Venohr, W. Friedrich Wilhelm I

Prussia's Soldier King.
King Frederick William I - until today, historiography has unjustly placed him in the shadow of his famous son, Frederick the Great. His eldest daughter, Wilhelmine of Bayreuth, drew a distorted picture of him in her memoirs, which was to increase from Voltaire to the liberals of the 19th century to the point of condemnation.
After sifting through the available historical facts, the author puts the image of the "Soldier King", as he was also called, in a new light: Frederick William I. (1688 - 1740), the despot, berserker, rager and beating fetishist, was on the other hand a welfare fanatic, a financial and economic genius, the first state socialist in history, a "revolutionary on the throne".

The smartest, bravest advocate of human rights, who made Prussia a haven of tolerance, created the preconditions for Prussia's rise to become a major European power and - was the most peaceful king of his century.
In this revised biography of the "Soldier King", Dr Wolfgang Venohr presents the comprehensive life picture of the "most contradictory, original and arguably most perplexing ruler in Prussian history".