283 FINAL YEARS AND IMMORTALITYa dispensation that was dry, artificial and non-German. Thus
the retired major Carl von Seidl conceded in 1821 that it would be
thought eccentric of him
to write about Frederick at a period when he no longer offers
fashionable reading-material... I accept the risk of being
consulted by just a couple of grey-haired veterans of Frederick's
school, or a few of his last contemporaries ... If Athens and
Rome exiled so many of their great men, or put them on trial, at
least they remembered them after their deaths, and honoured
them in histories or monuments. There must be, there will be a
time when it will once more be acceptable to call to mind the
great deeds of Frederick. (Seidl, 1821, v-vi)Within less than twenty years Seidl's wish was amply fulfilled.
The credit goes largely to the labours of the provincial schoolmaster
J.D.E. Preuss, whose multi-volume Friedrich der Grosse was pub-
lished as nine volumes of narrative and supporting documentation
between 1832 and 1834. This work signalled the awakening of a
genuinely historical interest in Frederick. It also encouraged the
Prussian bureaucracy to compete with the National-Liberal move-
ment in its newly professed admiration for Old Fritz, who was
beginning to emerge as an all-German hero-figure. Preuss, as a loyal-
ist and conservative, was accordingly commissioned by Frederick
William IV to supervise the publication of the great series of
Frederick's Oeuvres (30 vols, 1846-57).
By that time Frederick had recovered his place in the public
imagination. This process was to a great extent the work of the skilful
populariser Franz Kugler, who brought together anecdotal tradition
and the findings of Preuss in his Geschichte Friedrichs des Grossen
(1840).
In 1842 a young and largely self-taught Silesian artist, Adolf
Menzel, engraved the illustrations for a new edition of the Kugler
biography. These pictures were widely acclaimed, and they encour-
aged Menzel to embark on the celebrated setpieces of The Round
Table at Sans Souci (1850), The Flute Concert (1852), Frederick the
Great on his Travels (1854), The Night of Hochkirch (1856) and The
Interview of Frederick and Joseph II (1857). Menzel's career was a
long and active one, and it was as the most celebrated artist of
Germany that he made the magnificent plates that appeared early in
the twentieth centuiy in the German edition of the Oeuvres. Menzel
exerted a powerful influence on his near-contemporaries Robert
Wartmiiller, Arthur Kampf and Wilhelm Camphausen, and we still
see Frederick and his times through the 'primal image' established by
this remarkable man. His draftmanship was informed by precise