Prussia (redirected from Prussian king)

Prussia (prŭsh`ə), Ger. Preussen, former state, the largest and most important of the German states. Berlin was the capital. The chief member of the German Empire (1871–1918) and a state of the Weimar Republic (1919–33), Prussia occupied more than half of all Germany and the major part of N Germany. Before 1919 it consisted of 13 provinces: Berlin, Brandenburg, East Prussia (separated after 1919 from the rest of Prussia by the Polish Corridor), Hanover, Hesse-Nassau (see Hesse), Hohenzollern (a Prussian enclave between Württemberg and Baden in SW Germany), Pomerania, Rhine Province, Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Upper Silesia and Lower Silesia, and Westphalia. (Grenzmark Posen–West Prussia was sometimes considered a 14th province.) Prussia surrounded several smaller German states and stretched from the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg in the west to those of Lithuania and Poland in the east, and from the Baltic Sea, Denmark, and the North Sea in the north to the Main River, the Thuringian Forest, and the Sudetes Mts. in the south.

The region that was Prussia is made up mainly of low-lying land, drained by several rivers, notably the Rhine; the Weser; the Oder; and the Elbe, which divided the state into roughly equal eastern and western parts. After Berlin, the largest cities of the area were Cologne, Breslau (Wrocław), Essen, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Hanover, Dortmund, Magdeburg, and Königsberg (Kaliningrad). The region also included the gigantic industrial Ruhr district.

Industrially and politically the most prominent state of Germany prior to World War II, Prussia was partitioned among the four Allied occupation zones after 1945. In 1947 the Allied Control Council for Germany formally abolished the state of Prussia. This action not only confirmed an accomplished fact; it was also intended as a blow against the spirit of German militarism and aggression, long held to be connected with Prussia. Most of the former Prussian provinces became part of the new states of the Federal Republic of Germany and of the German Democratic Republic (now reunified). The USSR annexed the northern part of East Prussia; Poland acquired the rest of East Prussia, as well as all Prussian territory E of the Oder and Neisse rivers.

History

Growth of Brandenburg-Prussia

Prussia in its modern meaning came into existence only in 1701, when the elector of Brandenburg assumed the title "king in Prussia." Before then Prussia meant only the flat, sandy region later known as East Prussia (excluding the bishopric of Ermeland), separated from Brandenburg by a part of Poland (later known as West Prussia) and bordering on the Baltic Sea. The original inhabitants, the Borussi (or Prussians), were of Baltic stock. They were conquered and largely exterminated by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th cent. The Knights effected the Germanization of Prussia.

Through the secularization (1525) of the domain of the Teutonic Order by the grand master Albert of Brandenburg, the domain became a hereditary duchy under Polish suzerainty, ruled by a branch of the Hohenzollern dynasty of Brandenburg. In 1618 the duchy of Prussia passed through inheritance to the elector of Brandenburg, and in 1660, by the treaty of Oliva, full independence from Polish suzerainty was confirmed to Frederick William, the Great Elector. In the course of the 17th cent. the electors of Brandenburg directed themselves westward, acquiring the duchy of Cleves, together with the counties of Mark and Ravensberg (1614) and the bishoprics of Minden, Magdeburg, and Halberstadt (1648). In the east, Brandenburg gained (1648) Farther (i.e., eastern) Pomerania, which connected it with the Baltic Sea but not with Prussia.

Rise of the Prussian State

The electorate with its dependencies had become a major German state by the end of the 17th cent., a position that it owed largely to the secularization of church lands during the Reformation (the major part of its new acquisitions had been ecclesiastic territory) and to its successful diplomacy at the Peace of Westphalia (1648). In 1701, Elector Frederick III had himself crowned "king in Prussia" at Königsberg (Kaliningrad) and styled himself King Frederick I. He remained a prince of the Holy Roman Empire by virtue of his rank as margrave and elector of Brandenburg and his holdings within the empire, but not as king of Prussia, which lay outside the imperial boundaries. This technicality gave the kings of Prussia a measure of independence from the emperor not possessed by the other princes of the empire.

As a result of the Northern War, Prussia gained (1720) the eastern part of Swedish Pomerania (including Stettin). In the following 20 years, however, King Frederick William I, the true creator of the Prussian state, avoided military ventures and used diplomacy in order to create a unified state. He fully developed the features that had distinguished Prussia since the time of the Great Elector. The army, necessary to defend Prussia's scattered lands, was also the chief force in unifying and shaping the state. In order to build a strong army in their relatively poor country, Prussia's rulers developed a government-controlled economy and an obedient central bureaucracy (the Generaldirektorium). The landed aristocrats, the Junkers, were brought into military and state service and in turn were left free to enserf their peasants.

Frederick William's successor, Frederick II, or Frederick the Great (reigned 1740–86), used the efficient military instrument bequeathed him by his father to enter upon a period of conquest. On a slim pretext (see Silesia) and without a declaration of war, he invaded (1740) Austrian territory, thus gaining the initiative in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48). Acting with utter disregard for its allies, Prussia got out of the war in 1742 by the Treaty of Berlin, reentered it in 1744, and quit again in 1745 at the Treaty of Dresden. In both treaties Maria Theresa of Austria was forced to cede nearly all of Silesia to Prussia. Although it gained no additional territory in the Seven Years War (1756–63), Prussia emerged from the war as the chief military power of the Continent. By the partition of Poland of 1772 (see Poland, partitions of) Prussia gained Pomerelia (except Danzig) and Ermeland. Pomerelia was organized into the province of West Prussia, and the original Prussia became known as East Prussia.

Frederick was succeeded (1786) by Frederick William II, who further added to Prussia by the partitions of Poland of 1793 and 1795. However, under his rule and that of his successor, Frederick William III (1797–1840), Prussia underwent a period of eclipse as a result of the French Revolutionary Wars and the wars of Napoleon I. Defeated by the French, Prussia withdrew from the antirevolutionary coalition in the Treaty of Basel (1795) and remained neutral until 1806. Its armies were crushed by Napoleon in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt, and in 1807 Prussia had to accept the harsh Treaty of Tilsit, by which it lost all lands W of the Elbe and most of its share of Poland and became a virtual dependency of France.

Prussia was fortunate to possess, at this low ebb in its history, such able and energetic reformers as Karl vom und zum Stein, Karl August von Hardenberg, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. These men helped transform Prussia into a progressive state by abolishing serfdom and nobiliary privileges, introducing agrarian and other social and economic reforms, and laying the groundwork for an exemplary system of universal education. Gerhard von Scharnhorst and August, Graf von Gneisenau at the same time put the Prussian army on a modern basis.

Prussia was forced to send auxiliary troops for Napoleon's 1812 campaign in Russia, but late in the year Yorck von Wartenburg concluded a separate truce with Russia, and in 1813 Prussia joined the coalition against France. Field Marshal Blücher played a major role in defeating Napoleon at Leipzig (1813) and at Waterloo (1815). At the Congress of Vienna, Prussia gained, in addition to its recovered territories, the entire Rhine prov. and Westphalia, the northern half of Saxony, the remainder of Swedish Pomerania, and a large part of W Poland, including Danzig (Gdańsk), Poznań, and Gniezno. However, Prussia disappointed the hopes of German liberals by following the lead of the Austrian chancellor, Metternich, in the Holy Alliance.

A constitution promised in 1811 failed to materialize under the increasingly reactionary government of Frederick William III, and the half-hearted constitutional schemes of Frederick William IV were impracticable. By 1834 Prussia had, however, taken the lead in the economic unification of Germany (see Zollverein), which was a prerequisite to political union. The March Revolution of 1848 was put down by force, and in 1849 Frederick William IV refused the imperial crown of Germany offered by the Frankfurt Parliament. His scheme for a German Union under Prussian leadership and excluding Austria was punctured in the Convention of Olomouc (1850), and Prussia returned to the restored German Confederation.

Supremacy of Prussia

In 1861, William I (regent since 1858) became king, and in 1862 he appointed as premier Otto von Bismarck, who directed the destiny of Prussia and (after 1871) of Germany until 1890. Bismarck effected the elimination of Austria from German affairs and the union of Germany under Prussian hegemony by means of three deliberately planned wars. The first war (1864) was fought in alliance with Austria against Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein. Its settlement furnished a pretext for the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, in which Prussia quickly and thoroughly defeated Austria and its allies and gained additional territory by the annexation of Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Nassau, Schleswig-Holstein, and the free city of Frankfurt am Main. The German Confederation was dissolved, and the Prussian-led North German Confederation took its place. Finally, in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), the North German Confederation overwhelmed France, and in 1871 William I of Prussia was proclaimed emperor of Germany.

In its main features the subsequent history of Prussia was that of Germany. However, Bismarck's Kulturkampf against the Roman Catholic Church was largely confined to the kingdom of Prussia, which, like the other German states, continued as an individual member of the empire.

The Prussian constitution adopted in 1850 and amended in the following years was far less liberal than the federal constitution of the empire. The government was not responsible to the Prussian Landtag (lower chamber), whose powers were small and whose members were elected by a suffrage system based on tax-paying ability. The house of lords was largely controlled by the conservative Junkers, who held immense tracts of generally poor land E of the Elbe (particularly in East Prussia). Endowed with little money and much pride, they had continued to form the officer corps of the army. The rising industrialists, notably the great Rhenish and Westphalian mine owners and steel magnates, although their interests were often opposed to those of the Junkers, exerted an equally reactionary influence on politics. The Prussian constitution was liberalized after Prussia became a republic in 1918, and the Junkers lost many of their estates through the cession of Prussian territory to Poland. However, both the Junkers and the Rhenish industrialists continued to exert much power behind the scenes, and when Franz von Papen became (1932) German chancellor and commissioner for Prussia, they came into their own. In July, 1932, Papen suspended the Prussian parliament and ousted the Social Democrat Otto Braun, who had been premier of Prussia (with brief interruptions) from 1920.

Early in 1933, Adolf Hitler seized power and made Hermann Goering premier of Prussia; Hitler's rise had been aided by the Rhenish industrialists. By a decree of Hitler issued in Jan., 1934, the German states ceased to exist as political units, and it was no longer possible to differentiate clearly between Prussia and the rest of Germany. After World War II, in 1947, Prussia was officially dissolved by the Allied Control Council, which characterized the state as "a bearer of militarism and reaction in Germany." The former state was divided among the former West and East Germanies, Poland, and the USSR's Russian Republic (now Russia).

Bibliography

The classic histories of Prussia are those of Ranke, Treitschke, and Droysen. See also H. Tuttle, History of Prussia (4 vol., 1884–96, repr. 1971); Sir John A. R. Marriott and C. G. Robertson, The Evolution of Prussia (1915, rev. ed. 1946); S. B. Fay, The Rise of Brandenburg-Prussia to 1786 (1937, rev. ed. 1981); F. L. Carsten, Origins of Prussia (1954); T. M. Barker, ed., Frederick the Great and the Making of Prussia (1976); H. W. Koch, A History of Prussia (1987); C. Clark, Iron Kingdom (2006).

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Prussia

 German Preussen

In European history, any of three areas of eastern and central Europe. The first was the land of the Prussians on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea, which came under Polish and German rule in the Middle Ages. The second was the kingdom ruled from 1701 by the German Hohenzollern dynasty, including Prussia and Brandenburg, with Berlin as its capital. It seized much of northern Germany and western Poland in the 18th–19th century and united Germany under its leadership in 1871. The third was the 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.

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Prussia

a former German state in N and central Germany, extending from France and the Low Countries to the Baltic Sea and Poland: developed as the chief military power of the Continent, leading the North German Confederation from 1867--71, when the German Empire was established; dissolved in 1947 and divided between East and West Germany, Poland, and the former Soviet Union. Area: (in 1939) 294 081 sq. km (113 545 sq. miles)

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Prussia 

(Preussen), a state that arose as a result of military expansion by German feudal lords in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. A bulwark of reaction and militarism in Germany, Prussia was finally abolished after fascist Germany’s defeat in World War II.

Prussia evolved out of the Electorate of Brandenburg, created in the course of German feudal aggression against the Slavic peoples from the 12th century onward and out of the state established by the Teutonic Knights. In founding its state, the Knights fought wars of extermination against the Prussian tribes (from whom the name “Prussia” is derived) in the 13th century and seized Slavic, chiefly Polish, lands in the 14th century. At the beginning of the 16th century Albrecht of the Ho-henzollern dynasty, which had come to power in Brandenburg in 1415, was elected grand master of the Teutonic Knights. After the Thirteen Years’ War with Poland (1454–66) the Knights became a vassal of Poland; Prussia remained a fief dependency of Poland until the 1660’s.

In 1618 the united state of Brandenburg-Prussia was established under the rule of the Electors of Brandenburg. Its policies reflected the dynastic interests of the Hohenzollerns and the Junkers (owners of estates employing serf labor and producing for the market). The most oppressive forms of serfdom prevailed in Prussia. Militarism, a characteristic feature of Hohen-zollern policy, left its imprint on the subsequent history of Prussia. The Hohenzollerns took advantage of Germany’s fragmentation and the weakness of the small German principalities to enlarge their state at the expense not only of Slavic lands but also of German territories. In 1701 the elector Frederick III received the royal title from the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in return for a contingent of troops for the imminent War of the Spanish Succession. Brandenburg-Prussia became the Kingdom of Prussia.

During the reign of Frederick II, who ruled from 1740 to 1786, some two-thirds of the annual budget of the kingdom was allocated for military expenditures, and the Prussian Army became the largest in Western Europe. A militaristic, police-bureaucratic regime was established that ruthlessly suppressed any manifestation of free thinking. Prussia waged numerous wars of expansion. During the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), it seized most of Silesia. In the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) it sought to gain control of Saxony, the part of Pom-erania that was still free of Prussian domination, and Courland, and it hoped to strengthen its influence among the small German states, thereby undermining Austria’s influence. However, it suffered a major defeat by Russian troops at Gross Jägersdorf in 1757 and at the battle of Kunersdorf in 1759. In 1760, Russian troops occupied Berlin, the Prussian capital. Disaster was averted only because of disagreements among Prussia’s greatest enemies (Austria, Russia, and France) and the accession to the Russian throne of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp as Peter III after the death of Elizaveta Petrovna in 1761. Peter III made peace and formed an alliance with Frederick II.

During the last third of the 18th century, Prussia, together with tsarist Russia and Austria, took part in three partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as a result of which Prussia seized Poznań, central Poland (including Warsaw), Gdańsk, Toruń, and a number of other areas. By the end of the 18th century the Hohenzollerns had increased Prussia’s territory to more than 300,000 sq km.

During the Great French Revolution, Prussia and Austria formed the nucleus of the first anti-French coalition of European monarchies in 1792. However, after several defeats Prussia was compelled to sign the Treaty of Basel with France in 1795. In 1806, soon after Prussia joined the fourth anti-French coalition, the Prussian Army was defeated by Napoleon at the battles of Jena and Auerstädt. By the Treaty of Tilsit, concluded in 1807, Prussia lost about half of its territory. Prussia’s defeat, vividly demonstrating the rottenness of the Prussian state and feudal serf-owning system, prompted H. F. K. vom und zum Stein and K. A. von Hardenberg to introduce several bourgeois reforms, such as granting the peasants their personal freedom in 1807. A military reform proposed by G. von Scharn-horst and A. W. A. von Gneisenau was also implemented. The reform prepared the way for the introduction of compulsory military service for almost the entire adult male population.

In 1812 the Prussian government, betraying the country’s national interests, sent contingents to take part in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. The defeat of Napoleon’s army in Russia sparked the German people’s war of liberation against the Napoleonic oppression. By the Vienna peace settlement in 1815, Prussia received two-fifths of the territory of Saxony, as well as lands along the Rhine (the Rhineland and Westphalia). Its population now exceeded 10 million. A customs union (Zollvereiri) that included many German states was established in 1834. The union was dominated by Prussia.

During the spring of 1848 a bourgeois-democratic revolution broke out in Prussia, as in a number of other German states. The main issue was the unification of the country on a democratic basis. The revolutionaries believed that this process could be carried out consistently and fully only by establishing a unified democratic republic in Germany. Such a move, however, was opposed by the Prussian ruling circles. For this reason, K. Marx and F. Engels advocated the abolition of the Prussian state, calling upon German democrats to come to the defense of the Poles so that together they might liberate both nations. The Prussian military elite, however, crushed the Polish liberation uprising in Poznań and later dealt harshly with the German revolutionary and democratic forces. The Revolution of 1848–49 in Germany did not succeed in overthrowing the monarchy and the reactionary forces.

An antidemocratic constitution was introduced in Prussia in 1850, remaining in effect until 1918. In the interest of the Junkers a law was passed permitting the peasants to buy their release from feudal obligations. The development of capitalism in agriculture along the “Prussian path” brought great misery upon the peasants. The Prussian government, headed by O. von Bismarck from 1862, persistently strove to establish Prussian domination in Germany. The Prussian rulers helped the tsarist government suppress the Polish liberation uprising in 1863–64, in return for which tsarist Russia did not oppose Prussia’s struggle for hegemony in Germany. In 1864, Prussia and Austria began a war with Denmark, seizing Schleswig-Holstein. Two years later Prussia fought a war with Austria and the small German states allied with Austria. At the end of the war, known as the Seven Weeks’ War, Prussia annexed Hanover, Hesse-Cas-sel, Nassau, Schleswig-Holstein, and Frankfurt am Main. By defeating Austria, Prussia eliminated its rival in the struggle for dominance in Germany and paved the way for the unification of Germany under its leadership. In 1867, Prussia created the North German Confederation.

In 1870–71, Prussia waged a war against France, as a result of which it seized the French regions of Alsace and eastern Lorraine and received an indemnity of 5 billion francs. The formation of the German Empire was proclaimed on Jan. 18, 1871. Prussia maintained its dominant position in the unified Germany. The Prussian king was simultaneously the German emperor, and the Prussian prime minister until 1918 usually occupied the post of imperial chancellor as well as that of Prussian minister of foreign affairs. The Prussian system, becoming firmly established in the German Empire, manifested itself with particular force under imperialism. Prussian German militarists played an enormous role in unleashing World War I.

During the November Revolution of 1918 in Germany the Hohenzollern dynasty was overthrown, but the dominant position of the monopolies and the Junkers was untouched. Prussia became one of the states (Länder) in the Weimar Republic, but it retained its hold on the country’s economic and political life. With the establishment of a fascist dictatorship in Germany in January 1933, the Prussian state machinery merged with that of the Third Reich. Along with the rest of Germany, Prussia was converted to fascism.

The defeat of fascist Germany in World War II and the abolition of the German fascist state, which had embodied in an extreme form the worst traits of Prussian German imperialism and militarism, dealt a strong blow to the forces of reaction and militarism in Germany. In accordance with the decisions reached at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, the city of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) and the adjacent region were transferred to the Soviet Union, and Poland was given its original lands east of the Oder and Western Neisse, areas that Prussia had taken from Poland. Among these lands was the greater part of East Prussia, which over the centuries had been the bridgehead for German aggression against Russia and Poland. Prussian territory west of the Oder and Western Neisse remained within Germany.

Radical socioeconomic changes were carried out in 1945–46 on the Prussian territory that was included in the Soviet occupation zone. Agrarian reforms and the nationalization of large-scale industry removed the Junkers and monopolists from the economic and political life of the eastern part of Germany. Measures were taken to assure demilitarization, denazification, and democratization. On Feb. 25, 1947, the Allied Control Council in Germany adopted a law abolishing the Prussian state.

REFERENCES

Marx, K. “Podvigi Gogentsollernov.” In K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 6.
Marx, K. “Bozhestvennoe pravo Gogentsollernov.” Ibid., vol. 12.
Marx, K. “Polozhenie v Prussii.” Ibid., vol. 12.
Engels, F. “Rol’ nasiliia v istorii.” Ibid., vol. 21.
Lenin, V. I. “Agrarnaia programma sotsial-demokratii v pervoi russkoi revoliutsii 1905–1907 godov.” Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 16.
Lenin, V. I. “Tsabern.” Ibid., vol. 24.
Marks i Engel’s o reaktsionnom prussachestve, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1943.
Erusalimskii, A. Likvidatsiia prusskogo gosudarstva. Moscow, 1947.
Rotshtein, F. A. Iz istorii prussko-germanskoi imperii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1948.
Norden, A. Uroki germanskoi istorii. Moscow, 1948. (Translated from German.)
Abusch, A. Lozhnyi put’ odnoi natsii. Moscow, 1962. (Translated from German.)
Des volkes Feind: Über die Rolle des deutschen Militarismus in der neuen und neuesten Zeit. Berlin, 1961.
Droysen, J. G. Geschichte der preussischen Politik, vols. 1–5. Berlin, 1868–86.
Ranke, L. Zwölf Bücher preussischer Geschichte, Vols. 1–4. Berlin, 1929.
Vogler, G., and K. Vetter. Preussen von den Anfängen bis zur Reichsgründung. Berlin, 1970.

E. A. VOLINA