Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Biographics"
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"who largely wiped corruption from public offices"
The contrary was true. He did welcome corruption. He liked that other governments paid bribed to his clerks and officials to spy on their behalf, because that only meant that he could keep on paying low wages for his workers and hand over the cost of living upon other governments.
"who lived almost like a commoner"
He was a very fat man who later on would die from obesity related causes.
"Sure he was a tyrant, but he didn´t delight in inflicting pain to others"
Of all the untrue things said about this man, this does remain the most untrue of all.
It seems like you have gotten your untrue opinion from a nazi propaganda movie called "Der Alte und der Junge König".
Fact is that he loved to humiliate and bully others - and especially his own son. He did beat up his officials and he loved to make joke at their expense in the Tobacco Cabinet. He did beat up Frederick the Great's teacher for the crime of learning his own son latin language.
He was not a caring father. He wanted his son dead, and even went as far as trying to get him to commit suicide with his bullying. He forced him to marry a girl he thought unattractive, instead of getting the prestigious honor of marrying the princess of England who's beauty Frederick greatly admired.
opportunity
The diplomatic pressure simply became too high to make his will go through.
But in the end did he want to kill Frederick. He despised everything which were different from himself: Fredrick William was a christian fundamentalist, a militarist, he was a simple man that he loved hunting. While Frederick was open minded in religious issues and he was not a simple man since he had deep intellectual hobbies - he could read foreign languages, he was an excellent flute player, he read lots of books and he could discuss philosophical works.
Just like the rest of Frederick Williams family did he think that his fathers hunting trips were boring.
Frederick loved military life, but he was not as obsessed about it as his own father. And that made his father despise him. He thought that speaking french, intellectual interests and flute playing was useless feminine hobbies.
The only thing this primitive brute was right about when it came to his own son, was that Frederick in his young years liked to waste much money on foreign luxury garbage: perfume, tonnes of rings on his fingers, and buying tonnes of books in secrecy.
But this also a little bit shows the corrupt culture in Prussia under Frederick William, as his son in secrecy waste money on junk behind his fathers back.
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Martin Luther - Killed a man in a duel
John Knox - Is said the have been a real motherf***er
Pope Sixtus IV - Is known for constructing the Sistine chapel and for having children with his own sister.
Pope Alexander VI - Killed lots of people and rumor says that he had an incestuous affair with his daughter
Pope John XII - Turned the Lateran Palace into a brothel and had sex with his sisters. He died when he had sex with another mans wife.
Pope Benedict IX - Married his cousin, and murdered, robbed pilgrims, committed adultery and bestiality in daylight
Pope Anacietus II - Took a whore for his mistress, enjoyed incest with his sister and other relatives. Raping nuns was one of his hobbies.
Pope Boniface VIII - Was a rapist who also loved sodomy with animals
Pope John XXIII - A pirate who obtained the papacy through force, was charged by the Council of Constance for piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, incest and another 50 charges.
Nicholas V - Authorized the King of Portugal to war on African peoples, take their property and enslave people.
Pope Paul II - Died from a heart attack while he had sex with a young boy
Pope Sergius III - Enjoyed sex with underaged girls
Pope Benedict XII - Was such a hardened drinker that the expression "drunk as a pope" became popular in his lifetime.
Pope Pius II - A well known author of erotic literature, and had fathered about 12 illegitimate children
Pope Julius II - Commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the the Sistine Chapel. He was a paedophile and liked wasting church money so he could have his male prostitutes
Pope Paul III - Enjoyed an incestuous relationship with his daughter. He killed two cardinals and a Polish bishop to settle an argument over a theological point. Paul III was probably Rome's biggest ever pimp - he kept a roll of about 45,000 prostitutes, who paid him a monthly tribute.
Pope Julius III - Sodomized young boys, of which one was his own, illegitimate, son.
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@herrwagnerianer1739
"It was a nation that had borders"
People seemed unsure if the Netherlands and Switzerland would be included into that great empire. France and Italy had also been holy Roman land. And the Baltics had been a part of the Teutonic order.
So what should have been German, and what should not be? I don't think there was much of a consensus back then.
" a citizenry"
People spoke their own dialects and local patriotism was strong. I would not be surprised if many considered themselves to be Bavarians or Saxons first and Germans 2nd.
"common institutions"
Yes, but very weak ones.
"And all the sovereignty lay with the Empire"
The ruler could not centrally plan everything, and especially not in a country as large as Germany. So much power therefore had to be handed over to local rulers.
"No German prince, however powerful, not even Frederick II, ever denied that."
Frederick the Great frowned upon the idea of a unified Germany and denied such a thing existed.
"only Prussia proper was a sovereign country whereas all other lands were not sovereign but subject to imperial authority."
After the Swedish victory in the 30 years war would all small lands be able to determine their own religion and rule themselves to a small degree. They had their own armies and their own currencies.
And foreign powers were able to meddle in the affairs of the German parliament and making it less effective.
With the conquest of Pomerania was Sweden given a seat at the German parliament and thereby had a saying in how Germany would be runned.
And countries like France and Sweden stood outside Germany and guaranteed all small German states (electorates) some degree of independence with military force.
"its inhabitants recognised the existence of a German nation"
Not Frederick the Great as I said earlier. And Voltaire shared his opinion, as his famous quote tells us:
"The holy Roman empire - was neither holy, Roman, or an empire".
*"It appealed to the Emperor, to the princes of the Empire, and to the citizenry, all of whom existed in political reality, and asked them to defend the interests of the nation against Roman interference."
Some Germans were more loyal to God than to their Emperor. The Investiture Controversy was not an easy affair for the German emperor even if he theoretically was the most powerful wordly ruler in Europe.
"The German nation was just as much a political reality in the 16th century as the French or the English nations."
Parts of the country broke lose and declared independence (Münster). And the country was in turbulence after the reformation and parts of the country was fighting each other with more or less violent and peaceful means.
And in the 1600's would things go so far that Saxony and Brandenburg was in open war with the German emperor.
And later would Prussia under Frederick the Great also clash with the Holy Roman empire, despite Brandenburg was a part of it.
"He never thought of the German Empire of 1871 as the foundation of the political German nation but rather as a reorganization after its previous dismantling during the Napoleonic era."
Napoleon had done much to unify Germany. Baden was an unknown unimportant place in Germany before Napoleon, but after Napoleon took over Germany he gave much land to this province and over night its population grew multifold as well as its land mass.
And the hundreds of German mini-states got reduced in numbers and merged into larger states within the German reich.
But not everyone liked this new idea. Some local patriots did not like the idea of suddenly becoming Prussians, inhabitants of Baden or whatever.
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Well I respect that man. He introduced freedom of speech, freedom of opinion and meritocracy long before anyone else did.
He made the Prussian economy into the strongest in continental Europe, despite his country was a tiny piece of land with no natural resources in abundance. His military fought alone against 3 of the strongest armies in the world for several years without going out of the war with a loss, and he won many battles against armies twice as strong.
He was a gifted flute player, a thinking philosopher in an age of religious dogma and lack of thinking. He introduced the potato to Prussia and thereby saving thousands of lives from famines. He created the worlds first modern school system. He took on the bullying Habsburg empire and wrecked them and humiliated them, by conquering the rich province of Silesia which stood for 25% of Austria's tax revenues.
While other Kings motto was "I am the state". Did Frederick instead say "I am the first servant of the state", which implied that he was not a man free from duties and obligations, but instead would he work hard just like the rest of his subjects. A typical day he woke up early at the morning and read 30 letters, and afterwards he wrote a respons to all of them one by one. And he traveled around his Kingdom and talked to ordinary people and listened to their concerns and he suggested ways how to improve the economy. He was a man who never cared to glorify himself in art or improving the stories told about himself, like the propaganda of other monarchs, but instead did he let his actions speak for themselves.
His fate was in many ways a sad one. His childhood consisted of severe bullying from his father. His heart was crushed when his dream of marrying the beautiful princess of England was rejected, because his father wanted to further humiliate Frederick by marrying an ugly girl he didn't like instead. He was also forced to watch the execution of his friend Katte. And the seven years war did not seem to end well for Frederick despite his brilliant victories at the battles of Rossbach and Leuthen. And Frederick thought of committing suicide, as the war seemed lost and he seemed to have ruined his family's generational project, and his Kingdom was nearly wiped off the map.
He would however get of the war unharmed. But his psyche had some scars after the hard life he had been through.
He never married the woman he wanted, and people who he thought of as friends were often times only people which wanted money, high positions and favors from Frederick once he became King. And they became disappointing as he preferred meritocracy over nepotism. Later on would he say that he preferred his dogs over humans because "they are always loyal and never ungrateful".
Fredericks life would probably have been better if he had married the girl he wanted and without the bullying from his dad. Perhaps he could have created a few good off-springs that could have become better replacements for Frederick than the useless Frederick William II that managed to in just a few years waste all money that Frederick had saved up. And then he would also go to war against Napoleon and suffer a humiliating defeat.
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