The remains of Frederick the Great were returned to his beloved Sans Souci palace Saturday for burial alongside his faithful greyhounds, fulfilling the Prussian king's last wish 205 years too late in a Germany still wrestling with the militaristic image that was his legacy.
The sarcophagi of Frederick and his father, the "soldier king" Frederick William I, arrived in Potsdam aboard a vintage train, then were carried by horse-drawn wagon to the castle grounds, where thousands of spectators waited in a hissing rain.Unification of the two Germanys made the kings' final journey possible from the ancestral castle of the Hohenzollern dynasty in the south to the rococo Sans Souci in what used to be the communist east.
But public opinion about "Old Fritz" and Prussia was anything but united on the anniversary of his death.
About 1,500 demonstrators, including a mock funeral party, protested against the ceremony, especially the participation of an eight-member Bundeswehr honor guard and Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who interrupted his Austrian vacation "to pay my respects."
"Today it's Old Fritz's bones - in the next war, it's yours," read one protester's banner. Others shouted slogans such as, "Nazis out!"
Outside the palace gates, a smiling youth handed out neo-Nazi leaflets announcing the founding of the United States of the German East in the German Reich and demanding the return of all prewar German territories.
Scuffles broke out between small numbers of demonstrators, police and counter-demonstrators, authorities said, but no arrests or injuries were reported.
Saturday's reinterment was viewed by critics, among them many historians, clergy and liberals, as a "state funeral" for a monarch who expanded his realm through three of his era's bloodiest wars, molding Prussia into a state that became synonymous with military might.
Adolf Hitler later appropriated the Prussian tradition for his Nazi troops, and he so admired Frederick the Great and his father that he ordered their remains hidden in a salt mine when Allied bombs began falling near Potsdam.
The Americans found the royal remains and moved them to what became West Germany, where they remained until Saturday.
By nightfall, police estimated that 80,000 people had filed past Frederick the Great's casket, draped with the black and white Prussian flag, on display in the palace courtyard beneath a black canopy.