Prussia

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The coat of arms of the Kingdom of Prussia, 1701-1918
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The coat of arms of the Kingdom of Prussia, 1701-1918

The word Prussia (German: Preußen (Preussen), Polish: Prusy, Lithuanian: Prusai) has had various (often contradictory) meanings:

In 1947 Prussia as a territorial unit was abolished. Since then the term's relevance has been limited to historical or geographical usages.

The name Prussia derives from the Borussi/Prussi, a Baltic people related to the Lithuanians. Ducal Prussia was a dependency of the Kingdom of Poland until 1660, and Royal Prussia remained a part of Poland until 1772. With the growth of German cultural nationalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most German-speaking Prussians came to consider themselves to be part of the German nation, often underlining what were seen as the Prussian virtues: perfect organization, sacrifice, the rule of law. From the late 18th century the expanded Prussia dominated North Germany both politically, economically and in terms of population size, and was the core of the unified German Empire formed in 1871.

Table of contents
1 Geography
2 Early History
3 Kingdom of Prussia
4 Imperial Prussia
5 The end of Prussia
6 See also
7 External links
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Geography

The flag of the Kingdom of Prussia, 1701-1918
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The flag of the Kingdom of Prussia, 1701-1918

Prussia began its existence as a small territory in what is now northern Poland and the Kaliningrad exclave of Russia. The region was sparsely populated by the Prussi. It was an area which soon became subject to German colonization. By the time of its abolition it stretched across the North German Plain from the French, Belgian and Dutch borders on the west to the Lithuanian border and to territories which are now in eastern Poland. At its greatest extend before 1918 it included much of western Poland as well. For a period between 1795 and 1807 Prussia also controlled most of central Poland, including Warsaw.

Before its abolition Prussia included, as well as what might be called "Prussia proper" (the regions of West Prussia and East Prussia, which now lie in Poland and Russia), the regions of Pomerania, Silesia, Brandenburg, Lusatia, Province of Saxony (now state of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany) Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Westphalia, Hesse, and some small detached areas in the south such as Hohenzollern, the home of the Prussian ruling family.

Being predominantly a north and east German state, Prussia had a large Protestant majority, although there were substantial Catholic populations in the Rhineland; also East Prussia, Posen, Silesia and West Prussia had populations of predominantly Catholic Poles. This in part explains why the Catholic south German states, Austria and Bavaria, resisted Prussian hegemony for so long. Despite its overwhelmingly German character, Prussia's annexations of Polish territory in the late 18th century brought with them a large and troublesome Polish minority. In 1918 most of Polish territories were returned to the newly reconstructed Polish state.

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Early History

In 1226 Conrad of Mazovia invited a German order of crusading knights, the Order of the Teutonic Knights, from Transylvania to conquer the Prussian tribes on his borders. After struggling against more than a century of resistance from the Prussians they created a semi-independent state, which eventually came to control most of what are now Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as parts of northern Poland. From 1466, the Knights had to acknowledge the sovereignty of the King of Poland and Lithuania. In 1525 the Master of the Order became a Protestant, and converted part of the Order's territories into the Duchy of Prussia within the Kingdom of Poland.

(for more on Prussia's early history see Origins of Prussia, Prussia under the Teutonic Order, Prussian Confederation, Duchy of Prussia)

The territory of the Duchy was at this time confined to the area east of the mouth of the Vistula, near the present border between Poland and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. In 1618 the Duchy was inherited by the Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg, who with approval of Polish crown was at the same time ruler of Prussia and Brandenburg, a German state centered on Berlin and ruled since the 15th century by the Hohenzollern dynasty. For Hohenzollern, the newly acquired state was very important, since it spread outside the reach of the Holy Roman Empire. This state, known as Brandenburg-Prussia, although divided into two parts separated by Polish territory, was steadily drawn out of the orbit of the declining Polish state. Under Frederick William, known as "the Great Elector," Prussia steadily acquired territories, including Magdeburg and enclaves west of the Rhine.

(for more on this period, see Brandenburg-Prussia and Royal Prussia)

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Kingdom of Prussia

Growth of Brandenburg-Prussia
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Growth of Brandenburg-Prussia
Expansion of Prussia
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Expansion of Prussia

In 1701 Brandenburg-Prussia became the Kingdom of Prussia under Frederick I, with the permission of the Holy Roman Emperor and Polish King. Under Frederick II (Frederick the Great), Prussia seized the province of Silesia from Austria, and defended it through the Seven Years War which ended in 1763 with Prussia as the dominant state of eastern Germany. Prussia also acquired various territories in other parts of Germany through marriage or inheritance, including Pomerania on the Baltic coast.

During this period the formidable Prussian military machine and efficient state bureaucracy were founded, institutions which were to form the foundations of the German state until 1945. Prussia greatly expanded its territories to the east during the Partitions of Poland between 1772 and 1795. (see New East Prussia and South Prussia), which brought territory as far east as Warsaw under Prussian rule.

Frederick William II led Prussia into war with revolutionary France in 1792, but was defeated at Valmy and was forced to cede his western territories to France. Frederick William III resumed the war, but suffered disaster at Jena and withdrew from the war after ceding yet more territory at the Treaty of Tilsit.

In 1813 Prussia renounced this treaty and rejoined the war against Napoléonic France. Her reward in 1815 was the recovery of her lost territories, as well as the whole of the Rhineland and Westphalia and some other territories. These western lands were to be of vital importance because they included the Ruhr valley, centre of Germany's future industrialisation, and particularly the arms industry. Prussia emerged from the Napoléonic Wars as the dominant power in Germany, overshadowing her long-time rival Austria. In exchange, Prussia withdrew from areas of central Poland to allow the creation of Congress Poland under Russian sovereignty.


The first half of the 19th century saw a prolonged struggle in Germany between the forces of liberalism, which wanted a united federal Germany under a democratic constitution, and the forces of conservatism, which wanted to keep Germany as a patchwork of weak independent states, with Prussia and Austria competing for influence. In 1848 the liberals got their chance when revolutions broke out across Europe. An alarmed Frederick William IV agreed to convene a National Assembly and grant a constitution. But when the Frankfurt Parliament offered Frederick William the crown of a united Germany, he refused, on the grounds that revolutionary assemblies could not grant royal titles. Prussia obtained a semi-democratic constitution, but the grip of the landowning classes (the junkers) remained unbroken.

(for more on this period see Kingdom of Prussia)


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Imperial Prussia

Prussia in the German Empire 1871-1918
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Prussia in the German Empire 1871-1918

In 1862 William I appointed Otto von Bismarck as Minister-President (prime minister). Bismarck was determined to defeat both the liberals and the conservatives, by creating a strong united Germany, but under the domination of the Prussian ruling class and bureaucracy, not the western German liberals. He achieved this by provoking three successive wars, with Denmark (1864), which gave Prussia Schleswig-Holstein, with Austria (1866), which allowed Prussia to annex Hanover and most other north German territories, and with the France (the Franco-Prussian War) in 1870, which allowed him to force Mecklenburg, Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg and Saxony to accept incorporation into a united German Empire, of which William I assumed the title of Emperor (Kaiser).

This was the high point of Prussia's fortunes, and had the country had wise leaders, Prussia's economic power and political status might have peacefully made her the centre of European civilisation. However, William II, who became Emperor in 1888, was a man of limited experience, narrow and reactionary views and poor judgement. After dismissing Bismarck in 1890 he embarked on a program of militarisation and adventurism in foreign policy that eventually led Germany into the disaster of World War I. The Prussian junkers and generals dominated the conduct of the war, so when it ended in defeat they had to accept responsibility. The Prussian monarchy was overthrown and Germany became a republic. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 created a new Polish state and forced Germany to cede a large swathe of territory to it. East Prussia found itself cut off from the rest of Germany by the Polish Corridor.


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The end of Prussia

At the end of World War I, the idea of breaking up Prussia into smaller states was considered, but eventually traditionalist sentiment prevailed and Prussia became the "Prussian Free State" (Freistaat Preußen), the largest state of the Weimar Republic. Since it included the industrial Ruhr and "Red Berlin", it became a stronghold of the left, being governed by a coalition of the Social Democrats and the Catholic Centre for most of the 1920s.

Prussia's democratic constitution was suspended in 1932 as a result of a coup by Germany's conservative Chancellor Franz von Papen, marking the effective end of German democracy. In 1933 Hermann Göring became Interior Minister of Prussia, a position he used to suppress all democratic opposition. In 1934 the Nazi regime abolished the autonomy of all the German states. Prussia continued to exist as a territorial unit until the end of the war.

In 1945 the armed forces of the Soviet Union occupied all of eastern and central Germany (including Berlin). Everything east of the Oder-Neisse line, including Silesia, Pomerania, eastern Brandenburg and East Prussia, was annexed by Poland (with the northern third of East Prussia, including Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, going to the Soviet Union). An estimated ten million Germans fled or were expelled from these territories (see expulsion of Germans after World War II). These expulsions, together with the nationalisation of land by the Communist regime in the German Democratic Republic, destroyed the junkers as a class and marked the effective end of Prussia as a social and political entity.

Prussia was formally abolished by a proclamation of the four occupying powers in Germany in 1947. In the Soviet Zone of Occupation, which became the German Democratic Republic in 1949, the former Prussian territories were reorganised into the states of Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt. In the western zones of occupation, which became the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, they were divided up among North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Schleswig-Holstein (with Baden-Württemberg taking the territory of Hohenzollern).

The idea of Prussia is not entirely dead in Germany. Since the reunification of Germany in 1991, there have suggestions that the states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg and Berlin should be amalgamated, and called Prussia. There does not seem to be much enthusiasm for this idea even among German conservatives, and the left-wing parties, who govern both nationally and in these three states at present, are firmly opposed to it. In 1996 a proposal to merge Berlin and Brandenburg was rejected by Brandenburg voters, though this was not seen as a decision relating to the revival of Prussia as a state.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, ethnic Germans from Kazakhstan have begun to settle in the Kaliningrad enclave of the Russian Federation, once northern East Prussia. Today about 10,000 ethnic Germans, mostly from other parts of Russia, live there.

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See also

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External links

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