FREDERICK WILLIAM

born Feb. 16, 1620, Clln, near Berlin died May 9, 1688, Potsdam, near Berlin byname The Great Elector, German Der Grosse Kurfrst elector of Brandenburg (164088), who restored the Hohenzollern dominions after the devastations of the Thirty Years' Warcentralizing the political administration, reorganizing the state finances, rebuilding towns and cities, developing a strong army, and acquiring clear sovereignty over ducal Prussia. All these measures contributed to the foundation of the future Prussian monarchy. Frederick William was the eldest son of the elector George William and Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, a granddaughter of William the Silent, prince of Orange. He grew up amid the chaos of the Thirty Years' War, in which Brandenburg suffered particularly heavily, and was forced to spend his childhood years far from the Berlin court in the fortress of Kstrin, where he was educated in the Calvinist faith. His stay in Holland between his 14th and 18th years, the time divided between the University of Leiden and the court of his future father-in-law, Frederick Henry of Orange, at The Hague, left him with lasting impressions. The future elector was, above all, impressed by Holland's imposing maritime and commercial power, as well as by its pioneering achievements in military technology and organization. He retained a marked preference for Dutch architecture and agriculture and a strong desire to open Brandenburg to international commerce and maritime trade. born Aug. 20, 1802 died Jan. 6, 1875, Prague elector of Hesse-Kassel from 1847 after 16 years' co-regency with his father; he was noted for his reactionary stand against liberalizing trends manifested during the revolutionary events of 1848. In 1850 he re-instated an unpopular adviser, Hans Daniel Hassenpflug, who called on the German Confederation to restore by force the authority of the elector. At the end of the Seven Weeks' War (1866), in which he sided with Austria, he was deposed, and his lands were seized by the victorious Prussians. Additional reading Herman von Petersdorff, Der Grosse Kurfrst, new ed. (1939), the standard biography, now in need of revision; Ferdinand Schevill, The Great Elector (1947), the best account in English; Francis Ludwig Carsten, The Origins of Prussia (1954), deals with the social and economic problems of the Elector's reign; Gerhard Oestreich, Friedrich Wilhelm (Grosser Kurfrst), in Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 5 (1961), contains a very complete bibliography.