Lecture Barbara Sollberg-Rilinger: King Frederick William I of Prussia and the History of Masculinity

On 31 March, Professor of Early Modern History Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster) will give the lecture ‘King Frederick William I of Prussia and the History of Masculinity: Challenges of Biographical Writing’.

The suggestive power of retrospective rationalisation

Frederick William I, king of Prussia (1713-1740), called himself a tyrant, and most of his contemporaries would have agreed. Later historians, however, used to praise him as “educator of the German nation” and “Prussia’s greatest inner king”. His biography not only offers an insight into the social logic of autocracy and the transformation of masculinity. It is also an exemplary case to demonstrate the malleability of history and the suggestive power of retrospective rationalisation.