Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Schlagwort: Prussia

Five Books on Frederick the Great

In an interview with the Five Books website, former RECS-Voltaire Fellow Dr Adam Storring discusses the five best books to read (mostly) in English on Frederick II of Prussia, who is best known in the English-speaking world as ‘Frederick the Great’.

Storring describes how Frederick II’s still-strong posthumous reputation reflects his success in matching up to a variety of very different ideas about monarchy. On one hand, Frederick was a traditional military monarch. On the other hand, he also successfully responded to new, enlightened ideas about how rulers should behave.

Storring recommends Tim Blanning’s engaging biography of the Prussian king, which builds on the flood of new research published around the 300th anniversary of Frederick’s birth in 2012. Blanning’s book The Power of Culture and the Culture of Power discusses how Frederick successfully engaged with the new reading public, becoming a creator of culture in his own right. For Frederick as a military monarch, Storring recommends Christopher Duffy’s military biography of the Prussian king, as well as Marian Füssel’s book on the Seven Years War.

While primarily selecting books for Anglophone readers, Storring also recommends the catalogue of the Friederisiko exhibition, staged in 2012 by the Stiftung Preußischer Schlösser und Gärten. Lavishly illustrated, the Friederisiko catalogue offers an important visual perspective on Frederick’s reign, showing how he used his palaces and their magnificent furnishings to present his own greatness, and thus helping to offer a properly rounded picture of the Prussian king.

 

New Publications on Hohenzollern Strategy and the Third Silesian War

Ernst Wentzelmann: Dank- und Siegespredigt..., SPSG, Flugschrift, KnF_1758_01Dr Adam Storring has recently published two chapters on war and strategy in Prussia in the reign of Frederick II (1740-86).

In ‘Hohenzollern Strategy under Frederick II’, published in The Cambridge History of Strategy, Storring places Frederick firmly within the broader context of his dynasty’s strategy over the preceding generations. As one of a series of middle-ranking German dynasties seeking aggrandisement, the Hohenzollerns sought to profit from advantageous circumstances, often during periods when the Austrian Habsburgs – the hegemonic power in the German lands – were temporarily weak. Frederick II’s invasion of the Austrian province of Silesia in 1740 thus reflected not only the king’s own risk-taking personality but also the policy of his family over generations.

Storring’s chapter on ‘The Third Silesian War’, published in The Oxford Handbook of the Seven Years War, re-examines the conflict in central Europe between 1756 and 1763, which saw Prussia surprisingly survive undefeated despite facing a huge coalition of Austria, France, Russia, Sweden and many states of the Holy Roman Empire. The Russians called it ‘the Prussian war’, and it has also been a ‘Prussian war’ in the way historians have written about it, with much less consideration given to non-Prussian participants. Even from the Prussian side, there has been an overwhelming focus on the personality of King Frederick II. Storring emphasizes the need instead to examine the broader Prussian high command within which the king operated.

Prussia has typically been seen as a resource-poor state whose scattered territories left it exposed to attack. Storring argues, however, that the example of the Seven Years War shows that Prussia’s geographical position was not as disadvantageous as might be thought. While outlying possessions were quickly occupied, the scattered nature of the Hohenzollern territories was actually an advantage, as French and Russian armies found it logistically very difficult to cover the great distances necessary to reach the Prussian heartland. The Prussians benefitted from good river communications and mountain barriers, while the central position of the Prussian state allowed Frederick to move troops on interior lines to confront one adversary after another. Recent research has meanwhile shown that Prussia was much better at mobilising resources and bringing them to the theatre of war than its immediate opponents. Scholars have argued that, throughout its history, Prussia’s exposed geography repeatedly obliged it to take the offensive in wars. Storring explains, however, that Frederick actually survived the Seven Years War because of the defensive advantages he enjoyed.

Adam Storring was RECS-Voltaire-Fellow at the Stiftung Preußischer Schlösser und Gärten in 2018. He is currently Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London. His PhD, completed at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Sir Christopher Clark, was awarded the André Corvisier Prize for the best dissertation on military history defended at any university anywhere in the world.