Hail to the King

Potsdam. For those who might only remember hearing of this name from their high school history classes, it’s the meeting place of the Allied leaders, Churchill, Stalin, and Truman, when they were deciding the fate of Europe after the Second World War. But that’s not important.

What’s important is the long history that Potsdam has as the city where the Prussian kings lived and built their palaces when they weren’t busy doing political king-stuff in Berlin. And the most important of these kings? Well, in my opinion it’s Frederick the Great, who built the palace named Sanssouci (without worries) in Potsdam in the 18th century. The thing with this particular palace is that it’s more than just a building, it is also a grape growing terrace, since the King was a huge fan of fresh fruit, especially grapes. Not exactly proto-vegetarien, but he knew what he wanted.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t take pictures inside the palace, but the artwork of just about everything inside was magnificent. If it wasn’t marble or gold, it was designed to look like nature and took on the likeness of vines, trees, and exotic birds, all in this 18th century European palace. Of particular interest to me was a special sculpture of Mars that was made for Frederick II. This wasn’t the adult, fully armored and warlike Mars that is normally sculpted, but a young, resting Mars with his sword sheathed at his feet. This was apparently symbolic of Frederick’s vision of Sanssouci, where politics and war were not allowed to be discussed, in favor of the arts, music, literature, the latest ideas out of the Enlightenment, and other manners of leisure activities. A rather interesting factoid I learned about Fritz in Sanssouci was that only two people were allowed into his personal study; himself and the Enlightenment thinker Voltaire. I think many college students could learn a thing or two from Frederick the Great’s example.

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