Sexuality of Frederick the Great

However, in July 1750, the Prussian king teasingly wrote to his gay secretary and reader, Claude Étienne Darget: "Mes hémorroïdes saluent affectueusement votre v[erge]" ('My hemorrhoids affectionately greet your cock'), which strongly suggests that he was sexually involved with men.

[9] That he actually did desire men is also clear from statements by his famous contemporaries, Voltaire and Giacomo Casanova, who personally knew him and his sexual preferences.

[12] As a young crown prince, Frederick confided to his mentor, Generalfeldmarschall Friedrich Wilhelm von Grumbkow, that he felt too little attracted to the female sex to be able to imagine entering into a marriage.

Rumors of the liaison spread in the court, and the "intimacy" between the two boys provoked the comments of Frederick's sister Wilhelmine who wrote, "Though I had noticed that he was on more familiar terms with this page than was proper in his position, I did not know how intimate the friendship was.

"[14] Rumors finally reached King Frederick William, who cultivated an ideal of ultramasculinity in his court, and derided his son's supposedly effeminate tendencies.

[20] In 1789, Frederick's garden inspector and Oberhofbaurat [head of the planning department and building control office] Heinrich Ludewig Manger described Fredersdorf as "the king's darling at the time".

In 1746, Frederick wrote mocking letters to his rather openly gay brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, which were characterized by jealousy for the "handsome Marwitz",[24] a young royal page.

[…] Besides, I don’t care what obsessed people write about me as long as the well-being of my state doesn’t suffer.”[37] In his memoirs of 1759,[38] Voltaire lashed out at Frederick with malice and perfidy in order to avenge his quarrels during his time in Potsdam and in particular his ignominious internment in Frankfurt in 1753.

[40][41] He writes: "when His Majesty was dressed and booted, the Stoic gave some moments to the sect of Epicurus; he had two or three favorites come, either lieutenants of his regiment, or pages, or haidouks [Hungarian infantrymen], or young cadets.

Challenged by Algarotti that northern Europeans lacked passion, Frederick penned for him an erotic poem, La Jouissance (ambiguously meaning "the pleasure" or "the orgasm").

[54] For instance, the fourth canto of his mock-heroic poem Le Palladion (1749) describes the homosexual adventures of his reader Claude Étienne Darget[55] and includes the following blasphemous lines: "The good Saint John, what do you think he did / To induce Jesus to sleep with him in his bed?

[58] The palace gardens at Sanssouci include a Temple of Friendship (built as a memorial to his sister, Wilhelmine) celebrating the homoerotic attachments of Greek Antiquity, which is decorated with portraits of Orestes and Pylades, amongst others.

[60] In 1747, the king acquired the antique bronze statue of the nude Berlin Adorant, which he thought to represent Antinous, the supposed lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian.

[23] After his defeat at the Battle of Kolín, Frederick wrote in a letter: "La fortune m'a tourné le dos....[E]lle est femme, et je ne suis pas galant.

The following explanation can be read on the SPSG website: “Love was also considered erotic, but in public and literary terms it appeared to be more enthusiastic, asexual, platonic.

The visual and performing arts of the time reflect this, but the traditional writings and even pornographic depictions leave nothing to be desired.” And further: “Frederick also liked to buy (paintings by) Pompeo Batoni (1708–1787).

In any case, the pictures contain numerous of the cheerful so-called Mignons – sweethearts – who apparently matched the king's taste for young, pretty pages.”[64] While there is no extensive documentation of Frederick having any intimate heterosexual relationships, it is speculated that he may have had a short relationship with Anna Karolina Orzelska, a countess five years his senior and the illegitimate daughter of King Augustus II the Strong of Poland and Saxony.

Augustus allegedly attempted to divert Frederick's attentions away from his illegitimate daughter by offering him the nude opera singer called La Formera on a couch.

Some have claimed that Orzelska was Frederick's first and only mistress[66] - conjectures based largely on the wishful thinking of his sister Wilhelmine who didn't like her brother's same-sex liaisons with young pages.

[68] However, when King Augustus and the countess, who was now married and pregnant, paid a return visit to the Prussian court in 1731, Frederick was frustrated and turned to unspecified other forms of dissipation.

According to Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann, the private physician of George III and later of Frederick himself, also a member of his academy, "Frederick lost a great deal of 'sensual pleasure,' says Mr. Bushing (i.e. Anton Friedrich Büsching), a Prussian ecclesiastic counsellor, 'by his aversion to women; but he indemnified himself by his intercourse with men, recollecting from the history of philosophy, that Socrates was reported to have been very fond of Alcibiades.'

[86][87] The surgeon Gottlieb Engel, who prepared Frederick's body for burial, indignantly contested Zimmerman's story, saying the king's genitalia were "complete and perfect as those of any healthy man".

[88] In similar terms, the doctors who were involved in washing Frederick's corpse on 17 August 1786 reported that the recently deceased king showed no abnormalities whatsoever in the genitals.

Ollenroth, Rosenmeyer and Liebert, the three surgeons of the 1st Life Guards Battalion, wrote that "the blessed king's external birth parts were healthy and not mutilated".

"[89] Reinhard Alings, a curator of the Foundation for the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace, writes on the SPSG[90] website: “The topic probably really outraged few of his contemporaries, although it was always good for one or two sharp remarks.

With the end of the Hohenzollern Monarchy in Germany and more critical historiography, there were fewer reasons to make the topic taboo.”[91] Frederick's homosexuality was rejected by professional historians for centuries after his death.

[95] It has also been argued that the king's interest in the ballet dancer Barbara Campanini, as well as in Anna Karolina Orzelska, can be explained by the phenomenon of the often female “gay icons” that is widespread among male homosexuals.

[99] To others it seems that deliberate ignoring of abounding circumstantial evidence is rooted in conviction that a gay ruler would be a disgrace, as if Frederick's homosexuality would shrink his historic size.

Thomas Mann had provided an early precursor to this point of view with his essay Frederick and the grand coalition, written in late 1914, at the start of World War I.

"[10][103] Likewise, his lack of empathy could be explained by his own cruel experiences as a youth, because the conquest of Silesia cost the lives of tens of thousands of his soldiers and his country's citizens, which never affected Frederick in the least.