With its capital in Berlin, Prussia grew from being a small, poor, disregarded medieval state into one of the most vigorous and powerful countries in Europe, the scourge of its many enemies and, ultimately, the motor behind the creation of the German Empire in 1871 with all that implied for the 20th century. After the Second World War Prussia, which had still continued to exist as part of the German state, was abolished by the Allies, blamed for the overwhelming militarism that had led Europe into total disaster. Prussia's role in Europe's fortunes has been incalculable and Iron Kingdom is, extraordinarily, the first major book devoted to it. Prussia's power came from a sequence of notably brilliant rulers (most famously Frederick the Great), dynastic marriage and an obsessive focus on military excellence. It was both a progressive, well-run, enlightened country and a huge, threatening barracks. Iron Kingdom is a wonderfully readable, gripping account of a state which, for both good and ill, has fundamentally shaped our world.
Extract from Iron Kingdom by Christopher Clark
Prussia remains, more than two decades later, an idea with the power to polarize. The unification of Germany after 1989 and the transfer of the capital from Catholic, 'western' Bonn to Protestant, 'eastern' Berlin gave rise to misgivings about the still unmastered potency of the Prussian past. Would the spirit of 'old Prussia' reawaken to haunt the German Republic? Prussia was extinct, but 'Prussia' re-emerged as a symbolic political token. It has become a slogan for elements of the German right, who see in the 'traditions' of 'old Prussia' a virtuous counterweight to 'disorientation, 'the erosion of values', 'political corruption' and the decline of collective identities in contemporary Germany. Yet for many Germans, 'Prussia' remains synonymous with everything repellent in German history: militarism, conquest, arrogance and illiberality. The controversy over Prussia has tended to flicker back into life whenever the symbolic attributes of the abolished state are brought into play. The re-interment of the remains of Frederick the Great at his palace of Sans Souci in August 1991 was the subject of much fractious discussion and there have been heated public disputes over the plan to reconstruct the Hohenzollern city palace on the Schlossplatz in the heart of Berlin. In February 2002, Alwin Ziel, an otherwise inconspicuous Social Democratic minister in the Brandenberg state government, achieved instant notoriety when he intervened in a debate over a proposed merger of the city of Berlin with the federal state of Brandenberg. 'Berlin-Brandenberg', he argued, was a cumbersome word; why not name the new territory 'Prussia'? The suggestion set off a new wave of debate. Sceptics warned of a rebirth of Prussia, the issue was discussed on television talk shows across Germany, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ran a series of articles under the rubric 'Should there be a Prussia?' (Darf Preussen sein?) Among the contributors was Professor Hans-Ulrich Wehler, a leading exponent of the German special path, whose article - a vociferous rejection of Ziel's proposal - bore the title 'Prussia poisons us'.
No attempt to understand the history of Prussia can entirely escape the issues raised by these debates. The question of how exactly Prussia was implicated in the disasters of Germany's twentieth century must be a part of any appraisal of the state's history. But this does not mean that we should read the history of Prussia (or indeed of any state) from the perspective of Hitler's seizure of power alone. Nor does it oblige us to assess the Prussian record in binary ethical categories, dutifully praising light and deploring shadow. The polarized judgements that abound in contemporary debate (and in parts of the historical literature) are problematic, not just because they impoverish the complexity of the Prussian experience, but also because they compress its history into a national technology of German guilt. Yet the truth is that Prussia was a European state long before it became a German one. Germany was not Prussia's fulfilment - here I anticipate one of the central arguments of this book - but its undoing.
I have thus made no attempt to tease out the virtue and vice in the Prussian record or to weigh them in the balance. I make no claim to 'extrapolate' lessons or to dispense moral or political advice to present or future generations. The reader of these pages will encounter neither the bleak, warmongering termite-state of some Prussophobe treatises, nor the cosy fireside scenes of the Prussophile tradition. As an Australian historian writing in twenty-first century Cambridge, I am happily dispensed from the obligation (or temptation) either to lament or to celebrate the Prussian record. Instead, this book aims to understand the forces that made and unmade Prussia.
‘A sophisticated yet accessible account’
Independent
‘Christopher Clark has a voracious appetite for detail and a tart turn of phrase’
Observer
‘The story of Prussia is one that has been told many times, but seldom as intelligently, elegantly and interestingly as it is here’
Daily Telegraph
‘Not just good, it is everything a history book ought to be’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Excellent book’
Literary Review
'Well-written, even sometimes sprightly.'
Spectator
