Blue Monreal

I first learned about Frederick the Great when I was assigned to create a Slides presentation about him in ninth grade. Scrolling through Wikipedia, I happened upon a whole page entitled “Sexuality of Frederick the Great.” I was understandably intrigued and ended up referencing one of Frederick’s lovers in my slideshow. Apparently my history teacher did not approve of this “fun fact,” because she decided to take two points off my project grade—something about which I’m so salty that it has inspired an entire Orient column. Take that, Ms. W!

But we’ll get to what I found on that Wikipedia page later on. First, let’s talk about Frederick’s achievements as the king of Prussia, which are certainly nothing to sneeze at, considering he essentially had to be forced into politics. That’s right: Frederick—I’ll call him Fritz—had a classic case of what we today refer to as “Daddy Issues.” His father, Frederick William, is remembered as a stodgy and practical ruler; his painful gout and his son’s disobedience made him consistently ill-tempered. Disappointed that Fritz’s interests erred more towards literature and art than religion and war, Fred Will frequently humiliated and insulted his son. Things got worse when Fritz turned 17 and decided that he didn’t want to be king. He made plans to run away to England with his lover Hans Hermann von Katte, but the two were caught by Frederick William. Fritz was imprisoned and forced to watch von Katte’s execution—though the young prince was reported to have fainted right before the ax fell. However cruel, Frederick William was efficient in the realm of domestic policy. He centralized and mobilized a previously backwards realm, paving the way for his son’s foreign policy achievements.

At the start of Fritz’s rule, Prussia was just one of many weak German kingdoms constantly at war. Frederick refused to rest until Prussia was perhaps the most feared power in all of Europe. Fritz’s first move was to invade Silesia, a province located mostly in modern Poland, mobilizing his army at a rate that had the rest of Europe shaking in its drawers. His subsequent butt-kicking of Austria and Russia, also known as the Seven Years’ War, was equally astonishing. His military strategies and ability to outmaneuver the enemy became legendary, inspiring later tactics of the Continental Army. All this conquering stuff looks really impressive on paper, but unfortunately, Frederick’s “strategy” sometimes looked a lot more like utter disregard for human life. At Kunersdorf, his force of 50,000 men was reduced to less than 5,000, a casualty level that’s almost Napoleonic—definitely not a good look.

Among all this, it’s important to remember that Frederick never wanted to be king. He was an accomplished flutist, wrote more than 100 musical pieces, performed them in evening ensembles and composed several poems. A man of the Enlightenment, he sponsored the arts and was close friends with Voltaire for many years.

It’s actually Voltaire who provides us with some of the most explicit evidence for Frederick’s homosexuality. After 20 years of friendship, the two had a falling out that resulted in scandalous pamphlets detailing exactly the sort of shenanigans Frederick was getting up to. Even without these exposés, Fritz’s sexual deviance was well known in the courts of Europe. He filled his palace with homoerotic artwork and wrote a poem entitled “La Jouissance” (look it up—or don’t) to bisexual philosopher Francesco Algarotti. Fritz frequently admired his lieutenants and pages, and foreign monarchs were known to send diplomacy missions with a few “tall soldiers” as a peace offering. Humorously, Frederick once wrote, “Alas, fortune is a woman, and I am not that way inclined.”

Given all this, it might seem odd that the Nazis saw Frederick as an ideal leader. But in the early days of the Third Reich, a movement called “masculinism” was common among conservative homosexuals. Masculinist individuals, led by Ernst Röhm, embraced “hypermasculine comradeship” and scorned all other queer identities, relating to Frederick for his prioritization of masculine ideals. These men ended up suffering the consequences later on when higher-up Nazis saw no difference between them and the other homosexuals they had been tasked to persecute. Their worship of Fritz was ironic too, considering his love of art, poetry and music—not exactly super-macho disciplines. (One fantastic source on Frederick and masculinism is Chapter 4 of “Bad Gays” by Lemmey and Miller.)

Notwithstanding the brutality of his military actions, Frederick’s conquests changed Europe forever. Prussia’s power continued throughout the 18th century and set the stage for Otto von Bismarck’s military victories in the 19th century. Frederick re-invented Prussia’s legacy, defined an entirely new kind of European leader and somehow still managed to puzzle generations of historians with his homoerotic poetry. So if you ever find yourself thinking about 18th-century European politics or guerilla tactics during the American Revolution, just remember: All that illustrious military history exists thanks to one flute-playing twink with daddy issues.