Thank You Sophie Charlotte

When I started looking for non-fiction books about Germany, I discovered that the history section of your average bookstore chain, such as Dymocks, rarely stocks more than a few depressing accounts of the World Wars, a Luftwaffe aircraft coffee-table book and a biography of this guy:

Of course, none of us should forget what that guy did, but after reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and John Cornwell's Hitler's Scientists: Science, War and the Devil's Pact, I had nightmares about T. killing me in my sleep. Did my adorable T. really come from the same gene pool as those people?

"OK," I said to T., "You guys were briefly the scourge of the planet. But what was Germany up to before the world wars?"

Thank god for Christopher Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947. He introduced me to Frederick I and his consort Sophie Charlotte, who found her husband's coronation so tedious that she took pinches of snuff throughout to provide herself with "some pleasant distraction." By all accounts they were clever, genial, courteous polyglots who surrounded themselves with philosophers, scientists and artists. Now this is a Germany I can love. We visited their house recently. Charlottenberg: