FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. (1795-1861), king of Prus sia, eldest son of Frederick William III., was born on Oct. 15, 1795. From his first tutor, Johann Delbruck, he imbibed a love of culture and art, but of ter a time Delbruck was dismissed, his place being taken by the pastor and historian Friedrich Ancillon, while a military governor was also appointed. By Ancillon he was grounded in religion, in history and political science, and his tutor impressed upon him his own hatred of the Revolution and its principles. This hatred was confirmed by the sufferings of his country and family in the terrible years after 18o6, and his first experience of active soldiering was in the campaigns that ended in the occupation of Paris by the Allies in 1814. On his return to Berlin he studied art under the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch and the painter and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781 1841), proving himself in the end a good draughtsman, a born architect and an excellent landscape gardener. At the same time he was being tutored in law by Savigny and in finance by a series of distinguished masters. In 1823 he married the princess Eliza beth of Bavaria, who adopted the Lutheran creed. The union, though childless, was very happy. A long tour in Italy in 1828 was the beginning of his intimacy with Bunsen and did much to develop his knowledge of art and love of antiquity.
On his accession to the throne in 184o Frederick William re versed the unfortunate ecclesiastical policy of his father, allowing a wide liberty of dissent, and releasing the imprisoned archbishop of Cologne ; he modified the press censorship ; he promised the deputations of the provincial diets to create a central constitution, which he admitted to be required by the royal promises. But the idea of the sovereignty of the people was to him utterly abhorrent, and even any delegation of sovereign power on his own part would have seemed a betrayal of a God-given trust. "I will never," he declared, "allow to come between Almighty God and this country a plotted parchment, to rule us with paragraphs, and to replace the ancient, sacred bond of loyalty." His vision of the ideal state was that of a patriarchal monarchy, surrounded and advised by the traditional estates of the realm—nobles, peasants, burghers— and cemented by the bonds of evangelical religion. In Prussia, with its traditional loyalty and its old-world caste divisions, he believed that such a conception could be realized, and he stood half-way between those who would have rejected the proposal for a central diet altogether as a dangerous "thin end of the wedge," and those who would have approximated it more to the modern conception of a parliament. With a charter, or a repre sentative system based on population, he would have nothing to do. The united diet which was opened on Feb. 3, 1847, was no more than a congregation of the diets instituted by Frederick William III. in the eight provinces of Prussia. Unrepresentative though it was—f or the industrial working-classes had no share in it—it at once gave voice to the demand for a constitutional system.
The revolutionary outbreaks of 1848 rudely awakened Fred erick William from his mediaeval dreamings ; he even allowed himself to be carried away for a while by the popular tide. The loyalty of the Prussian army remained inviolate ; but the king was too tender-hearted to use military force against his "beloved Berliners," and when the victory of the populace was thus assured his impressionable temper yielded to the general enthusiasm. He paraded the streets of Berlin wrapped in a scarf of the Ger man black and gold, symbol of his intention to be the leader of the united Germany ; and he even wrote to the indignant tsar in praise of "the glorious German revolution." But the united Germany which he wa,s prepared to champion was not the demo cratic state of the Frankfort national parliament, but the old Holy Roman Empire, the heritage of the house of Habsburg. Finally, when Austria had been excluded from the new empire, he replied to the parliamentary deputation that came to offer him the imperial crown that he might have accepted it had it been freely offered to him by the German princes, but that he would never stoop "to pick up a crown out of the gutter." In fact the German empire would have lost immeasurably had it been the cause rather than the result of the inevitable struggle with Austria. However that may be, Frederick William's refusal gave the deathblow to the parliament and to all hope of the immediate creation of a united Germany. For Frederick William the position of leader of Germany now meant the employment of the military force of Prussia to crush the scattered elements of revolution that survived the collapse of the national movement. His establishment of the northern confederacy was a reversion to the traditional policy of Prussia in opposition to Austria, which, after the emperor Nicholas had crushed the insurrection in Hungary, was once more free to assert her claims to dominance in Germany. But Prussia was not ripe for a struggle with Austria, and the result was the humiliating convention of O1mutz (Nov. 29, 185o), by which Prussia agreed to surrender her separatist plans and to restore the old constitution of the confederation. Yet Frederick William had so far profited by the lessons of 1848 that he consented to establish (185o) a national parliament, though with a restricted franchise and limited powers.
In religious matters Frederick William sought a rapproche ment between the Lutheran and Anglican churches, the first fruits of which was the establishment of the Jerusalem bishopric under the joint patronage of Great Britain and Prussia; but the only result of his efforts was to precipitate the secession of J. H. Newman and his followers to the Church of Rome. In the sum mer of 1857 he had a stroke of paralysis, and a second in October. From this time, with the exception of brief intervals, his mind was completely clouded, and the duties of government were under taken by his brother William (afterwards emperor), who on Oct. 7, 1858, was formally recognized as regent. Frederick Wil liam died on Jan. 2, 1861.
Selections from the correspondence (Briefwechsel) of Frederick Wil liam IV. and Bunsen were edited by Ranke (Leipzig, 1873) ; his proc lamations, speeches, etc., from March 6, 1848 to May 31, 1851, have been published (Berlin, 1851) ; also his correspondence with Bettina von Arnim, Bettina von Arnim and Friedrich Wilhelm IV., unge druckte Briefe and Aktenstiicke, ed. L. Geiger (Frankfort-on-Main, 1902) . See L. von Ranke, Friedrich Wilhelm IV., Konig von Preussen (works 51, 52 also in Allgem. deutsche Biog. vol. vii.), especially for the king's education and the inner history of the debates leading up to the united diet of 1847; H. von Petersdorff, Konig Friedrich Wilhelm IV. (Stuttgart, 1900) ; H. von Poschinger (ed.), (Inter Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Denkwiirdigkeiten des Ministers Otto Frhr. von Man teuffel, 1848-1858 (3 vols., 1902) , and Preussens auswartige Politik, 1850-1858 (3 vols., ib., 19o2) , documents selected from those left by Manteuffel; F. Rachfahl, Deutschland, Konig Friedrich Wilhelm IV. and die Berliner Marzrevolution (Halle, 1901), Die deutsche Politik Konig Friedrich Wilhelm IV., im Winter 1848-49 (Munich, 1919) .