Frederick the Great

Born in 1712, Frederick II clashed with his authoritarian father over his love of music and philosophy. Upon taking the throne in 1740, he immediately invaded Silesia and seized it from Austria, revealing a military genius no one had expected. He spent the next decades reorganizing the Prussian army, writing influential military theory drawn from his own battlefield experience, and expanding his kingdom through the First Partition of Poland in 1772. At home he practiced enlightened absolutism - modernizing the bureaucracy, reforming the courts, allowing religious freedom for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and patronizing Enlightenment thinkers and the arts. Almost certainly homosexual, he died childless in 1786 at Sanssouci, his favourite palace. Nineteenth-century German historians made him a national icon; the Nazis later claimed him as a precursor to Hitler, which darkened his reputation after 1945.