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Frederick II of Prussia

BIRTH

Jan 24, 1712

Berlin

DEATH

August 17, 1786

Potsdam

FAMILY

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Frederick II of Prussia

(1712-1786)

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) was a King of Prussia and military commander. Born in Berlin, this person held public responsibilities that included Prince-Elector, King of Prussia, and Margrave of Brandenburg. The life ended in Potsdam. The entry is included to connect the individual with the people, institutions, events, and historic places that shaped the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and the era of the American Revolution.

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DIED:

Potsdam

Aug 17, 1786

Frederick II of Prussia was born on or about Jan 24, 1712 in Berlin. The names of the parents are not yet securely established in this database. These family and geographic circumstances formed the earliest setting for a life later associated with King of Prussia and military commander. The surviving evidence represented in this record does not always preserve the details of childhood schooling, household routine, religious instruction, apprenticeship, or youthful travel. Where such particulars remain uncertain, they are not reconstructed as fact. Even so, the known birthplace and family connections place this individual within the local, colonial, imperial, Indigenous, or Atlantic communities that shaped opportunity and identity in the eighteenth century. Those early relationships could determine education, inheritance, occupation, marriage prospects, military obligations, religious affiliation, and access to political or commercial networks. Social position also influenced which experiences were documented. Elite households often left correspondence, property records, school accounts, or legal papers, while the childhoods of women, laborers, enslaved people, Indigenous people, and less prominent relatives were more likely to survive only indirectly. Absence of detail should therefore be understood as a limitation of the record, not as evidence that the early years were uneventful or unimportant. Place mattered as well: settlement patterns, nearby ports and roads, denominational institutions, warfare, migration, and kinship networks all affected the choices available to a young person. This early-life summary therefore emphasizes the documented setting and immediate family rather than unsupported anecdotes. It establishes a careful biographical foundation while leaving room for future discoveries from family papers, parish registers, probate files, military documents, and local histories. Together, these facts provide the background necessary for understanding how Frederick II of Prussia entered the adult world described in the Career field and became connected to the people, events, and historic places indexed by HistoryGPS.

Frederick II of Prussia built a career centered on King of Prussia and military commander. Contemporary cataloging also identifies the person with work as ruler, art collector, monarch, and king. Recorded offices and formal responsibilities included Prince-Elector, King of Prussia, and Margrave of Brandenburg. The career intersected directly with First Silesian War, Second Silesian War, Seven Years' War, and Third Silesian War, placing this individual within the military and political struggles of the period. Institutional or organizational associations included Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Sciences, and freemasonry. Within HistoryGPS, the career is significant because it links personal activity to the larger imperial, revolutionary, diplomatic, intellectual, and social history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

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