if not complex character, I recommend people to read as it provides a strong story in the period of unrest and change in the period of the Enlightenment.As Napoleon would observe, Frederick was a figure of huge importance to the shaping of modern Europe.Tim Blanning however leaves much to be desired in the form of trying to engage the reader, nonetheless with a strong character like Frederick it is difficult to make this a poor read.

A well written and balanced account of the career of this eminent 18th century king of Prussia. It concentrates not unnaturally on his military campaigns but also covers his political and personal life. To be honest, it was these two last elements in which I was most interested. There are some useful maps and interesting photographs. I only deducted a star because I compared it with Andrew Roberts' "Napoleon the Great" which I think gets a better balance between the military, political and personal elements of his subject's life.