Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Frederick the Great and Enlightened Absolutism

  • Chapter
Enlightened Absolutism

Part of the book series: Problems in Focus Series ((PFS))

Abstract

Despite periodic attempts to bury it, the issue of Frederick the Great’s relationship with the Enlightenment keeps thrusting its way back to the surface. Over a decade after Betty Behrens suggested that enlightened absolutism was a concept best discarded, Frederick’s most recent and most distinguished modern biographer, Theodor Schieder, identified the Enlightenment as crucial to a proper understanding of Frederick, his policies and his system.1 Further acquaintance with Prussia in the eighteenth century appears to have led Miss Behrens herself to change her mind, for she has now written, in a recent study, that ‘the ideology of the Prussian Enlightenment… was the ideology of the King himself’.2

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes and References

  1. C. B. A. Behrens, ‘Enlightened absolutism’, The Historical Journal, 18:ii (1975);

    Google Scholar 

  2. Theodor Schieder, Friedrich der Grosse: Ein Königtum der Widersprüche (Frankfurt-am-Main, Berlin and Vienna, 1983), especially pp. 123, 146.

    Google Scholar 

  3. C. B. A. Behrens, Society, Government and the Enlightenment. The experiences of eighteenth-century France and Prussia (London, 1985) p. 178.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Hans Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy and Autocracy: The Prussian experience 1660–1815 ( Cambridge, Mass., 1958) pp. 130–1.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Walther Hubatsch, ‘Zum Preussenbild in der Geschichte’, Das Preussenbild in der Geschichte ed. Otto Büsch (Berlin, 1981) p. 16.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Wolfgang Neugebauer, Absolutistischer Staat und Schulwirklichkeit in Brandenburg-Preussen (Berlin and New York, 1985) pp. 176–80, 632.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  7. Gerhard Oestreich, Friedrich Wilhelm I. Preussischer Absolutismus, Merkantilismus, Militarismus (Göttingen, 1977) p. 89.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Otto Hintze, Die Hohenzollern und ihr Werk 8th edn (Berlin, 1916) p. 346.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Karl Demeter, ‘Die Herkunft des preussischen Offizierkorps’, Otto Büsch and Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds) Moderne preussische Geschichte, 3 vols (Berlin and New York, 1981) vol. II, p. 875.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Martin Greiffenhagen, Die Aktualität Preussens. Fragen an die Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1981) p. 85.

    Google Scholar 

  11. R. Köpcke, Ludwig Tuck. Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Dichters nach dessen mündlichen und schriftlichen Mittheilungen, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1855) vol. I, p. 27.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Ernst Consentius, ‘Friedrich der Grosse und die Zeitungs-Zensur’, Preussische Jahrbücher CXV (1904) 220.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Horst Steinmetz (ed.) Friedrich II., König von Preussen, und die deutsche Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1985) pp. 50, 290 n.3.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Günter Vogler and Klaus Vetter, Preussen von den Anfängen bis zur Reichsgründung (Cologne, 1981) p. 41.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Ingrid Mittenzwei, ‘über das Problem des aufgeklärten Absolutismus’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 18:ix (1970) 1165.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Klaus Vetter, Kurmärkischer Adel und Preussische Reformen (Weimar, 1979) pp. 23–5.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Klaus Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton, 1966) pp. 211–13.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Hanns-Martin Bachmann, Die naturrechtliche Staatslehre Christian Wolffs (Berlin, 1977) pp. 44–7.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Günter Birtsch, ‘Religions- und Gewissensfreiheit in Preussen von 1780 bis 1817’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, vol. XI, 2 (1984) p. 184.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Hans Reiss (ed.) Kant’s political writings (Cambridge, 1970) pp. 58–9.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Horst Möller, ‘Königliche und bürgerliche Aufklärung’, Sch-lenke (ed.) Preussen–Versuch einer Bilanz, vol. II, pp. 127–9.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Cf. H. B. Nisbet, ‘Was ist Aufklärung? The concept of Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Germany’, Journal of European Studies, XII (1982) 90.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Horst Möller, Aufklärung in Preussen. Der Verleger, Publizist und Geschichtsschreiber Friedrich Nicolai (Berlin, 1974) p. 266.

    Google Scholar 

  24. J. R. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein, or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic age, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1878) vol. I, p. 40.

    Google Scholar 

  25. John Moore, A View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland and Germany 2 vols (4th edn, Dublin, 1789) vol. II, p. 130.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Jacques Droz, L’Allemagne et la Révolution française (Paris, 1949) p. 80.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. T. C. W. Blanning
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

H. M. Scott

Copyright information

© 1990 T. C.W. Blanning

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Blanning, T.C.W. (1990). Frederick the Great and Enlightened Absolutism. In: Scott, H.M. (eds) Enlightened Absolutism. Problems in Focus Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20592-9_11

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation