The 1991 Reburial of Frederick the Great and Its Potential Meanings

I begin the present paper by providing an overview of the afterlife of Frederick the Great's earthly remains. I then continue by presenting the mise-en-scène of Frederick's last (until now?) reburial, together with the conflicts and debates surrounding this event. Subsequently, I elaborate on the main conceptual frameworks dealing with dead body politics and thus seeming at first glance suitable for explaining the sinuous afterlife of the royal corpse of Frederick. Directly connected with this attempt at theoretical clarification, I comment upon the extent to which these frameworks furnish the appropriate instruments to make sense of the fate of Frederick the Great's dead body and of the reinterment that took place on 17 August 1991, in Potsdam. At the same time, I also aim to explicitly show how the 1991 reinterment of Frederick the Great, and that of his father, Frederick William I, differs to a large extent from apparently similar or akin events.