Frederick William, the Elector of Brandenburg, is shown seated upon his horse like a god, with his head held high and no stirrups. This statue once stood on the bridge known as the Lange Brücke (now Rathausbrücke) in Berlin until the Second World War. The elector’s gaze was cast on the adjacent palace. As a sign of his military authority, his right arm, holding a commander’s baton, points towards the city. The monument is an expression of Frederick William’s claim to power.
The statue portraying the Elector Frederick William was commissioned by his son, Elector Frederick III, who in 1701 became King Frederick I in Prussia. The sculptor Andreas Schlüter began making the model in 1696, from which Johann Jacobi cast the bronze statue from 1700. The inauguration ceremony for the equestrian monument was held in 1703. Some final additions, entailing figures and reliefs on the pedestal, were completed in 1709.
Equestrian statues in Paris that are no longer extant served Schlüter as examples, including the depictions of chained and seated men at the corners of the base. In Paris, these figures symbolised the European powers defeated by France. In Berlin’s equestrian statue, the men in chains could be interpreted as the subjugated enemies of the Brandenburg Electorate and later the Kingdom of Prussia. In the interim, these representations have also been associated with Elector Frederick William’s role in European colonial politics. As the founder of the Brandenburgisch-Afrikanische Compagnie (BAC), after 1682, the elector had the fortification and outpost Groß Friedrichsburg, among other sites, built in present-day Ghana and participated in the transatlantic slave trade. About 20,000 people were trafficked from West Africa to the Caribbean over a 30-year period. King Frederick I initially continued his father’s colonial politics to expand his power.
