Prussia
The national name Prussia (in Prussian: Prusa, Preussische & German: Preußen, Polish: Prusy, Lithuanian Prusai, Latin: Pruthenia or Borussia) was used by a wide variety of political factions during the 2nd millennium. At different times it has denoted a geographical region, a dukedom, a Polish province, a Polish fief, a kingdom under Brandenburg's rule which became the leading kingdom of the German Empire, comprising in its last form almost two-thirds of the Empire's area.
Though rapidly losing its sense of identity and with no political unity, Prussia still exists as a dispersed nation in exile following the decision to "delete" Prussia after World War II. For the vast majority however, Prussia is remembered only in History for its role in uniting Germany and is still, especially abroad, often wrongly perceived as a synonymous term for Germany. In a good light, some emphasise Prussia's role in the Enlightenment, when it was a land of religious & ethnic tollerance home to artists and intellectuals. In a less flattering light the Term "Prussia" also conjurs images of militarism since its ancient militaristic traditions and culture which were decisive in making it Germany's most powerful kingdom. Thus it must be stressed that the use of the term "Prussia" today therefore depends much on context which a reader should try to deduce from the individual materials being studied.
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2 After World War II 3 Notable Persons of Prussian History 4 Further reading 5 External links |
Prussia's Historic Roots
The land extending from the south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea to the Masurian Lakes district was called "Prussia" by its Polish neighbours in the 10th century. People inhabiting those lands from at least the 5th century BCE spoke a variety of languages belonging to the western branch of the Baltic language group, whose modern representatives are Latvian and Lithuanian. At the end of the 1st century the Prussian settlements were divided into tribal domains, separated from one another by uninhabitated areas of forest, swamp and marsh. The basic territorial communities called Laukses were formed by groups of farms, which shared economic interests, the desire for safety and generally accepted conditions of coexistence. The supreme power in each Lauks laid in general gatherings of all adult males, which discussed important matters concerning the community and elected the leader and the chief. The leader was responsible for the supervision of the everyday matters, while the chief was in charge of the road and watchtower building, and for the border defence.
Because the Baltic tribes inhabiting Prussia never formed a common political and territorial organisation (a state), they had no reason to adopt a common ethnic name. Instead they used the name of the region from which they came - Galindians, Sambians, Bartians, Nadrovians, Natangians, Scalovians and Sudovians. It is not known when and how the first general names came into being in the lands that did not have a tribe name tradition such as Pomesania, Pogesania or Sasinia in the western peripheries of the Prussian settlements. Parts of the Baltic region retained wilderness areas for longer than almost anywhere else in Europe. Tacitus may have been referring to peoples living in what was later East Prussia when, in AD 98, he wrote of the Aesti in his Germania. These people may have been those later known as the Aesti-Prussi, who lived between the Vistula and Niemen rivers and spoke a Baltic rather than a Germanic language. Tacitus referred to all the tribes living near the Mare Suebicum, or the Baltic Sea, under the collective name of Suebi, a broad term which included also various peoples to the south, including the Lombards, Rugi, Burgundians, Semnoni, Vandals, Lugi, Silingi, Goths and others who made their homes near the Elbe, Oder and Vistula rivers.
16th century histories of Prussia link the name of the "Prussai" or "Prussi," and thereby Prussia, to a place called "Prutenia". According to these histories, most likely based on heroic sagas, Pruteno (or Bruteno) was a priest king, brother of the legendary king Widewuto or Waidewut, who lived in the late 10th century. The regions of Prussia and their peoples are said to bear Widewuto's sons' names. These peoples include the Yatvingians and Sudovians. In the first half of the 13th century bishop Christian of Prussia recorded the history of a much earlier era. Adam of Bremen mentions Prussians in 1072.
The foundation of the Holy Roman Empire allowed the Ottonian Emperors the opportunity to continue to expand eastwards the holdings they had inherited from the East Frankish kingdom. They achieved this largely through continuing the Carolingian policy of co-opting local Slavic chieftains or ambitious war-leaders into a system of mutual defence and allegiance. This policy not only bound former enemies to the Emperor, but also prevented any of the Emperor's West Frankish leading men from expanding their own power bases eastward.
It is not surprising, then, that when the Duchy of Poland was established (c.962), the Polish dukes attempted to increase their territory. Where expansion offered the opportunity to convert pagan peoples to Christianity, the support of both Emperor and Pope was almost guaranteed. In 997, Boleslaus I, then duke of Poland, gave military protection to Saint Adalbert of Prague when he went to convert the Prussians. The Prussians resisted these attempts at conversion, which have been seen as an attempt to weaken their independence. Like many other missionaries, Adalbert was martyred by those he wished to convert.
The western part of Pomerelia-Prussia was christianised by Otto of Bamberg. In 1209 Pope Innocent III commissioned the Cistercian monk Christian of Oliva with the conversion of the still-pagan eastern Prussians. Christian afterwards became the first bishop of Prussia.
In 1220 Conrad of Masovia invaded and even conquered some of the Prussian territory in the Kulmerland. When the Prussians attempted to re-take their own territory, Conrad called on the pope and the emperor for a Crusade. The results were edicts calling for Crusades against the "marauding, heathen" Prussians. Many of Europe's knights joined in these Crusades, which lasted sixty years. In 1243, the Papal legate William of Modena divided Prussia into four bishoprics, Kulmerland, Pomesania, Ermland (Warmia), and Samland under the archbishopric of Riga.
The pope installed the Teutonic Knights, a crusading order that reported directly to the Papacy, as rulers of the area. Under their governance, woodlands were cleared and marshlands made arable. Many cities and villages were founded upon those lands, including Marienburg (now the Polish Malbork), the seat of the Knights' grand master. Many of these cities joined the Hanseatic League of northern European trading cities.
In 1410, with the death of the emperor Rupert, war broke out between the Teutonic Knights and a Polish-Lithuanian alliance supported by Russian and Tatar forces, in which Poland and Lithuania were the winners following their victory at Tannenberg. The Order assigned Henry XIII, duke of Reuss-Plauen, to defend Pomerania. He moved rapidly to bolster the defence of Marienburg, was elected vice-grand master and saved the Marienburg headquarters. He then became grand master and in 1411 concluded the First Treaty of Thorn with king Ladislaus II of Poland.
In March 1440, the Hanseatic cities of Gdansk, Elblag and Torun (then Danzig, Elbing and Thorn, respectively) founded the Prussian Confederation with other Prussian cities to free themselves from the overlordship of the Teutonic Knights. King Casimir IV of Poland supported their revolt (February 1454) in the War of the Cities or Thirteen Years' War. The resulting second Treaty of Torun (October 1466 provided for the Teutonic Order's cession to the Polish crown of its rights over the western half of its territories, which became the province of Polish or Royal Prussia. The eastern half of Prussia remained under the rule of the Order and its successors, until 1660 under Polish overlordship.
During the Reformation endemic religious upheavals and wars occurred, and in 1525, the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert of Brandenburg, a member of a cadet branch of the house of Hohenzollern, resigned his position, adopted the Lutheran faith and assumed the title of "Duke of Prussia." In a deal partially brokered by Martin Luther Ducal Prussia became the first Protestant state. In 1618 the dukedom of Prussia passed to the senior Hohenzollern branch, the ruling Margraves of Brandenburg.
The ducal capital of Königsberg (now the Russian city of Kaliningrad) became a centre of learning and printing, one of its noted sons, the leading mathematician and astronomer Johann Müller Regiomontanus (1436-76), naming himself after the Latin form of the city's name. In 1492 a life of Saint Dorothy of Montau, published in Malbork in Polish Prussia, became the first known printed publication from the region.
The second Treaty of Thorn had left eastern Prussia as a fief of the Polish crown. In 1660, after the Second Northern War between Sweden, Poland and Brandenburg, the Treaty of Welawa (Wehlau) granted full sovereignty to Frederick William I, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, as Duke of Prussia. The treaty also prescribed that when the Hohenzollern rule in the Ducal Prussia expired, the land would revert to the Polish crown. (Hohenzollern rule expired only in 1918, when Wilhelm II of Germany abdicated as German Emperor and King of Prussia, but East Prussia did not return to Poland until 1945, and even then only its southern part.)
In 1688, Frederick William I died and his possessions passed to his son Frederick III (ruled 1688-1713). With the exception of Prussia, all of Brandenburg's lands were a part of the Holy Roman Empire, by this time under the all but hereditary nominal rule of the House of Habsburg. Since there was only one King of the Germans within the Empire, Frederick gained the assent of the Emperor Leopold I (in return for alliance against France) to his adoption (January 1701) of the title of "King in Prussia", based on his non-Imperial territories, and the title came into general acceptance with the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). Though Brandenburg was far richer and more important than Prussia proper, it was gradually subsumed into the Kingdom of Prussia. The change was understood by all to be a shell game with titles, and the new nation was commonly called Brandenburg-Prussia.
Sweden's defeat by Russia, Saxony-Poland, Denmark-Norway, Hannover and Prussia in the Great Northern War (1700-1721) marked the end of Swedish power on the southern shores of the Baltic Sea. In the Prusso-Swedish peace treaty of Stockholm (January 1720), Brandenburg-Prussia regained Stettin and Sweden's holdings in Pomerania, most of which had been a part of Hohenzollern Brandenburg since 1472 (Outer Pomerania was annexed to Brandenburg-Prussia in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia).
During this time the trends set in motion by the Great Elector reached their culmination, as the Junkers - the landed aristocracy - were welded to the army which had gained so much influence in the previous fifty years.
In 1740, Frederick II (more commonly known as Frederick the Great) came to the throne and invaded Silesia, a province of Austria which was in turmoil after the death of the Emperor Charles VI. The invasion was the first shot of the War of the Austrian Succession (Silesia was to have passed to the rulers of Brandenburg on the extinction of its Piast dynasty according to a bilateral arrangement of 1537, subsequently vetoed by the Emperor Ferdinand I). After rapidly occupying Silesia, Frederick offered to protect the new Austrian Archduchess, Maria Theresa if the province were turned over to him. The offer was rejected, but Austria faced several other opponents, and Frederick was eventually able to gain formal cession with 1742's Treaty of Berlin.
To the surprise of many, Austria managed to renew the war successfully, and in 1744 Frederick invaded again to forestall reprisals and to claim, this time, the province of Bohemia. This time he failed, but French pressure on Austria's ally Britain led to a series of treaties and compromises (culminating in the 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle that restored peace and left Prussia still in possession of Silesia.
Humiliated by the cession of Silesia, Austria worked to secure an alliance with France and Russia, while Prussia drifted into the United Kingdom's camp (the "Diplomatic Revolution". When Frederick pre-emptively invaded Saxony and Bohemia over the course of a few months in 1756-1757, a general conflict broke out: the Seven Years' War.
This war was a desperate struggle for the Prussians, and the fact that they managed to fight much of Europe to a draw bears witness to Frederick's military skill. Facing Austria, Russia, France and Sweden simultaneously, and with only Hanover (and the non-continental British) as notable allies, he managed to hold off serious invasion until October 1760, when the Russian army briefly occupied Berlin and Königsberg. The situation became progressively grimmer, however, until the death of the Tsarina Elizabeth and the accession of the prussophile Peter III relieved the pressure on the eastern front. Sweden also dropped out of the war at about the same time. Defeating the Austrian army at the Battle of Burkersdorf, and relying on continuing British success against France in the war's colonial theatres, Prussia was finally able to force a status quo ante bellum on the continent. This result confirmed Prussia's major role in Germany and Europe as a whole. Frederick, appalled by the near-miss for his country, lived out his days as a much more peaceable ruler.
Prussia continued to grow through diplomatic means, however. To the east and south, Poland had gradually become weakened, and in 1772 Frederick was unable to resist the first of the Partitions of Poland between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The Kingdom of Prussia thus gained full sovereignty of Warmia and the Polish Royal Prussia, henceforth (until 1824, and again in 1878-1918) the province of West Prussia. After Frederick the Great died (in 1786), his nephew Fredrick William II continued the partitions through military and diplomatic force, gaining a large part of western Poland in 1793 and a large area (including Warsaw) to the south of East Prussia in 1795, when the Polish kingdom ceased to exist.
(History 1795-1871 up to Prussia's incorporation into the German Empire will follow.)
After World War II, Prussia as a state was formally dissolved by the Allied Control Council Decree No. 46 of February 25, 1947, which simply declared: "The state of Prussia, which has forever been the carrier of militarism and reaction in Germany, [...] shall herewith be dissolved."
The eastern parts of the pre-war Prussian state had been made parts of Poland and the Soviet Union at the Potsdam Conference, when the Odra-Nysa line was established as the new border between Poland and Germany. The remaining area of the former kingdom of Prussia is today distributed among many of Germany's sixteen Bundesländer (federal states), among them Berlin, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, and North Rhine-Westphalia.
Poland offered Prussians a chance to become Polish if they could speak Polish and pass a nationality examination. The Stalinists were much more harsh and deported every last person (prussian or other), who had not managed to flee to Germany, in trains to Central Asia & Siberia. Some parents however did managed to leave their younger children with simpathetic neighbouring Lithuanians. Many descendants of Prussians from the areas now known as Warmia, Mazury, Memel-Klaipedia, & Kaliningrad live today primarily in Siberia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania or Germany while some have returned to Kaliningrad.
Prussia in the Middle Ages
Early Modern Prussia
After World War II
Notable Persons of Prussian History
Also see :
Further reading
Publications in German
Publications in Polish
External links
Maps of Prussia
