I.
Frederick the Great’s base tolerance produced dissolvent effects. Not proceeding from respect of religious beliefs, it engendered contempt for them. As, apart from the curb of religion, the new society of Prussia had no tradition of social morals to rely upon, corruption entered in and consumed it. The King’s scepticism took possession of his subjects, who translated it into deeds. It was good “form”; everyone in Berlin took it up and conducted himself accordingly. The leaven of licence and sensuality which mars all the literature of the century fermented without let or hindrance in those coarse souls. An immature civilization had overstimulated imaginations and senses without abating the brutality of the primitive passions. In Prussia people lacked the delicate taste, the genteel habits, the light wit, which in France qualified the depravity of the age. A heavy dissoluteness was paraded in Prussia. Officials, the gentry, women, all fed their minds on d’Holbach and La Mettrie, taking their doctrines seriously and applying them to the very letter.
Add to this that in the newly built Prussian capital society, utterly artificial as it was, an improvised amalgam of incongruous elements, was predisposed, so to speak, to dissoluteness. Berlin swarmed with army men who had no family life and whose whole day was not occupied with military duties. Men of letters, adventurers of the pen and of the sword, attracted by Frederick’s reputation and reduced to intrigue and all sorts of expedients for a living; a nobility, very poor, very proud, very exclusive, weighed down by royal discipline and thoroughly bored; a bourgeoisie enlightened, enriched, but relegated to a place of its own; between these groups, separated one from the other by etiquette or prejudice, a sort of demi-monde where they met, chatted and enjoyed themselves at their ease, the foyer of “French ideas,” the hub of affairs and intrigues—Jewish society, the richest and most elegant in Berlin. With the marvellous pliancy of their race the Jews had assimilated the new civilization and took their revenge from the political exclusion of which they were the victims by bringing together in their salons all the intellectual men in Berlin, all the attractive women, all desirous of liberty and freed from prejudice. Such was Berlin in the days of Frederick.