While there is no lack of historical accounts about the relations
existing between Voltaire and Frederick the Great, yet there are
phases of that relationship which still lend themselves to fresh
interpretation when viewed by one so keenly analytical as Georg
Brandes. The Danish critic declares emphatically that history can
show few instances where a ruler in his relations with a great
productive mentality has proceeded in such a way as to make the contact
significant to both principals.
“In ancient times,” Brandes writes, “Aristotle was the teacher of
Alexander, and the latter, when on his campaign would send Aristotle
books and material for study. But Alexander could exert no influence on
the philosopher. Caesar and Cicero knew each other thoroughly. Cicero
was Caesar’s political opponent. Nevertheless, Caesar paid homage to
Cicero as the representative of literature and repaid his attacks by
showing him knightly attention. But neither Caesar nor Cicero owed
each other any intellectual enrichment.
“In later times the relations between Goethe and Karl August lasted
from the early youth of both until the death of the prince. Goethe
was indebted to the Duke of Weimar for a secure position and received
through this connection much experience. But intellectual impression
he did not obtain from this source, for in spite of Karl August’s
considerable capability, a genius he was not.
“In even later times there is the relationship between Richard Wagner
and Ludwig II. Wagner had King Ludwig to thank for comfort and a place
where he could work in quiet. But the King did not influence the
composer intellectually.
“The historical relation between Voltaire and Frederick the Great
stands alone. This is no harmonious relationship. In the course of
the first fifteen years enthusiasm is abroad; then the friendship is
undermined through Voltaire’s undisciplined methods and Frederick’s
exasperation. Then again the relationship is renewed, the break is
healed and the friendliness is maintained through the lives of both.
This is striking evidence of the spirit of world-citizenship that
prevailed in the eighteenth century, since the ruler and the writer
belong to two different people, even while their language is the same.
But the decisive fact here is that both the writer and the ruler are
geniuses, the acknowledged geniuses of the period, and that they
influence each other.”
Where Georg Brandes excels in portraying great men of the past is in
his masterful pictures of contrasts, the analytical and synthetic so
nicely proportioned that in its final presentation the picture leaves
no doubt but what scholarly devotion to a set task leaves little to be
said on the subject beyond what Brandes himself contributes. On the
question of the Voltaire relationship with Frederick he writes further:
“When in August, 1736, Voltaire received the first letter from the
Crown Prince of Prussia he was in his forty-second year. The writer was
24 years old. Voltaire was famed throughout Europe and looked upon as
the most important author of the period. Frederick was a young prince,
unknown except for what he had gone through. He had had to suffer for
his inclination and peculiar intellectuality, just as Voltaire had to
pay a price for his wit and the revolutionary might of his thinking.
Both had been the victims of the brutality of the time and the
arbitrariness of the system of government.
“The father of Frederick, whom Carlyle idealized, in spite of all his
good qualities as organizer, was restive and quick tempered; with all
his rectitude often raw and cruel. He had prescribed an educational
program for his son that excluded everything unnecessary, among this
Latin and literature. The King detested everything foreign. If he
permitted French this was simply because German was then scarcely
considered a language. He took pleasure in personally giving his
subjects a beating on the street in case the one or other incident gave
him dissatisfaction.
“When Frederick as a youth studied forbidden things, got into debt,
cared nothing for parades of the troops, the father demanded that
he should renounce his right to the throne. When he refused he was
treated barbarously, called a coward because he did not resist. In 1730
he made an attempt to escape to England. But an intercepted letter
to his friend Katte revealed the scheme to the King. Again he was
treated abominably and a court-martial was appointed for the purpose
of sentencing him to death. That was the custom of the time. Twelve
years before, Peter the Great had his son Alexei beaten to death and
he himself wielded the knout. When the Prussian court-martial failed to
act as blindly as the Russian the King had the prince put in prison in
Kuestrin.”
Passing over the years intervening between that earlier time and when
Frederick ascended the throne, May 31, 1740, a period replete with
letter writing and exchange of compliments describing in Brandes’
inimitable manner, the Danish critic tells of Frederick’s joy that now
at last he can come face to face with the object of his admiration.
“Frederick, in spite of the many things to occupy him, makes his debut
as a true disciple of Voltaire,” declares Brandes. “His first act is
the doing away with torture as punishment, the dissolution of the
Potsdam guard, the guard that the father had hired, secured at whatever
cost, and calling back a thinker like Wolff to become once more
professor at Halle.”
The first meeting between Voltaire and Frederick the Great gives
Brandes an opportunity for bringing into play his exceptional faculty
for entering into the very minutest description of these contrasting
personalities, and while German culture of that day affected the French
satirist quite differently from what he experienced on English soil,
still there is no doubt that Voltaire’s international outlook was
broadened through contact with the King who in his own way stood head
and shoulders over his people.
Badly as Voltaire was being treated at home, the fact that the King of
Prussia made so much of him and gave his admiration public expression
did not fail to improve his status in the eyes of the leading men of
France. The time had gone by when Louis XIV dominated Europe so that
fear prevailed because of the French generals and armies. A number of
defeats like that at Dettingen resulted in the fact that Europe as a
whole made merry on account of French politics and French militarism.
Outside of France Louis the Beloved did not count. All eyes were
directed toward the King of Prussia. Every power tried to draw him
within its particular circle. The English strove to keep alive his
dislike of France. It would mean much to the French nation, who so far
had been unable to retain her former allies and had been unsuccessful
in gaining new ones, if it by any possibility could enter into an
alliance with just that King whose name spelled ingenious energy.
Frederick was a hero to Voltaire. On the other hand, Voltaire was the
idol of the King. At any rate, therefore, it was worth the trial to
utilize the poet as secret diplomat.
What followed has been dealt with exhaustively by many able pens, but
Brandes manages to give the historical facts a setting so picturesque
and informing that the entire relationships between Frederick the
Great and Voltaire appears in a new light and illustrates pointedly
what the French nation owed to the man whose doctrines were the cause
of a persecution that reflects little glory on the period so far as
France was concerned. Nevertheless, Francois de Voltaire has found in
the twentieth century no writer who to better purpose brings out the
particular qualities that places him among the great internationalists
than Georg Brandes has done in his monumental work.