In Germany, newspaper columnists and TV talk shows are hotly debating whether or not there is cause for celebration. King Frederick II (1712–1786) put Prussia on the map as a European power. In 1945, Prussia was taken off the map. A mythical figure and an icon, he remains a puzzle, full of contradictions – a military genius who played the flute.
In pursuit of power and glory, Frederick waged three aggressive wars – the last one, the Seven Years’ War – against countries that were no threat to him. (He was England’s ally in 1756 when they conquered Quebec.) After defeating the Prussians and occupying Berlin about twenty years after Frederick’s death, Napoleon visited his grave in Potsdsam. “Gentlemen,” he said to his entourage, “if this man were still alive I would not be here.”
But – and you may want to take this into account when you consider celebrating his birthday – there was also a direct line between him and the Third Reich. Hitler considered Frederick his role model. At the very end, in the bunker, on April 12, 1945, he hoped Roosevelt’s death would turn things around for him just as during the Seven Years’ War the death of his enemy, the czarina Elizabeth, rescued him, against all expectations, in the last minute.
Frederick would have had no use for Hitler. Frederick was more French than German. At his court, only French was spoken and he was an anti-nationalist. He tolerated anybody as long as they respected him. A skeptic, he tolerated all religions. Though he had strong intellectual interests, literature to him meant French literature and he was not interested in his contemporaries, Goethe and Schiller. He conducted his voluminous writing in French, wrote a history of Prussia in French, and an early idealistic essay, Anti-Machiavelli, in which he challenged, chapter by chapter, Machiavelli’s The Prince, a textbook on Realpolitik, on moral grounds. He loved ideas, and had a spirited correspondence with Voltaire for more than ten years. In 1750, Voltaire spent several lively months at his court in Potsdam.
Frederick was an absolute monarch but, as a disciple of the French Enlightenment, his absolutism was tempered by his belief in the rule of law – yes, you can have the rule of law without democracy – and by his insistence on the practice of the legendary Prussian virtues of efficiency, incorruptibility, punctuality and reliability. Oswald Spengler, the author of The Decline of the West, wrote an anti-democratic book about Prussian Socialism, published in 1919, while the Weimar Constitution was being debated. He had Frederick’s Prussia in mind.
And he loved music. He was a talented composer and invited the old Bach to his court and (perhaps) composed for him the theme for The Musical Offering.
But he was not a charming man. He wanted to be admired, even loved, but his general tone of voice was sarcastic. He was tolerant by intellectual conviction not by nature: he was a cynic and did not like people. Towards the end of his life, he was a bad-tempered, crotchety old man – always appearing wearing his famous three-cornered hat – a misanthrope who felt he was being crushed by the burdens of state. His motto was Ich Diene [I serve]. He was the subject of innumerable anecdotes. Once, during one of his battles, he egged on his reluctant soldiers by calling out to them, “Get Going, Ihr Kerle, do you want to live for ever?” When he died, there was a universal sigh of relief.
No wonder he was a misanthrope. He had a hideous, atrocious childhood. As a boy he had a philosophical, artistic disposition – an offence to his despotic, militarist, crude drillmaster of a father, King Frederick William I, the “soldier-king,” who thought his son and heir was soft. (It is generally assumed that Frederick was gay.) When he was eighteen, Frederick had a close friendship with Lieutenant Hans Hermann von Katte to whom he confessed his intention to escape from his father’s oppression and flee to England. Since he was already an officer, this amounted to desertion, a capital crime. The plot was discovered and Frederick was incarcerated in the fortress of Küstrin. For being an accessory to his son’s attempted desertion, the king had von Katte decapitated in the courtyard of the fortress and forced Frederick to watch from the window.
Frederick never recovered.
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
Perhaps Fred II will be remembered as a symbol of the elusive philosopher-king, the wise but less approachable father figure. A life well lived! Thank you Eric.
I did not know about the relationship with J.S Bach but was not one of the Bach boys (C.P.E.?) a long time employee of Frederic and one who thought that his music-loving employer played the flute badly?
From Grove’s Dictionary: “Frederick invited Johann Sebastian Bach to Potsdam, and the visit, of which Forkel gives an account, and the result of which was Bach’s ‘Musikalisches Opfer’, took place on 7 May 1747.” The story is told here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Musical_Offering.
“In 1728 Frederick began to learn the flute from Quantz…. Quantz died in 1773 while composing his 300th concerto for the king, who completed the work…. Frederick’s execution of an adagio is said by Fasch to have been masterly, but in quick movements he betrayed a want of skill, and in the matter of time his playing was so impulsive and irregular that to accompany him was an art in itself. In later years he again took up the clavier, not having sufficient breath, it is stated, for the flute.” C.P.E. Bach was Frederick’s court cembalist from 1740 to 1767, but it was not a happy engagement: Frederick was not pleased with C.P.E.’s compositions, and C.P.E.’s duties included accompanying Frederick, which must have been irksome: Frederick “took many liberties with the tempo and required from his cembalist deference which [C.P.E.] found it increasingly difficult to afford.”
Kaiser Wilhelm II also thought Frederick was the best kind of monarch and he worshipped him.