ABSTRACT
Events repeat themselves in the history of the House of Hohenzollern. While Joachim, the second Elector, builds, banquets, and squanders his substance in Berlin, John George, his frugal son, squats in the castle at Zechlin, a god-forsaken eyrie in the Mark, once the seat of the Bishops of Havelberg, muttering savagely at the old man’s spendthrift splendour. Joachim’s Physician-in-Ordinary and Master of the Mint, one Lippold, a kind of Jew Suss of the Mark, was arrested upon an altogether preposterous indictment, absurd admissions were wrung from him upon the rack, and he was executed with horrible cruelty. Joachim Frederick, however, son of this diehard Elector, found his cousin of Ansbach, George Frederick, who as guardian of, and vicegerent for, a melancholic Duke of Prussia had also assumed sovereign power in the East, a far more attractive model than the obstinate old father without an idea in his head beyond the frontiers of Brandenburg.
