Fathers and Sons

Andrew Varley reviews Frederick the Great by Giles MacDonogh, Weidenfeld & Nicolson

To the Whigs he was the Protestant hero, to the Romantics, he was the Philosopher king, to the victors of 1945, he was the Proto-Nazi, and to Hitler himself he was the architect of modern Germany whose portrait went down into the bunker with the doomed Führer. For a man with such a distinctive character, whose views and accomplishments are widely known, Frederick II, King of Prussia, has managed to take on a bewildering variety of guises during the last two hundred years. Perhaps this is because he was so emotionally frigid that what he truly believed has been left open to speculation.

Curiously, he has never become a homosexual icon. It could be argued that he was as much a martyr to his supposed sexuality as was Oscar Wilde. The Irish playwright may have been incarcerated but at least he did not have to watch the beheading of his boyfriend from a cell window. Perhaps military success does not go with gay stardom - though, of course, throughout history there have been great commanders who happened to be homosexual. There again, it is typical of Frederick the Great that his homosexuality cannot be taken for granted. In the publicity for this important new biography of the Prussian king, it is said that Giles MacDonogh tackles Frederick's sexuality head on. When dealing with practice rather than simply inclination, this is not really the case. He refers to rumour - assiduously spread by the malicious Voltaire - but often in such a coy way that the reader could miss the implication. Whatever doubts we and his biographer may have now, Frederick's father was certain about his sexual habits.

A key to Frederick's personality is his relationship with his father. Frederick William I was a remarkable character. In reaction to his own father's luxurious tastes, he turned Prussia into a military camp, abandoned most of the architectural projects already set in train, and sent the court artists and musicians packing. The army was exalted above everything and the position German officers enjoyed for the next two centuries was established at the beginning of his reign. It is a measure of Frederick the Great's own standing that Frederick William has received comparatively little attention, at least from historians writing in English. Mr MacDonogh shows that many of the successes achieved by the son were based on the foresight of the father and the legacy of the Prussian army provided Frederick with the tool he needed.

However, it was Frederick William's personality which was decisive in the formation of his eldest son. He was in many ways a pathetic figure. It is impossible not to feel some sympathy for a man who can shout "Love me! love me!" at the person he is belabouring with his cane. He was brutal, obsessive, parsimonious, controlling, insecure, and suspicious. He was capable of maudlin sentiment, uxorious to a degree (to a wife who loathed him), philistine, and, at times, apparently on the point of mental disintegration. Everyone knows the story of the Potsdam Grenadiers, the regiment of giants, recruits for which were sought throughout Europe. Exceptionally tall men were unceremoniously press-ganged: a scandal was caused when an Italian priest was dragged from his altar by Frederick William's over enthusiastic agents and when an Imperial diplomat was shanghaied. He even tried mating his Grenadiers with lofty women, a failed experiment which presaged the later Lebensborn programme of the SS.

Frederick William's relaxation lay in getting hopelessly drunk in the all-male gathering he called the Tabakscollegium. Surrounded by his military friends, vast quantities of wine and beer were consumed whilst the men smoked (or pretended to smoke) their pipes. The king enjoyed coarse, but not improper, humour. Gundling, his licensed jester, could insult the guests with impunity, although the evening often ended with his being thrown out of the window into the moat. On one occasion, not recorded by Mr MacDonogh, the revellers forgot that the water was frozen solid and Gundling bounced amusingly. At least he was made a baron in compensation. These occasions were a torment for Frederick, who was abstemious in alcohol, hated buffoonery, and was much happier playing his flute or delving into the volumes of the philosophes which he secretly bought.

Like many intelligent, sensitive sons of such a man, Frederick took refuge in mockery and covert opposition. Improbably, when his mother, George II's sister, was trying, against the king's will, to engineer English marriages for Frederick and his favourite sister, Wilhelmina, he convinced himself that he was in love with Princess Amelia of Great Britain. In the end Frederick William prevented the alliance. Understandably, as things turned out, Wilhelmina never forgave her father for ending up as Margravine of Bayreuth rather than Princess of Wales. Frederick William hated his brother-in-law and, reasonably enough, was unwilling to act as England's glorified mercenary. Any indication of pro-English sentiment was calculated to enrage Frederick William. He was perfectly capable of humiliating his son in public, pulling his hair, cuffing him, and commenting on his effeminacy.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Frederick William showed a majority of the symptoms associated with the so-called "addictive personality" and Frederick those of a man brought up in a dysfunctional, or

alcoholic, family. Having stated that, there is something to be said for the argument that there were no dysfunctional families until our century, with its obsession with psychological hypotheses, invented the term. Those ambitious to categorise us all would point to Frederick's over-compensation in striving to receive his father's approval from beyond the grave by far outstripping him in military achievement. Frederick William might have admired Frederick's prowess as a commander but he would have heartily deprecated his amoral, and at times treacherous, foreign policy.

The vogue for medical history - the effects of haemophilia in the Romanov family; the influence of Napoleon's health on the outcome of the Waterloo campaign; Caesar's epilepsy; genetical deterioration among the intermarrying Hapsburgs - has, on the whole, neglected alcohol's rôle in shaping historical events. It would be foolish to argue that Frederick the Great as battlefield tactician, or even as master of realpolitik , was solely the product of his upbringing but his underlying characteristics which determined his approach to war or politics were formed in the turmoil of the relationship he had with his father. Like many children of alcoholics (or, at least, of men with personalities like Frederick William's), Frederick learned to dissemble, rely on himself, and mistrust.

All mutual irritation, misunderstanding, and antipathy between father and son pale into insignificance when compared to the traumatic days of 1730 when Frederick decided to escape from Prussia and what he had come to view as an intolerable existence. Foreign powers were, albeit passively, involved, and Prussian officers had compromised themselves in helping the Prince and so there was something to be said for the King's talk of desertion and treason. Frederick was imprisoned and interrogated; his friend, von Katte, executed. For a time, it appeared that there might be a re-enactment of the tragedy worked out between another alcoholic sovereign,

Peter the Great, and his son, Alexis. But the case was different. Frederick William was more constrained by civilized behaviour than Peter - it was difficult to be otherwise - and Frederick was vastly more intelligent than the Tsarevitch. He survived, but coming close to the block on the orders of one's own father was as great a constraint on normal family life in the eighteenth century as it would be in ours. If Frederick was a cynic, it is hard to blame him.

Mr MacDonogh takes the reader through Frederick the Great's life in tremendous style. He is witty and discerning and concerned, of course, with far broader issues than those on which this review had dwelt. There are curious and sometimes baffling turns of phrase; there is the occasional solecism such as referring to the splendid Mme de Pompadour insultingly as La Pompadour; but the book will remain an important text on Frederick.

Old Fritz, as he came to be known, is a fascinating candidate for psychological analysis-with-hindsight but in Mr MacDonogh's book he comes over as strangely unlikable. In an earlier study - one very different in nature - Nancy Mitford, drawing on her own acquaintance just as she had when describing Mme de Pompadour's royal lover, Louis XV, leaves us with the impression of a rather lovable old queen. Here Frederick, even when his strengths are being discussed, is deeply irritating. Many of his artistic tastes were second rate - he regarded Graun as a much greater composer than Bach; in his building, the pettiness of rococo replaced the grandeur of baroque; he held foolish opinions based on ignorance (that the German language has no rules, for example). Like many people with liberal opinions, he was intolerant on those who did not. Very few of his contemporary monarchs had happy childhoods - if that is not an anachronistic assertion - but few were so fitted our idea of the adult child of an alcoholic. A new variation of an old dinner party game might be to ask the question, "Would you rather have been a subject of Frederick the Great or Louis XV?" Stick to the latter.