Today the name is only for historical, geographical, or cultural use. The name Prussia is from the Borussi or Prussi people who lived in the Baltic region. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most German-speaking Prussians started thinking they were part of the German nation. They thought the Prussian way of life was very important:. From the late 18th century , this bigger Prussia had a lot of power in North Germany; it was the strongest in politics and economics, and it had the most people.
After a small number of Prussi people lived there, Germans came to live there too. Some parts of Prussia can be found in eastern Poland.
Before , a lot of western Poland was also in Prussia. Between and , Prussia also controlled Warsaw and most of central Poland. However, some regions were never part of Prussia, such as Oldenburg , Mecklenburg, and the Hanse city-states. North-east Germany was Protestant , so Prussians were mostly Protestant.
The states of south Germany especially Austria and Bavaria were Catholic, so they did not want Prussia to have the power. Prussia was mostly German, but in the late 18th century the new Polish areas had a lot of Polish people too. In , these Polish areas returned to Poland. He wanted them to fight the Prussian tribes on his borders.
They fought for more than years, then they created a new state. From , the Knights were under the King of Poland and Lithuania. In the leader of the Knights became a Protestant. At that time, the Duchy of Prussia was only the area east of the mouth of the Vistula River. He was also Margrave of Brandenburg. Brandenburg was under the Hohenzollern family. The name for the new state was Brandenburg-Prussia. In the middle of the state was Polish land, but Brandenburg-Prussia was moving away from Poland.
The wars ended in ; Prussia was now the most powerful state in eastern Germany. Other parts of Germany, including Pomerania , went to Prussia because of marriage or death.
In this time, the Prussian military machine grew, as did the administration system. Until these were at the heart of the German state. Now Prussia controlled land in the far east, e. He lost at Valmy and gave his western land to France. He gave more land to France at the Treaty of Tilsit. In Prussia won her lost land again, and also all the Rhineland and Westphalia and some other land. This land in the west was very important, especially the Ruhr valley.
It was the new centre of Germany's industrialisation, and the home of the weapons industry. In the early 19th century, the liberals in Germany wanted one federal, democratic Germany. The conservatives wanted Germany as a group of independent, weak states.
In revolution came to Europe — the liberals had a chance. Frederick William IV was worried. He allowed a National Assembly and a constitution. The new Frankfurt Parliament wanted to give Frederick William the crown of all Germany, but he did not want it.
He said that revolutionaries could not name kings. Now Prussia had a semi-democratic constitution, but really the nobility with land the Junkers had the power, especially in the east. Bismarck wanted the liberals and the conservatives to lose. He wanted to create a strong united Germany, but under the Junker, not under the western German liberals. The economic and political future looked good, if the leaders were clever.
But after 99 days, in the state had a new leader, William II. He fired Bismarck, who lost his job in , and William II started a new foreign policy. He made the army bigger, and the navy much bigger, and took risks; this took Germany into World War I. German peasants were brought in to farm the land and by around the majority of the population was German, though the Poles annexed part of Prussia in the following century, leaving the Knights with East Prussia.
Meanwhile Germans had conquered the Brandenburg area to the west and the margraves, or marcher lords, of Brandenburg became Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. Both Brandenburg and East Prussia fell under control of the Hohenzollern family, which mastered the Brandenburg hereditary nobility, the Junkers, and began the long march to power in Europe which was to end with the First World War and the abdication of the Kaiser in The formidable Frederick William of Brandenburg, known as the Great Elector, who ruled from to his death in , made Brandenburg-Prussia the strongest of the northern German states, created an efficient army and fortified Berlin.
There could not be a king of Brandenburg, which was part of the Empire, and there could not be a king of Prussia, because part of it was in Poland. By an ingenious formula, however, Frederick was permitted to call himself king in Poland. Brandenburg from then on, though still theoretically part of Germany owing allegiance to the Emperor, was treated in practice as part of the Prussian kingdom. Frederick and his second wife, Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, sister of George I of England, turned their court at Berlin into a miniature Versailles where French was the first language, French etiquette was de rigeur and the king trotted about in high-heeled red shoes and a long wig to hide his hump, spending money like water and doing his best to emulate Louis XIV.
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