“Frederick the Great: King of Prussia”, by Tim Blanning

 

688 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: 978-1400068128

Just how much more can I learn about Frederick the Great anyway? Frederick the Great: King of Prussia by Tim Blanning is, by my count, the third biography I have read about him, the others being Frederick the Great: The Magnificent Enigma by Robert B. Asprey (reviewed on July 5^th, 2017) and Frederick the Great: King of Prussia by David Fraser (reviewed on February 10^th, 2021); but I’m glad I read Blanning’s bio as it is hands-down the best of the trio. Blanning’s fresh writing style combined with his top-notch research and clear-eyed take on his subject delivers up as complete a portrait of Old Fritz as one could hope for, all in less than 700 pages – and from an academic historian, to boot (much of academic history is so damned stunted as to give the history genre a bad name, if I may be so bold).

Blanning’s take on Frederick is thematic as he focuses on aspects of his upbringing, interests, personality and so forth, bringing into the light what only the most ardent Frederickophile would know. To do so, he has divided his book into three parts. Part one describes the social, historical and familial background in which Frederick was raised, focusing especially on how his relationship with his abusive father shaped him. Part two is a history of the Seven Years’ War and how victory made not only Frederick but the Kingdom of Prussia, as well. Part three is an Everything but the Kitchen Sink grab-bag which touches on subjects from agriculture to censorship to the treatment of Jews under Frederick’s reign; everything, I suppose, that did not fit into parts one and two. A rather peculiar way to organize a biography, but not unappreciated.

I found the writing to be clear, concise and informative, as one would expect from Blanning. I also found a few other items of note, one being that Blanning is the first author to declare openly that Frederick was homosexual, rather than dancing around the issue by saying that he was asexual or that there just wasn’t enough information to go on. All well and good, but he does harp on it a little too long, and it still must be said that all of his evidence is circumstantial. And for those seeking an in-depth study of Frederick the Soldier-King will be disappointed, as the battles and wars that the man fought in are given rather short shrift. The lead up to his wars are discussed, the campaigns are detailed and the battles are shown, but all in a rather lackadaisical fashion, I assume because Blanning’s interest just doesn’t extend to this aspect of Frederick’s reign. Furthermore, showing Blanning’s independence of thought, he is the only author not to praise Frederick as a military genius but rather to declare that “he was an indifferent general but a brilliant warlord”.

So what to make of it all? Blanning has drawn a portrait of a man driven by his love/hate relationship with his tyrannical father and shows how he kicked the traces over with a vengeance in regards to his embrace of cosmopolitanism and libertinism, to say nothing of his atheism. This makes his drive to have Prussia recognized as a great power, his aggressive militarism and his personal autocratic rule all the more revealing, as it could be argued that Frederick was merely following through on his father’s policies. While in many ways the enlightened despot of historical myth dedicated to the welfare of his subjects, he was contemptuous of the great majority of Prussians. A foe of religion, his Prussia was notable for its religious tolerance while also being a nasty anti-Semite. A patron of the arts, his taste was decidedly conservative.

We get it all in Frederick the Great: King of Prussia, a biography of an endlessly fascinating, enraging, important and all-too-easily forgotten man whose influence is with us still, whether we know it or not.