Frederick I of Prussia

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Frederick I
Elector of Brandenburg
Reign	29 April 1688 – 18 January 1701
Predecessor	Frederick William
Born	(1657-07-11)11 July 1657 Königsberg, Prussia
Died	25 February 1713(1713-02-25) (aged 55) Berlin, Prussia, Holy Roman Empire
Burial	Berlin Cathedral
Spouses	Elizabeth Henrietta of Hesse-Kassel ​ ​ (m. 1679; died 1683)​ Sophia Charlotte of Hanover ​ ​ (m. 1684; died 1705)​ Sophia Louise of Mecklenburg-Schwerin ​ ​ (m. 1708)​
Calvinist
Signature

Prussian Royalty
House of Hohenzollern
Frederick I
Children Luise Dorothea, Hereditary Princess of Hesse-Kassel Prince Frederick August Frederick William I
v t e

Frederick I (

Biography

Family

Born in

The Hohenzollern state was then known as

Frederick persuaded Emperor Leopold I to allow Prussia to be elevated to a kingdom by the Crown Treaty of 16 November 1700. This agreement was ostensibly given in exchange for an alliance against King Louis XIV in the War of the Spanish Succession and the provision of 8,000 Prussian troops to Leopold's service. Frederick argued that Prussia had never been part of the Holy Roman Empire, and he ruled over it with full sovereignty. Therefore, he said, there was no legal or political barrier to letting him rule it as a kingdom. Frederick was aided in the negotiations by Charles Ancillon.^[3]

Frederick crowned himself on 18 January 1701 in Königsberg. Although he did so with the Emperor's consent, and also with formal acknowledgement from

His royalty was, in any case, limited to Prussia and did not reduce the rights of the Emperor in the portions of his domains that were still part of the Holy Roman Empire. In other words, while he was a king in Prussia, he was still only an elector under the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Emperor in Brandenburg. Legally, the Hohenzollern state was still a personal union between Brandenburg and Prussia. However, by the time Frederick crowned himself as king, the emperor's authority over Brandenburg (and the rest of the empire) was only nominal, and in practice it soon came to be treated as part of the Prussian kingdom rather than as a separate entity. His grandson, Frederick the Great, was the first Prussian king formally to style himself "King of Prussia" (from 1772 onwards).^[6]

Frederick was a patron of the arts and learning. The Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin was founded by Frederick in 1696, as was the Academy of Sciences in 1700, though the latter was closed down by his son as an economic measure; it was reopened in 1740 by his grandson, Frederick II. Frederick also appointed Jacob Paul von Gundling as Professor of History and Law at the Berlin Knights Academy in 1705, and as historian at the Higher Herald's Office in 1706.^[7]

Frederick died in Berlin in 1713 and is entombed in the Berlin Cathedral.^{[citation needed]}

His grandson, Frederick the Great, referred to Frederick I as "the mercenary king", due to the fact that he greatly profited from the hiring of his Prussian troops to defend other territories, such as in northern Italy against the French.^[8] "All in all," he wrote of his grandfather, "he was great in small matters, and small in great matters."^[9]

Marriages and children

Frederick was married three times:

• first, in 1679, to
  Elizabeth Henrietta of Hesse-Kassel
  (1661–1683), with whom he had one child,
  • Louise Dorothea
    , born 1680, who died without issue at age 25.
• then to Sophia Charlotte of Hanover (1668–1705), with whom he had
  • Frederick August (1685–1686)
  • Frederick William I, born in 1688, who succeeded him.
• In 1708, he married Sophia Louise of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who survived him but had no children by him.

He also had an official mistress, Catharina von Wartenberg, between 1696 and 1711. However, he was never known to make use of her services, being deeply in love with his second wife.^{[citation needed]}

Ancestry

Notes

Further reading

• Dwyer, Philip G., ed. The Rise of Prussia, 1700–1830 (2000).
• Frey, Linda, and Marsha Frey. Frederick I: The Man and His Times (1984).

External links

• Media related to Frederick I of Prussia at Wikimedia Commons
• "Frederick I. of Prussia" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.