William Shakespeare | William Laud | William Blake | William | William III of England | William Morris | William McKinley | William Howard Taft | William Ewart Gladstone | William the Conqueror | William S. Burroughs | William Shatner | William Faulkner | William Randolph Hearst | William Wordsworth | William Tecumseh Sherman | Frederick the Great | William Hogarth | Prince William, Duke of Cambridge | William Penn | William Jennings Bryan | William Gibson | Frederick | William Wilberforce | William James | William Makepeace Thackeray | Fort William | William Hanna | Frederick II | William Hague |
In 1840 Alexander von Humboldt accompanied Prussian King Frederick William IV on the way to Königsberg, and Humboldt received an honorary membership in the Society.
As a consequence of the Revolutions of 1848, King Frederick William IV was offered the crown of a united Germany by the Frankfurt Parliament.
The Academy's foreign members and lecturers included Niebuhr, Akerblad, Thorwaldsen, as well as sovereigns, Frederick William IV of Prussia and Charles Albert of Sardinia.
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.