Prussian virtues (
German: ) are the
virtue
A virtue () is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be morality, moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is Value (ethics), valued as an Telos, end purpos ...
s associated with the historical
Kingdom of Prussia
The Kingdom of Prussia (, ) was a German state that existed from 1701 to 1918.Marriott, J. A. R., and Charles Grant Robertson. ''The Evolution of Prussia, the Making of an Empire''. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946. It played a signif ...
(1701–1918). They were derived from Prussia's
militarism
Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mili ...
and the ethical code of the
Prussian Army as well as from
bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...
values such as honesty and frugality that were influenced by Lutheran
Pietism
Pietism (), also known as Pietistic Lutheranism, is a movement within Lutheranism that combines its emphasis on biblical doctrine with an emphasis on individual piety and living a holy Christianity, Christian life.
Although the movement is ali ...
and
the Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a European intellectual and philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained through rationalism and empirici ...
. The so-called "German virtues" that include punctuality, order, and diligence can also be traced back to Prussian virtues.
History

Pietism, which emphasized individual piety and leading an active Christian life, exerted a significant influence on the Prussian court and its nobility from the time of its founding in the late seventeenth century. Although King
Frederick William I (r. 1713–1740) was a
Calvinist
Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed Protestantism, Continenta ...
, he had considerable respect for
Lutheran
Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...
-based Pietism. He felt that it had a moderating influence on the tensions between Lutherans and Calvinists within both the kingdom and the court. It also brought with it practical social benefits such as the
Francke Foundation, which opened charity schools and orphanages. Pietism quickly became closely intertwined with Prussian governmental bodies at all levels and among all
estates. Numerous pastors and administrators educated in the spirit of Pietism at the
University of Halle
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (), also referred to as MLU, is a public research university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg. It is the largest and oldest university in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. MLU offers German and i ...
carried its values out into the country. It was also embraced by some of Prussia's high-ranking military officers such as Field Marshal
Dubislav Gneomar von Natzmer who championed Pietist attempts to free the army of vices such as gambling and the use of brothels.

At that time, Prussian territory was spread over wide areas, some of them far apart, and its population was heterogeneous. The majority of Prussians were Lutherans, a minority (including parts of the ruling family) Calvinists, and another minority
Catholics
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
. After King
Frederick the Great
Frederick II (; 24 January 171217 August 1786) was the monarch of Prussia from 1740 until his death in 1786. He was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled ''King in Prussia'', declaring himself ''King of Prussia'' after annexing Royal Prussia ...
(r. 1740–1786) brought
Jews
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
into the country, a total of four larger religious communities existed in the state, along with several smaller free churches. Ethnically, in addition to the German majority, there were Slavic (
Polish,
Sorbian, and
Kashubian) and Baltic (
Prussian Lithuanians
The Prussian Lithuanians, or Lietuvininkai (singular: ''Lietuvininkas'', plural: ''Lietuvininkai''), are Lithuanians, originally Lithuanian language speakers, who formerly inhabited a territory in northeastern East Prussia called Prussian Lithuan ...
and
Curonians
:''The Kursenieki are also sometimes known as Curonians.''
The Curonians or Kurs (; ) were a medieval Balts, Baltic tribe living on the shores of the Baltic Sea in the 5th–16th centuries, in what are now western parts of Latvia and Lithuania. ...
) minorities, and a significant minority of the population, especially in
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, consisted of descendants of French
Huguenots
The Huguenots ( , ; ) are a Religious denomination, religious group of French people, French Protestants who held to the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, ...
. In such a heterogeneous state, the ideas of Pietism, which eventually took on the character of a "Prussian state religion", proved to be a valuable area of commonality.
When Frederick William I ascended the throne he found Prussia highly indebted, and he made order, diligence, modesty, and the fear of God the guiding principles for his successful reform and reorganization of the state. He saw himself as a moral role model for his subjects. Frederick the Great, unlike his father, was an aesthete who admired
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...
and the
French Enlightenment
French may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France
** French people, a nation and ethnic group
** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices
Arts and media
* The French (band) ...
, and was not inclined toward Pietism. He nevertheless felt himself bound to many of his father's ideals and deviated only slightly from Frederick William's self-image as the "first sergeant to the King of Prussia", saying that he wished to be the "first servant of his state". He regarded the Enlightenment ideals of reason and tolerance as personal maxims of conduct in his governance of Prussia.
Through Frederick William and his son, the values of Pietism were combined with those of the Enlightenment. They gave Prussia a progressive legal system and administration, an officer corps loyal to the crown, and a "patriotism of reason" that promoted Prussia's rise from the baroque state of the Great Elector
Frederick William (r. 1640–1688) to a modern European power. The change came about in spite of Prussia's economically meager resources – it had suffered great devastation and depopulation during the
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War, fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, was one of the most destructive conflicts in History of Europe, European history. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from battle, famine ...
(1618–1648) and had sandy, poorly arable soils that led it to be called "the blotting-sand box of the
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation after 1512, was a polity in Central and Western Europe, usually headed by the Holy Roman Emperor. It developed in the Early Middle Ages, and lasted for a millennium ...
".
The
Prussian Reform Movement
The Prussian Reform Movement was a series of constitutional, administrative, social, and economic reforms early in 19th-century Prussia. They are sometimes known as the Stein–Hardenberg Reforms, for Karl Freiherr vom Stein and Karl August v ...
, which began after Prussia's 1806 defeat by
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led Military career ...
in the
Battle of Jena–Auerstedt and lasted until the
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon, Napol ...
in 1815, also influenced the kingdom's later development. The reforms affected municipalities, the army, schools, universities, and taxes and included the 1812
Edict of Emancipation that, with a few restrictions, granted Prussian Jews the same rights and duties as other citizens. The reform of the army was particularly important for the development of Prussian values by permanently changing the relationship between king and soldier and "turning the uniform jacket into a cloak of honor". It is possible that the new leadership principle of
mission-type tactics
Mission-type tactics ( German: ''Auftragstaktik'', from ''Auftrag'' and ''Taktik''; also known as mission command in the United States and the United Kingdom) is a method of command and delegation where the military commander gives subordinate ...
based on a willingness to assume responsibility, which was developed after the 1813
wars of liberation against Napoleon (but had precursors going back to Frederick the Great), also grew out of the ideals that created the Prussian symbiosis of Pietism and the Enlightenment.
The Prussian virtues are summed up in the first lines of
Ludwig Hölty's poem "" ("The Old Farmer to His Son"). It was set to the tune of "" ("A girl or little wife") from
Mozart's 1791 opera ''
Die Zauberflöte
''The Magic Flute'' (, ), K. 620, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. It is a ''Singspiel'', a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue. The work premiered on ...
'' ("''The Magic Flute"'') and performed daily by the carillon of the
Potsdam Garrison Church where Frederick the Great was originally buried. The poem begins, "Practice always faithfulness and honesty / To your cold grave / And do not deviate a finger's breadth / From God's ways."
The virtues
The Prussian virtues are not fixed in number or type and therefore do not form a canon.
With the exception of obedience, they all go back to the
cardinal virtues
The cardinal virtues are four virtues of mind and character in classical philosophy. They are prudence, Justice (virtue), justice, Courage, fortitude, and Temperance (virtue), temperance. They form a Virtue ethics, virtue theory of ethics. The t ...
(generally prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance).
Virtues with predominantly military significance
Although they did not originate in the military sphere, the ideals of Prussian virtues strongly influenced it and became soon some of its most prominent features. A strict hierarchy was characteristic of the Prussian social system, with the result that characteristics to be striven for included loyalty, a self-denial that benefits the state and the king (German author Walter Flex praised the Prussian soldier's oath of allegiance in a poem: "He who swears by the Prussian flag no longer has anything that belongs to himself",) bravery without self-pity ("Learn to suffer without complaining"), subordination, courage, and obedience (but not without frankness). (Self-)discipline,
an indispensable military virtue, involved toughness () towards oneself even more than towards others.
Virtues of overall social significance
* Sincerity ()
* Modesty ()
* Honesty
()
* Diligence
()
* Straightforwardness ()
* Sense of justice (): = to each his own / his due, the motto of the Prussian
Order of the Black Eagle
The Order of the Black Eagle () was the highest order of chivalry in the Kingdom of Prussia. The order was founded on 17 January 1701 by Elector Friedrich III of Brandenburg (who became Friedrich I of Prussia, Friedrich I, King in Prussia, the ...
* Conscientiousness
()
* Willingness to make sacrifices ()
*
Sense of order ()
* Sense of duty
()
* Punctuality
()
* Probity ()
* Cleanliness
()
* Frugality
()
* Tolerance
()
* Incorruptibility
()
* Restraint / self-effacement (): ("To be more than to appear")
* Determination ()
* Reliability
()
It is to these virtues that the obsolete saying that someone does something ("for the King of Prussia", i.e. for free, without taking anything in return) is sometimes attributed.
Virtues of worldview
Fear of God was considered a Prussian virtue since at least the time of Frederick William I. Under his son, too, it continued to be given high priority, although under the aspect of religious tolerance. "Everyone shall be blessed according to his own fashion" became Frederick the Great's leitmotiv. His state-sponsored cosmopolitanism also had economic motives. When Frederick allowed Jews into the country, he obliged them to pay high special taxes.
Typical quotes
In his novel ''
Der Stechlin'',
Theodor Fontane had an officer say:
The inscription on the headstone of General
Johann Friedrich Adolf von der Marwitz, who refused Frederick the Great's order to sack
Hubertusburg Castle during the
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763, was a Great Power conflict fought primarily in Europe, with significant subsidiary campaigns in North America and South Asia. The protagonists were Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and Kingdom of Prus ...
reads: "He chose disgrace where obedience did not bring honor".
French proverb: . ("To be Prussian is an honor but not a pleasure.")
In his 1919 ', the philosopher of history
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German polymath whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best know ...
judged
Prussianism to be the basis of a specifically German, essentially illiberal, anti-democratic and anti-revolutionary school of thought:
Criticism
Prussian virtues were criticized from the beginning, as for example among the bourgeoisie, because of their remoteness from science and art, their hostility to democracy, and their state-controlled and militaristic characteristics – "command and obedience". The labor movement turned against the latter two traits in particular. During the
1960s protests, because loyalty and obedience toward the
National Socialist government had been so prevalent among the German people, those virtues were viewed with extreme suspicion and devalued as "secondary virtues" compared to the emancipatory "
primary virtues".
The American Richard Rhodes saw
Heinrich Himmler's principle of Prussian "toughness" as a prerequisite for hundreds of thousands of Germans to willingly carry out the extermination of Jews:
Himmler strove to make the repulsive task of slaughtering unarmed civilians part of the SS aura. In his efforts he was able to draw on the Prussian military tradition, according to which morally reprehensible and psychologically stressful experiences were transformed into a virtue: toughness.
Himmler also invoked the virtue of toughness in the fall of 1940 when he told SS officers that the SS had to remove hundreds of thousands of Poles in Poland in minus 40°C weather and "have the toughness" to shoot thousands of leading Poles.
"It must always be the case that such an execution has to be the hardest thing for our men. And they must never become soft, but go about it with their teeth clenched."
Since Germany's defeat in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
and the
Allied denazification
Denazification () was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by removing those who had been Nazi Par ...
campaign, historical German militarism has become anathema in German culture, which is focused on
collective responsibility
Collective responsibility or collective guilt is the responsibility of organizations, groups and societies. Collective responsibility in the form of collective punishment is often used as a disciplinary measure in closed institutions, e.g., b ...
and ("overcoming the past"). At the same time, the related non-military, bourgeois virtues of efficiency, discipline, and work remain in high standing. This has led to the concept of "Prussian virtues" being regarded with mixed feelings in modern-day Germany. Among the
German student protests of 1968, militarist virtues were rejected as having been prerequisites for the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. The term ''
Kadavergehorsam'' (lit. "corpse obedience") for "blind obedience", originally a slur directed against
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
during the 1870s
Kulturkampf
In the history of Germany, the ''Kulturkampf'' (Cultural Struggle) was the seven-year political conflict (1871–1878) between the Catholic Church in Germany led by Pope Pius IX and the Kingdom of Prussia led by chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Th ...
, came to be used as a staple derogatory against the Prussian military ethos. Similarly, the term (" loyalty"), which in the
German Empire
The German Empire (),; ; World Book, Inc. ''The World Book dictionary, Volume 1''. World Book, Inc., 2003. p. 572. States that Deutsches Reich translates as "German Realm" and was a former official name of Germany. also referred to as Imperia ...
had been used in a positive sense for the military virtue of absolute loyalty, came to be used derogatorily in reference to the fanatical loyalty characteristic of
fascism
Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hie ...
. In 1982, amid the controversy surrounding the
NATO Double-Track Decision, in response to
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany ( , SPD ) is a social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the party's leader since the 2019 leadership election together w ...
(SPD) Chancellor
Helmut Schmidt's call for a return to such virtues,
Saarbrücken's SPD mayor
Oskar Lafontaine
Oskar Lafontaine (; born 16 September 1943) is a German politician. He served as Minister-President of the state of Saarland from 1985 to 1998 and was federal leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1995 to 1999. He was the lead candidat ...
commented that they were "perfectly suited to run a
concentration camp
A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...
". In 2006, the Minister President of
Brandenburg
Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg, is a States of Germany, state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders Poland and the states of Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It is the List of Ger ...
Matthias Platzeck
Matthias Platzeck (born 29 December 1953) is a German politician. He was Minister-President, Minister President of Brandenburg from 2002 to 2013 and party chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD from November 2005 to April 2006. ...
called for a return to Prussian virtues, citing "good basic virtues, such as honesty, reliability, and diligence".
See also
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
References
External links
*
* This 37 second recording is the only one known to exist of the original carillon of the
Potsdam Garrison Church. It is playing Mozart's melody for "" by
Ludwig Christoph Heinrich Hölty (1748–1776).
{{Virtues
Virtue
Virtues
A virtue () is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is valued as an end purpose of life or a foundational pri ...
Military of Prussia
Prussian Army
Codes of conduct
Bourgeoisie
Frederick William I of Prussia
Pietism