Augustus The Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco

"Consulting the shortlists for the annual Elizabeth Longford Prize are a great way to discover new historical biographies. This year, the winner was Tim Blanning, with Augustus the Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco . Augustus was a somewhat hapless king of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in the 18th century; his patronage of the arts, however, made Poland a major centre of Baroque culture. When I spoke to Roy Foster , the Oxford academic and prize judge, about the shortlist earlier this year, he described the Blanning as “an astonishing researcher” who asks “whether a figure can be both a reviled failure in politics and yet historically significant because of his authority in other arenas of life, which may, in the long term, be more influential.” It is also, he added, “extremely funny… It’s a witty book, as well as a profound one.”"

"Tim Blanning is the great doyen on the history of Central Europe, notably the German states that will later become Germany, in the late 17th, early 18th century. He’s written wonderful books about culture, music, and painting in this period, as well as a terrific biography of Frederick the Great. Augustus the Strong—and I think, if you took the exact translation, he was known as ‘Augustus the Physically Strong,’ which implied that brain power didn’t have much to do with it—was a man who fought first and thought second. He was a bit of a rascal and a warmonger, and a notable fornicator and adulterer who shocked many of his contemporaries. In terms of power politics, he was the Elector of Saxony who forced his way into becoming elected King of Poland, which was an absolute disaster for Poland and for him. He got involved in a crazy, duelling-type war with the repellent figure of Charles XII of Sweden. So his public life as a warring monarch in late 17th, early 18th century Europe was a fiasco, as Tim Blanning’s subtitle says. Tim Blanning makes the case that, though he may have been a political fiasco, he was one of the most important patrons of music, of theatre, of public spectacle—notably and brilliantly of Baroque architecture in Dresden, with its astonishing range of buildings. He was very much at the centre of all this. He worked very closely with the architects, and was an original and very committed aesthete, though he didn’t seem like it in other aspects of his life. So what Tim Blanning’s book is asking us to judge is whether a figure can be both a reviled failure in politics and yet historically significant because of his authority in other arenas of life, which may—in the long term—be more influential. Like Baroque architecture or early 18th-century music. Blanning is also an astonishing researcher—and we do always look for scholarship in these books—and the range of languages and sources, the originality of the material out of which Tim Blanning has reinvigorated this half-forgotten figure, is tremendously impressive. It’s also extremely funny. I use the word advisedly; I mean, it’s sometimes almost laugh-out-loud funny. This is a quality that I think far too few historians care enough about. It’s a witty book, as well as a profound one. It’s vital if you are going to write about countries outside your own language. It used to be far more part of university training of historians, especially in Oxford and Cambridge. Less so now. There is no longer an explicit stipulation that you must have a good working knowledge of the French language to study French history in most universities. Ditto for German history, and so forth. I think that’s a great loss and a great pity, but I’m afraid it’s a reflection of the way that languages have been demoted in favour of the so-called STEM subjects in secondary education. But that’s not what we are here to talk about."