Prussia

• 1. Teutonic Origins And Early Statehood

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  In 1211, King Andrew II of Hungary granted Burzenland in Transylvania as a fiefdom to the Teutonic Knights. This German military order of crusading knights operated from their headquarters in Acre within the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Order moved its operations to the Baltic Sea area after being expelled by Andrew II in 1225. Duke Konrad I of Masovia invited the Teutonic Knights to conquer pagan Prussian tribes on his borders in 1226. During sixty years of struggles against the Old Prussians, the Order established an independent state that came to control Prūsa. Around 1252 they finished the conquest of the northernmost Prussian tribe of the Skalvians and the western Baltic Curonians. They erected Memel Castle which developed into the major port city of Memel. The Treaty of Melno defined the final border between Prussia and the adjoining Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1422. The Hanseatic League officially formed in northern Europe in 1356 as a group of trading cities. This League held a monopoly on all trade leaving the interior of Europe and Scandinavia for foreign countries. In 1308, the Teutonic Knights conquered the region of Pomerelia with Danzig. Their monastic state was mostly Germanised through immigration from central and western Germany. In the south, it was Polonised by settlers from Masovia. The imposed Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 split Prussia into the western Royal Prussia and the eastern Duchy of Prussia. The western part became a province of Poland while the eastern part remained a feudal fief of the Crown of Poland until 1657.

• 2. Hohenzollern Ascension And Kingdom Formation

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  On the 10th of April 1525, after signing the Treaty of Kraków, Albert I resigned his position as Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. He received the title Duke of Prussia from King Zygmunt I the Old of Poland in the main square of the Polish capital Kraków. As a symbol of vassalage, Albert received a standard with the Prussian coat of arms from the Polish king. Albert I, a member of a cadet branch of the House of Hohenzollern, secularized the Order's Prussian territories and became a Lutheran Protestant. Brandenburg and Prussia united two generations later when Duchess Anna of Prussia married her cousin Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg in 1594. When Albert Frederick died in 1618 without male heirs, John Sigismund was granted the right of succession to the Duchy of Prussia. From this time the Duchy of Prussia was in personal union with the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The resulting state known as Brandenburg-Prussia consisted of geographically disconnected territories in Prussia, Brandenburg, and the Rhineland lands of Cleves and Mark. During the Thirty Years War which lasted from 1618 to 1648, various armies repeatedly marched across the disconnected Hohenzollern lands. The ineffective and militarily weak Elector George William fled from Berlin to Königsberg in 1637. His successor Frederick William I reformed the army to defend the lands. In January 1656 during the first phase of the Second Northern War he received the duchy as a fief from the Swedish king who later granted him full sovereignty in the Treaty of Labiau. In 1657 the Polish king renewed this grant in the treaties of Wehlau and Bromberg. With Prussia the Brandenburg Hohenzollern dynasty now held a territory free of any feudal obligations. On the 18th of January 1701, Elector Frederick III elevated Prussia from a duchy to a kingdom and crowned himself King Frederick I.

• 3. Frederick The Great And Military Hegemony

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  In 1740, Prussian troops crossed over the undefended border of Silesia and rapidly conquered the region. Silesia was the richest province of Habsburg Austria and signalled the beginning of three Silesian Wars between 1740 and 1763. By defeating the Austrian Army at the Battle of Mollwitz on the 10th of April 1741, Frederick succeeded in conquering Lower Silesia. In the next year 1742, he conquered Upper Silesia which became a vital region to Prussia greatly increasing the nation's area population and wealth. In the Third Silesian War part of the Seven Years War Frederick won a victory over Austria at the Battle of Lobositz on the 1st of October 1756. Despite being several times on the verge of defeat Frederick allied with Great Britain Hanover and Hesse-Kassel was finally able to hold the whole of Silesia against a coalition of Saxony the Habsburg monarchy France and Russia. On the 3rd of November 1760 the Prussian king won another battle the hard-fought Battle of Torgau. Voltaire once described Frederick the Great's Prussia by saying it was Sparta in the morning and Athens in the afternoon. During the last 23 years of his reign until 1786 Frederick II promoted the development of Prussian areas such as the Oderbruch. He built up Prussia's military power and participated in the First Partition of Poland with Austria and Russia in 1772. The partition added Polish Royal Prussia to the kingdom allowing Frederick to re-style himself King of Prussia. During this period he also opened Prussia's borders to immigrants fleeing from religious persecution in other parts of Europe. Prussia became a safe haven much in the same way that the United States welcomed immigrants seeking freedom in the 19th century.

• 4. Industrial Expansion And Unification Wars

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  In 1862, King Wilhelm I appointed Otto von Bismarck as Minister President of Prussia. Bismarck curried support from large sections of the people by promising to lead the fight for greater German unification. In 1864, Prussian and Austrian forces crossed the border between Holstein and Schleswig initiating the Second War of Schleswig. The Austro-Prussian forces defeated the Danes who surrendered both territories. In the resulting Gastein Convention of 1865 Prussia took over the administration of Schleswig while Austria assumed that of Holstein. The struggle for supremacy in Germany then led to the Austro-Prussian War which began in 1866. On the side of Prussia were Italy most north German states and some smaller central German states. Eventually the better-armed Prussian troops won the crucial victory at the Battle of Königgrätz under Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. As a result of these territorial gains Prussia now stretched uninterrupted across the northern two-thirds of Germany and contained two-thirds of Germany's population. The German Confederation was dissolved and Prussia impelled the 21 states north of the Main river into forming the North German Confederation. In 1870, the German states joined forces and quickly defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War following victory under Bismarck's leadership. Baden Württemberg and Bavaria accepted incorporation into a united German Empire. On the 18th of January 1871 William was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles outside Paris while the French capital was still under siege.

• 5. Weimar Democracy And The Prussian Coup

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  Because of the German Revolution of 1918 Wilhelm II abdicated as German Emperor and King of Prussia. Prussia was proclaimed a Free State within the new Weimar Republic and in 1920 received a democratic constitution. Almost all of Germany's territorial losses specified in the Treaty of Versailles were areas that had been part of Prussia. Many of the areas Prussia annexed in the partitions of Poland such as the provinces of Posen and West Prussia went to the Second Polish Republic. From 1919 to 1932 Prussia was governed by a coalition of the Social Democrats Catholic Centre and German Democrats. The East Prussian Otto Braun served as Prussian minister-president almost continuously from 1920 to 1932. He implemented several trend-setting reforms together with his minister of the interior Carl Severing which became models for the later Federal Republic of Germany. A Prussian minister-president could be forced out of office only if there was a positive majority for a potential successor. This concept known as the constructive vote of no confidence was carried over into the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. In contrast to its pre-war authoritarianism Prussia was a pillar of democracy in the Weimar Republic until this system was destroyed by the Preußenschlag or Prussian coup of Reich Chancellor Franz von Papen. On the 20th of July 1932 the government of the Reich deposed the Prussian government under the pretext that the latter had lost control of public order.

• 6. Nazi Centralization And Allied Abolition

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  After the appointment of Hitler as the new chancellor the Nazis used the absence of Franz von Papen as an opportunity to appoint Hermann Göring federal commissioner for the Prussian ministry of the interior. The Reichstag election of the 5th of March 1933 strengthened the position of the National Socialist German Workers Party although they did not achieve an absolute majority. In the centralised state created by the Nazis in the Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich states were dissolved in fact if not in law. From 1934 to 1945 almost all ministries were merged and only a few departments were able to maintain their independence. Hitler himself became formally the governor of Prussia but his functions were exercised by Hermann Göring as Prussian prime minister. The areas east of the Oder-Neisse line mainly Eastern Prussia Western Prussia Pomerania and Silesia were annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union in 1945 owing to the Treaty of Potsdam between three of the Allies. This included important Prussian cities like Danzig Königsberg Breslau and Stettin. The population fled mostly to the Western zones or was driven out. By Law No. 46 which was accepted and implemented by the Allied Control Council on the 25th of February 1947 Prussia was officially proclaimed to be dissolved.