Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg
Frederick William | |
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Duke of Prussia | |
Reign | 1 December 1640 – 29 April 1688 |
Predecessor | George William |
Successor | Frederick III |
Born | Stadtschloss, Berlin, Brandenburg-Prussia, Holy Roman Empire | 16 February 1620
Died | 29 April 1688 Stadtschloss, Potsdam, Brandenburg-Prussia, Holy Roman Empire | (aged 68)
Burial | |
Spouse | Countess Luise Henriette of Nassau (m. 1646; died 1667) |
Issue Detail |
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Calvinist | |
Signature |
Frederick William (
Biography
Elector Frederick William was born in
Owing to the disorder in Brandenburg during the Thirty Years' War, he spent part of his youth in the Netherlands, studying at Leiden University and learning something of war and statecraft under Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. During his boyhood, a marriage had been suggested between him and Christina, heir to the throne of Sweden, but although the idea was revived during the peace negotiations between Sweden and Brandenburg, it came to nothing.[2]
When his father died in 1640, the 20-year-old's reign as elector began.
Foreign diplomacy
Following the Thirty Years' War, which devastated much of the
In 1672, Frederick William joined the Franco-Dutch War as an ally of the Dutch Republic, led by his nephew William of Orange but made peace with France in the June 1673 Treaty of Vossem. Although he rejoined the anti-French alliance in 1674, this left him diplomatically isolated; despite conquering much of Swedish Pomerania during the Scanian War, he was obliged to return most of it to Sweden in the 1679 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.[4] In 1666 his title to Cleves, Jülich and Ravensberg was definitely recognized.[2]
Military career
Frederick William was a military commander of wide renown, and his standing army would later become the model for the
Domestic policies
Since his capital Berlin had suffered greatly from the Swedish occupation during the Thirty Years' War, Friedrich Wilhelm commissioned the master engineer Johann Gregor Memhardt to plan a city fortification. Construction of the Berlin Fortress began in 1650 following the contemporary fortification model of bastion forts in northern Italy. Large parts were finished between 1658 and 1662, but the last ramparts only in 1683.
Frederick William raised an army of 45,000 soldiers by 1678, through the
Legacy
In his half-century reign, 1640–1688, the Great Elector transformed the small remote state of Prussia into a great power by augmenting and integrating the Hohenzollern family possessions in northern Germany and Prussia. When he became elector (ruler) of Brandenburg in 1640, the country was in ruins from the Thirty Years' War; it had lost half its population from war, disease and emigration. The capital Berlin had only 6,000 people left when the wars ended in 1648. He united the multiple separate domains that his family had acquired primarily by marriage over the decades, and built the powerful unified state of Prussia out of them. His success in rebuilding the lands and his astute military and diplomatic leadership propelled him into the ranks of the prominent rulers in an era of "absolutism". Historians compare him to his contemporaries such as Louis XIV of France (1643–1715), Peter the Great (1682–1725) of Russia, and Charles XI of Sweden (1660–1697).[7]
Although a strict Calvinist who stood ready to form alliances against the Catholic states led by France's Louis XIV, he was tolerant of Catholics and Jews. He settled some 20,000
In 1682, at the suggestion of the Dutch merchant and privateer Benjamin Raule, he granted a charter to the Brandenburg Africa Company (BAC), marking the first organised and sustained attempt by a German state to take part in the Atlantic slave trade. As Brandenburg-Prussia remained economically impoverished after the Thirty Years War, he hoped to replicate the mercantile successes of the Dutch East India Company. The charter he granted to the BAC stipulated that they could establish a colony in West Africa, which was subsequently named the Brandenburger Gold Coast. Between 17,000 and 30,000 enslaved Africans were transported by the BAC to the Americas before the colony was sold to the Dutch in 1721.[9]
Significant ships named after Frederick William include two Imperial Navy ships of Germany named Grosser Kurfürst: one built in 1875 and the other built in 1913. Shipping company Norddeutscher Lloyd (aka North German Lloyd) also built a cargo and passenger liner for North Atlantic service with the same name that was later taken into US Navy service.
Marriages
On 7 December 1646 in
- William Henry, Electoral Prince of Brandenburg (1648–1649)
- Charles, Electoral Prince of Brandenburg (1655–1674)
- Frederick I of Prussia (1657–1713), his successor
- Amalie (1664–1665)
- Henry (1664–1664)
- Louis (1666–1687), who married Ludwika Karolina Radziwiłł
On 13 June 1668 in
- Philip William (1669–1711)
- Marie Amelie (1670–1739)
- Albert Frederick (1672–1731)
- Charles Philip (1673–1695)
- Elisabeth Sofie(1674–1748)
- Dorothea (1675–1676)
- Christian Ludwig(1677–1734)
In both self-confident women he found political advisers who thought and acted pragmatically. Both accompanied him on his campaigns. Luise Henriette also distinguished herself through charity, Sophie Dorothea through extraordinary business acumen, which allowed her to increase both her own fortune (and thus the inheritance of her children) and to strengthen the state economy. Both also left behind impressive palace buildings that they had built on their fiefs from their own income.
The suspicion that Dorothea worked towards a division of Brandenburg-Prussia in order to secure an income for her sons[2] is regarded as refuted by historical scholarship. This negative perception is based on the fact that some publicists do not base their critical judgments on Dorothea on the primary sources, but on the centuries-old legends that are mainly based on publications after her death, especially by Karl Ludwig von Pöllnitz. There is no question, however, that the Elector's eldest surviving son and successor harbored at least corresponding fears about his stepmother.[10]
Ancestry
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See also
References
- ^ Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). Encyclopedia Americana. .
- ^ a b c d public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Frederick William of Brandenburg". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 67–68. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ISBN 3-406-30817-1.
- ISBN 0-674-02385-4.
- ISBN 0-691-00796-9.
- ^ Citino, Robert. The German Way of War. From the Thirty Years War to the Third Reich. pp 1–35. University Press of Kansas, 2005.
- ^ David Parker, "Absolutism" in Peter Stearns, ed., Encyclopedia of European Social History (2001) 2:439–448.
- ^ William H. Burnside, The Essentials of European History: 1648 to 1789 (2001) pp. 50–51.
- ISBN 978-1-78327-112-2.
- ^ Heinrich Jobst Graf von Wintzingerode: Die märkische Amazone Kurfürstin Dorothea von Brandenburg (The Brandenburg Amazon Electress Dorothea of Brandenburg), Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-932313-48-6, p. 41
Further reading
- Carsten, Francis L. "The Great Elector and the foundation of the Hohenzollern despotism." English Historical Review 65.255 (1950): 175–202. Online
- Carsten, Francis L. "The Great Elector" History Today (1960) 10#2 pp. 83–89.
- Clark, Christopher M. Iron kingdom: the rise and downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (Harvard UP, 2006).
- Citino, Robert. The German Way of War. From the Thirty Years War to the Third Reich (UP Kansas, 2005).
- Holborn, Hajo. A History of Modern Germany: Vol 2: 1648–1840 (1982).
- McKay, Derek. The Great Elector: Frederick William of Brandenburg-Prussia (Routledge, 2018), standard scholarly biography
- Mühlbach, L. The reign of the Great Elector (1900) online free
- Richardson, Oliver H. "Religious Toleration under the Great Elector and Its Material Results." English Historical Review 25.97 (1910): 93–110 Online.
- Schevill, Ferdinand. The Great Elector (U of Chicago Press, 1947), outdated biography
- Wilson, Peter H. "The Great Elector. (Shorter Notices)." English Historical Review 117#472 (2002) pp. 714+. online review of McKay.
- Upton, George P. Youth of the Great Elector (1909)
External links
- Media related to Friedrich Wilhelm I of Brandenburg at Wikimedia Commons