Who Was Frederick the Great?
by Wik Wikholm
Frederick the Great was such a complicated man that one biographer
dubbed him
"The Magnificent Enigma." He was a warrior who championed tolerance, a
humanist who started wars that killed hundreds of thousands, and a
sodomite
who ruled a land where sex between men was punishable by death.
Frederick earned his title by building an army that was the terror of
18th-century Europe. But as a child, young Frederick preferred the
French novels
and music he learned about from his tutors to the military lessons
ordered by
his father. Frederick, still less than 10 years old, surrendered to the
king's demand that he excel in daily military drills, and he learned to
hide
when he played the flute and read books.
In 1730 the 18-year-old prince colluded with two soldiers, one his
lover, to
escape from his father and flee to England. The king discovered the plot
and
sent soldiers to arrest the three. The soldiers captured the prince and
his
lover, Lt. Hans von Katte, and jailed them.
The king had long believed that his son and Katte were lovers, but what
enraged him now was their disloyalty to him. After a tribunal convicted
Katte
of desertion, the king ordered the lieutenant killed. Frederick William
dispatched soldiers to his son's cell to force him to watch Katte die,
but
Frederick fainted moments before an executioner chopped off his lover's
head
in the courtyard below. The king considered killing Frederick, but
friends
dissuaded him.
Katte's death showed Frederick that he could not escape his father's
control,
so when Frederick William ordered him to marry a noblewoman three years
after
the execution, he complied, though he told friends that he detested the
idea.
The couple never produced an heir.
In 1740 Frederick William died and the crown prince became king.
Inspired by
Enlightenment philosophies, the king outlawed censorship of the press
and
encouraged religious tolerance. Even Jews, excluded from much of life in
Europe, enjoyed new freedoms.
But though he seemed more humanitarian, Frederick plunged Prussia into
war
within a year of his coronation. Frederick had absorbed his father's
vision
of Prussia as a great power and invaded neighboring Silesia to expand
Prussia's borders and to help pay for a larger military.
The Silesian campaign was only the first of many wars of expansion that
Frederick won, but the Prussian people paid dearly. Commerce stagnated
under
military financial demands and taxes were raised. But the financial
costs
were small compared with the price in human lives. In a single year,
60,000
soldiers died on the Prussian side alone, a staggering loss for a
country
with less than 3 million inhabitants.
Frederick's battlefield successes earned him the fear and respect of
many of
Europe's other monarchs, but his royal court provoked rumors and jokes.
At
Sans Souci, his Potsdam palace, he rarely invited women to court, and
his
wife was never welcome. Frederick's own sexual affairs with men were an
open
secret.
Had Frederick been a common sodomite, or "warm brother" as Prussia's
sodomites were called, he could have been executed. In spite of his
power to
change it, the law that mandated the death penalty for sodomy stayed on
the
books.
Frederick the Great died on August 17, 1786. His nation had doubled in
size
during his rule, and the liberal reforms he championed saved his
subjects
from torture and censorship. But since sodomy convictions could still
mean
death, Prussia's warm brothers had little reason to mourn the passing of
their sodomite king.
Further Reading
Asprey, Robert B., Frederick the Great: The Magnificent Enigma.
New
York: Ticknor and Fields (1986).
MacDonough, Giles. Frederick the Great: A Life in Deeds and
Letters.
New York: St. Martin's (2000).
Steakley, James D. "Sodomy in Enlightenment Prussia: From Execution to
Suicide." Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 16, Numbers 1/2 (1988).
Wik Wikholm produces www.gayhistory.com, an introduction to modern gay
history.
He can be reached on the site's discussion boards, or by e-mail at
wik@gayhistory.com.
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