Are there really no population statistics from Brandenburg-Prussia in Friedrich's lifetime?
Beats me, I honestly don't know.
His remarks about the relationship between Fritz/Wilhelmine and FW
Mildred, Cahn, the relevant passage:
One thing is sure, though: Friedrich had a hard childhood. The conflict his father went to physical and mental limits. Hahn: It wasn't an existential conflict, since he couldn't have lost in this conflict with his father. According to the Golden Bull, the basic law of the HRE, Friedrich was the successor to the throne. His father could never have gone up against the the law of the Empire in this. Which is why Friedrich couldn't have lost this conflict. The only loser here was his father, because he behaved impossibly, unlike any other monarch of his era. His court was a madhouse and he was a barbarian.
He beat his children... Hahn: ... and occasionally his wife, Queen Sophia Dorothea. Friedrich Wilhelm I., the so-called soldier king, was suffering terribly through severe illnesses and was a small, fat man who was hardly able to move. His oldest children, Wilhelmine and Friedrich, enjoyed provoking him, to cause him behaving without retraint, uncivilised, unroyal. And the King was suffering terribly through this. Here you can already see some characteristic traits of Friedrich's: he was proud, he endured all; he was unbreakable, sly and malicious, throughout his entire life. And he had learned to act with this slyness, not to open up to anyone, to take his own path consistently. His behaviour towards his father was vicious, for he knew exactly how that man would respond. But one has to blame some of it on the mother, who wasn't able to run interference in any calming way. On the contrary; she poured gasoline into fire.
Sophia Dorothea was obsessed with the hoped for English double marriage for Friedrich and Wilhelmine. Hahn: This was her pride. She had the idea: my children will be Kings and will be married royally. Friedrich Wilhelm had no sense of that at all. He married off his children far below their station. All of Friedrich's siblings were married cheaply and humiliatingly from an aristocratic point of view. Which was already true for the marriages of the Great Elector and his children. The one exception: Friedrich I, the first King in Prussia. His second wife was the the Hannover princess Sophie Charlotte, who was on an equal level. But she probably was quite clear on the fact she thought of the House of Hannover as superior. In my opinion, the marriage politics of the Hohenzollern express the mentality of a parvenu family. They probably always felt their social mediocrity. Which they compensated by ambition and political determination while leaving a lot of devastation in their wake. If you like: the Hohenzollern are a parable of German history.
I shall restraint on any comment on the victim blaming - seriously, how hard is it not to go the "but the kids provoked him!" route? -, and limit myself to saying that while FW could indeed not have changed the order of succession without either the Emperor's permission or his son's voluntary resignation (which he did ty to get), I think attempting his level best to break his son by methods all against the Geneva conventions and thus in today's terms qualifying as torture doesn't qualify this particular conflict as one Fritz couldn't have lost. For contemporary comparison of how a crown prince of Prussia without Fritz' hardcore sense of self preservation responds to a King dealing out humiliation and verbal abuse for a far shorter time, just ask AW. I don't think being secure that his right to the succession could not have been overturned by Fritz comforted AW one bit, and as godawful as that year was, it was only a smidgeon of the treatment Fritz had gotten from FW.
I'm also a bit stunned to see a qualified historian blithely saying of FW "because he behaved impossibly, unlike any other monarch of his era". Unless you mean just FW's excentricities re: tall soldiers and personal life style. Because when it comes to FW as a father and other monarchs of his time, well:
1.) Peter I. still wins by sheer virtue of torturing his son to death. Literally, not metaphorically. Considering he and FW were of a generation, he certainly counts as a monarch of the era.
2.) George I. didn't do that (he killed his wife's lover instead), but his relationship with George II was as terrible as that of George II's with his son Frederick, and George III's with his sons, which included public shouting matches and the respective crown princes siding with the opposition, see also here.
3.) And then there's Regent of France Philippe d'Orleans (son of gay Philippe D'Orleans and Liselotte) getting accused of incest with his favourite daughter by young Voltaire, which might or might not have been true, but what he did doin public was attend orgies with her. We're still in FW's generation and talking about royal fathers behaving scandalously.
4.) Speaking of royal fathers accused of incest by gossip: hello there, August the Strong! Also a FW contemporary.
Re: Peter-Michael Hahn
Are there really no population statistics from Brandenburg-Prussia in Friedrich's lifetime?
Beats me, I honestly don't know.
His remarks about the relationship between Fritz/Wilhelmine and FW
Mildred, Cahn, the relevant passage:
One thing is sure, though: Friedrich had a hard childhood. The conflict his father went to physical and mental limits.
Hahn: It wasn't an existential conflict, since he couldn't have lost in this conflict with his father. According to the Golden Bull, the basic law of the HRE, Friedrich was the successor to the throne. His father could never have gone up against the the law of the Empire in this. Which is why Friedrich couldn't have lost this conflict. The only loser here was his father, because he behaved impossibly, unlike any other monarch of his era. His court was a madhouse and he was a barbarian.
He beat his children...
Hahn: ... and occasionally his wife, Queen Sophia Dorothea. Friedrich Wilhelm I., the so-called soldier king, was suffering terribly through severe illnesses and was a small, fat man who was hardly able to move. His oldest children, Wilhelmine and Friedrich, enjoyed provoking him, to cause him behaving without retraint, uncivilised, unroyal. And the King was suffering terribly through this. Here you can already see some characteristic traits of Friedrich's: he was proud, he endured all; he was unbreakable, sly and malicious, throughout his entire life. And he had learned to act with this slyness, not to open up to anyone, to take his own path consistently. His behaviour towards his father was vicious, for he knew exactly how that man would respond. But one has to blame some of it on the mother, who wasn't able to run interference in any calming way. On the contrary; she poured gasoline into fire.
Sophia Dorothea was obsessed with the hoped for English double marriage for Friedrich and Wilhelmine.
Hahn: This was her pride. She had the idea: my children will be Kings and will be married royally. Friedrich Wilhelm had no sense of that at all. He married off his children far below their station. All of Friedrich's siblings were married cheaply and humiliatingly from an aristocratic point of view. Which was already true for the marriages of the Great Elector and his children. The one exception: Friedrich I, the first King in Prussia. His second wife was the the Hannover princess Sophie Charlotte, who was on an equal level. But she probably was quite clear on the fact she thought of the House of Hannover as superior. In my opinion, the marriage politics of the Hohenzollern express the mentality of a parvenu family. They probably always felt their social mediocrity. Which they compensated by ambition and political determination while leaving a lot of devastation in their wake. If you like: the Hohenzollern are a parable of German history.
I shall restraint on any comment on the victim blaming - seriously, how hard is it not to go the "but the kids provoked him!" route? -, and limit myself to saying that while FW could indeed not have changed the order of succession without either the Emperor's permission or his son's voluntary resignation (which he did ty to get), I think attempting his level best to break his son by methods all against the Geneva conventions and thus in today's terms qualifying as torture doesn't qualify this particular conflict as one Fritz couldn't have lost. For contemporary comparison of how a crown prince of Prussia without Fritz' hardcore sense of self preservation responds to a King dealing out humiliation and verbal abuse for a far shorter time, just ask AW. I don't think being secure that his right to the succession could not have been overturned by Fritz comforted AW one bit, and as godawful as that year was, it was only a smidgeon of the treatment Fritz had gotten from FW.
I'm also a bit stunned to see a qualified historian blithely saying of FW "because he behaved impossibly, unlike any other monarch of his era". Unless you mean just FW's excentricities re: tall soldiers and personal life style. Because when it comes to FW as a father and other monarchs of his time, well:
1.) Peter I. still wins by sheer virtue of torturing his son to death. Literally, not metaphorically. Considering he and FW were of a generation, he certainly counts as a monarch of the era.
2.) George I. didn't do that (he killed his wife's lover instead), but his relationship with George II was as terrible as that of George II's with his son Frederick, and George III's with his sons, which included public shouting matches and the respective crown princes siding with the opposition, see also here.
3.) And then there's Regent of France Philippe d'Orleans (son of gay Philippe D'Orleans and Liselotte) getting accused of incest with his favourite daughter by young Voltaire, which might or might not have been true, but what he did doin public was attend orgies with her. We're still in FW's generation and talking about royal fathers behaving scandalously.
4.) Speaking of royal fathers accused of incest by gossip: hello there, August the Strong! Also a FW contemporary.