“Our Fritz” thus remained contested. One legend made him the anglophile champion of liberty, reform and progress: the darling of the liberal left and for the reactionary right an object of fearful derision. Another tale turned him into a royal Prussian hero. Another Fritz, another Louise; to be remembered as the general, William II wrote in his memoirs, “who helped to forge Germany’s Imperial crown; as the amiable and popular Crown Prince, and . . . as the man of sorrows, who bore with noble fortitude sufferings that carried him off before his time.” It is easy for the man Frederick to get lost amongst these myths. They contained more than a few grains of truth but also distorted the outlines of a fundamentally decent but weak man who was caught between different traditions and dominated by the strong personalities that surrounded him. In Emperor Frederick some of the most powerful forces of the political culture of his age imprinted themselves at a most prominent, visible and important position. His tragic life richly repays a careful analysis.