During his early years, George Frederick Charles was instructed by his very religious mother, and later received a careful formal education in Bielefeld. From 1700 to 1704 he travelled to western Europe as part of a traditional educational journey, and visited, among other countries, Denmark, France and the Dutch Republic. Later, he studied four years at the University of Utrecht. After the death of his father in 1708 he returned with his family, who had lived since 1704 in the Schloss Weferlingen near Magdeburg, and assumed the nominal title of Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth-Kulmbach. Schloss Weferlingen had been assigned to his family as an appanage by King Frederick I of Prussia, after George Frederick Charles's heavily indebted father had renounced his succession rights to the Franconian Hohenzollern estates of Bayreuth and Ansbach in favour of Prussia in the Contract of Schönberg. George Frederick Charles nonetheless tried to recover his rights after the death of his father and sought the abolition of this contract. He was able to secure the support of the Franconian states, who feared being merged into the Franconian Circle by Prussia. George Frederick Charles could also rely on the decisive assistance of the Archbishop of Mainz and Prince-Bishop of Bamberger Lothar Franz von Schönborn and his nephew, the Imperial Vice-Chancellor Frederick Karl von Schönborn, who supported the abolition of the Contract of Schönberg. His efforts finally succeeded only in 1722 after long and difficult discussions and the payment of a substantial indemnity to Prussia. When the Margrave Georg Wilhelm died in 1726 without surviving male issue, George Frederick Charles assumed the principality of Bayreuth without further difficulties. After his accession, George Frederick Charles put great value on the improvement of the ruined finances of his territories and made local government his highest priority. In contrast to many of his contemporary rulers, he had no political or military ambitions. Instead he was very pious and intensely supported August Hermann Francke in inculcating the importance of religious life for his subjects. He was remarkable for his support of orphanages. He was uninterested in court life, and in his last years built up Schloss Himmelkron, a former monastery, probably with plans to retire there. In the memoirs of his daughter-in-law Wilhelmine of Prussia, George Frederick Charles is described as a thin, bandy-legged, egotistical, wrong-headed, jealous person. The antipathy was mutual. The margrave harassed his daughter-in-law in much the same way that her parents had done. When Wilhelmine gave birth to a daughter, it destroyed George Frederick Karl's hopes to take charge of his grandchild's upbringing, since he was allowed to supervise the education of his son Frederick's child only if it were a boy, according to the marriage contract signed with Wilhelmine. Frederick supported his wife and the drunk margrave hit him with his stick without injuring him.
After seven years of unhappy marriage, George Frederick Charles and Dorothea separated in 1716. Eight years later, their marriage was formally dissolved. Dorothea later emigrated to Sweden, where she died in 1761, twenty years after her former husband. Neither of them remarried.
