Friedrich Wilhelm IV. König von Preußen
(15.10.1795 - 02.01.1861)
place of birth:  Berlin
Königreich Preußen:  Seine Majestät der König,  Chef der Armee

                             


King of Prussia from 1840 to 1861, Friedrich Wilhelm IV (Frederick William) was the son and successor of Friedrich Wilhelm III. His mother was Luise von Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Prior to his coronation, he was wed with Princess Elisabeth von Bayern in 1823, although the marriage did not produce any children. 

A romanticist and a mystic, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV conceived vague schemes of reform based on a revival of the medieval structure, with the rule of estates and a patriarchal monarchy. During the Revolution of 1848 in Prussia, which broke out in March, he was forced, at first, to accede to revolutionary demands. Later, however,he crushed the opposition, dissolved the constituent assembly, and promulgated a conservative constitution, which, as modified in 1850, remained in force until 1918. 

Friedrich Wilhelm IV refused the crown of a united Germany offered him (1849) by the Frankfurt Parliament on the grounds that a monarch by divine right could not receive authority from an elected assembly. He nonetheless desired German unity under Prussian leadership and presented the Prussian Union plan for a confederation of Prussia and the smaller German states. Austrian opposition to the plan forced him to abandon it in the Treaty of Olmütz (1850). In 1848, he briefly supported the revolt in Schleswig-Holstein against Denmark but yielded to British pressure for an armistice. In 1857 his mental condition necessitated a temporary (later permanent) regency of his brother, who succeeded him as Wilhelm I.  He died in January 1861 in Potsdam.

	König von Preußen	07.06.1840  -  02.01.1861
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