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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

family, principle, Empress Frederick, Prussia

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

History

Abstract

The Empress Frederick was a remarkably intelligent woman, who uniquely responded to her parents educational system and ideas, making her the bright hope for the future generation, particularly for the future of Prussia. Her lofty English ideals, however, led her into conflict and defeat at the hands of Otto von Bismarck. The core of the contrast between the Empress Frederick’s and Prince Bismarck’s convictions are best expressed by Vicky (the Empress) herself: “What has been brought about with blood and iron could have been achieved by moral conquests.” Bismarck’s commanding vision of unification through blood and iron is fairly concrete and therefore understandable. Vicky’s, by contrast, is based in conceptual credence—a sense of rightness that is far more difficult to measure or comprehend. In essence, she believed in principles both for her person and her people. Her family, however, was the crucial birthplace, bastion, and ambition of these principles. This central conflict between blood and iron and family and principle defined the lives of Bismarck and the Empress Frederick as well as the future of the German Empire. Both ideologies influenced Germany’s formative years, and in the end their effects would be equal to their strategies: Bismarck found the concrete success of expediency and power, and Vicky found the immeasurable success of family and honor.

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