Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are
transporting ourselves to a very specific spot
in Potsdam, Germany. Okay. We're standing on
the terrace of the Sanssouci Palace, looking
down at a grave. And if you were to visit this
grave today... You wouldn't just see the usual
tributes flowers, maybe a wreath, a flag. Right.
The typical things. Instead, you are almost guaranteed
to see piles of raw potatoes. Which is a bizarre
sight if you don't know the context. You walk
up expecting, you know, solemnity. And instead,
it looks like someone spilled a grocery bag.
Exactly. It looks like a prank, but it is actually
a deeply sentimental tribute to the man buried
there. We're talking about Frederick the Great,
or as the locals affectionately call him. Der
Kartoffelkönig. The Potato King. The Potato King.
It sounds like a character from a children's
book, doesn't it? It really does. Something whimsical.
But that nickname hides a much more complex and,
frankly, much darker reality. It refers to his
relentless, almost tyrannical campaign to force
Prussian farmers to adopt the potato to prevent
famine. And that really sets the stage for everything
we are going to talk about today. It really does.
Because when you peel back the layers, Pun intended.
Yeah. Frederick is arguably one of the most confusing,
contradictory figures in European history. Absolutely.
We have a man who is remembered as a flute -playing
philosopher, a guy who hated the German language,
wrote French poetry, and hung out with Voltaire.
And yet, simultaneously, this is the man who
single -handedly forged the Prussian military
state. He's the Iron King who plunged Europe
into decades of bloodshed, perfected military
strategies, still studied at West Point. And
was later idolized by the Nazis as the ultimate
German hero. Exactly. That's the core contradiction.
That is the central tension we need to unpack.
We have the sensitive soul on one side and the
ruthless warlord on the other. And the mission
for this deep dive is to figure out how those
two people existed in the same body. How does
a man who wrote a book called Anti -Machiavelli,
literally arguing against Machiavelli's cynicism,
end up becoming the absolute master of Machiavellian
geopolitics? To understand that, we have to start
with what I would call one of the most brutal
origin stories in royal history. You cannot understand
Frederick the Great without understanding the
absolute nightmare that was his childhood. Specifically,
his relationship with his father, King Frederick
William I. The father is known to history as
the soldier king. Right. And that title makes
him sound kind of noble, maybe a bit stern. But
from what I have read, noble is not the word
I would use. Not at all. Psychopath feels closer.
It's not far off. Frederick William was a very
specific type of tyrant. He was violent, authoritarian,
and obsessed with the military to a degree that
bordered on mania. He viewed his entire kingdom
as one giant barracks. He was famous for walking
the streets of Berlin with a heavy cane, and
if he saw a citizen who looked like they were,
you know, idling or spending money on something
frivolous, he would beat them. Right there in
the street. Just beat random citizens. Anyone
he felt wasn't contributing to the efficiency
of the state. He was frugal to the point of madness.
He sold off his father's crown jewels. He melted
down the silverware to buy muskets. And he had
this obsession with the... Potsdam giant. Oh,
the giants. This is one of those details that
sounds completely made up. It does. But it's
true. He created a special regiment of soldiers
who all had to be over six feet tall, which was
enormous for the 18th century. Giants. He collected
them like toy figures. He bought them from other
monarchs. He even had agents kidnap tall men
from other countries to force them into the regiment.
That's kidnapping. It was. And it wasn't even
about combat effectiveness. It was a fetish.
He just liked looking at them. So this is the
environment. young frederick is born into a father
who despises anything soft anything artistic
anything he deems french which he saw as effeminate
and young frederick well he is basically an emo
kid chuckles that is a perfect description he
is the ultimate emo kid he's sensitive he hates
hunting he hates riding horses he just wants
to stay in his room and listen to music and read
poetry He loves literature, he plays the flute,
and he speaks French better than he speaks German.
In fact, he despised German. He called it a boar's
language. A boar's language, which must have
driven the soldier king absolutely insane. It
made him apoplectic. Frederick had a secret library
of about 3 ,000 volumes, mostly French poetry,
Greek, and Roman classics, that he had to hide.
If his father found them, He would throw them
in the fire. And when we say the father disapproved,
we weren't talking about a stern lecture or being
grounded. No, we are talking about systematic
physical and psychological abuse. It was brutal.
The king would beat Frederick publicly. He would
humiliate him in front of the court. He dragged
him by his hair through the palace. Wow. He would
mock him, calling him a fife player and a poet,
using those terms as slurs. He viewed Frederick's
artistic interests as a personal failure, a sign
that his heir wasn't man enough to rule Prussia.
Imagine the psychological pressure. You are the
crown prince. You can't quit. You can't move
out. And your father, who has absolute power
over life and death, thinks your very existence
is a mistake. It created a pressure cooker. And
eventually that pressure exploded in what is
known as the Catté Affair. Right. This is the
turning point. This is the moment that breaks
the boy and makes the king. This is the escape
attempt in 1730. Frederick is 18 years old. Right.
He just couldn't take it anymore. He planned
to flee to Great Britain with a close friend,
a young oxer named Hans Hermann von Catté. And
their relationship was... Intense. Very intense.
Historians have debated the nature of their relationship
for centuries. But let's be real. They're 18.
They are inseparable, they are writing these
incredibly emotional letters, and they're risking
deaths to run away together. The consensus among
modern historians is that they were lovers. But
whether it was romance or just an incredibly
deep friendship, Cate was Frederick's rock. He
was the one person who understood him. And the
plan went horribly wrong. A complete disaster.
They were caught before they could cross the
border. And because they were military officers,
the king didn't see this as a teenage rebellion
or a family squabble. No. He saw it as desertion.
He saw it as treason. Frederick William actually
considered executing his own son. Executing the
crown prince of Prussia. He seriously debated
it. He was that furious. The courts and foreign
diplomats had to beg him not to do it. Unbelievable.
He eventually relented on killing Frederick,
but he decided to make an example of Kate. And
the cruelty of this punishment is hard to fathom.
It's straight out of a horror movie. It is. He
imprisoned Frederick in the fortress of Kustrin,
he stripped him of his rank, and then he ordered
that Kate be beheaded. But not just beheaded.
No, there was a twist. He ordered that the execution
take place right outside Frederick's cell window.
And he forced Frederick to watch. Soldiers held
Frederick's head to the window so he couldn't
look away. Accounts say Frederick shouted out
the window to Cate as he was being led to the
block, screaming, And Cate. What did he do? Cate,
with incredible dignity, called back that he
forgave him, that he was happy to die for his
prince. And then the sword fell. Oh, man. Frederick
fainted immediately. He was so distraught that
for days afterwards, people feared he would die
of grief or take his own life. He was hallucinating,
seeing Cate's ghost. That is the moment. That
is where the potato king is really born. You
don't come back from that as the same person.
You don't. The soft, artistic boy died in that
tower along with Kate. The man who walked out
had built a shell of iron around his heart. Survival
mechanism. Totally. He realized that to survive,
he couldn't fight his father openly. He had to
submit outwardly. He adopted a sense of predestination,
this chilling idea that his life was not his
own. He learned to wear the mask. Exactly. He
became the good son. He started doing the administrative
drudgery his father demanded. He studied war.
He memorized the drill manual. Whatever it took.
He even agreed to a marriage he didn't want,
to Elizabeth Christine of Brunswick -Beverne.
He wrote to his sister, There can be neither
love nor friendship between us. But he went through
with the wedding to please the king. He buried
his true self deep down where the king couldn't
hurt it anymore. And then, in 1740, the old soldier
king finally dies. And I imagine the rest of
Europe breathed a huge sigh of relief. Oh, absolutely.
They looked at Frederick, this flute -playing,
French -speaking intellectual who had been writing
letters about tolerance and philosophy, and they
thought, okay, Prussia's going to relax now.
The monster is dead. We are going to have a soft,
enlightened neighbor. And that is the biggest
bait -and -switch in history. Because almost
immediately, Frederick shocks everyone. He invades
Silesia. Out of nowhere. This was a rich industrial
province belonging to Austria. The Holy Roman
Emperor had just died, and his daughter, the
young Maria Theresa, had taken the throne. And
Frederick saw an opportunity. He saw a young
woman on the throne, he saw a disputed succession,
and he thought, I can take this. It is pure cynicism.
He writes a book called Anti -Machiavelli, and
then pulls a move that Machiavelli would have
given a standing ovation. It was pure opportunism.
He famously said later, regarding his strategy,
When you want to catch mice, you have to keep
the mousetrap open. He let the Austrian troops
cross the mountains so he could trap them. A
classic maneuver. But, and this is important,
his first major battle, the Battle of Molwitz
in 1741, was actually a disaster for him personally.
This is a story I love because it makes him so
human. We think of Frederick the Great, military
genius, but in his first battle... He panicked.
He panicked completely. The Austrian cavalry
charged. The Prussian cavalry, which was the
weak link at the time, collapsed. It was chaos.
Snow was blinding them. And Frederick thought
it was over. He thought the battle was lost.
His advisors practically threw him on a horse
and told him to run to avoid being captured.
So the king gallops off into the night to hide
in a mill. Meanwhile, back on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, his infantry, the soldiers his father
had drilled so relentlessly, the walking machines,
they didn't break. They held the line. Under
the command of Field Marshal Schwerin, they stood
like a stone wall. They fired volley after volley
with mechanical precision until the Austrians
broke. So Friedrich wakes up the next morning,
probably thinking he's lost his kingdom, and
his general rides up and says, Congratulations,
your majesty, you won. While you were running
away, it was incredibly humiliating. I can't
even imagine. But Friedrich later called Malwitz
his school. He realized that his father's training
had created a great army, but he wasn't a great
general yet. And this is what's different about
him. Yes. He didn't execute the people who saw
him flee. He analyzed it. He spent the next few
years obsessively retraining his cavalry, studying
tactics, and refining his approach. He vowed
never to leave the field again. And he kept that
promise. This kicks off a series of wars that
basically consumes the next 20 years of his life.
And this is where we see him evolve from a student...
into a master. We have to talk about the oblique
order. This is his signature move. It's what
Napoleon studied. It's what changed warfare.
But help me out here, because when I read about
it, attacking on the flank, it sounds like military
tactics 101. Why was this considered so revolutionary?
It's all about the execution and the geometry.
In the 18th century, armies were like two long
walls moving toward each other. You line up parallel,
you march forward, you shoot. It's a shoving
match. The longer line usually wins. Just a numbers
game. Exactly. Frederick realizes, I am always
outnumbered. Prussia is a small state. If he
fights line against line, he loses. So he changes
the geometry. Ow. He intentionally weakens one
side of his line. He refuses the flank, basically
telling those guys, just stay back, act like
you're gonna attack, but don't engage. So he's
leaving half his army exposed on purpose. He's
baiting the enemy. While the enemy is looking
at that weak -looking plank, Frederick takes
his elite troops and marches them rapidly, often
using hills or fog to hide the movement, all
the way to the other side. To the opposite flank.
He hits the enemy's weak spot with overwhelming
local superiority. So instead of 40 ,000 versus
60 ,000 across the whole field, he creates a
situation where it's maybe 20 ,000 Prussians
versus 5 ,000 Austrians on just the right tip.
Precisely. He smashes that flank and then the
rest of the enemy line just sort of... Crumbles.
He rolls them up like a carpet. And the ultimate
example of this is Luthen, right? The Battle
of Luthen in 1757 is the masterpiece. He's facing
65 ,000 Austrians. He has maybe 39 ,000 men.
That's almost two to one. He should have been
crushed. He should have been. But he marches
his troops in this bizarre formation hidden behind
a ridge. The Austrians think he's retreating.
By the time they realize he's actually on their
flank, it's too late. He just demolishes them.
It is still studied today as a masterpiece of
tactical maneuvering. Napoleon Bonaparte later
visited Frederick's tomb and said, gentlemen,
if this man were alive, I would not be here.
That is high praise coming from Napoleon. The
highest. But despite these tactical wins, the
Seven Years' War sounds like it was an absolute
nightmare for Prussia. It wasn't just Austria
they were fighting, was it? No, it was Prussia
against the world. A massive coalition formed
against him. Austria, France, Russia, Sweden,
and the Holy Roman Empire. The whole neighborhood.
Basically, yeah. Prussia was surrounded. The
odds were impossible. Frederick famously described
himself during this time as fighting like a gladiator
in the arena. He was constantly marching, constantly
outnumbered. And the toll on him personally must
have been immense. This is the sensitive soul
being forced to live in mud and blood for years.
It destroyed him physically and mentally. He
aged 20 years and five. He lost his teeth. He
suffered from gout. And the losses were devastating.
Kunersdorf. At the Battle of Kunersdorf in 1759,
he suffered his worst defeat. Half his army was
destroyed. Frederick himself was almost killed.
He had two horses shot out from under him. And
this is where we get that cinematic detail about
the snuff box. Yes. A bullet actually struck
him in the chest, but it hit a golden snuff box
he was carrying in his coat pocket. The box shattered,
but it stopped the bullet. It saved his life.
That is incredible luck. But after Kundersdorf,
even he thought it was over. He was suicidal?
He carried a vial of poison around his neck for
the rest of the war in case of capture? He wrote
to his ministers saying that all was lost, that
he would not survive the doom of his country.
Berlin was even raided by Russian and Austrian
troops. So Prussia was on the brink of total
collapse. Absolutely. So how did he survive?
How does Prussia not get wiped off the map? It
is what Frederick called the miracle of the House
of Brandenburg. The miracle. In 1762, just as
things looked completely hopeless, the Empress
Elizabeth of Russia died. She'd been a fierce
enemy of Frederick, obsessed with destroying
him. Okay. Her successor was her nephew, Peter
III. And Peter III was a bit different. Peter
III was a Frederick the Great superfan, a stan
in modern terminology. You're kidding. Not at
all. He idolized Frederick. He dressed his own
soldiers in Prussian -style uniforms. He called
Frederick, my king, my master. So the enemy leader
dies, and the guy who takes over is the president
of your fan club. Exactly. One of the first things
Peter did was switch sides. He pulled Russia
out of the war against Prussia and actually offered
troops. to help Frederick. Wow. It completely
broke the coalition. It was a stroke of luck
so massive that it reinforced Frederick's belief
that he was destined for something, that fate
was intervening. So he survives the war, he keeps
Silesia, and Prussia emerges as a great power.
But I want to pivot now to what he was doing
when he wasn't on the battlefield. His domestic
policy. Because remember, this guy called himself
the first servant of the state. That is a very
different vibe from I am the king, I am chosen
by God, do what I say. It is a core part of his
philosophy, which historians call enlightened
absolutism. The idea was that the monarch has
absolute power, yes, but that power must be used
for the benefit of the people, not for the monarch's
luxury. It sounds great in a press release. Yeah.
I work for you. It does. But when Frederick said
servant, he didn't mean he was going to listen
to voters. He meant he was going to work harder
than anyone else to tell them what to do. A micromanager.
On a continental scale, we have accounts of his
daily routine. He was up at 3 .0 or 4 .am. And
we have to mention the coffee. This detail stuck
with me. Chuckles. The coffee. He brewed it incredibly
strong, often using champagne instead of water.
Champagne and coffee. Or he would lace it with
mustard and peppercorns. Wait, mustard? Was he
trying to wake up or punish his stomach? He wanted
the kick. He needed to jolt his system awake
because he had mountains of paperwork. He reviewed
every expense. If a village wanted to build a
bridge, Frederick had to sign off on the timber
budget. He didn't trust anyone else. Not really.
He believed that if he wasn't watching, everyone
would become corrupt or lazy. And this service
led to some pretty progressive policies, especially
regarding religion. By 18th century standards,
yes. He famously said, Which is a beautiful quote.
It sounds very modern. It is. But we have to
be careful not to project 21st century values
onto him. He wasn't tolerant because he loved
diversity. He was tolerant. because he was a
cynic and a pragmatist. He didn't care about
the theology. Not at all. He was likely a deist
or an atheist. To him, Catholics, Protestants,
Calvinists, they were all just taxpayers. Right.
If you were willing to work, pay taxes, and serve
in the army, he didn't care who you prayed to.
He even built a massive Catholic cathedral, St.
Hedwig's, in the center of Protestant Berlin
just to show he could. But there was a limit
to that tolerance. We have to talk about the
anti -Semitism. Because this is where the Enlightened
label really peels off. We do. This is the dark
side of his pragmatism. While he didn't launch
violent pogroms like some other rulers, he was
deeply prejudiced. In his political testament,
he wrote very harsh, anti -Semitic things. So
it wasn't just unspoken. Oh, no, it was written
down. Yeah. He viewed the Jewish population entirely
through a utilitarian lens. Useful but dangerous
in his mind. Exactly. He limited the number of
Jews allowed in cities. He levied special humiliating
taxes on them, like the porcelain tax, where
Jews were forced to buy substandard porcelain
from the royal factory just to get a marriage
license. That's awful. He viewed them as a disadvantage
to the state. except for their utility and trade
and finance, especially on the Polish border.
So it wasn't moral equality, it was exploitation.
And that pragmatism extended to his other reforms,
like law and agriculture. Yes. He abolished most
forms of judicial torture and restricted the
death penalty, which was huge for the time. And
he was obsessed with making the land productive,
draining swamps. The Oderbrook region. He saw
uncultivated land as useless barbarism. He drained
these massive wetlands to create new farmland.
He called it his peopling policy, bringing in
thousands of colonists to settle these new lands.
And this brings us back to the potato. The potato
king. Exactly. Frederick realized that the potato
was a nutritional powerhouse compared to grain.
It was less susceptible to bad weather and could
feed more people per acre. But the Prussian peasants
were suspicious of it. It grew underground. It
looked dirty. They thought it was poisonous or
fit only for dogs. It wasn't in the Bible. You
know, all these superstitions. So how did he
convince them? There is a famous legend, and
while historians debate if it happened exactly
like this, it perfectly captures his style. Okay,
the story. The story goes that he planted a field
of potatoes near Berlin and had it guarded by
his best soldiers during the day. Reverse psychology.
Exactly. The peasants looked at the guards and
thought, Well, if the king is guarding it, it
must be valuable like gold. That must be some
special root. Right. So at night, when the guards
were instructed to look the other way, the peasant
snuck in, stole the plants, and started growing
them in their own gardens. He tricked them into
not starving. Whether that specific story is
true or not, he did issue official potato edicts
forcing the cultivation of the crop. He sent
instructions on how to cook them, and it worked.
It undoubtedly saved thousands from starvation.
So we have the Soldier King 2 .0. We have the
first servant of the state. Now let's go to his
private life. Let's go to Sanssouci. Sanssouci.
The name means without care or no worries in
French. His happy place. This was his sanctuary
in Potsdam. It wasn't a grand, imposing palace
like Versailles meant to intimidate. It was a
private retreat on a human scale. It sits on
top of these beautiful vineyard terraces. And
the vibe there was strictly French. Strictly.
Frederick essentially created a French island
in the middle of Prussia. At dinner, you had
to speak French. If you spoke German, you were
mocked. And this is where the philosopher king
really lived. He wasn't just posing as an intellectual.
Not at all. He was a prolific composer. He wrote
121 flute sonatas and four symphonies. And they
are good. They are still performed today. He
was a serious musician. Very serious. He practiced
the flute four times a day, even during his military
campaigns. Imagine being a general in the next
tent, hearing the king practicing scales after
a battle. The contrast is insane. And he had
this famous encounter with J .S. Bach. The musical
offering. Exactly. Bach visited Potsdam and Frederick,
who admired him greatly, gave him this incredibly
complex musical theme and challenged him to improvise
a fugue on the spot. Which Bach did. And then
he went home and wrote an entire collection of
pieces based on the royal theme, which he called
the musical offering. It's a legendary moment
in music history. But the man writing these flute
sonatas. was also, you know, debasing currency
to fund brutal wars. The ultimate contradiction.
And he surrounded himself with the greatest minds
of Europe. The most famous guest being Voltaire.
The rock star of the Enlightenment. Frederick
courted him for years. When Voltaire finally
came to stay at Sanssouci, it was a meeting of
the minds, but it was also a disaster. Too many
egos in one palace. Way too many. They admired
each other's intellect, but they clashed constantly.
Voltaire was snarky and loved to gossip. Frederick
was authoritarian and thin -skinned. It didn't
end well. Not at all. Voltaire eventually fled
Prussia and Frederick actually had him arrested
at the border to get back a book of poetry. It
was a messy breakup. Speaking of breakups, Sansushi
was also notable for who wasn't there. His wife,
Queen Elizabeth Christine. Frederick essentially
banned her from his court. Once his father died,
he separated from her completely. He set her
up in a palace in Berlin, paid for her staff,
visited her formally maybe once a year on her
birthday, and that was it. No affection at all.
None. He never showed her any. And this leads
us to the topic of his sexuality. The outline
mentions he was almost certainly homosexual.
The historical evidence is quite strong. Beyond
the tragic relationship with Kate and his youth,
his private circle at Sanssouci was almost exclusively
male. And there were specific relationships.
Yes. He had close, ambiguous relationships with
figures like Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, his
valet who became a close confidant and arguably
the most powerful man in Prussia behind the scenes.
And then there was the Italian intellectual Count
Elgarotti. It's interesting because today he
is often viewed as an icon of LGBTQ history.
But in his own time, he had to be incredibly
discreet. While sodomy was still a capital crime
in many places, even for a king, openness was
impossible. But his contemporaries knew. People
talked. An open secret. It was an open secret
in the courts of Europe. Enemies would write
pamphlets calling him the King of Sodom. It added
to his image as an eccentric, an outsider. He
didn't have a mistress. He didn't produce an
heir. He was a singularity. So we have painted
a picture of a complex, brilliant man. But we
have to go to the darker side. We already touched
on his anti -Semitism, but there is also his
foreign policy later in life, specifically regarding
Poland. This is one of the darkest stains on
his legacy, the partition of Poland. Frederick
looked at the map and saw that his kingdom was
split. He had East Prussia on one side, Brandenburg
on the other, and Polish territory in the middle.
He wanted to connect the dots. And he did that
by carving up a neighboring country. Yes. In
1772, along with Russia and Austria, he orchestrated
the first partition of Poland. They literally
just redrew the map and took what they wanted.
He took the land in the middle. He annexed a
huge chunk of Polish territory, which he called
West Prussia. It connected his lands, but the
way he did it and the way he talked about it
was chilling. He mocked Maria Theresa about it,
didn't he? He did. Maria Theresa of Austria was
very religious and felt guilty about dismembering
a sovereign Catholic state. She was weeping while
signing the treaty. And Frederick's response?
He quipped, she cries, but she takes. He was
completely cynical about it. And his view of
the Polish people wasn't exactly enlightened.
No. This is where his colonial mindset comes
out. He referred to the Polish territories as
barbaric. He said he found in West Prussia nothing
but sand, fir trees, heath, and juice. Wow. He
even compared the Poles to the Iroquois, which
gives you an idea of how he viewed indigenous
peoples in general. As savages to be civilized.
Exactly. He wanted to Germanize the region, replacing
Polish culture and laws with Prussian efficiency.
He viewed himself as bringing civilization, which
was a common justification for imperialism, but
he applied it right in the heart of Europe. That
cynicism contrasts so sharply with the flute
playing humanitarian. It's hard to reconcile.
It really is. And speaking of dark legacies,
we have to talk about who his biggest fans were
in the 20th century. The Nazis. This is tragic
because it really distorted how the world saw
Frederick for a long time. The Nazis, and Hitler
specifically, absolutely idolized Frederick the
Great. They saw him as the ideal German. The
ultimate German hero. The man who stood alone
against the world and won by sheer will. I read
that Hitler kept a portrait of Frederick in his
bunker right until the end. He did. It was an
oil painting by Anton Graf. When Hitler was in
the Führerbunker in 1945, refusing to surrender
while Berlin burned above him, he was staring
at that portrait. Hoping for a miracle. He was
hoping for another miracle of the house of Brandenburg.
He thought that if he just held on, the alliance
between the U .S. and the Soviets would break,
just like the coalition against Frederick broke.
But the Nazis were selective history readers,
weren't they? Extremely selective. They glorified
the militarism, the discipline, the will to power.
They loved the soldier king aspect. And ignored
everything else. They conveniently ignored the
Francophile who hated German culture. They ignored
the philosopher who believed in tolerance. They
ignored the fact that Frederick probably would
have despised the Nazis as boorish thugs. They
hijacked his image. They did. And because of
that, after World War II, Frederick was seen
by the Allies as a bad guy. His statue on Unter
den Linden in Berlin was taken down by the East
Germans. Prussia itself was abolished as a state.
Why? Because the Allies saw it as the source
of German militarism. It has taken a long time
for historians to reclaim the real Frederick
from that shadow. It has. Since reunification
in Germany, there has been a more balanced view.
We can now see him as he was, an enlightened
absolutist, a man who modernized the legal system,
abolished torture, promoted education, but also
waged brutal wars and held prejudiced views.
He is a figure of his time, not a proto -Nazi.
Let's fast forward to the very end of his life.
The year is 1786. Frederick is an old man. He
is lonely. His friends are mostly dead. Who is
he with? He is with his greyhounds. He loved
his dogs more than he loved most people. He had
a favorite named Biche. He once said, dogs have
all the virtues of men without their vices. So
it's just him and his dogs? He died in an armchair
at Sansushi, quiet and alone, with his dogs at
his feet. And he had a very specific request
for his burial, which I think says everything
about who he really was inside. He wanted to
be buried on the terrace at Sansushi in a simple
crypt he had prepared right next to his dogs.
Not in some grand church. No, he wanted a simple
funeral without pomp. He explicitly said he wanted
to be buried as a philosopher, not a king. He
wanted to rest in the place where he was happiest.
And naturally, his successor ignored that completely.
Completely. His nephew, Frederick William II,
thought it was undignified to bury a king next
to dogs. It was an embarrassment. So what did
he do? So he had Frederick buried in a church
in Potsdam, the Garrison Church, right next to
his abusive father, the soldier king. That is
a cruel irony. Yeah. To be trapped in death next
to the man who tormented you in life, the man
who made you watch your best friend die. It is
heartbreaking. And he stayed there for over 200
years. His coffin was moved around during World
War II to protect it from bombing hidden in a
salt mine, then moved to a castle. And it wasn't
until after the fall of the wall. Finally, in
1991, after the Berlin Wall fell, his body was
brought back to San Susi. A final homecoming.
Yes. There was a ceremony, though still perhaps
more pomp than he would have liked. And he was
finally laid to rest in the grave on the terrace
next to his greyhounds. And that brings us back
to the potatoes. Exactly. That is why people
leave potatoes on that grave. It is a tribute
to the complex legacy of a man who conquered
provinces and drilled soldiers, but also cared
enough to ensure his people didn't starve. It's
a nod to the first servant. It really is a fascinating
story. You have this man who was beaten for being
soft, who then became the heart. man in Europe,
but who never quite lost that love for the flute
and the philosophy book. It is the ultimate paradox.
He built the foundation of the modern German
state, the bureaucracy, the military, the economy,
but he did it while despising the German language
and culture. A man of contradictions to the very
end. He believed in reason and the Enlightenment,
but he practiced ruthless conquest. So what does
this all mean for us? I think Frederick forces
us to ask a really difficult question about leadership.
He called himself the first servant of the state.
In our modern world, we hear politicians say
they are public servants all the time. But Frederick
actually lived it. He worked himself to the bone.
Yet he was an absolute dictator. That is the
provocative thought I would leave you with. Can
you truly be a servant when you hold absolute
power? Frederick believed he knew what was best
for the people better than they did themselves,
whether it was planted potatoes or going to war.
He served the state, the abstract idea of pressure,
sometimes at the expense of the actual people
living in it. It is the difference between serving
the people's will and serving the people's interests.
Yeah. As defined by one man. Exactly. And that
is a tension between efficiency and liberty.
Between the strong leader and the democratic
process, that didn't die with Frederick the Great.
Something to chew on, maybe while eating a potato.
Thanks for joining us for this deep dive into
one of history's most fascinating figures. We
will catch you next time.