If you are by now discovering that Prussia is not what you thought it was, be prepared for further surprises and consider the following question: might the hatred of Prussia be in some way related to its rejection of the ideas of the liberal/socialist so-called "enlightenment" (which lead to the anti-Christian excesses of the French revolution and to our modern anti-Christian liberal secularism) in favour of retaining a Christian romantic philosophical view? And as a follow-up to this question, Bible-believing Christians ought to be asking themselves which they would prefer of the two systems? I know which I would prefer any day. Indeed, if Prussia had survived the nazis and the communists, Europe today might not have gone down the atheistic highway to spiritual and moral oblivion. I furthermore guarantee that if you were to write down a list of what it is to be "Prussian", as you have been educated by the liberal media, that it will be divorced from the truth by at least 80%.

I am, as I said earlier on, a monarchist, meaning I believe the Kingdom of Heaven is a monarchy (with Yah'shua/Jesus as King) and that by derivation human kingdoms, when acting in righteousness, ought perhaps to be enlightened monarchies also. We all know, of course, that in the mix which was continental politics, the motives for choosing good over evil were sometimes a little hazy and were more expeditious rather than derived from the conviction of conscience. And such was Prussia, in the early days, a little Protestant island in a huge Catholic sea, it is understandable that its rulers would resort to poltical expediency to ensure it survival ... and that of the dynasty which ruled it (of course). Thus it was that the Elector of Brandenburg - Johann Sigismund - became a Reformed Christian in 1613 as a calculated act of state but - to be fair - also a matter of personal conviction, his political motive being to tie together the far flung parts of of Prussia in the West and in the East. The continuing loyalty of Kleve (Cleves - of Anne of Cleves fame, the wife of Henry VIII of England) depended on Prussia recognising the three Christian denominations of the territories - Lutheran, Reformed (Calvinist) and Catholic. It was soon obvious to Sigismund that the stability of Brandenburg-Prussia depended on religious toleration which culminated in the Toleration Edict of 1614 which made it an offense to preach hatred of other Christian faiths from the pulpit. Thus the Elector admitted freedom of religious conscience in Prussia, an attitude which was very ahead of the times (long before the so-called "enlightenment") and which prevailed in Prussia to its very end in 1947.

Little known outside Germany is the fact that Prussia opened its doors to political and religous refugees from oppression. In the Edict of Potsdam (1685), for instance, Prussia offered assylum to the French Huguenots who had become displaced by the treacherous Catholic revocation of the Edict of Nantes which had protected the French Protestants and which resulted in a brutal massacre by Catholics. A considerable French colony grew up in Brandenburg and as a result of which names like La Motte-Fouqué, Fontane and Le Coq Devrient came to occupy an honourable place in the annals of Prussia. But not only in prestigious names did Prussia gain from this marriage of Gallic blood with Prussian, but also French education which was to train generations of Hohenzollern rulers.

So let me ask you this question: was 'racist' one of those worlds you included on your list of Prussian character traits? If it was, you may scratch it out, for the Prussians not only welcomed French but other races and religions too, including Jews. Did you know that one of the aftermaths of the Toleration Edict was the readmission, in 1761, of Jews into Brandenburg from which they had been driven a century earlier during the earlier excesses and fanaticism of the Reformation, fuelled in large measure by Martin Luther's antisemitism? Prussia distanced itself from this kind of fanaticism and maintained a moderate policy towards the Talmudic Jews in her terriotory, and would have continued doing so had Adolf Hitler not come onto the German scene with his poisonous hatred.

- Sincerity
- Humility
- Industriousness
- Obedience (but not without Frankness)
- Straightness
- Sense of Justice
- Godliness coupled with religious Tolerance
- Toughness, against oneself even more than against others
- Courage
- Sense of Order
- Sense of Duty
- Probity
- Self denial
- Austerity
- Bravery without sniveling
- Loyalty
- Incorruptibility
- Subordination
- Self-effacement
- Reliability
- Punctuality