Frederick I

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Frederick I (Prussia) (1657–1713; ruled 1688–1713), as Frederick III elector of Brandenburg and duke of Prussia; from 1701, as Frederick I, king in Prussia. Frederick I was one of the great Hohenzollern rulers who contributed to the rise of the Prussian state. Whereas his father, Frederick William, the Great Elector (ruled 1640–1688), focused his attention on building administrative and military resources, Frederick I earned his reputation for stressing the cultural and artistic development of Prussia, particularly the enhancement of Berlin. Still, his greatest contribution to the rise of Prussia was his acquisition of the title of king, which placed his house in the elite company of German royals and was a necessary step toward Prussia's becoming the dominant German state of the nineteenth century.

Frederick's goal after his accession to his father's titles of elector of Brandenburg and duke of Prussia was to be a king. His wish became intense in the 1690s as he watched other German princely houses prepare for royal advancement. In 1692 it appeared that the neighboring house of Hanover would be in line for the throne of England, and in 1697 his neighbor to the south, Frederick Augustus, the elector of Saxony, assumed the title of king of Poland. The opportunity to become king came in the wake of the Spanish succession crisis in 1700. In November of that year Charles II of Spain died without an heir, and two sides, Louis XIV of France on one and Austria, Holland, and Britain on the other, put forward competing candidates for the Spanish throne. In 1701 the two sides went to war.

Austria solicited aid from the states of the Holy Roman Empire for its war effort, and Brandenburg was obligated to send its designated number of soldiers. But Frederick offered to send an additional eight thousand men if Emperor Leopold I would agree to his assumption of the title of king. The emperor initially balked at the request, since he assumed that, if he granted Frederick such a title, other German princes would request the same or perhaps more modest upgrades of their own status. After some negotiation, the emperor agreed to recognize Frederick as king as long as he was in his province of East Prussia, which was not part of the Holy Roman Empire. So, Frederick assumed the title of king in (not of) Prussia. On 18 January 1701 in Königsberg Castle Frederick placed a crown upon his head and another upon that of his wife, Sophie Charlotte of Hanover. By crowning himself in a secular setting, he made it clear that no church had the authority to invest him as king. Only afterward did the parties move to a chapel where two Lutheran bishops consecrated the proceedings. The assumption of the royal title was a major step in the enhancement of Prussia's reputation. Despite the restriction of the title "in Prussia," Frederick was commonly referred to as king, and all of the institutions of the monarchy became "royal." The title gave a new cohesion to the dispersed possessions of the House of Hohenzollern.

Those Prussian troops Frederick offered to secure his new title fought well in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), but the results did not lead to notable gains. Prussia acquired a few bits of territory that were part of the inheritance of the Dutch House of Orange, but nothing more. While that war went on, Frederick had to keep a wary eye on his eastern possessions, for on their borders the Sweden of Charles XII and the Russia of Peter the Great were fighting the Great Northern War. Although battles seemed to take place all around, Frederick was able to avoid being drawn into that struggle. Wars, however, were not Frederick's forte. Enhancement of culture was. He built a variety of masterful baroque buildings in Berlin, including seven churches, a massive arsenal, and the glorious Charlottenburg Palace for his queen, Sophie Charlotte. Frederick added considerably to the library begun by his father, which in time was to become one of the great libraries of the world. He was greatly assisted in his efforts to improve the arts by Sophie Charlotte, who hosted a court that was lively, sophisticated, and highly intellectual. In 1701 Frederick established the Berlin Academy of Sciences, modeled after the Royal Society in London and the French Academy in Paris, and appointed as its first president Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), one of the great geniuses of the age and one of the inventors of calculus. In 1694 Frederick dedicated the University of Halle, which, while not the first university in Hohenzollern lands, became famous for its production of enlightened administrators, pastors, jurists, and judges. The jurist Christian Thomasius (1655–1728) lectured there in German rather than in Latin, which broke a long-standing tradition in German universities.

Frederick died in 1713 and was succeeded by his son Frederick William I (ruled 1713–1740), who was most unlike his father. Whereas Frederick had pursued the arts and letters, Frederick William cared for the army. His hobby was not discussing philosophy but drilling his troops. Still, he did not completely neglect his father's work, and the qualities of both—the culture and sophistication of the grandfather and the military aptitude and strength of the father—would unite in Frederick's grandson and Frederick William's son, Frederick II, called Frederick the Great (ruled 1740–1786).

Bibliography

Dwyer, Philip G., ed. The Rise of Prussia, 1700–1830. Harlow, U.K., 2000.

Frey, Linda, and Marsha Frey. Frederick I: The Man and His Times. Boulder, Colo., 1984.

—KARL A. ROIDER