Sanssouci at the time of Frederick William IV covers the period almost one hundred years after the palace's construction, when a King who was convinced of the divine right of his crown and of the absolute claim to power of the ruler came to the Prussian throne. It was a time of social upheaval, its bloody climax being the March Revolution of 1848. Frederick William IV, the romantic on the throne, admired and respected the person and world of Frederick the Great very much. He believed that he had much in common with Frederick as to their complex interests, especially in the area of architecture and artistic design. But Frederick William IV was not sufficiently astute for the political re-orientation that occurred in the middle of the 19th century. He sought authentication of his own claim t