Prussia: A Tale of Three Fredericks

As you all know, we have discussed absolutism in Austria, and a bit about Russia, but today we learned about absolutism in Prussia. And it was very confusing. To start off, Prussia was not even a continuous area! What we mean by Prussia, is rather the combined lands of  Estates of Brandenburg, which is located around Berlin, the Duchy of Prussia, and the scattered areas in Western Germany. How could such a divided and comparatively small country ever hope to achieve any form of absolutist rule?

Get your act together!

It all started with the Great Elector Frederick William(1640-1688), a member of the Hohenzollern family, and after the Thirty Years' War, which had devastated his holdings. Of course the ones opposing absolutist rule here (as usual) were the nobles, known as the Junkers. However, they were weakened enough after the Thirty Years' War to give in to the Great Elector's demands. The most important one being that the Great Elector could tax as he wanted, of course he promised to not tax these nobles heavily. Financial independence allowed the Great Elector to make a powerful standing army. With this army, Prussia had centralized its power.

However, his successor, Elector Frederick III (1688-1713) (who later becomes King Frederick I as a reward from Spain) was rather weak and focused more on the cultivation of the arts than war.

This all changed when Frederick William I (1713-1740)(NOT THE GREAT ELECTOR) became king. He became known as the Soldiers' King because of his intense love for militarism. He was the one who made Prussia truly an absolutist state. He further increased the power of the Prussian military to the point that is was the main focus of the country.To do this he had to create a strong centralized bureaucracy and did away finally with the power of the Junkers and any form of self-government. In return to these nobles, he made them the officer class of his new super army. He basically laid the foundations militarily for what would become the German war machine hundreds of years later.

I made a table to make this easier to understand: