Frederick the Great of Prussia
Great Lives
00:00
Frederick the Great's Struggle to Improve Hisself
When I grew up in just about still East Germany, it was really in the heartlands of where Frederick's work unfolded. Therefore, his spectre hung over me, my childhood and also the entire region. There was constantly this idea that he embodied everything that was proper in German and Prussian and masculine in many ways as well. But then also he was very much praised for the land reforms that you introduced and other things. He really did shape the area that I grewup in,. so he was a spectre in both a positive and slightly more menacing way. And introduced the potato, apparently, too. It wasn't very widely spread or consumed because it was still deemed a poor man
Transcript
Play full episode
