gay and tired

However, in July 1750, the Prussian king teasingly wrote to his gay secretary and reader, Claude Étienne Darget: "Mes hémorroïdes saluent affectueusement votre v[erge]" ('My hemorrhoids affectionately greet your cock'), which strongly suggests that he was sexually involved with men.[7][8]

To muddy Frederick's homosexual reputation, Frederick's physician von Zimmermann claimed that Frederick had convinced himself that he was impotent[85] due to a minor deformity he had received during an operation to cure gonorrhea in 1733. According to Zimmermann, Frederick pretended to be homosexual in order to appear as still virile and capable of intercourse, albeit with men.[72] This story is doubted by biographer Wolfgang Burgdorf, who is of the opinion that "Frederick had a physical disgust of women" and therefore "was unable to sleep with them".[86][87] The surgeon Gottlieb Engel, who prepared Frederick's body for burial, indignantly contested Zimmerman's story, saying the king's genitalia were "complete and perfect as those of any healthy man". [88] In similar terms, the doctors who were involved in washing Frederick's corpse on 17 August 1786 reported that the recently deceased king showed no abnormalities whatsoever in the genitals. Ollenroth, Rosenmeyer and Liebert, the three surgeons of the 1st Life Guards Battalion, wrote that "the blessed king's external birth parts were healthy and not mutilated". "The two testicles were in their natural position without the slightest defect; the spermatic cord could be clearly felt up to the entrance of the abdominal ring without the least hardening or distention; the male member was of natural size; there was not the slightest bit in the soft parts of the pubic region characteristic of a scar or induration, or of any disease ever involving these parts."[89]