Frederick William IV of Prussia

Frederick William IV became King of Prussia on 7 June 1840, a deeply religious man convinced he ruled by divine right who feared revolutions and dreamed of a Christian estate-based state rather than constitutional monarchy. He started moderately - easing censorship, freeing political prisoners - but when the German revolutions of 1848-1849 forced him to bend, he dissolved the Prussian National Assembly in December 1848 for proposing too radical a constitution, imposed his own version with a strong monarch, and sent Prussian troops to crush revolutionary forces across the German Confederation. In 1849 he refused the title of Emperor of the Germans from the Frankfurt Parliament, insisting it had no right to offer it. An artistic soul interested in architecture, he extended the Berlin-Potsdam Residence Landscape and Museum Island, supported the completion of Cologne Cathedral, and shaped the Upper Middle Rhine Valley - all now UNESCO World Heritage Sites. From 1857 onward, strokes left him incapacitated; his brother William served as regent after 1858 and succeeded him when he died on 2 January 1861.