- [Narrator] Fortress of Kustrin,
Brandenburg, November 6th, 1730.
Frederick, crown prince of Brandeburg-Prussia,
looks through the bars of his cell windows
as soldiers lead his companion, Hans Hermann von Katte,
to the mound of sand.
Katte is more than his friend.
He's the 18-year-old Frederick's confidant,
his protector, and some say his lover.
and he had tried to save Frederick
from his father, the king of Prussia,
and Katte would pay.
"Please forgive me dear, Katte," Frederick yells in French,
the language they both prefer.
"In God's name, forgive me."
"There's nothing to forgive,"
Katte answers in the same language.
"I'd die for you with joy in my heart."
The headsman steps up, revealing his ax.
Frederick doesn't want to watch,
but two soldiers acting on his father's orders grab hold
of him and press his face to the bars.
He screams, he fights.
The ax raises over Katte's bare neck,
and mercifully, the boy who would become
Prussia's greatest king faints before he sees it fall.
(vibrant music)
Thanks so much to Hello Fresh
for continuing to help us bring history to the table.
Hey, everyone, as you can probably tell already,
Frederick the Great's childhood was a horror show of abuse
and homophobic bullying by his father.
So with today's episode, viewer discretion is advised.
Frederick the Great is one
of the most dynamic monarchs of the 18th century,
inheriting a fractured peace of the Holy Roman Empire,
a place so minor its monarch was called king
in Prussia rather than king of Prussia.
He expanded it to a major power.
Known as a soldier and a philosopher,
his reign simultaneously encompassed refinement
and brutality, demonstrating both the splendor
and slaughter of the enlightenment.
Yet, his first battle was not against the Habsburgs
or France but rather his own dad.
Frederick's father, Frederick-William,
was known as the Soldier King.
Living in a sparse militaristic fashion,
he despised anything
he considered ostentatious or effeminate.
In fact, his first act upon becoming the king in Prussia
and the elector of Brandenburg was
to sell his own father's jewels,
horses, and fine furnishings.
While many German princes used the treasury
as their personal party fund,
Frederick-William instead pursued
a conservative economic policy,
curtailing state spending and battling corruption,
which was a wise thing overall,
but many of the unnecessary expenses he eliminated
included patronage of the arts, literature, and science.
He didn't just defund the Prussian Academy of Sciences.
He closed it.
But Frederick-William did have one pet project, the army.
So everything he saved, he poured in the defense spending.
He also created a new type of military draft,
the Canton System, that allowed Prussia
to be able to recruit and train troops more efficiently
and create civilian reservists that could be called upon.
In that way, he doubled the size
of the Prussian military to 76,000 men,
making it the fourth largest army in Europe,
roughly the same as that of France,
which had 10 times Prussia's population.
Oh, did this guy love the army.
He dressed as a military officer,
held meetings in rooms
where he could watch troops drilling out his window,
and in an additional extreme,
drafted the tallest men in the Holy Roman Empire
into a special unit of giants.
In fact, his counsel was so full of soldiers swilling beer
and smoking foot-long pipes
that it was nicknamed the Tobacco Cabinet,
mostly because their meeting rooms smelt
like an airport smoking lounge.
He also was prone to violent rages,
which got worse as the years went on,
and had several medical conditions
that kept him in constant pain.
In other words, Frederick-William projected an heir
of hypermasculinity, Calvanist piety,
and frugal financial habits,
and naturally he wanted his eldest surviving son Frederick,
nicknamed Fritz, to grow up to be just like him,
a hypervirile religious soldier king
to use the great instrument
of Prussian military power that he'd created.
Now, the first six years of Fritz's life,
he had lived with his mother,
and under her care, young Fritz developed
what his father considered worrying habits.
Fritz loved music and books.
He grew incredibly close to his older sister Wilhelmina,
enjoyed poetry, philosophy, opera,
and learned to play the flute.
Worse than that, it was the transverse flute
recently invented in France.
Oh, Frederick-William hated France
and was known to fly into a rage
if the country was even mentioned.
"The French," he said, "Were decadent and defeminate."
So imagine his consternation when Fritz,
who was tutored in French and German simultaneously,
took to French as his first language
and struggled with his native German.
Okay, all right, not a big deal.
"The boy," Frederick-William reasoned,
"Just needed to find the fun in war," you know?
So for his sixth birthday,
he gave him a miniature arsenal
of military rifles and cannons
plus a group of boys in uniform he was supposed
to order around as living toy soldiers.
Ah, hah, pretty cool, hey Fritz?
Fritz, you know?
It's fine, it's fine
because Frederick-William would soon
also shape his son more directly.
For as was tradition, the next year when he turned seven,
the responsibility for raising
and educating Fritz transferred
from his mother to his father.
As you can imagine, all studies of music,
philosophy and poetry were promptly shut down.
The prince would instead now have
a grueling regimented schedule of Latin,
religious studies, ancient classics,
modern political history, and military subjects,
conducted largely by military officers.
But even there, Fritz found allies.
His Latin tutor was sympathetic
to his clearly bright charge
and not only procured him a flute
but helped him amass a secret library
of 3,000 books covering poetry,
enlightenment philosophy, and art.
Fritz also visited a nearby court in Saxony,
which gave him a glimpse of a freer life than he'd had.
Yet, as Frederick grew into a teenager,
Frederick-William became increasingly furious over his heir
who he considered effeminate, incompetent, and irreligious,
as it was increasingly clear that Fritz was an agnostic.
So he responded with a campaign of abuse.
Frederick-William berated his son,
screaming at him in front of soldiers.
He burned books and artwork he found
and assaulted him in public.
He would strike young Frederick
for sleeping in and being late for drill
or for being unsure on horseback.
Once, he beat him with a cane
for wearing a pair of gloves when it was cold.
"If I had disgraced my father so," he once told Fritz,
"I would have killed myself."
Then when Fritz was 16 and formed an intimate relationship
with one of his father's pages,
Frederick-William had the young man sent
to a border posting and beat his son again,
calling him a sodomite.
Now, a quick aside here.
The language surrounding Frederick's sexuality can be
a hot-button topic among historians.
Not whether he was gay, he clearly was attracted to men,
preferred male partners,
and commissioned art with homoerotic themes.
The debate is more about terminology,
whether labels like gay are imposing a modern idea
of sexuality on a very different time and culture.
But let's be honest,
in history, it's already common
to use a ton of terms like feudalism
or democracy to describe things that existed
but didn't yet have labels
and queer people existed then, as they always have.
So with all that in mind, Frederick was gay
and his sexuality definitely made it dangerous
for him to live under Frederick-William.
At this point, he had only one hope to escape his father,
a double marriage.
See, his mother had been planning
to marry his sister, Wilhelmina,
and him to the children of her brother George II of England.
Fritz was all about this.
He could go to England,
which was far freer than Prussia.
And look, if he had to get married
to get away from his father, that was a small price.
But when that deal fell apart due
to intrigue and shifts in alliances,
he plunged into despair.
That was when Katte, his friend, tutor,
and likely lover agreed to help him escape.
They would slip away while touring the Holy Roman Empire
and flee together to England,
though they were caught almost immediately
and thrown into prison.
Given both were military officers,
Frederick-William charged them with treason
and seriously considered having Fritz executed,
but that put him on rocky legal ground
with the rest of the empire.
So in the end, his punishment was to watch Katte die.
Afterward, Frederick made a deal with his father.
In return for a pardon and getting to stay crowned prince,
he submitted to an even more grueling
and austere routine of tutors.
He also swore to be a good protestant and agreed to marry.
So he entered an engagement with Elisabeth Christine,
a protestant cousin of the Habsburg line.
Though Frederick was despondent over this choice
and swearing that even friendship
between them was impossible,
he threatened suicide,
however still had no choice in the marriage.
But he knew the only way out was through.
Frederick wept upon meeting her,
and on their wedding night,
loitered in their bedroom for an hour
before abruptly leaving to stroll the grounds until dawn.
But no matter, he was safe, he was free,
and he only needed to wait until the Soldier King died,
and when he took power, he would never be beaten again.
For in a surprise to all,
Frederick-William's tutelage had taken root,
and his son would be a warrior king
like Prussia had never seen.
And while we wait to find out what happens
to Frederick next time,
I say we go make a meal fit for a king.
(doorbell chimes)
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(vibrant music)