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Prussia, with its capital at Königsberg and then, when it became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany. The name Prussia derives from the Old Prussians; in the 13th century, the Teutonic Knights – an organized Catholic medieval military order of German crusaders – conquered the lands inhabited by ...
- Overview
- Ducal Prussia and the Kingdom of Prussia, to 1786
Prussia, in European history, any of certain areas of eastern and central Europe, respectively (1) the land of the Prussians on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea, which came under Polish and German rule in the Middle Ages, (2) the kingdom ruled from 1701 by the German Hohenzollern dynasty, including Prussia and Brandenburg, with Berlin as its capital, which seized much of northern Germany and western Poland in the 18th and 19th centuries and united Germany under its leadership in 1871, and (3) the Land (state) created after the fall of the Hohenzollerns in 1918, which included most of their former kingdom and which was abolished by the Allies in 1947 as part of the political reorganization of Germany after its defeat in World War II.
The original Prussians, mainly hunters and cattle breeders, spoke a language belonging to the Baltic group of the Indo-European language family. These early Prussians were related to the Latvians and Lithuanians and lived in tribes in the then heavily forested region between the lower Vistula and Neman rivers. Their social organization was loose—although some elements of stratified society can be traced—and they were pagans. Early attempts to convert the Prussians to Christianity—notably those made by Saint Adalbert and Saint Bruno of Querfurt at the turn of the 11th century—were unsuccessful. In the 13th century, however, the Prussians were conquered and Christianized by the German-speaking knights of the Teutonic Order, which had been awarded Prussian lands by the Polish duke Conrad of Mazovia for help against Prussian incursions. The Prussian countryside was subdued, castles were built for German nobility, and many German peasants were settled there to farm the land. By the middle of the 14th century, the majority of the inhabitants of Prussia were German-speaking, though the Old Prussian language did not die out until the 17th century. By the 17th century the indigenous population was thoroughly assimilated.
The Teutonic Order’s last grand master in Prussia, Albert of Hohenzollern, became a Lutheran and, in 1525, secularized his fief, which he transformed into a duchy for himself. Thereafter until 1701 this territory (i.e., East Prussia) was known as Ducal Prussia. When Albert’s son and successor, Albert Frederick, died sonless in 1618, the duchy passed to his eldest daughter’s husband, the Hohenzollern elector of Brandenburg, John Sigismund.
The union of Ducal Prussia with Brandenburg was fundamental to the rise of the Hohenzollern monarchy to the rank of a great power in Europe. John Sigismund’s grandson Frederick William of Brandenburg, the Great Elector (reigned 1640–88), obtained by military intervention in the Swedish-Polish War of 1655–60 and by diplomacy at the Peace of Oliva (1660) the ending of Poland’s suzerainty over Ducal Prussia. This made the Hohenzollerns sovereign over Ducal Prussia, whereas Brandenburg and their other German territories were still nominally parts of the Reich under the theoretical suzerainty of the Holy Roman emperor. Frederick William was also able to set up a centralized administration in Prussia and to wrest control of the duchy’s financial resources from the nobility.
The most significant achievement of the Great Elector’s son Frederick (reigned 1688–1713) was to secure the royal dignity for himself as Frederick I, king in Prussia, crowning himself at Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) on January 18, 1701. Thereafter, the other Hohenzollern possessions, though theoretically remaining within the German Reich and under the ultimate overlordship of the Holy Roman emperor, soon came to be treated in practice rather as belonging to the Prussian kingdom than as distinct from it.
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Frederick I’s son Frederick William I began his reign in 1713 shortly before the conclusion of the Treaty of Utrecht, which assigned to him not only the so-called Upper Quarter of Geldern on the Meuse River but also the principality of Neuchâtel and Valengin on the border of France and Switzerland. Through participation in the Second Northern War, he further acquired much of western Pomerania (1720).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the newly annexed Royal Prussia and Warmia became the Province of West Prussia, while the Duchy of Prussia (along with part of Warmia) became the Province of East Prussia.
The Franco-German War of 1870–71 established Prussia as the leading state in the imperial German Reich. William I of Prussia became German emperor on January 18, 1871. Subsequently, the Prussian army absorbed the other German armed forces, except the Bavarian army, which remained autonomous in peacetime. Bismarck combined the offices of ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
In 1871 the Kingdom of Prussia became the largest constituent state of the German Empire and from then on its history became conjoined with that of Germany. The Prussian army absorbed most of the other German armed forces and retained its formidable reputation and considerable authority within the united German government.
After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the newly annexed Royal Prussia and Warmia became the Province of West Prussia, while the Duchy of Prussia (along with part of Warmia) became the Province of East Prussia.
Sep 16, 2024 · History of Europe - Prussia, Enlightenment, Unification: Frederick II had inherited a style of absolute government that owed much to the peculiar circumstances of Brandenburg-Prussia as it emerged from the Thirty Years’ War.
