I can’t believe I missed Frederick the Great‘s birthday (Jan 24th). I was fortunate enough to read the Robert Asprey biography of Fredrick shortly after graduating high school and it’s stuck with me ever since (about time for a re-read, actually).
Enjoy some Frederick-relevent music while reading the rest of this post:
Die Welt (via Worldcrunch) has a nice modern look at the Prussian.
Frederick’s know-it-all-ism and righteousness are difficult to stomach. If he were alive today, he might be one of those self-important bloggers who believes it’s up to him to set the world straight.
Well…let’s score one for the possibility that TwShiloh is the reincarnated monarch, himself!
One of the reasons I was fascinated with Fritz was his early idealism. He was so offended by Machiavelli’s The Prince, he wrote a rebuttal called the Anti-Machiavel. (You can find the essay here).
Power, however, caused him to embrace many of Machiavelli’s principles and despite being beset by enemies on all sides he managed to pull off a 46 year reign (!) which isn’t too shabby.
If you find yourself hungering for a bit more 18th century shenanigans with Fritz, I recommend this quite good documentary about our favorite Prussian.
