FREDERICK WILLIAM III, King of Prussia. - B. 3 Aug. 1770 at Potsdam, d. 7 June 1840 at Berlin. Having ascended the throne in 1797, he ceded in 1801, by the Treaty of Lunéville, the lands on the left bank of the Rhine to France, but two years later, through the secularization of the German ecclesiastical states, he obtained as compensation the bishoprics of Hildesheim, Paderborn, Münster and other territories. Compelled in 1807 to the disastrous Peace of Tilsit and in 1812 to an alliance with France, F. W. took advantage of Napoleon's defeat in Russia to free himself from the French yoke. Having declared war on France, F. W., together with the emperors of Austria and Russia, entered Paris as a victor.

After the Congress of Vienna he remained always faithful to the policy of the Holy Alliance.

Attached to Lutheranism, he was concerned about the considerable number of conversions to the Catholic faith on the part of Prussian citizens who were coming to Rome at that time. He therefore wished to establish a German Evangelical community in the Eternal City. In 1839 he intended to promote the union of the Calvinists with the Lutherans of his kingdom by constituting the Evangelical Church of Prussia (Evangelische Kirche der Altpreussischen Union). Toward Catholicism the King was tenaciously hostile, hindering the bishops in various ways in the exercise of their ministry, and tending to reduce the Church to a handmaid of the State.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: V. Hartmann, Friedrich Wilhelm III, in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, VII, pp. 700-29. On relations with the Catholic Church: H. Brück, Geschichte der katholischen Kirche in Deutschland, I-II, Magenta 1788-89, passim; J. Schmidlin, Papstgeschichte der neuesten Zeit, I, Munich 1933, passim. On the Evangelical Church: E. Foerster, Die Entstehung der preussischen Landeskirche unter König Friedrich Wilhelm III, Tübingen 1905-1907, 2 vols. On the Evangelical community in Rome: E. Schubert, Geschichte der deutschen evangelischen Gemeinde in Rom, Leipzig 1930.

Silvio Furlani

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Frederick William III, King of Prussia

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