King Frederick William I and the Prussian Myth. A Contribution to the History of Autocracy and Masculinity
Talk by Professor Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
Abstract
The Prussian "Soldier King" was regarded by most of his contemporaries as a ridiculous outsider and pathological despot. His bizarre behaviour violated almost all political, legal, moral, and aesthetic norms of the time and shaped a new style of hegemonic masculinity. In the eyes of 19th and 20th-century Prussian-German historians, this made him the "educator of the German people to Prussianhood". The lecture explores this change in norms, which can serve as an example of the plasticity of historical narratives.
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