Frederick the Great and the Notion of Fear

On Sunday I took a walk through the middle of Berlin. It was cold and rainy, but I wanted to see how things had changed since my last visit a year ago. One of the highlights is the newly restored Bode Museum on the Museum Island in the middle of the city. Originally designed by the Imperial Court's architect Ernst von Ihne between 1897-1904, the neo-Baroque museum was meant to hold the sculpture and artwork collections of Wilhelm von Bode. When I entered the main doors, I found my way into the "small" cupola hall facing a large bronze statue of Frederick the Great on his horse. In reading a little more about this place I found out that the emperor was originally surrounded by statues of five of his generals. They are no longer apparently there, but in looking around the large hall and the ornately wrought balustrades winding up along the sides toward the restaurant and gift shop above, I could read gilt inscriptions in Latin and English. One read, "I and my house want to serve the Lord" and another read, "Fearlessness and Perseverance" (Furchtlosigkeit und Beharrlichkeit).
This was not a place meant for just any German to enter. When the curators opened the museum in 1904, they invited the Emperor's court society and upper middle class patrons. I have not found any documents that demonstrate how people received this architectural display of the old Prussian emperors, but it is striking that the architects chose to invoke the likeness of arguably the greatest Prussian monarch as military leader in the entrance space to this museum. It is even more interesting to me that the architects chose texts that link the notion of service to the activity of the emperor's house and the belief in God. Moreover, instructs those connected to the undertakings of the Prussian monarchs that they should not feel fear and they should persevere in the face of...what, fear itself? On the one hand, it is clear that the builders would intend to eradicate the feeling of fear with this place as it calls onlookers to serve their leaders. One emotion that should not have been present under this monarchy and in that society was the feeling of fear, and yet there it is written in large gold script on the ceiling.
In future postings, I plan to explore the problem of fear in more detail. One of the things I plan to do is review a new book on fear in German society built on interviews with prominent Germans who discuss the specificity of fear in Germany and the way Germans go about their lives today. Reflecting on this statue, I am not sure how much this, I'll call it, "emotional culture" differed from those of other monarchies and nation states in Europe, but it does not appear unusual so far in comparison. Plus, I think it is worth exploring the notion of fear more widely in that time and place at the turn of the century through different types of sources. I will keep an eye out as I now enter the archives. Please let me know what you think.