The king was also determined to foster domestic industries, in particular those which he deemed essential to the military, but he realized that the local manufacturers could not compete with foreign imports. His response was to demand punitive duties on imported goods and in some cases he banned them altogether. In 1724 he halted the import of all foreign weapons, but six years later armaments manufacturers in Spandau and Potsdam were exporting their goods to Denmark, Poland, Russia and the Habsburg Empire. The most blatant form of control came in the textile industry, which was so important for the supply of military uniforms. Frederick William personally controlled the prices of textile goods; in 1719 he banned the import of all foreign cloth and two years later ordered all military personnel to buy expensive new uniforms every year; if they could not afford it they were expected to supplement their incomes by spinning wool for cash. Spinners and weavers at the state managed textile enterprises, such as the Berlin Lagerhaus, were paid 25 per cent above the going rate and the king insisted on high quality and prompt delivery, which in turn promoted the development of efficient production methods.64 This artificial market attracted skilled workers from all over Europe; 20,000 people came to Prussia in 1732 and over a quarter moved to the Berlin area. Wool for manufacture increased from 43,969 stones in 1720 to 81,955 in 1737.65 Increased production and revenue allowed the king to pursue his greatest ambition: the creation of a powerful army.
When Frederick William took power the army was in terrible shape.66 The state had not been able to pay the soldiers, they had no education, lived in degrading housing and were often short of food; widows and orphans and wounded men were considered outcasts and resorted to begging on the streets of Berlin. The Pietist Jakob Spener had tried to alleviate the problem by creating a wing at the Grosse Friedrichs Hospital, where they were given food and shelter in return for regular church attendance, but when war broke out in 1701 the numbers of the destitute rose again and riots often flared when the Berlin police tried to clear them off the streets. Frederick William’s solution was to put the injured in workhouses while the able bodied were expected to join the army. By now Prussia had a population of 2.25 million, of which an extraordinary 90,000 were soldiers, and the numbers were swollen by peasants expected to divide their time between army service and work on the land. Frederick William’s obsession went beyond the desire to assemble a strong fighting force; one of his most notorious hobbies was the creation of a bizarre battalion of giant grenadiers: the countryside was scoured for men over six feet tall, who were then forced to serve. These men were personally trained by him, and when he was ill or depressed he would have them march through his private rooms.67 But, above all, the king saw the army as a model way of life for all men and he issued a stream of ‘articles’ dictating every aspect of their behaviour. Common soldiers had to keep scrupulously clean and show unquestioning obedience to officers, who in turn were to carry batons with them at all times; visitors to Berlin were often shocked to see officers beating soldiers who had not saluted quickly enough or were sloppily dressed. Minor offences were severely punished; stocks and floggings were common, as was hard labour on construction of fortresses or barracks. The most infamous punishment was running the gauntlet, in which the unfortunate victim would be made to race past a line of around 200 soldiers who hit him with the flats of their swords. Drunkenness was punished with ten runs, insubordination with thirty runs; theft and a second attempt to desert were punished by death. The army was also meant to be part of religious life. The first military church in Berlin was located at the garrison and was directed by Lampertus Gedicke; it became renowned for its tough moral stance and bleak services. The king made officers march their soldiers to church every Sunday and guards were posted at the doors so that nobody could sneak out; one disgusted visitor noted that the men were marched in ‘in the same Order, and with the same Silence, as if they were going to Battle’.68 The king often delivered the cheerless sermons himself.
By the end of his reign life in Berlin had become inextricably linked with the army. All frivolity had vanished and the city had regained its reputation as a gloomy place devoted to the barrack square and the parade ground. Eighty per cent of all revenue went into the army; only 2 per cent was spent on the court. When it had first become a garrison city in 1657 Berlin had contained 1,500 soldiers and 579 dependants; under Frederick William one quarter of the population of 57,000 were in or dependent on the military. Soldiers were everywhere, parading around in their uniforms in bright yellow, blue, red or white, barking orders, marching in rows or filing into their barracks. The landscape of Berlin was dominated by new installations: a parade ground was set up at the Lustgarten, another in the Tiergarten, another near present-day Alexanderplatz; there was a parade ground in front of the Brandenburg Gate, another by the Potsdam Gate, another by the Halleschen Gate; there were soldiers, guard houses and exercise grounds everywhere. It was Mirabeau who quipped that ‘La guerre est l’industrie nationale de la Prusse’ and by the time of the Soldier King’s death Prussia had the fourth largest army in Europe despite being only thirteenth in population and tenth in area.69 In his Political Testament the king warned his successor to be godly, not to take mistresses or follow ‘scandalous pleasures’, to beware of ‘flatterers and toadies’. Above all he was to manage his finances and the army ‘personally and alone’. The Soldier King had put the imprint of the military firmly on Berlin’s character. It would be left to his son Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great, to transform Berlin into one of the most important cities in Germany.
Frederick the Great was the last and the most important in the line of benevolent despots who ruled Berlin in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His reign lasted from 1740 until his death in 1786, and under him Berlin was a complex and often contradictory place. It became the centre of a new kind of administration, a haven of French fashion, a centre of learning and industry, a cultural centre. But it was also despised as a city of aggressive militarism, an upstart, a sand-pit of soldiers and cannon and officers which could threaten not only Russia and Sweden, but France and England and Austria as well. These contradictions were very much a reflection of the king himself, the last of the absolutist monarchs who shaped the city in his own complicated image.
Frederick II became king in Prussia on 31 May 1740. The coronation was nothing like the spectacle enjoyed by his grandfather, and after a short traditional ceremony the king went to the balcony of the Schloss and looked out over the crowd in the Lustgarten.70 Berliners cheered with delight. They had heard about Frederick’s love of art and of music, his hatred of violence, his suspicion of the military, his passion for learning and for Enlightenment ideas, and all were hopeful that the oppressive policies of the Soldier King had come to an end. To their surprise, instead of dismantling the military he immediately started a war. Berlin, which had enjoyed peace for decades, was plunged into the middle of a bloody European conflict for which they were blamed. Once again, its future hung in the balance.
Frederick had been in power only a few months when news reached Berlin that the Emperor Charles VI of Austria had died and that the throne had passed to the young Maria Theresa. Frederick was keen to take advantage of her weakness. Without even declaring war he mobilized his army and led it into Silesia, sending word to the young empress that he would ‘protect’ her if only she would hand over the province without a fight. She refused and in 1741 an Austrian force was sent to attack the Prussian troops. Frederick held on to the territory in the First Silesian War, but it was difficult to protect and after years of continued conflict the Austrians made a decisive bid to win it back. The Seven Years War lasted from 1756 to 1763 and extended far beyond Silesia until all European powers were involved in some way; the British backed Prussia not because they agreed with their expansion into Silesia but because they needed them as an ally elsewhere, particularly in North America, and at one point it was money from the British government which saved Frederick from ruin because, as Pitt put it, Canada and India were to be won for the British on the battlefields of Silesia. Macaulay said of Frederick: ‘In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromanel, and red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America.’71 The rest of Europe frowned on Frederick’s greed and from that time Berlin was identified by many with dangerous Prussian militarism and opportunism.
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