FREDERICK THE GREAT
The house of Hohenzollern has never been famous for its love of
popular forms of government. But ere the crazy strain of the Bavarian
Wittelsbachs had tainted this sober-minded family of bookkeepers and
overseers, they rendered some very useful service to the cause of
tolerance.
In part this was the result of a practical necessity. The Hohenzollerns
had fallen heir to the poorest part of Europe, a half-populated
wilderness of sand and forests. The Thirty Years War had left them
bankrupt. They needed both men and money to start in business once more
and they set out to get them, regardless of race, creed or previous
condition of servitude.
The father of Frederick the Great, a vulgarian with the manners of a
coal-heaver and the personal tastes of a bartender, could grow quite
tender when he was called upon to meet a delegation of foreign fugitives.
“The more the merrier,” was his motto in all matters pertaining to the
vital statistics of his kingdom and he collected the disinherited of all
nations as carefully as he collected the six-foot-three grenadiers of his
lifeguard.
His son was of a very different caliber, a highly civilized human being
who, having been forbidden by his father to study Latin and French, had
made a speciality of both languages and greatly preferred the prose of
Montaigne to the poetry of Luther and the wisdom of Epictetus of that
of the Minor Prophets. The Old Testament severity of his father (who
ordered the boy’s best friend to be decapitated in front of his window
so as to teach him a lesson in obedience) had not inclined his heart
toward those Judaean ideals of rectitude of which the Lutheran and
Calvinist ministers of his day were apt to speak with such great praise.
He came to regard all religion as a survival of prehistoric fear and
ignorance, a mood of subservience carefully encouraged by a small class
of clever and unscrupulous fellows who knew how to make good use of
their own pre-eminent position by living pleasantly at the expense of
their neighbors. He was interested in Christianity and even more so in
the person of Christ himself, but he approached the subject by way of
Locke and Socinius and as a result he was, in religious matters at least,
a very broad minded person, and could truly boast that in his country
“every one could find salvation after his own fashion.”
This clever saying he made the basis for all his further experiments
along the line of Tolerance. For example, he decreed that all religions
were good as long as those who professed them were upright people who led
decent, law-abiding lives; that therefore all creeds must enjoy equal
rights and the state must never interfere in religious questions, but
must content herself with playing policeman and keeping the peace between
the different denominations. And because he truly believed this, he asked
nothing of his subjects except that they be obedient and faithful and
leave the final judgment of their thoughts and deeds “to Him alone who
knew the conscience of men” and of whom he (the King) did not venture to
form so small an opinion as to believe him to be in need of that human
assistance which imagines that it can further the divine purpose by the
exercise of violence and cruelty.
In all these ideas, Frederick was a couple of centuries ahead of his day.
His contemporaries shook their heads when the king gave his Catholic
subjects a piece of land that they might build themselves a church right
in the heart of his capital. They began to murmur ominous words of
warning when he made himself the protector of the Jesuit order, which
had just been driven out of most Catholic countries, and they definitely
ceased to regard him as a Christian when he claimed that ethics and
religion had nothing to do with each other and that each man could
believe whatever he pleased as long as he paid his taxes and served his
time in the army.
Because at that time they happened to live within the boundaries of
Prussia, these critics held their peace, for His Majesty was a master
of epigram and a witty remark on the margin of a royal rescript could
do strange things to the career of those who in some way or another had
failed to please him.
The fact however remains that it was the head of an unlimited monarchy,
an autocrat of thirty years’ standing, who gave Europe a first taste of
almost complete religious liberty.
In this distant corner of Europe, Protestant and Catholic and Jew and
Turk and Agnostic enjoyed for the first time in their lives equal rights
and equal prerogatives. Those who preferred to wear red coats could not
lord it over their neighbors who preferred to wear green coats, and vice
versa. And the people who went back for their spiritual consolation to
Nicaea were forced to live in peace and amity with others who would as
soon have supped with the Devil as with the Bishop of Rome.
That Frederick was entirely pleased with the outcome of his labors, that
I rather doubt. When he felt his last hour approaching, he sent for his
faithful dogs. They seemed better company in this supreme hour than the
members of “the so-called human race.” (His Majesty was a columnist of no
mean ability.)
And so he died, another Marcus Aurelius who had strayed into the wrong
century and who, like his great predecessor, left a heritage which was
entirely too good for his successors.