26 Prussia Under Frederick the Great
21.2.3: Prussia Under Frederick the Great
Frederick the Great significantly modernized Prussian economy, administration, judicial system, education, finance, and agriculture, but never attempted to change the social order based on the dominance of the landed nobility.
Learning Objective
Analyze Frederick the Great’s domestic reforms and his relationship with the Junker class
Key Points
- Frederick the Great helped transform Prussia from a European backwater to an economically strong and politically reformed state. During his reign, the effects of the Seven Years’ War and the gaining of Silesia greatly changed the economy.
- Frederick organized a system of indirect taxation, which provided the state with more revenue than direct taxation. He also followed Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky’s recommendations in the field of toll levies and import restrictions and protected Prussian industries with high tariffs and minimal restrictions on domestic trade.
- Frederick gave his state a modern bureaucracy, reformed the judicial system, and made it possible for men not of noble stock to become judges and senior bureaucrats. He also allowed freedom of speech, the press, and literature, and abolished most uses of judicial torture. He also reformed the currency system and thus stabilized prices. However, he did not reform the existing social order.
- At the time, Prussia’s education system was seen as one of the best in Europe. Frederick laid the basic foundations of what would eventually became a Prussian primary education system. In 1763, he issued a decree for the first Prussian general school law based on the principles developed by Johann Julius Hecker.
- Frederick was keenly interested in land use, especially draining swamps and opening new farmland for colonizers who would increase the kingdom’s food supply. The resulting program created 60,000 hectares (150,000 acres) of new farmland, but also eliminated vast swaths of natural habitat.
- While Frederick was largely non-practicing and tolerated all faiths in his realm, Protestantism became the favored religion and Catholics were not chosen for higher state positions. His attitudes towards Catholics and Jews were very selective and thus in some cases oppressive, while in others relatively tolerant.
Key Terms
- Freemason
- A member of fraternal organizations that trace their origins to the local fraternities of stonemasons, which from the end of the 14th century regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interactions with authorities and clients. There is no clear mechanism by which these local trade organizations became the fraternal organizations gathering members of similar ideological and intellectual interests, but the rituals and passwords known from operative lodges around the turn of the 17th–18th centuries show continuity with the rituals developed in the later 18th century by members who did not practice the physical craft.
- Seven Years’ War
- A world war