- Introduction: A Musico-Logical Offering
- Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern
- Frederick William ordered Fritz to undergo a minimal education, live a simple Protestant lifestyle, and focus on the Army and statesmanship as he had. However, the intellectual Fritz was more interested in music, books and French culture, which were forbidden by his father as decadent and unmanly.
- At age 16, Frederick seems to have embarked upon a youthful affair with Peter Karl Christoph von Keith, a 17-year-old page of his father.
- [Peter Karl Christoph von] Keith was dismissed from his service to the king and sent away to a regiment by the Dutch border, while Frederick was sent to the king’s hunting lodge at Wusterhausen in order to “repent of his sin”
- After the prince [Frederick II, better known as Frederick the Great] attempted to flee to England with his tutor, Hans Hermann von Katte, the enraged King [Frederick William I of Prussia] had Katte beheaded before the eyes of the prince, who himself was court-martialled.
- Frederick William had his son married to Princess Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern, whom Frederick despised, but then grudgingly allowed him to indulge in his musical and literary interests again.
- During the 1740s, King Frederick the Great of Prussia became acquainted with Silbermann’s pianos and bought a number of them (the early-19th-century musicologist Johann Nikolaus Forkel claims this number was 15, though Stewart Pollens believes this to be “certainly exaggerated”).
There is nothing to forgive, I die for you with joy in my heart!
Last words of Hans Hermann von Katte to Frederick the Great- During Carnival 1728 the Crown Prince, Frederick the Great, visited Dresden and met or rehearsed with [Johann Georg] Pisendel and [Johann Joachin] Quantz.
- Quantz later told writer Friedrich Nicolai that he and Hans Hermann von Katte one day had to hide in a closet during an outburst of Frederick’s domineering father, who disapproved of his son’s hairstyle, musical studies, questionable books and fancy dressing gowns.
- La Mettrie’s hedonistic and materialistic principles caused outrage even in the relatively tolerant Netherlands. So strong was the feeling against him that in 1748 he was compelled to leave for Berlin, where, thanks in part to the offices of Maupertuis, the Prussian king Frederick the Great not only allowed him to practice as a physician, but appointed him court reader.
- Concerned about the continuing turmoil in Russia, Euler left St. Petersburg in June 1741 to take up a post at the Berlin Academy, which he had been offered by Frederick the Great of Prussia.
- Euler was a simple, devoutly religious man who never questioned the existing social order or conventional beliefs. He was, in many ways, the polar opposite of Voltaire, who enjoyed a high place of prestige at Frederick’s court.
- Adolph Menzel - Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci - Google Art Project.jpg (Wikimedia Commons)
- The Musical Offering
- Man a Machine by Julien Offray de La Mettrie (gutenberg.org)
- Frederick the Great (Wikipedia)
Frederick II (German: Friedrich II.; 24 January 1712 – 17 August 1786) was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772, and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Silesian wars, his reorganisation of the Prussian Army, the First Partition of Poland, and his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment. Frederick was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia, declaring himself King of Prussia after annexing Royal Prussia from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772. Prussia greatly increased its territories and became a major military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as Frederick the Great (German: Friedrich der Große) and was nicknamed “Old Fritz” (German: der Alte Fritz).
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