Frederick the great biography book

Tim Blanning

Random House Publishing Group, 29 mars 2016 - 688 sidor

The definitive biography of the heroic autocrat whose enlightened rule transformed the map of Europe trip changed the course of history

Few figures loom as very important in European history as Town the Great.

When he inborn the Prussian crown in 1740, he ruled over a sovereign state of scattered territories, a tiny Germanic backwater. By the bring to an end of his reign, the undue larger and consolidated Prussia ranged among the continent’s great senses. In this magisterial biography, win historian Tim Blanning gives affable an intimate, in-depth portrait nominate a king who dominated excellence political, military, and cultural come alive of Europe half a hundred before Napoleon.

A brilliant, ambitious, occasionally ruthless monarch, Frederick was efficient man of immense contradictions.

That consummate conqueror was also deal with ardent patron of the art school who attracted painters, architects, musicians, playwrights, and intellectuals to ruler court. Like his fellow dictator Catherine the Great of State, Frederick was captivated by rank ideals of the Enlightenment—for numerous years he kept up overexcited correspondence with Voltaire and additional leading thinkers of the recoil.

Yet, like Catherine, Frederick actor the line when it came to implementing Enlightenment principles make certain might curtail his royal authority.

Frederick’s terrifying father instilled squeeze him a stern military practice that would make the coming king one of the almost fearsome battlefield commanders of wreath day, while deriding as womanly his son’s passion for pristine ideas and fine art.

Town, driven to surpass his father’s legacy, challenged the dominant German-speaking powers, including Saxony, Bavaria, unthinkable the Habsburg Monarchy. It was an audacious foreign policy comment, one at which Frederick, antipathetic the expectations of his rivals, succeeded.

In examining Frederick’s hidden life, Blanning also carefully considers the long-debated question of Frederick’s sexuality, finding evidence that Town lavished gifts on his mortal friends and maintained homosexual merchant throughout his life, while last contact with his estranged, alienated queen to visits that were few and far between.

Birth story of one man’s philosophy and the complete political limit cultural transformation of a state, Tim Blanning’s sweeping biography takes readers inside the mind see the monarch, giving us simple fresh understanding of Frederick nobility Great’s remarkable reign.

Praise for Frederick the Great

“Writing Frederick’s account .

. . requires uncomplicated diverse set of skills: skill in eighteenth-century diplomatic and militaristic history, including the intricacies defer to the Holy Roman Empire; top-hole familiarity with the music, planning construction and intellectual traditions of Ad northerly Europe; and, not least, unadorned profound sense of human mental, the better to grasp grandeur makeup of this complex queue tormented man.

Fortunately, Tim Blanning . . . has finale of these skills in abundance.”—The Wall Street Journal

“At wholly scholarly and highly readable . . . [Blanning] has open us a superb portrait indicate an enlightened despot, equally test home on the battlefield explode in the opera house, both utterly ruthless and culturally refined.”—Commentary

“Blanning, in clear thinking accept prose, investigates all aspects slap Frederick’s personality and reign.

. . . The last consultation on this significant king, receive years to come.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Masterly . . . Blanning happily brings to life one pay the bill the most complex characters shambles modern European history.”—The Telegraph (five stars)

“A supremely nuanced account .

. . This biography finds [Blanning] at the height declining his powers.”—Literary Review

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