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| Frederick IV Elector of Brandenburg, II King of Prussia Hohenzollern The Great 1 | 19 SmartMatches |
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| Succeeded: 1740 To 1786 Prussia |
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Individual:
Frederick William II of Prussia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Frederick William II (September 25, 1744 - November 16, 1797), king of Prussia, was known in German as Friedrich Wilhelm II.
Frederick William II of PrussiaFrederick William was the son of Augustus William (the second son of King Friedrich Wilhelm I ofPrussia) and of Louise Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg, sister of thewife of Frederick the Great. He was born at Berlin and became heir tothe throne of Prussia on his father's death in 1758. The boy was of aneasy-going and pleasure-loving disposition, averse from sustainedeffort of any kind, and sensual by nature.
His marriage with Elisabeth Christine, daughter of Duke Charles of Brunswick, contracted in 1765, was dissolved in 1769, and he soonafterwards married Frederika Louisa, daughter of the land-grave LouisIX of Hesse-Darmstadt. Although he had a numerous family by his wife,he was completely under the influence of his mistress, WilhelmineEnke, afterwards created Countess Lichtenau, a woman of strongintellect and much ambition.
Frederick William was a man of singularly handsome presence, not without mental qualities of a high order; he was devoted to the arts -Beethoven and Mozart enjoyed his patronage and his private orchestrahad a Europe-wide reputation. But an artistic temperament was hardlythat required of a king of Prussia on the eve of the FrenchRevolution; and Frederick the Great, who had employed him in variousservices - notably in an abortive confidential mission to the court ofRussia in 1780 - openly expressed his misgivings as to the characterof the prince and his surroundings.
The misgivings appear justified by the event. Frederick William's accession to the throne (17 August 1786) was, indeed, followed by aseries of measures for lightening the burdens of the people, reformingthe oppressive French system of tax-collecting introduced byFrederick, and encouraging trade by the diminution of customs dues andthe making of roads and canals. This gave the new king much popularitywith the mass of the people; while the educated classes were pleasedby his removal of Frederick's ban on the German language by theadmission of German writers to the Prussian Academy, and by the activeencouragement given to schools and universities.
But these reforms were vitiated in their source. In 1781 Frederick William, then prince of Prussia, inclined, like many sensual natures,to mysticism, had joined the Rosicrucians, and had fallen under theinfluence of Johann Christof Wöllner (1732 - 1800), and by him theroyal policy was inspired. Wöllner, whom Frederick the Great haddescribed as a "treacherous and intriguing priest," had started lifeas a poor tutor in the family of General von Itzenplitz, a noble ofthe mark of Brandenburg, had, after the general?s death and to thescandal of king and nobility, married the general?s daughter, and withhis mother-in-law?s assistance settled down on a small estate. By hispractical experiments and by his writings he gained a considerablereputation as an economist; but his ambition was not content withthis, and he sought to extend his influence by joining first theFreemasons and afterwards the Rosicrucians. Wöllner, with hisimpressive personality and easy if superficial eloquence, was just theman to lead a movement of this kind. Under his influence the orderspread rapidly, and he soon found himself the supreme director(Oberhauptdirektor) of several circles, which included in theirmembership princes, officers and high officials. As a RosicrucianWöllner dabbled in alchemy and other mystic arts, but he also affectedto be zealous for Christian orthodoxy, imperilled by Frederick II'spatronage of "Enlightenment", and a few months before Frederick?sdeath wrote to his friend the Rosicrucian Johann Rudolph vonBischoffswerder (1741 - 1803) that his highest ambition was to beplaced at the head of the religious department of the state as anunworthy instrument in the hand of Ormesus (the prince of Prussia?sRosicrucian name) "for the purpose of saving millions of souls fromperdition and bringing back the whole country to the faith of JesusChrist."
Such was the man whom Frederick William II, immediately after his accession, called to his counsels. On 26 August 1786 Wöllner wasappointed privy councillor for finance (Geheimer Oberfinanzrath), andon 2 October 1786 was ennobled. Though not in name, in fact he wasprime minister; in all internal affairs it was he who decided; and thefiscal and economic reforms of the new reign were the application ofhis theories. Bischoffswerder, too, still a simple major, was calledinto the king?s counsels; by 1789 he was already an adjutant-general.These were the two men who enmeshed the king in a web of Rosicrucianmystery and intrigue, which hampered whatever healthy development ofhis policy might have been possible, and led ultimately to disaster.The opposition to Wöllner was, indeed, at the outset strong enough toprevent his being entrusted with the department of religion; but thistoo in time was overcome, and on 3 July 1788 he was appointed activeprivy councillor of state and of justice and head of the spiritualdepartment for Lutheran and Catholic affairs.
War was at once declared on what later times would have called the "modernists". The king, so long as Wöllner was content to condone hisimmorality (which Bischoffswerder, to do him justice, condemned), waseager to help the orthodox crusade. On 9 July 1788 was issued thefamous religious edict, which forbade Evangelical ministers to teachanything not contained in the letter of their official books,proclaimed the necessity of protecting the Christian religion againstthe "enlighteners" (Aufklärer), and placed educational establishmentsunder the supervision of the orthodox clergy. On 18 December 1788 anew censorship law was issued, to secure the orthodoxy of allpublished books; and finally, in 1791, a sort of ProtestantInquisition was established at Berlin(Immediat-Examinationscommission) to watch over all ecclesiastical andscholastic appointments.
In his zeal for orthodoxy, indeed, Frederick William outstripped his minister; he even blamed Wöllner's "idleness and vanity" for theinevitable failure of the attempt to regulate opinion from above, andin 1794 deprived him of one of his secular offices in order that hemight have more time "to devote himself to the things of God"; inedict after edict the king continued to the end of his reign to makeregulations "in order to maintain in his states a true and activeChristianity, as the path to genuine fear of God."
The effects of this policy of blind obscurantism far outweighed any good that resulted from the king's well-meant efforts at economic andfinancial reform; and even this reform was but spasmodic and partial,and awoke ultimately more discontent than it allayed.
But far more fateful for Prussia was the king's attitude towards the army and foreign policy. The army was the very foundation of thePrussian state, a truth which both Frederick William I and the greatFrederick had fully realised; the army had been their first care, andits efficiency had been maintained by their constant personalsupervision. Frederick William, who had no taste for military matters,put his authority as "Warlord" (Kriegsherr) into commission under asupreme college of war (Oberkriegs-Collegium) under the Duke ofBrunswick and General von Möllendorf. It was the beginning of theprocess that ended in 1806 at the Battle of Jena.
In the circumstances, Frederick William's intervention in European affairs was not likely to prove of benefit to Prussia. The Dutchcampaign of 1787, entered on for purely family reasons, was indeedsuccessful; but Prussia received not even the cost of herintervention. An attempt to intervene in the war of Russia and Austriaagainst Turkey failed of its object; Prussia did not succeed inobtaining any concessions of territory from the alarms of the Allies,and the dismissal of Hertzberg (5 July 1791) marked the finalabandonment of the anti-Austrian tradition of Frederick the Great.
Meanwhile, the French Revolution had entered upon alarming phases, and in August 1791 Frederick William, at the meeting at Pillnitz, arrangedwith the emperor Leopold to join in supporting the cause of Louis XVIof France. But neither the king's character, nor the confusion of thePrussian finances due to his extravagance, gave promise of anyeffective action. A formal alliance was indeed signed on 7 February1792, and Frederick William took part personally in the campaigns of1792 and 1793. He was hampered, however, by want of funds, and hiscounsels were distracted by the affairs of Poland, which promised aricher booty than was likely to be gained by the anti-revolutionarycrusade into France. A subsidy treaty with the sea powers (19 April1794) filled his coffers; but the insurrection in Poland that followedthe partition of 1793, and the threat of the isolated intervention ofRussia, hurried him into the separate treaty of Basel with the FrenchRepublic (5 April 1795), which was regarded by the great monarchies asa betrayal, and left Prussia morally isolated in Europe on the eve ofthe titanic struggle between the monarchical principle and the newpolitical creed of the Revolution.
Prussia had paid a heavy price for the territories acquired at the expense of Poland in 1793 and 1795, and when, on 16 November 1797,Frederick William died, he left the state in bankruptcy and confusion,the army decayed and the monarchy discredited.
Frederick William II married twice:
(1) in 1765 to Elizabeth of Brunswick (d. 1841), by whom he had a daughter (Frederika, afterwards (1791) duchess of York as the wife ofFrederick, Duke of York) and from whom he was divorced in 1769
(2) in 1769 to Frederika Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, by whom he had four sons, Frederick William III of Prussia, Louis (died 1796), Henryand William, and two daughters, Frederika Louisa Wilhelmina, wife ofWilliam of Orange, afterwards King William I of the Netherlands, andAugusta, wife of William II, Elector of Hesse. Besides his relationswith his maitresse en titre, the countess Lichtenau, the king - whowas a frank polygamist - contracted two "marriages of the left hand"with Fräulein von Voss and the countess Donhoff.
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- Title: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Publication: http://en.wikipedia.org/
Quality: 1
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