Frederick the Great
A Life in Deed and Letters
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Piet and soldier, misanthrope and philospher, Frederick the Great was a contradictory, almost unfathomable man. His conquests made him one of the most formindable and feared leaders of his era. But as a patron of artists and intellectuals, Frederick re-created Berlin as one of the continent's great cities, matching his state's reputation for military ferocity with one for cultural achievement.
Though history remembers Frederick as a "Potsdam Fuhrer," his father more rightly deserved the title. When, as a youth, Frederick attempted to flee the elder man's brutality, the punishment was to watch the execution of his friend and co-conspirator, Katte. Though a subsequent compromise allowed Frederick to take the throne in 1740, he would remain true unto himself. His tastes for music, poetry, and architecture would match the significance of his military triumphs in the Seven Years' War.
Drawing on the most recent scholarship, Giles MacDonogh's fresh, authoritative biograhy gives us the most fully rounded portrait yet of an often misunderstood king.
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MacDonogh's stated purpose in this biography is to recover the real Frederick from the various "imposters," the different versions of the Prussian king that have been current at different times and for different purposes (Frederick the Hero, Frederick the Nazi, etc.). Unfortunately, the author, whose previous works on Germany and German history were well received, presupposes a greater knowledge of the times than the average reader is likely to possess, and the pictures drawn of the various facets of Frederick's personality consequently never cohere into a single portrait. We see him as a sensitive young man who plots an escape from his father's tyrannical control, and later we see him as an accomplished diplomat, strategist and military leader, but the transition from one to the other is not fully explored. In a similar vein, the motives of those engaging in machinations surrounding the arrangements of Frederick's marriage are never made clear, though the account of the Seven Years' War is well-rounded and should be of interest to many readers. The account of Frederick's relationship with Voltaire is likewise interesting and well presented, but this book is probably best left to graduate students--though even they may be put off by the inconsistency of this volume. Explanatory notes appear sometimes at the bottom of the page and sometimes at the end of the book. Foreign phrases and sentences are not always translated, and the translations of verse, by Frederick himself and others, often sacrifice accuracy for what is perhaps intended to be a more fluid English version. Illus.
