![]() ![]() Here, almost from day one of his innings, was the annexation of Silesia. ![]() And now they sent Frederick the Great into bat. They were very different, these Hohenzollerns. But he despised his son, just as he, in turn, had despised his father. He spread the kingdom, built an even larger army, but also constructed a close-knit system of central administration to replace the previous patchwork of local autonomy. Take his grandson, Frederick William I, a clever, cynical man full of violent rage. Take Frederick William, the 'Great Elector', serving for 48 years and building an army 30,000-strong that made Brandenburg a regional power to reckon with, strong enough to repel and maul marauding Swedes and Poles. Take three scions from that astonishing family. And it also explains why the Germany that Bismarck helped build retains a social conscience and sense of social responsibility to this day. It rates human brilliance far ahead of systems and machines. It shows the power of a dynasty to dominate, innovate and renew itself. That story - historic rise, historic fall - is compelling enough, but Christopher Clark's masterful account also carries contemporary relevancies. ![]() Gradually, through five more centuries, a European superpower grew, then withered and perished, disgraced after the First World War, its Hohenzollern leader dispatched into exile and then clinically erased after the Second World War. ![]()
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