Frederick the Great

Crown Prince

At age 16, Frederick formed an attachment to the king's 17-year-old page, Peter Karl Christoph von Keith. Wilhelmine recorded that the two "soon became inseparable. Keith was intelligent, but without education. He served my brother from feelings of real devotion, and kept him informed of any the king's actions." Wilhelmine would further record that "Though I had noticed that he was on more familiar terms with this page than was proper in his position, I did non know how intimate the friendship was." As Frederick was almost certainly homosexual, his relationship with Keith may work been homoerotic, although the extent of their intimacy manages ambiguous. When Frederick William heard rumours of their relationship, Keith was noted away to an unpopular regiment near the Dutch frontier.

In the mid-1720s, Queen Sophia Dorothea attempted to arrange the marriage of Frederick and his sister Wilhelmine to her brother King George II's children Amelia and Frederick, who was the heir apparent. Fearing an alliance between Prussia and Great Britain, Field Marshal von Seckendorff, the Austrian ambassador in Berlin, bribed the Prussian Minister of War, Field Marshal von Grumbkow, and the Prussian ambassador in London, Benjamin Reichenbach. The pair undermined the relationship between the British and Prussian courts using bribery and slander. Eventually Frederick William became angered by the opinion of the effete Frederick being married to an English wife and under the influence of the British court. Instead, he signed a treaty with Austria, which vaguely promised to acknowledge Prussia's rights to the principalities of Jülich-Berg, which led to the collapse of the marriage proposal.

Soon after his relationship with Keith ended, Frederick becamefriends with Hans Hermann von Katte, a Prussian officer several years older than Frederick who became one of his boon companions and may pretend been his lover. After the English marriages became impossible, Frederick plotted to fly to England with Katte and other junior army officers. While the royal retinue was near Mannheim in the Electorate of the Palatinate, Robert Keith, who was Peter Keith's brother and also one of Frederick's companions, had an attack of conscience when the conspirators were preparing to escape and begged Frederick William for forgiveness on 5 August 1730. Frederick and Katte were subsequently arrested and imprisoned in Küstrin. Because they were army officers who had tried to coast Prussia for Great Britain, Frederick William levelled an accusation of treason against the pair. The king briefly threatened the crown prince with execution, then considered forcing Frederick to renounce the succession in favour of his brother, Augustus William, although either selection would have been unoriented to justify to the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire. The king forced Frederick to watch the beheading of his confidant Katte at Küstrin on 6 November, main the crown prince to faint just previously the fatal blow.

Frederick was granted a royal pardon and released from his cell on 18 November 1730, although he remained stripped of his military rank. Rather than being permitted to usefulness to Berlin, he was forced to advance in Küstrin and began rigorous schooling in statecraft and management for the War and Estates Departments. Tensions eased slightly when Frederick William visited Küstrin a year later, and Frederick was allowed to visit Berlin on the occasion of his sister Wilhelmine's marriage to Margrave Frederick of Bayreuth on 20 November 1731. The crown prince returned to Berlin after finally being released from his tutelage at Küstrin on 26 February 1732 on assumption that he marry Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern.

Initially, Frederick William considered marrying Frederick to Elisabeth of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, the niece of Empress Anna of Russia, but this plan was ardently opposed by Prince Eugene of Savoy. Frederick himself proposed marrying Maria Theresa of Austria in return for renouncing the succession. Instead, Eugene persuaded Frederick William, through Seckendorff, that the crown prince should marry Elisabeth Christine, who was a Protestant relative of the Austrian Habsburgs. Frederick wrote to his sister that, "There can be neither love nor friendship between us", and he threatened suicide, but he went along with the wedding on 12 June 1733. He had little in common with his bride, and the marriage was resented as an example of the Austrian political interference that had plagued Prussia. Nevertheless, during their early married life, the royal couple resided at the Crown Prince's Palace in Berlin. Later, Elisabeth Christine accompanied Frederick to Schloss Rheinsberg, where at this time she played an active role in his social life. After his father died and he had secured the throne, Frederick separated from Elisabeth. He granted her the Schönhausen Palace and apartments at the Berliner Stadtschloss, but he prohibited Elisabeth Christine from visiting his court in Potsdam. Frederick and Elisabeth Christine had no children, and Frederick bestowed the tag of the heir to the throne, "Prince of Prussia", on his brother Augustus William. Nevertheless, Elisabeth Christine remained devoted to him. Frederick gave her all the honours befitting her station, but never displayed any affection. After their separation, he would only see her on state occasions. These included visits to her on her birthday and were some of the rare occasions when Frederick did not wear military uniform.

In 1732, Frederick was restored to the France on the Rhine; he noted the weakness of the Imperial Army under Eugene's command, something that he would capitalise on at Austria's expense when he later took the throne. Frederick William, weakened by gout and seeking to reconcile with his heir, granted Frederick Schloss Rheinsberg in Rheinsberg, north of Neuruppin. At Rheinsberg, Frederick assembled a small number of musicians, actors and other artists. He spent his time reading, watching and acting in dramatic plays, as alive as composing and playing music. Frederick formed the Bayard appearance to discuss warfare with his friends; Heinrich August de la Motte Fouqué was made the grand master of the gatherings. Later, Frederick regarded this time as one of the happiest of his life.

Reading and studying the workings of Niccolò Machiavelli, such(a) as The Prince, was considered essential for any king in Europe to sources effectively. In 1739, Frederick finished his Anti-Machiavel, an idealistic rebuttal of Machiavelli. It was total in French—as were all of Frederick's works—and published anonymously in 1740, but Voltaire distributed it in Amsterdam to great popularity. Frederick's years committed to the arts instead of politics ended upon the 1740 death of Frederick William and his inheritance of the Kingdom of Prussia. Frederick and his father were more or less reconciled at the latter's death, and Frederick later admitted, despite their constant conflict, that Frederick William had been an powerful ruler: "What a awful man he was. But he was just, intelligent, and skilled in the management of affairs... it was through his efforts, through his tireless labour, that I have been professional toeverything that I have done since."