• Genre: Classical
• Instrument: Flute
• Representative Album: "Three Flute Concertos"

Biography

There are instances of European monarchs laying claim to composer's credits for music of their era -- best known is the example of songs attributed to England's King Henry VIII. In the case of Frederick the Great, also known as Frederick II of Prussia, the composition talent was very real, as were his musical abilities. He was taking instruction in the organ at age seven, and beginning in 1728, when he was 16 years old, he began taking instruction from flautist/composer Johann Joaquim Quantz. Frederick's father saw no purpose to his son's musical training and ordered its halt, but beginning in 1732, the crown prince maintained a chamber orchestra and took instruction in composition from its conductor, Carl Heinrich Graun.

Frederick's instrument was the flute, which he played for his own pleasure, as much as four times a day. Following his ascent to the throne in 1740 as Frederick II, he engaged Quantz at court under a very generous agreement. Frederick's interest in music caused him to take a serious interest in its creation within his domain, so that he even dictated the forms and shapes that any music written at court should take at Potsdam. He played only the works of Quantz, who authored 296 flute concertos for the king -- Frederick also wrote his own pieces, 122 sonatas for flute along with four concertos and four symphonies, as well as numerous other smaller scale works, all of which have survived. The four flute concertos are considered among the finest works of this talented amateur composer, who wrote for purposes of entertainment. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

Frederick II (1712-1786), or Frederick the Great, was king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786. He combined the qualities of a warrior king with those of an enlightened despot.

The eldest son of Frederick William I of Prussia and of Princess Sophie Dorothea of Hanover, Frederick II was born in Berlin on Jan. 24, 1712. His father was a hardworking, unimaginative soldier-king, with no outward pretensions and no time to waste on superfluous niceties. Even as an adolescent Frederick, with the tacit support of his mother, rebelled against this mold. He preferred French literature to German and the company of young fops to that of old soldiers.

In 1730 Frederick and a young friend, Lieutenant Katte, planned a romantic escape to England, but their plot was discovered. The would-be escapees were arrested and condemned to death for desertion, and Katte was executed in Frederick's presence. The crown prince was spared upon the entreaties of Emperor Charles VI, although it is doubtful that his father ever intended to go through with the execution. Frederick, however, was imprisoned in the fortress of Küstrin in the most rigorous conditions until, after some 6 months, he voluntarily approached Frederick William with a request for pardon. For the next 2 years, although still nominally a prisoner, Frederick was employed in a subsidiary position of the local administration of Küstrin, thus learning the intricacies of the Prussian administrative system.

In 1732 Frederick was appointed commandant of an infantry regiment and, having decided to obey his father, he learned soldiering with all the thoroughness with which he had previously avoided it. In 1733, at his father's insistence, he married Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig, but his aversion to women was so pronounced that the marriage was, over the many years it lasted, never consummated.

Between 1733 and 1740 Frederick, who had grown into a young man whose unimposing stature was balanced by piercing blue eyes, an aquiline nose, and a good chin, exceeded even the expectations of his father in his dedication to hard, dull routine. But he also found time to devote himself further to French literature, to begin a lifelong correspondence with a number of French philosophes, and to try writing himself. One product of this period was the Anti-Machiavel (1739), a work in which he argued that the Italian's ruthlessly practical maxims for princes were no longer compatible with the more advanced ethics of a new age. He was soon given the opportunity to test his own conduct against these views.

War of the Austrian Succession

On May 31, 1740, Frederick William died, and Frederick became king of Prussia as Frederick II. Before he had time to accustom himself to his new position, the death of Emperor Charles VI on October 20 created a political crisis and presented Frederick with a unique opportunity. Like all the other leading powers of Europe, Prussia had subscribed to the Pragmatic Sanction, guaranteeing the succession of Charles's daughter Maria Theresa and the integrity of her dominions. But it was an open secret that at least France and Bavaria intended to make demands upon Austria as soon as the Emperor was dead, and Frederick saw no reason to stand by while others enriched themselves at Austria's expense. He offered to assist Austria in the maintenance of its possessions in exchange for the cession of the rich province of Silesia to Prussia. When this outrageous piece of blackmail was indignantly rejected, in December Frederick marched his troops into Silesia, thus launching the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748).

In the first phase of this struggle the combined onslaught of Prussian, French, and Bavarian forces threatened to overwhelm Austria. Not wishing to bring about a situation more favorable to his potential rivals than to himself, Frederick withdrew from the war in 1742 with most of Silesia as his price. When Austria, relieved of the necessity of fighting the Prussians, threatened to crush its remaining enemies, Frederick reentered the war in 1744. The conflict was finally ended in 1748 with Silesia still firmly in Prussian hands.

Seven Years War

Since the Austrians were antagonistic over the loss of Silesia, Frederick had reason to fear a renewal of the struggle. In the aftermath of the war both sides engaged in complicated diplomatic maneuvers. Austria, which had enjoyed a tentative alliance with Russia since 1746, tried to strengthen this while making overtures toward its old enemy France. Frederick in turn concluded the Treaty of Westminster (1755) with Great Britain, promising Prussian neutrality in the war that had just broken out between France and England. These maneuvers led directly to the Diplomatic Revolution, which in 1756 left Prussia facing an overwhelming Continental alliance of Austria, Russia, France, and Saxony. Rather than await inevitable death by constriction, Frederick attacked Austria, which he regarded as the weakest among the great powers facing him. Thus began the Seven Years War (1756-1763).

In this conflict Frederick distinguished himself by continually keeping at bay much more powerful antagonists. He took advantage of the natural lack of cohesion of coalitions and fought his enemies, so far as possible, one at a time. The superior discipline of the Prussian army allowed Frederick to march it to the theater of war in small detachments, from various directions, uniting only shortly before a battle was to be fought. He also made the most of the oblique order of battle which he had inculcated in the Prussian army and which allowed him to concentrate his forces against emerging weak spots in his enemies' more ponderous formations.

In spite of these advantages, by 1762 Prussia was on the verge of bankruptcy, its army was in no condition to continue the war, and Russian troops had occupied Berlin. At this juncture Empress Elizabeth of Russia died; her successor, the mad Peter III, an admirer of Frederick, pulled Russia out of the war. Thus saved, Frederick was able to conclude the Peace of Hubertusberg (1763), which restored the prewar status quo.

The Seven Years War taught Frederick that, while Prussia's recently acquired position as a great power had been successfully defended, any further adventures in foreign policy had to be avoided at all costs. Hereafter his policy was a strictly defensive one, bent primarily on preventing changes in the balance of power. This became evident when, in 1772, it appeared as if Austria and Russia were about to succeed in partitioning the Ottoman Empire. As there was no chance of securing reasonable compensation for Prussia, Frederick blustered and threatened until the principals agreed on a three-way partition of Poland. In 1778, when Joseph II of Austria attempted to acquire Bavaria, Frederick reluctantly went to war but engaged in no more than a halfhearted war of maneuver of which the Austrians at last tired; and in 1784, when Joseph tried to trade the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria, Frederick organized the League of German Princes to preserve the status of Germany.

Domestic Policies

Frederick had inherited a well-run state from his father, a circumstance that allowed him to fight his major wars. But he worked as hard at internal administration as at military leadership. He very reluctantly delegated authority, took all important decisions himself, and ruled through ministers responsible only to him. His ruthless insistence on hard work and honesty resulted in a doubling of the revenues of the state in his reign and a tripling of the available reserve fund, this last in spite of the devastation associated with the Seven Years War.

Frederick continued the traditional Prussian policy of encouraging immigration of economically productive elements, particularly peasants, into the more backward and underpopulated areas of the state. In contrast, his policy toward the established peasantry tended to be restrictive. In spite of the spirit of the times, he refused to abolish serfdom where it existed, fearing that such a measure would weaken the landed nobility, which produced both officers for his army and officials for his civil service.

In economics Frederick was a strict mercantilist, fostering the rather backward domestic industry with high tariffs wherever he could. He did not, however, extend these notions to the building of a fleet, so that Prussia did not participate in the great expansion of European overseas trade of the second half of the 18th century.

Apart from purely pragmatic measures, Frederick's reign was not a time of considerable reform. The one exception is the area of judicial procedure, where the efforts of his minister of justice, Cocceji, resulted not merely in a more extensive codification of the law but in the acceptance of the principle that the law is foremost the protector of the poor and the weak.

During his reign Frederick continued to concern himself with literature and music. He became, in a sense, the host of the most famous salon in Europe. Voltaire was only the best known of the philosophes to take advantage of his hospitality. The Prussian Academy of Sciences, which had long languished and which he renewed in 1744, provided much-needed subsidies for both major and minor luminaries of the French Enlightenment. At the same time Frederick had no use for those obstinate enough to persist in writing in "barbaric" German, and the young Goethe was not the only German author deprived of royal assistance for this reason.

But Frederick was not content to be merely a patron of literature. He found time to produce, besides Anti-Machiavel, the Mirror of Princes and a series of histories dealing with his own affairs that at his death filled 15 volumes.

An Assessment

Frederick was both lionized and vilified long after his death. In Germany his more nationally minded admirers produced a cult of Frederick the Great, the precursor of the all-German hero. In other countries he was blamed as the inventor of an implacable German militarism let loose upon the world. Both these views are gross distortions. Frederick was always a Prussian nationalist, never a German one. And while he was a soldier-king, his pervasive interests throughout his life were nonmilitary. The latter part of his reign was unquestionably pacific and in some cases even propitiatory in nature.

Frederick did not have a first-rate analytical mind, but Voltaire's denunciations of him after their famous quarrel do not sound much more convincing than his panegyrics when he still hoped to get some of the royal money. Frederick was parsimonious, perhaps to a fault, but his funds were in fact severely limited. His treatment of his queen, whom he refused even the right to reside near him, was perhaps unforgivable. Frederick II died at his beloved summer residence, Sans-Souci, near Potsdam on Aug. 17, 1786, and was followed on the throne by his nephew Frederick William II.

Further Reading

Among the older English biographies of Frederick, the best is probably W. F. Reddaway, Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia (1904). Other useful biographies are Edith Simon, The Making of Frederick the Great (1963), and D. B. Horn, Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia (1964). Gerhard Ritter, Frederick the Great: An Historical Profile (1936; 3d ed. 1954; trans. 1968), and G. P. Gooch, Frederick the Great: The Ruler, the Writer, the Man (1947), are both stimulating essays dealing with aspects of Frederick's life. See also John A. Marriott and Charles G. Robertson, The Evolution of Prussia: The Making of an Empire (1915; rev. ed. 1946); Hajo Holborn, History of Modern Germany, vol. 2 (1963); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (2 vols., 1966-1969); and Walter Henry Nelson, The Soldier Kings: The House of Hohenzollern (1970).

Additional Sources

Abulafia, David, Frederick II: a medieval emperor, London: Allen Lane, 1988; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Duffy, Christopher, Frederick the Great: a military life, London:Routledge & K. Paul, 1985.

Duffy, Christopher, The military life of Frederick the Great, New York: Atheneum, 1986, 1985.

Mitford, Nancy, Frederick the Great, London; New York: Penguin Books, 1995.

Simon, Edith, The making of Frederick the Great, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977.

For more information on Frederick II, visit Britannica.com.

or Frederick the Great, 1712–86, king of Prussia (1740–86), son and successor of Frederick William I.

Early Life

Frederick's coarse and tyrannical father despised the prince, who showed a taste for French art and literature and no interest in government and war. At the age of 18 Frederick, who had been repeatedly humiliated and ill-treated, planned to escape to England. He was arrested, imprisoned, and forced to witness the beheading of his friend and accomplice, Lieutenant Katte. Frederick submitted to his father and was released. In 1733, at his father's request, he married Elizabeth of Brunswick-Bevern, but he separated from her shortly afterward and for the rest of his life showed no interest in women.

Prince Frederick spent the next few years at Rheinsberg, where he wrote his Anti-Machiavel, an idealistic refutation of Machiavelli, and began his long correspondence with Voltaire. His period of relative inactivity ended with his accession to the throne in 1740, after which Frederick immediately showed the qualities of leadership and decision that were to characterize his reign.

Foreign Affairs

In the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) against Maria Theresa, Frederick invaded Silesia without warning, simultaneously offering his aid to Maria Theresa if she ceded a portion of Silesia to him. A brilliant campaigner, Frederick acted with utter disregard of his allies, notably France, and twice concluded separate peace treaties with Maria Theresa (1742, 1745), both times securing Upper and Lower Silesia for Prussia.

In the Seven Years War (1756–63), possession of Silesia was again in dispute; Maria Theresa wished to recover it, and Frederick faced a strong coalition including Austria, Russia, and France. England was his only strong ally. Victorious at Rossbach and Leuthen (1757), he was routed (1759) at Kunersdorf by the Austro-Russian forces, who in 1760 occupied Berlin. In that dark period, it is said, Frederick was on the verge of suicide. However, the accession (1762) of his admirer, Peter III of Russia, took Russia out of the war and opened Frederick's way to victory.

The Peace of Hubertusburg (1763) left Frederick his previous conquests and made Prussia the foremost military power in Europe. He was brilliantly assisted by his principal generals, Seydlitz, James Keith, Ferdinand of Brunswick, Hans Joachim von Zieten, and others. Frederick is widely recognized as the 18th century's greatest general and military strategist. His tactics were studied and admired by Napoleon Bonaparte and exerted great influence on the art of warfare.

After the peace of 1763 Frederick promoted an alliance with Russia, which had nearly defeated him in the Seven Years War. The establishment of a Russo-Prussian alliance prepared the way for the eventual dismemberment of Poland. By the first partition of Poland (see Poland, partitions of) in 1772, Frederick vastly expanded the limits of Prussia. His rivalry with Austria persisted. He opposed any attempts by Austria to extend its power within the Holy Roman Empire and instigated the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–79) to prevent Austrian annexation of Bavaria. He also created (1785) the Fürstenbund [league of princes] to check Austrian schemes.

Internal Affairs

Frederick continued his father's fundamental domestic policies. His first care was the strength and discipline of his army. An “enlightened despot,” he instituted important legal and penal reforms, set up trade monopolies to create new industries, forwarded education, and accomplished internal improvements such as drainage projects, roads, and canals. Though he improved the lot of his own serfs, the nobility had more control over their peasants after his reign than before.

Character

Frederick was tolerant in religious matters, personally professing atheism to his intimates. Cold and curt, he relaxed only during his famous midnight suppers at Sans Souci, his residence at Potsdam. There he was surrounded by a group of educated men, mostly French, that included at times Voltaire (who broke with him in 1753 but who later resumed his friendship from a safe distance), d'Alembert, La Mettrie, and Maupertuis.

Frederick's wit was corrosive and icy. He wrote inconsequential poetry and remarkable prose on politics, history, military science, philosophy, law, and literature. Nearly all his writings were in French. He failed to appreciate such men as Lessing and Goethe, who were among his most ardent admirers. A pupil of Quantz, he played the flute creditably, and he composed marches, concertos for the flute, and other pieces. Frederick's personal appearance in his later years—small, sharp-featured, untidy, and snuff-stained—has become part of the legend of “Old Fritz.” He was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William II.

Bibliography

See J. D. E. Preuss, ed., Œuvres de Frédéric le Grand (33 vol., 1846–57). See also biographies by Carlyle and Macaulay, both classics, and the more scholarly studies by G. Ritter (1936, tr. 1968), P. Gaxotte (tr. 1941), G. P. Gooch (1947), L. Reiners (1952, tr. 1960), P. Paret, ed. (1972), W. Hubatsch (1976), and D. Fraser (2002).

Frederick II (Prussia) (1712–1786; ruled 1740–1786), king of Prussia. In 1740 the years of general peace that had prevailed in Europe since the conclusion the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) came to an end. In May 1740 Frederick William I (ruled 1713–1740) died and was succeeded by his son Frederick II (Frederick the Great). In October 1740 Charles VI (ruled 1711–1740) of Austria died unexpectedly and was succeeded by his daughter Maria Theresa (1717–1780) as sovereign of the Austrian lands. The new Prussian king used the opportunity to seize the rich Austrian province of Silesia, beginning the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) and the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Frederick's victories in these wars raised Prussia to the rank of the great power that became, in the next century, the creator of a united Germany.

Frederick brought to his task of expanding and ruling Prussia an unusual temperament. As a youth he was interested in art and music. He played the flute, composed music, and admired the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), whose son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788) was the Prussian court composer. Frederick's relationship with his crude martinet of a father alternated between the explosively antagonistic and the coldly distant. But in the end he was his father's son. Flute and composition gave way to success in war and to a religion of the state, with the prince as its first servant. Reason of state became the cynical Frederick's secular creed, to which he consecrated both his life and the lives and fates of his subjects. After the wars Frederick became a misanthrope, nursing an almost pathological suspicion of everyone he knew and every report he read. But in spite of bad health and bad temper, he continued to work, spending endless hours alone reading reports and writing orders and comments, which he interrupted, when he felt up to it, with surprise inspections that terrified superior and subordinate alike. He held his officials to the same standards of diligence and honesty he maintained for himself, and the phrase "to work for the king of Prussia" became an eighteenth-century expression for working long and hard for low pay and no appreciation. But Frederick, the harsh and grim autocrat, saw it all as benefiting the one thing he loved, the Prussian state.

The Wars

In the autumn of 1740, seizing the moment, Frederick occupied Silesia. After securing it, he offered both payment and alliance to the outraged Maria Theresa, who rejected both and prepared for war. By 1741 all of Europe west of Russia was at war with someone. Although alliances shifted, as did military fortunes, in the War of the Austrian Succession, Prussia held onto Silesia. By the Treaty of Dresden (1745) Prussia retained Silesia, and in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) all other conquests were rescinded. Eight years of war had brought gain to Prussia and substantial destruction to all the rest.

The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle satisfied no one. Austria was not reconciled to the loss of Silesia, and Maria Theresa schemed to get it back. In May 1756 she engineered the Diplomatic Revolution, in which France, after nearly three hundred years of enmity toward Austria, joined Austria and Russia against Prussia. Frederick derisively called the new triple alliance the "petticoat plot," since it was negotiated by Maria Theresa of Austria, Empress Elizabeth (ruled 1741–1762) of Russia, and Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson (Madame de Pompadour; 1721–1764), mistress of Louis XV (ruled 1715–1774), of France. Ridicule, however, was reserved for public consumption; privately Frederick worried about the new coalition sufficiently to begin the war himself in August 1756 by occupying Saxony and seizing its treasury and supplies. When the fighting began, Frederick, for one, would be in a favorable position.

Frederick needed every advantage he could grab, for the alliance was as strong as he had feared. Although Frederick had exceptional military skills and won more battles than he lost, he still could not win every time. He did defeat the French so decisively at Rossbach (1757) and Minden (1759) that they were effectively driven from the war. But Austria and Russia were more substantial foes. By 1759 Frederick had been thrown on the defensive, and in 1760 Austria took Saxony, while the Russians burned Berlin. In 1762, when it looked as if Frederick would lose the war, Empress Elizabeth of Russia died, and her successor Peter III (ruled 1762), who admired Frederick, concluded a peace treaty with him. Austria could not continue the war alone, and on 23 February 1763 signed the Treaty of Hubertusburg with Prussia. Frederick retained Silesia.

Although Frederick was pleased with the acquisition of Silesia and with the rise of Prussia as a great power, he also realized that marauding armies, including his own, had devastated every part of Prussia. Frederick continued expansion after 1763, taking the province of Posen (Poznan) in the first partition of Poland in 1772, but he engaged habitually in a diplomacy of peace, desiring to settle all international issues by negotiation. His attention turned to rebuilding Prussia.

The Society

Frederick brought to administration the same ideals that animated his fellow enlightened despots in Austria, Savoy, Tuscany, and Spain. He too strove to increase royal centralization and to impose uniformity upon the varying local and class privileges in Prussia. The technique he used was cameralism, government by committees and councils of administrators. He retained the General Directory established by his father but undercut its broad authority by creating several independent and competing councils, beginning with Commerce and Industry (1741), then War Supplies (1746), Excises and Tolls (1766), Mines (1768), and Forestry (1770). Cameralism fostered reports to the royal autocrat, secrecy in all deliberations and recommendations, and an incurable tendency toward caution and procedure (red tape). But efficiency was not Frederick's goal, autocracy was, and cameralism was well suited to deferring all decisions to the king.

Frederick's internal reforms were centered on three general areas, agriculture, commerce and manufacture, and law. In all of these areas Frederick followed the general ideals of enlightened despotism, the idea that a philosophical autocrat, with the best interests of his or her people at heart, could reform the inherited maze of medieval anomalies, privileges, exemptions, and class structures that stood athwart progress toward a more just, prosperous, and efficient state.

In the area of law Frederick and his successor Frederick William II (ruled 1786–1797) achieved what all other eighteenth-century monarchs, enlightened or not, tried and failed to do. They created a unified law code for the entire realm. In 1781 Frederick issued a general reform of civil procedure. Completed in 1794, this code made Prussian justice the most honest and efficient in Europe, no small achievement, and it guaranteed liberty of religion, again not insignificant. It secured private property but left serfdom untouched. Free persons (excluding serfs, of course) had guaranteed civil rights, but the legal predominance of the landed nobility was also established. It was a code that provided some liberty but with an emphasis on the rights of the state.

Frederick's agricultural policies were a combination of modern state support and retention of serfdom. He drained swamps, particularly in the Oder Valley and in Brandenburg. He settled immigrants on vacant lands that had been depopulated by war or reclaimed from swamps and forests. He gave peasants tax rebates, grain, fodder, animals, and timber to build or rebuild. To the landed nobility, who were the chief support of the Prussian monarchy, he gave money and tax rebates and support for the institution of serfdom. New crops, such as turnips and potatoes, were introduced through royal patronage, along with better cattle and improved crop rotation. In the end, as is so often the case, the nobles with large farms benefited more than did the peasants with small ones.

Frederick's efforts in commerce and manufacturing complemented his agricultural policies and followed the standard mercantilist policies of the eighteenth century. He built canals to connect the Oder and the Elbe, thus opening north central Europe to Prussian products. He expanded the harbor at Szczecin (Stettin) on the Oder to increase north-south trade from Silesia to the Baltic. Frederick invited textile workers from abroad to Prussia, abolished internal tolls to create a free trade area within Prussia, and established a state bank (1766) to extend credit to industrial enterprises. The investment of state funds, a basic mercantilist idea, reached the huge sum of sixty million talers by Frederick's death in 1786. The king also reorganized and rationalized the Prussian tax structure (1776) with the result that royal income rose. Frederick's general economic policies, both in industry and in agriculture, reflected standard Continental opinion concerning royal responsibility for national prosperity.

A general evaluation of the reign of Frederick the Great must center around his greatest concern, the state. Liberty for subjects was not important, nor was anything beyond liberty of religion granted. The state became more efficient, more powerful, and more competitive internationally, reflecting Frederick's mercantilist beliefs as an autocrat and a warrior who made peace rather than war a continuation of policy by other means.

Bibliography

Carsten, F. L. The Origins of Prussia. Oxford, 1954.

Ergang, R. R. The Potsdam Fuehrer: Frederick William I, Father of Prussian Militarism. New York, 1941.

Gooch, G. P. Frederick the Great: The Ruler, the Writer, the Man. New York, 1947.

Rosenberg, Hans. Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660–1815. Cambridge, Mass., 1958.

—JAMES D. HARDY, JR.

Quotes:

"I must in the face of a storm, think, live and die as a king."

"In trying to defend everything he defended nothing."

"An educated people can be easily governed."

"Every man must get to Heaven his own way."

"They say that kings are made in the image of God. If that is what he looks like, I feel sorry for God."

"Don't forget your great guns, which are the most respectable arguments of the rights of kings."

See more famous quotes by (Frederick II) Frederick The Great