2.5 stars [History]
(W: 2.64; U: 2.38; T: 2.25)
Exact rating: 2.42
#102 of 110 in genre

Christopher Clark became an eminently better writer in 6 years. His The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 [2012] lies on the opposite end of my History category (#4 in genre; Exact rating 4.00). This offering from 2006 was a slog, even though I was eager to learn the material.

Writing: 2.46
The prose was outstanding! Everything else was not.
(lexical 4.5, syntax 2.48, semantic 2.5, dynamism 2, linearity and organization 2.33, pacing 2)

Use: 2.38
Scope: 3
The Micro: 1.75 (1.25 to 1.75, weighted on the lower end)
A difficult beginning, with nonstop names and dates which I had a hard time following. Some of the same in Chapter 16.
Plebian and uninteresting material suffuses the book's Body. Occasionally it got even worse, such as when Clark engaged in a crass discussion about Friedrich II's sexual writings, and a subsequent section on whether or not he was homosexual.

Truth: 2.25
2.5 to 3, heavily on the former, with bits of 1.5 and 2
Clark was waffling and/or unsure on economic sections. The section on Pietism was interesting. Except for that section, a demography section near the beginning, and the section on the cataclysms of the Thirty Years War, the constant naming of treaties and military action did not really illumine the world of 17th- and 18th-century Europe.

He gave a one-sided presentation of Hegel. His coverage of post-WW1 political shifts was almost monotonal. Finally at the end he decently demonstrated that Prussianism was nothing but a rallying word in the Third Reich. Indeed it was one of the only stable alternative identities for those few who opposed Hitler.

Takeaway
The only thing that redeemed this book from a 2-star rating was its scope. I regret to have to warn people away from this one.

P.S. Regarding the Audiobook in particular. The reader, Shaun Grindell, was quite bad. He intoned every single sentence like he was revealing a murder-mystery secret, and his German pronunciation was appalling.

3.5 stars.

This is a decent book if somewhat too prosaic and academic at times. The author uses a fairly convoluted language to explain concepts, which detract from the essence of the story, and make sense in a lecture for very narrow-field enthusiasts than in a book aimed at general populace (using the word liberally).

That said, Iron Kingdom is a very cool book, covering some 350 years of Prussia, from the early days of the Hohenzollern dynastry to the dissolution of Prussia after WW2. You get everything - the insight into the Junkers class, the personalities and feats of different Prussian kings - including Frederick the Great and Bismarck, the education, taxation and administration, the military discipline, the wars. Colorful and covers pretty much every angle of the Prussian society.

It also touches on the rise of liberalism and nationalism after the 1848 revolutions, and the deep impact these had on pretty much everything that has happened since. People nowadays would also get a wrong impression of what liberalism and nationalism meant back then, compared to how we classify that today. Then, there's the expansion of Prussia into the German Empire, and then, the final chapter, essentially a battle between Communism and Nationalism that erupted in WW1, simmered through the Weimar Republic, and eventually led to WW2.

The ending feels a bit rushed - there's little focus on what the Prussian "state" or elite did during WW2, and there's only a generic focus on how Prussia behaved in the scope of the wider German nation in those days, but mostly in the sense of state function and not how the topic was tackled in the earlier chapters. Perhaps by this time, Prusssia was actually meaningless? To me, it leaves a few open questions, but it does not seriously detract from the depth and quality of Iron Kingdom.

If you like history, you definitely want to read this. Can be a heavy ready here and there, but it's a good, immersive book, with lots of fascinating detail.

Igor

One of the review blurbs on the back cover of Iron Kingdom reminds the reader that Prussia remains Europe's only extinct power, which I found startling upon further reflection; it is a fate similarly dealt out to Piedmont after its political leaders and monarchical house led the drive to reunify Italy, though, of course, that Alpine kingdom never came close to the level of being a major European player. However, one can at least still find the Piedmont name upon modern maps as a constituted Region of the Italian state, whereas Prussia—forever more to be associated with a bellicosity and sternness that served as both engine and fuel of the Germanic war machine—has been dismembered and parceled out amongst the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. Many young people, upon seeing its name in print these days, might consider it to be a misspelling of the great Slavic realm that dominates the northern Eurasian landmass. Yet it was once as well known for the honesty and efficiency of its civil service, its orderly and hard-working citizenry, its enlightenment values, and for being the dominant Protestant European state and a bulwark against the Catholic south. In many ways, as author Clark posits at the outset of his outstanding historic venture, Prussia was undone by its hegemonic role in the creation of the German Empire in 1871. It carried the unresolved contradictions from its monarchical existence into the dominant position it assumed within the new Imperial Reich, and these contradictions, inflamed and made perilous with the raw military power available to the forces of the Kaiser-King by the early twentieth century, were, in the main, what brought about its extinction within two short years of the cessation of the Second World War.

The point of embarcation is the purchase in 1415 of the Margraviate of Brandenburg by the cash-rich Hohenzollern family of southern Germany from the cash-strapped Emperor Sigismund. Brandenburg was an electoral princedom of the Holy Roman Empire, and that dignity (the Kurfürstenwürde) came with the newly bought fief. At that point in time Brandenburg was a rather unprepossessing, landlocked unit spread across the marginal and sandy lowlands, interspersed with swamps and forested pockets, that comprised the North European Plain between the Elbe and Oder rivers south of Baltic Pomerania and north of the Electorate of Saxony. Originally ranged by petty West Slavic tribes, its hardy denizens at the time of the Hohenzollern purchase were a colorful mixture of French, Flemish, Saxon, Franconian, English, and Danish settlers, invited in by previous Margraves, along with scattered clusterings of the Slavic Wends and Sorbs remaining from the German conquest, its capital the relatively small city of Berlin. Thus, Brandenburg, with open borders in every direction and peopled by a diverse stock of transplanted Europeans, was from the start a state with a terrible sense of vulnerability and contingency, one that was only heightened by the fortunes of Salic Law that brought to the Margrave the Duchy of Prussia in the east and the Rhenish fiefs of Cleves-Mark-Ravensburg in the west. The Duchy of Prussia, a Baltic fief slightly larger than Brandenburg and held from the King of Poland, at its nearest point was over one hundred miles east of Brandenburg, while the Rhenish dukedoms and countdoms were of a similar distance westwards and bordering upon France. Realizing the impossibility of holding these non-contiguous realms in the face of hostilities, the early Hohenzollern electors strove to serve as peace-makers and conciliators amongst their Imperial and Polish-Lithuanian neighbors, all of which served them naught during the brutal onslaught of the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648, in which, notwithstanding the desperate efforts of the electors to remain neutral in the religious/dynastic conflict, Brandenburg was ravaged by marauding hordes of Swedish, Austrian, Saxon, French, and, rather ghoulishly, Brandenburgian soldiery. When the carnage had finally ceased, the lands of the Electorate had lost 35% of their population, and upwards of 60% in the hardest hit provinces of Prignitz and Uckermark.

The horrors visited upon the electorate by the Thirty Years' War left a lasting imprint, above all the vital necessity of having a large and disciplined army in place in order to avoid becoming the playground of aggressive nations. It also saw the curious trifurcation of a Lutheran Prussia and Brandenburg as against the Catholic provinces of the Rhine, jointly ruled by a Hohenzollern family that, for several generations, had been staunch Reform Calvinists. These two strains, military and religious, were developed in a most advantageous manner under the firm guidance of Frederick William I the Great Elector, who came to power in the waning years of the ruinous decadal destruction and held his throne until his death in 1488, a reign of forty-eight years, the longest of the Hohenzollern dynasts, which would see Brandenburg-Prussia completely transformed and set upon the road to becoming a serious rival to the European Big Boys. For a remarkable string of four father-to-son progressions of rule—the Great Elector followed by Frederick I, then Frederick William I the Soldier King, and capped off by Frederick II the Great—the combined state saw itself augmented via treaty, inheritance, and conquest until it emerged at the end as one of the powers (though the least amongst them) of Europe. Frederick I was elevated to the royal dignity in Prussia, and it was as King in Prussia (King of Prussia after Frederick the Great was done showing his military chops) that the monarch of Prussia-Brandenburg-Rhenish provinces became predominantly known. During this period the states of Eastern and Western Pomerania, Polish Royal Prussia, Silesia, the Magdeburg Bishoprics, and another pair of Rhenish petty dukedoms were added to the territorial kitty, key additions in that east Elbian Prussia was now a contiguous realm stretching over five hundred miles west to east along and around the Baltic coast.

Clark spends a considerable amount of time during this period discussing the reforms to the military, particularly the uses of conscription, regular training, auxiliary militias, and iron discipline in creating a mobile and well-ordered striking force. Against this is set the conciliatory Pietist religious movement, a blending of the Lutheran and Reform Calvinist faiths, that was the driving force behind the spread of educational institutes, charitable houses, burgeoning minor industry and, above all, the instillation of the protestant work ethic and spirit of achieving that saw so much of the populace ever striving to better themselves and the state. He also examines the treatment of the Jewish and ethnic (primarily Polish) minorities, with the former continually gaining further privileges, though graded by social rank and denied Prussian citizenship, whilst the latter, after a futile attempt to break-up the nobility, were allowed to continue as gentry lords of their localities and to have Polish admitted as the language of primary education. There is also a detailed look at the enduring Prussian conflict between a centralizing state bureaucracy, endowed with the emerged values of the enlightenment, and the reactionary noble corporatism of the provincial gentry—the Junkers of historical renown—with the usual struggles over taxation, judicial rights and administration, peasant emancipation, and the attempts to implement the steady stream of innovative changes cooked up in Berlin at local levels across the widely spread and disparate ruralities. While the ruling personalities, especially those of Frederick William I and his son Frederick the Great, whose mutual antagonism produced an astonishing drama played out in the Crown Prince's eighteenth year, are fleshed out with wonderful anecdotes and analysis, Clark avoids history through Big Men only and examines what took place, what changes were playing out, what historical trends evolving, with an intelligence and wittiness that actually renders such compulsively readable.

As thoroughly enlightening and enjoyable as the book was up to here, Clark truly excels when he enter into the Napoleonic Era and the Nineteenth Century. A Prussia made fat upon the three partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had allowed its vaunted soldiery to become a creaking edifice led by noble officers completely out of touch with the sudden advances brought into military tactics and organization by the French Revolution. Embarrassed in their repulsion by the Revolutionary Armies when, allied with Imperial Austria, Prussian arms attempted to invade France and restore Bourbon absolutism, the humiliation was thorough and enduring when the punishing eye of Napoleon Bonaparte was turned to the Prussian dominions, leading to the utter thrashing the North German kingdom received in the Battle of Jena. King Frederick William III, a peaceable man whose beautiful and tragically short-lived wife, Louise of Mecklinburg (spec out her youthful hotness on the left here), revolutionized the role of the Queen Consort and became established as a feminine ideal in Prussian mythology, saw his dominions shredded, his Rhenish fiefs confiscated and his eastern possessions distributed to a newly reconstituted Poland. Determined to revive the ossified structures of the kingdom that had so failed against the French conqueror, he promoted two liberalizing pro-enlightenment reformers, the Baron vom und zum Stein and Prince Karl August von Hardenberg, as the first Prussian Prime Ministers; these two figures instituted a sea change across the realms, most especially in cleansing the military of aristocratic time-servers and filling the ranks with soldier-innovators whose names—Scharnhorst, Clausewitz, Blücher, Gneisenau—burrowed themselves into the historical memory of the North German völk. Religious institutions were revamped, Kantian and Hegelian ideas of the state debated and incorporated, public goods undertaken in quantity, schools reformed, commercial development upgraded, while a serious effort was made to fully emancipate the Prussian Jews and integrate them as full citizens (which reform fell short of achieving the entirety of this final objective) and the Polish and Lithuanian minorities in the east were accommodated linguistically and culturally in both education and local governmental structures. Through it all the ministers had to tread a fine line against the entrenched opposition of the Junkers, intramural antagonisms of the central bureaucracy, and, most of all, the increasingly reactionary tendencies of the king in the face of an expanding current of revolutionary fervor, especially strong in the vast new West German provinces of Rhineland and Westphalia accquired in the Congress of Vienna in 1815, in the wake of the fall of Napoleon and the energizing July Revolution in France.

As a king, Frederick William IV, who came to the throne in 1840, has received much bad press as a romantic buffoon whose flimflammery on liberalization of the realm and weakness against his own ministers did much to promote the Prussian unrest in the 1848 Revolutions. Clark gives him a new look and finds a monarch more capable, especially in his actions during the 1848 uprisings when he restrained his aggressive brother, the future Emperor William I, then known as the Grape Shot Prince for his eagerness to put down dissent with bullets. The king actually maneuvered through this tumultuous period with some subtlety and skill: while his terrified wife was filled with visions of the guillotine, the king provided guarantees of granting the constitution the people were demanding, playing off splits amongst the different factions of the Prussian Diet to gain time to reoccupy Berlin with troops stationed outside, and then taking advantage of his new ascendency to present a royally-crafted constitution which, with its three-tiered voting system, ensured the dominance of the conservatives while conceding enough that the liberals were satisfied. The 1848 revolutions also saw a flowering German Nationalism, leading the Frankfurt Confederal Parliament to offer Frederick William IV an imperial German crown, an honour which he refused (holding that God apportioned crowns, not measly party politicians) but which meme would bubble in the Prussian background from that period forward until 1871, when unification was achieved.

With the incapacitation of Frederick William in 1857 his brother became regent, and then king four years later when the former passed away. William I had matured much since those heated moments of 1848, including acceptance that Prussia was now a constitutional monarchy with extensive male suffrage. After a terribly rocky start in which, with government after government falling against a recalcitrant parliament the king actually considered abdication, Otto von Bismarck was installed as Minister-President of Prussia, and he would hold those reins until his dismissal by William II in 1890. Bismarck brilliantly, ruthlessly, and dexterously guided the ship of state, playing off socialists against conservatives, conservatives against socialists, liberals against both and both against liberals as Prussia kick-started into top gear. Masterful diplomatic maneuvering allowed Bismarck to initiate carefully calculated wars-with-defined-ends against Denmark, Austria, and France—all undertaken only after Great Britain and Russia had been effectively brought on board or neutralized. The Danish War showed flaws in the Prussian military machine that were ironed out in time for the drubbing administered to Austria, an encompassing victory that removed Austrian influence (and interference) within the German princely realms—an influence that had dominated for over five hundred years—from that point forward. The war against France was a whirlwind affair, the conclusive victory at Sedan, where the French emperor Napoleon III was captured, achieved within a mere seven weeks. In the exuberance surrounding this astonishing feat the German realms agreed to the creation of a German Empire with William I, King of Prussia, to assume to coeval title of German Emperor, a coronation carried out in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles (and don't think the French forgot or forgave this slight one iota). With the additions of Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Western Saxony and the Hessian princedoms tacked on to the Prussian state during the Bismarckian victories, Prussia comprised a full 65% of the German Empire in area and 62% in population. Yet this glorious moment, the pinnacle of Prussian success, soon left a bitter aftertaste and set in motion the events that would lead to its complete extinction in a mere seven-plus decades.

The greatest of the contradictions engendered within the Prussian state came from the unresolved issues of military control, for the powerful army remained under the personal direction of the King. Unlike in other German states such as Bavaria or Württemberg, where the military forces were directed by the governmental executive under the auspices of a minister of war, the Prussian ministerial cabinet could only make suggestions regarding the military to the king, whose consent was required before the General Staff would implement these political directives ; and this ominous bifurcation carried itself with the Prussian state as it was constituted within the German Empire. Powerful minister-presidents like Bismarck, who inevitably got his way from William I through the force of his personality (William once remarked mournfully to a counselor that it is hard being emperor under Bismarck), exerted a strong control over the headstrong and still aristocratically officered army, but even such as he faced various insubordinations throughout any particular campaign, including some that came perilously close to derailing the political objectives of the master of realpolitik. Indeed, the very authoritarian constraints upon the Prussian monarch were left nebulously undefined in the constitution, and when headstrong and imperious narcissists like William II came to the throne, this lack of firm checks provided ample space for the emperor to override the parliamentary decrees and desires of the duly elected politicians.

This was all revealed during the First World War, when the partnership of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, after a coup-by-ultimatum had given them supreme military command in the east against Russia, decided to relegate the civilian political leadership to the sidelines as, with the coerced assent of the Kaiser, they took control of the direction of the German Empire during the remaining years of the Great War. This subjugation of the civilian government would come back to haunt the Weimar Republic as the theme of a Jewish-dominated political betrayal of the German people and their army was played up by the opponents of the fledgeling democracy and severely undermined the faith of the beleaguered citizenry in their politicians while elevating the military to realm where their mistakes and hubris were collectively forgotten. Indeed, the lack of political control over the army continued on into the Weimar Republic, and the Ebert government's collusion with both what remained of the military and various freikorps units in violently suppressing the revolution of 1918-19—and especially the latter's brutality against KPD members and execution of its leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg—caused a rift on the left and ensured the Weimar Republic would face a combination of extremist attacks in the foreseeable future. Clark wraps things up with a look at Prussia in the waning years of the Weimar Republic and the ascent to power of the Nazis. An interesting angle was the usage of the position of minister of the interior of Prussia during the final coalition conservative governments under President Hindenburg—trying to find a way to use Hitler's appeal while defanging him—when it had become a federal ministerial appointment, one which, when assigned to Hermann Göring by a newly installed Chancellor Hitler, gave the vast apparatus of the Prussian police force into the hands of the Nazi party to use to harass and incapacitate the opposition. Once firmly in power, though the Nazis made great use of the mystique of an iron-willed, militarily puissant, völkish laden and heroic-figure-textured Prussian mythology in various propaganda efforts, they intended (but never saw through) the dissolution of Prussia into its constituent provinces. This dissolution was enacted by the Allies who, almost to a man, saw an aggressive Prussian militarism as the enduring threat to European peace; and, in 1947, the name was removed from the map.

Clark really penned a marvelous work of history here, one so well done that I eagerly anticipated the authorial perspective with each turn worked through the eventful history of this North German enigma arisen from the barren sands of the Spree litoral. In particular, he provides strong insights into the enduring vulnerabilities and fears of this protestant upstart state for its powerful neighbors and precarious position that carried forward into the twentieth century when it was a European Great Power. It's a terrible legacy of Prussia that its twin strengths—a powerful military machine and an honest, hard-working civil service—could never have been fully reconciled under a liberal governmental structure, for its enlightenment values and respect for the rule of law endowed it with a great potential for the German future.

I'm coming to realize that writing a history that covers any significant amount of time is a thankless job. There's no way to cover hundreds of years in a way that covers everything to everyone's satisfaction.

There's a lot of great information in here and I kind of like how Clark begins with looking primarily at the leaders of the emerging Prussian state but then shifts to focus on social movements as the roll of king became less important. Or maybe not less important, but the position was occupied by less magnificent people. We can't all be Friedrich the Great!

Clark does an admirable job of giving the reader an overview of Prussian history, though it does sometimes feel a bit disorganized. Or, not disorganized, but organized in a way I didn't really enjoy. He has a habit of picking one thread and moving forward with it. Maybe following that thread for like twenty years. Then he hops back to where the previous thread started and begins following a new thread. The book is structured like this and I just found it somewhat confusing. Or maybe not confusing, but it made things feel more scattered and disconnected.

I think of the other history books I've read that move through centuries and they tend to stick to linearity. While there are certainly cons to taking either path with regard to writing history, I think the linear method at least makes everything straightforward and digestible in a very simple way. Whereas this scattershot approach may allow for covering more diverse topics, it leads to history feeling a bit haphazard.

Maybe it should be a minor complaint, but I just found it a bit unpleasant.

Anyrate, it's definitely worth checking out if you're interested in the history of central Europe.

Rumours emanating from the publishing world suggest that, with the possible exception of books about queens, the "history boom" of recent years has already gone into steep decline. Let us hope that the sands into which it has run are not those forming the soil of Brandenburg around Berlin. For it is on this unpromising terrain that Christopher Clark's excellent tome begins.

Landlocked and without defensible frontiers, medieval Brandenburg hardly seemed predestined to become "the heartland of a powerful European state". In 1417 the territory, which constituted one of seven electorates of the Holy Roman Empire, was bought by Frederick Hohenzollern, who established himself as Frederick I. Though far from powerful in that early period, the Hohenzollerns held Brandenburg together, avoiding break-up and partition at moments of succession, maintaining their neutrality in surrounding disputes, and introducing Protestant reformation at a tactfully gradual pace.

Things were interrupted by the thirty years war (1618-48), when the German lands became the site of devastating conflict between the Habsburg emperor and Protestant forces that included Denmark, Sweden, Spain and France. The extortion, slaughter and torment introduced by the warring armies as they swept back and forth would be remembered for centuries. Historians have blamed it on the weakness of Elector George William, but Clark insists that he was faced with a "structural" challenge that would weigh on many future Berlin governments, which also found themselves "stranded between the fronts" of Europe's conflicting powers.

It was a different Frederick, this one known as the "Great Elector", who restored Brandenburg after the war. He secured his domain by raising a carefully trained army that answered to his newly established state rather than to the provincial aristocracy. He also entered a carefully chosen series of alliances, which shifted to reflect the balance of power between Poland, Sweden, France and Austria. By the end of the 17th century, Brandenburg-Prussia was "the largest German principality after Austria". A couple of years later, and in a ceremony of enormous opulence, the Great Elector's successor, also named Frederick, was crowned "King in Prussia".

From here, Clark shows the Prussian state being strengthened and expanded through a series of annexations and wars. His interest in military technique is well exercised as he pursues his story through the 18th century, when yet another Frederick took over Silesia and Saxony, fought with the Swedes and grabbed large chunks of Poland. Then, in 1806, comes the "Napoleonic shock": a shattering defeat by the French at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt, which triggered extensive social and political reform. Clark attends to the revolutionary demands of 1848, here judged to have "constitutionalised Prussian politics without demilitarising the Prussian monarchy". He also gives due prominence to Bismarck, who became minister-president in 1862 and carried out further expansions, including the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine - a cause of lasting and fateful antagonism with France.

Clark skirmishes with received understanding as he goes. Twentieth-century historians were inclined to condemn Prussia as an authoritarian regime that had forged its own "special path" through history - one that side-stepped democracy and eventually delivered Germany into the hands of Kaiser Wilhelm II and then Hitler. If our mental picture of Prussia remains one of braided militarism, ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy and robot-like obedience to the state, this is because we still know Prussia in those terms. A "detestable" regime, so French voices cried after the first world war; "the source of the recurring pestilence," as Churchill declared a few years before defeated Prussia was finally wiped from the map in 1947.

Clark shows Prussia's course to be less an embodiment of evil, or an expression of "Teutonic" racial character, than the outcome of a defining historical experience. In his revised picture, the square-headed and patriarchal land-owning "Junkers" of well-known stereotype are moved aside to reveal the powerful and decisive women who actually shared power with them. The militarists, with their bristling moustaches and monocles, are forced to make space for the ranks of the anti-war movement, at times larger and more active than anywhere else in Europe. Karl Marx's claim that the forces of reaction were restored after the revolutions of 1848 is both granted and corrected with the insistence that there was never a question of rolling back the clock. Bismarck certainly took firm control over the democratic impulse, but he didn't wholly annul it, and his regime entailed social reform as well as "Iron and Blood".

There is much here for those concerned with the nation state and its development as a cultural and political construct. Clark gives us the high-born Fredericks and their courtiers but, aware of the call for "history from below", he seeks out the experience of peasants and industrial workers too. Attentive to questions of economics, military and industrial strategy and politics, he also engages the cultural dimensions of Prussian life and reviews their influence on the course of history. He considers the "invention of tradition" in Prussia, and the importance of memorials and ceremonies of remembrance in shaping patriotic identity. He covers the development of the press and other institutions of the public sphere that developed alongside Kant's ideas of enlightenment. He finds his material in novels, buildings and statues as well as state archives. Like most historians reaching out to the "general reader", he struggles to organise his material into a more or less coherent story, and yet he also knows that narrative has often been used to make the past reflect present wishes and prejudices.

It is only by contrary example that this book may remind us how miserable some hastily written products of the recent "history boom" have been. Clark is not one to swagger over the dead, secure in the knowledge that they cannot answer back. Instead, this is a well-informed and fair-minded historical investigation, written by a man who is plainly fascinated by the changing circumstances under which lives are lived and decisions made. One of the pleasures of this book is to watch Clark weighing the undeniable otherness of the past and resisting any tendency to convert it into a costume drama.

Iron Kingdom is written over such a wide canvas that even the most appreciative reader is likely to suffer moments of confusion. For me, the fog remained thick over Schleswig-Holstein. These northern duchies, which lie close to Denmark between the Baltic and the North Sea, have long since reverted to agrarian placidity within Germany, but they caused widespread alarm in the 19th century. Caught up in warfare between Denmark and Prussia, their future became connected with the ambitions of various rival powers, including Austria, Russia and Britain. All that you need to know about this flash oint is presented here. However, I was grateful to Clark for admitting that most of the protagonists in this particular story seem to be named either Christopher or, indeed, Frederick.

I was a fan of Christopher Clark after watching a tv show he presented that appeared on SBS here in Australia, i think it was called "The Story of Europe" or something similar. I enjoyed that show immensely so when i saw this book i had to get it.
Clark uses broad strokes to tell the story of Prussia. He doesn't just focus on the standard "kings and battles" narrative that most historians tell but devotes a lot of time to culture and art. So alongside politicians and generals you also hear from writers, poets, artists and various others. I found this broad view of a nation's history very refreshing and satisfying.
If you want to understand the big picture of why Germany has gone in the directions it has over the last three centuries or so this is probably the best place to start.

Absolute pleasure reading this book and would recommend to anyone interested in learning about the through-line of Brandenburg-Prussia, Prussia, Prussia-Germany, and how that relates in part to the understanding of Germany today! A part was missing that I noticed, no mentioning of the Kaiser firing Bismarck, but other than that, a fantastic overview of Prussia, as a state, idea, power player in European geopolitics, and how it interacted with other neighboring German and European states as it slowly grew and organized until its abolition in 1947.

Great overview, however brief it might be. Tends to be a little about Prussians, and not enough about Prussia at points, but has an amazing section on the 19th century, and a good precursor to WW1. Very well written.

Well I'm relieved I finally finished reading this. Despite a very interesting & good writing, it's still a heavy weight book to go through, especially for new German history reader. Midway I realized that I could've help myself more by making notes on the peopple & time frame, etc. But then perhaps I'll think of it more as a chore & won't even manage to finish. The notes will be helpful considering Clark's way of spiraling through the history, which is wonderful as it can cover more elements and its impact to each other, but honestly it's rather difficult for me to differentiate between the Frederickses. Good thing I'm not such a stickler for details & more concerned about the general idea of what was happening. In this case this book actually worth 5stars and the difficulty all comes down to my lack of general knowledge about this subject. Perhaps I'll re-read it after I go through things that specially attracted me, such as Frederick the Great, Bismarck, The Great Elector, Weimar republic, Roman Empire and of course Habsburg family. For now I might actually go forward w/ Third Reich first. Let's see, perhaps I'll be distracted by some light detective story.

*Additional note*
I was pondering on part of the reason this book was written, a rebuttal on the thesis that Nazi happened because of Prussia; the millitaristic culture, etc. ; which leads to its dissolution after the WWII. I'm thinking isn't it part paranoid & wishful thinking on the Allies part? As if they were saying, we're not Prussian, we don't have this urge for aggrandizement; therefore we are safe, there won't be any new Hitler sprout up among us, history will not repeat itself. Which I think is rather lame. Sure, Hitler looks up to Frederick the Great & use Prussia extensively on his propaganda, but would we also annihilate mango were it be his favourite fruit? As for the safety feeling that another psychopath will not turn up to be a leader among you because you think your community is not millitant enough, that's also hogwash. I don't think there's any community absolutely safe from such leader, being smug & righteous will not help avoiding it. Anyway, a goverment can do equally outrageous things even without a Hitler on the helm. Hasn't enough example has happened until now?

Ich habe mir mit der Lektüre dieses Buches einige Zeit genommen, und das benötigt dieses Buch auch, denn es ist eine Tour de Force, mit sehr vielen Details, einer sehr objektiven Sicht auf die Ereignisse, die immer wieder die politische Inanspruchnahme Preußens sichtbar macht.

Das Werk ist im weitesten Sinne weitestgehend grobchronologisch aufgebaut, allerdings folgt es anhand dieser zeitweise annualistischen oder zumindest grob zeitabschnittanhängigen Grundausrichtung gewisse Themen.
Diese Themen orientieren sich an den bekannten Themen und bewährten Inhalte der jeweiligen Zeitabschnitte preußischer Geschichte.
So folgt beispielsweise den militärischen Errungenschaften Friedrich des Großen auch eine eingehende Beschäftigung mit der Zeit der Aufklärung.

Obwohl der Autor keine überraschenden Schwerpunkte setzt, erreicht er durch die inhaltlichen Schwerpunkte, dass dem zeitlichen Faden und der Komplexität seines Themas gut zu folgen. Darüber hinaus gelingt es ihm, dass er zwischen den Episoden den verbindenden roten Faden herausarbeitet, aber auch die Brüche der jeweiligen Abschnitte preußischer und dann schließlich ab 1871 nachpreußischer Geschichte schreibt.

Dabei vermeidet der Autor es auch, sich zu sehr einzelnen Personen anzunähern und dadurch behält er immer das gesamtpreußische Thema und die Wirkung auf das europäische Umfeld, sowie die jeweiligen Wechselwirkungen, im Auge. Er verbringt die Zeit eben nicht, wie die meisten, gekettet an Friedrich den Großen oder Bismarck.

Nur in wenigen Situationen erlaubt sich der Autor klar wertende Urteile zu den Fähigkeiten der Persönlichkeiten seiner beschriebenen Geschichte und so bleibt er meist beschreibend und objektiv, was sehr erfrischend ist. Ebenso wertet er die Geschichte Preußens auch bei weitem nicht so sehr wie andere Historiker (v.a. nicht moralisch!), durchaus geht er aber auf die historische Wirkung der jeweiligen Zeitabschnitte ein; allen voran ab der Zeit Wilhelm des II., wo Preußen immer mehr zu einem Mythos wird bis in unsere Zeit.

Insgesamt braucht das Werk - ich habe es in Originalsprache gelesen - jedoch einige Aufmerksamkeit. Obwohl es hervorragend recherchiert ist, gefällig geschrieben und anhand seiner chronologischen Abfolge und seiner Themen gut zu verfolgen ist, bedarf es hier und da zusätzliches Wissen oder eben zusätzliche Recherche, um einige, kleine Lücken zu füllen.
Des Weiteren ist das Werk vor allem in seinen großen Wirkungen nach außen betrachtet (also allen voran in Bezug auf Österreich bzw. das Haus Habsburg, Frankreich, Russland, in in kleinen Teilen Italien und Großbritannien), und im Detail betrachtet es sich immer nur aus einer Innenschau. Wer nach Anknüpfungen in einem größeren, internationalen Rahmen sucht, wird hier nicht oder nur schwer fündig werden.

Er schließt das Werk - stark zusammengefasst - mit der Erkenntnis ab, dass Preußen eigentlich nie eine wirkliche (nationale) Identität hatte und die uns Übertragene eine nachträglich konstruierte ist. Was nach seinem vorgelegten Werk eine sehr schlüssige These ist.

Zusammenfassend ist es eine aufwendige, anstrengende, hervorragend dargestellte und vorbildlich objektive Darstellung der Geschichte Preußens und insofern uneingeschränkt zu empfehlen!

This was a very comprehensive book on the history of Prussia. In many respects, I learned a lot about early Prussian history, the time of Frederick the Great, the Napoleonic Wars, the revolutions of 1848, the wars of German unification, and the disasters of both world wars. Ultimately though, I felt the book was a little too ambitious for a single volume history and perhaps would have been better served to be split into multiple volumes where each topic would get more detailed history and analysis.

“It has recently become fashionable to emphasize that nations and states are not natural phenomena but contingent, artificial creations. It is said that they are ‘edifices’ that have to be constructed or invented, with collective identities that are ‘forged’ by acts of will. No modern state more strikingly vindicates this perspective than Prussia,” Christopher Clark wrote in the introduction of this book. He did a brilliant job in tracing the invention, construction, manipulation and destruction of the identity of Prussia.

Given there have been plenty of words written in praise of this “most successful history of Prussia” (Richard Evans, Cosmopolitan Islanders), I’m going to focus here on how it could be better still, at least for my interest.

A major disappointment is that the book, after giving a vivid narrative about the “rise” of Prussia, tells a rather abstracted story of the “downfall.” Of the 688 pages in 18 chapters, only two chapters (133 pages) were spent on the three quarters of century after the German unification and foundation of the second Reich. I appreciate the pain of writing a history of 350 years in one volume, but it is strange to see less details on the period closest to the present time, which most readers have far greater interests in.

One reason is that, as Mr. Clark stated in his introduction, one of the central arguments of this book is that “Germany was not Prussia’s fulfilment, but its undoing.” He even wrote in the book that “with the formation of a German national state, the Prussia whose history we have traced in this book came to an end.” Therefore, in a way, there was no downfall of Prussia at all as it ended at its most glorious moment. The final two chapters were merely an extended epilogue to roundup of its legacy.

I suspect another reason is that so many pages have been written about the Germany after 1871 Clark feels he can add little value by repeating many of the “well-known” facts and analysis. But this is not true for an average reader like myself. By the way, he assumes quite a few events and facts in the book are “well-known” and does not provide any background or explanation when mentioning them.

No matter the united Germany was considered fulfilment or undoing of Prussia, I would like to treat the unification as the final territorial expansion of Prussia. After all, Prussia accounted for nearly two thirds of land and population, and dominated the political process of the Second Reich. (It’s also not without precedence that different laws applied in regions of the State of Prussia.) Meanwhile, the similarities and conflicts of interests, cultures and identities between Prussia and the newly integrated southern states in the German Empire are of great interests to me, which is sadly missing in the book.

The central theme of the book is the evolution of the concept of the Prussian State, as it developed “an ever more elaborate account of its trajectory in the past and its purposes in the present”. But the other aspects of Prussian history probably should have been better covered. The book has plenty of details about kings and ministers, wars and diplomacy, but relatively light on art and culture. For sure, there is a whole chapter on Prussian enlightenment and a number of mentionings of Kant and Hegel, but I would still prefer some more coverage of the cultural elements and their role in the changing social psyche, particularly in the years prior to the major upheavals of 1848 and 1918.

Clark provides a comprehensive account of Junker class and the conservative faction, who dominated the Prussian politics through this history, but only a sketchy picture of the development of liberal side of Prussian tradition. Even less were written about the far-left side. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg got no mention until the last days of their lives. This is particularly at odds with the author’s clear intention to present a balanced view of Prussian history and debunk the Nazi abstraction of Prussiandom, which were readily accepted by the occupying allies and even many contemporary scholars.