Frederick the Great was dismissive of those historians he defined as “mere workmen, who amass, scrupulously and without discrimination, quantities of material”. For him, the compilation of facts was futile until an “architect can shape them”. He considered himself such an “architect”. He would, I think, have recognised Christopher Clark as another.
Clark's book considers Frederick alongside three other German rulers: the 17th-century Elector Frederick William, Otto von Bismarck and Adolf Hitler. There is very little in Time and Power, though, about warfare or nation-building. Clark's interest is not in what his chosen subjects did, but in how they positioned themselves in relation to past, present and future.
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