From Scholar to Jester

Jacob Paul von Gundling had come to the Prussian court believing that a man of intellect, a man of letters, could find his place among rulers. He was a scholar, a historian, and a man who had spent his life in the pursuit of knowledge. But the world of kings and warriors had little use for thinkers, except as curiosities to be examined and then destroyed for sport.

Von Gundling’s fate had been set in motion long before he realized it. He had been appointed by King Frederick I, a ruler who, despite his own eccentricities, valued scholarship and intellectual discourse. Under Frederick I, von Gundling had a purpose—his mind was an asset, his work respected. But the king's death changed everything. The crown passed to his son, Frederick William I, a man of an entirely different nature, a king who saw no use for scholars unless they were willing to be humiliated for his amusement.

This change was not just personal but political. Frederick I had ruled Prussia as an enlightened monarch, modeling his court on the refined grandeur of Versailles, believing that cultural and intellectual prestige would cement Prussia’s status as a true European power. Scholars, artists, and philosophers had thrived under his rule because they were considered vital to this vision of a sophisticated kingdom. But his extravagance came at a cost. The War of Spanish Succession had drained Prussia’s coffers, and his opulent spending left the state with debt. When Frederick William I took the throne in 1713, he saw his father’s vision not as a foundation to build upon, but as waste to be eradicated.

The new king was a soldier, first and foremost. He despised the lavish courts of France and Austria, rejecting the idea that Prussia should waste its resources on intellectuals, artists, or scholars who did not directly contribute to the state’s efficiency and survival. He ruled with iron discipline, demanding that his court reflect his militaristic ethos. Every institution, every person, had to serve a function that contributed to Prussia’s growing military might. For men like von Gundling, whose value lay in books rather than bureaucracy or battle, the shift in power was catastrophic.

The court of Frederick William I of Prussia was a place of iron discipline, military precision, and boorish cruelty. The king, known as the Soldier King, had no patience for idle philosophy or scholarly debate. He did not rule with wisdom but with force, and he surrounded himself with men who mirrored his disposition—officers, noblemen, and sycophants who bowed to his every whim. To them, learning was an affectation, a weakness, and von Gundling, despite his intellect, would come to serve not as an advisor, but as a target.

He had not started as a fool. There had been a time when his scholarship had been respected, when his knowledge had been valued. He had held a post as a historian, a role that should have afforded him dignity. But something about him—perhaps his awkwardness, perhaps his eagerness to serve—had marked him as prey. The king had taken an interest in him, but not as a man of insight. No, Frederick William saw something else: a man who could not fight back.

And so, von Gundling became the plaything of the court.

The Tobacco College, as they called it, was not an institution of learning but a club of the king’s closest men, where drinking, smoking, and mockery took the place of governance. Here, decisions were not made through reasoned debate but through the camaraderie of shared cruelty. And von Gundling, the scholar among soldiers, was to be their source of amusement.

It started subtly, with small humiliations disguised as jests. He was given absurd titles, grand names meant not to honor him but to ridicule him. One day he was Baron of the Kingdom of Fools; the next, he was Governor of the Moon. They staged elaborate ceremonies for these appointments, making a farce of the rituals that bestowed real power upon others. The king would watch, laughing, as von Gundling was made to kneel, as mock decrees were read in his honor, as the courtiers sneered and clapped at the absurdity of it all.

But the games did not stop with mere words. They delighted in breaking him, in testing how far he could be pushed before he collapsed. They would ply him with wine, encouraging him to drink far beyond his limit. When he was too drunk to resist, they would take his room key and hide it, watching in feigned concern as he staggered through the palace, convinced he had lost it. They would pretend to help, leading him on a fruitless search, only to produce the key at the last moment, laughing at his bewilderment.

One night, they brought out a live monkey and shoved it into his arms. “Your bride,” they declared. The beast clung to him in terror as the nobles roared with laughter, urging him to kiss it, to embrace it as his wife. Too drunk, too humiliated, too accustomed to their cruelty, von Gundling did as he was told. And they laughed harder.

Still, he endured. He did not fight back—he could not fight back—but he endured. He continued his work, writing, chronicling history, though he knew that no one around him cared for the words he put to paper. The king had granted him a salary, a place at court, but it was not an honor. It was a leash. And every night, when the Tobacco College convened, he was dragged out once more to be paraded before them, to serve as their entertainment.

Desperate for some semblance of dignity, he sought an escape. If he could marry, he thought, perhaps they would leave him alone. A wife would grant him respectability; it would make him a man in the eyes of the court rather than a mere plaything. And so he took a wife, a widow who offered him companionship and stability. But instead of deterring his tormentors, it only gave them more fuel. The king mocked him further, declaring that even a fool could find a bride. They demanded he speak of his married life, turning every word he said into another joke at his expense.

But why did he stay? Why did he endure when he could have left?

The answer was simple: he had nowhere else to go. He had been appointed by Frederick I, who had valued scholarship and given him a post that should have secured his future. But Frederick William I saw no value in scholars. He tolerated von Gundling, but only as an object of ridicule. And outside of court, there was no patronage waiting for him, no position of dignity he could retreat to. His fate was either this—or obscurity and poverty.

And perhaps, deep down, he thought it would end differently. That if he endured long enough, if he remained compliant, the cruelty would pass. That he would outlast their amusement and eventually be respected for his knowledge. But cruelty does not tire. The more he endured, the more they despised him for it. They saw his suffering as proof of their own superiority, of the weakness of intellect before brute force.

At some point, he must have known there was no escape. No one at court took him seriously; no one saw him as anything but a joke. He had become trapped in a cycle of abuse that fed upon itself, where even his silence, his endurance, became another reason to despise him. The more he accepted, the more they heaped upon him. He had become the scholar who let himself be broken—and to the ruling class, there was no greater weakness than that.

But the king had made him a promise, one that he never let von Gundling forget. “You will not have a proper burial,” he had declared. It was a threat, a joke, and a certainty.

And when von Gundling finally died in 1731, the king kept his word. There would be no stately tomb, no ceremony of honor. Instead, his body was stuffed into a wine barrel and buried as a final insult. The man who had been forced to drink himself into foolishness was now entombed in a cask, his final resting place as much a mockery as his life had been.