Prussia
Rescinds Death Penalty
Prussia, 1794. Frederick II (1784-1786), remembered
by historians as Frederick the Great, revised Prussia's legal code during his reign to
make it more humane. The new laws made torture illegal and eventually reduced the
use of the death penalty so that it applied only to murderers.
It wasn't until 1794, eight years after Frederick died, that the newly
liberalized sodomy law was actually implemented, but it had been 12 years in the making.
Compared with France's Code of 1791 that eliminated all penalties for
"pederasty", Prussia's new law seems draconian, but it was an improvement over
capital punishment. Like French laws against sodomy before 1791, Frederick's sodomy
law criminalized both male and female same-sex acts. The law specified that
sodomites suffer at least a year in prison, be flogged at the beginning and again at the
end of their prison terms, and then be banished.
The Curious Life of Frederick the Great
Even though Frederick's father was a brutal man, his son, under the
guidance of a French tutor, preferred literature and French manners over the soldierly
pursuits his father thought appropriate for the Crown Prince of Prussia. His father
hated him for it, and regularly beat him to straighten him out, but Frederick was a
strong-willed boy.
At 18, Frederick schemed with two of his friends, Lieutenant Katte and
Lieutenant Keith, to escape to England where his father wouldn't be able to brutalize him
any more. Sadly, his father found out about the plan. Lt. Keith was warned and
escaped, but Frederick and Lt. Katte were caught. Frederick's father was so furious
that he ordered his son to prison where he was forced to watch his intimate friend
beheaded. The late scholar, Warren Johanssen, reports that Frederick was so
distraught that he fainted at the sight, and then awoke to a day and a half of
hallucinations.
In spite of the hideous brutality of his upbringing, Frederick retained his
love of literature and philosophy and even made friends with some leading French
intellectuals. He proved to be a great military leader, but perhaps because of his
appreciation of French Enlightenment philosophy, he also instilled a new tolerance into
Prussian society. He encouraged religious tolerance even though he was
personally a religious skeptic, he ended the use of torture, and he even granted limited
freedom to the press.
During his lifetime, rumors swirled around Europe about Frederick's
sexuality because of his unusual lifestyle. Unlike other European rulers, Frederick
created a royal court that was an all-male affair - women were only rarely welcomed there
- and Frederick lived apart from his wife in a mansion he named Sanssouci. Because
his company at Sanssouci was mostly male and mostly French, many concluded that he didn't
much like women.
Sanssouci, Palace of Frederick the
Great
photo credits
Frederick is remembered as "The Great" because he turned Prussia
into a military powerhouse and built it into the strongest of the German Kingdoms.
Prussia's dominance when the German kingdoms were unified in 1871 is, at least in part,
the legacy of Frederick the Great.
A Prussian Subculture?
Historian James Steakley has uncovered some
tantalizing documents that imply that groups of sodomites may have gathered in Eighteenth
Century Berlin, but so far there is only a tiny hint that a subculture like those in
London, Paris, and
Amsterdam existed there. In a 1782 account of Berlin's sexual
underworld, Johann Friedel wrote of a gathering of men who "embraced with the
warmest tenderness, kissed each other, squeezed hands, and said such sweet things to each
other as a fop might say to a lady". When Friedel asked his host to explain, he
got this answer: "Oh, you mustn't be surprised. These seven genlemen are
'warm brothers'... You must have read something about Socratic love?".
Elsewhere, Friedel describes a brothel where boys and young men plied their trade.
Very little research has been done on the
possibility of the existence of a modern subculture in Prussia, but Friedel's report
suggests that sodomites may have been more organized in Prussia than we know.
Credits and Sources
Photo
Credits
The photo of Sanssouci
as it stands today is used courtesy of Dr. Beatrice Finkelstein.
Sources
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910-1911.
"Frederick II", "Prussia", "Voltaire".
Johannsen, Warren, 1990.
"Frederick II (The Great) of Prussia (1712-1786)." in Wayne Dynes, ed., Encyclopedia
of Homosexuality.
Steakley, James D., 1988. "Sodomy
in Enlightenment Prussia: From Execution to Suicide." Journal of
Homosexuality Vol. 16, Numbers 1/2.
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© 1998
Andrew Wikholm
All Rights Reserved |
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