Kingdom of Prussia

The Kingdom of Prussia (German: Königreich Preußen, pronounced [ˈkøːnɪkʁaɪç ˈpʁɔʏsn̩] ) was a German state that existed from 1701 to 1918. It played a significant role in the unification of Germany in 1871 and was a major constituent of the German Empire until its dissolution in 1918. Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. Its capital was Berlin.

The kings of Prussia were from the House of Hohenzollern. The polity of Brandenburg-Prussia, predecessor of the kingdom, became a military power under Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, known as "The Great Elector". As a kingdom, Prussia continued its rise to power, especially during the reign of Frederick II "the Great". Frederick the Great was instrumental in starting the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), holding his own against Austria, Russia, France and Sweden and establishing Prussia's dominant role among the German states, as well as establishing the country as a European great power through the victories of the powerful Prussian Army. Prussia made attempts to unify all the German states (excluding the German cantons in Switzerland) under its rule, and whether Austria would be included in such a unified German domain became an ongoing question. After the Napoleonic Wars led to the creation of the German Confederation, the issue of unifying the German states caused the German revolutions of 1848–1849, with representatives from all states attempting to unify under their own constitution. Attempts to create a federation remained unsuccessful and the German Confederation collapsed in 1866 when the Austro-Prussian War ensued between its two most powerful member states.

Prussia was subsequently the driving force behind establishing in 1866 the North German Confederation, transformed in 1871 into the unified German Empire and considered the earliest continual legal predecessor of today's Federal Republic of Germany. The North German Confederation was seen as more of an alliance of military strength in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War but many of its laws were later used in the German Empire. The German Empire successfully unified all of the German states aside from Austria and Switzerland under Prussian hegemony due to the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The war united all the German states against a common enemy, and with the victory came an overwhelming wave of nationalism which changed the opinions of some of those who had been against unification.

With the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Kingdom of Prussia was transformed into the Free State of Prussia. Prussia as a whole was abolished in 1947.

History

Background and establishment

The Hohenzollerns were made rulers of the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1518. In 1529, the Hohenzollerns secured the reversion of the Duchy of Pomerania after a series of conflicts, and acquired its eastern part following the Peace of Westphalia.

In 1618, the electors of Brandenburg also inherited the Duchy of Prussia, since 1511 ruled by a younger branch of the House of Hohenzollern. In 1525, Albrecht of Brandenburg, the last grand master of the Teutonic Order, secularized his territory and converted it into a duchy. It was ruled in a personal union with Brandenburg, known as "Brandenburg-Prussia". A full union was not possible, since Brandenburg was still legally part of the Holy Roman Empire and the Duchy of Prussia was a fief of Poland. The Teutonic Order had paid homage to Poland since 1466, and the Hohenzollerns continued to pay homage after secularizing Ducal Prussia.

In the course of the Second Northern War, the treaties of Labiau and Wehlau-Bromberg granted the Hohenzollerns full sovereignty over the Prussian duchy by September 1657.

In return for an alliance against France in the War of the Spanish Succession, the Great Elector's son, Frederick III, was allowed to elevate Prussia to a kingdom in the Crown Treaty of 16 November 1700. Frederick crowned himself "King in Prussia" as Frederick I on 18 January 1701. Legally, no kingdoms could exist in the Holy Roman Empire except for Bohemia and Italy. However, Frederick took the line that since Prussia had never been part of the empire and the Hohenzollerns were fully sovereign over it, he could elevate Prussia to a kingdom. Emperor Leopold I, keen to secure Frederick's support in the impending War of the Spanish Succession, acquiesced.

The style "King in Prussia" was adopted to acknowledge the legal fiction that the Hohenzollerns were legally kings only in their former duchy. In Brandenburg and the portions of their domains that were within the Empire, they were still legally only electors under the overlordship of the emperor. However, by this time the emperor's authority was only nominal. The rulers of the empire's various territories acted largely as the rulers of sovereign states, and only acknowledged the emperor's suzerainty in a formal way. In addition, the duchy was only the eastern bulk of the region of Prussia; the westernmost fragment constituted the part of Royal Prussia east of Vistula, held along with the title King of Prussia by the King of Poland. While the personal union between Brandenburg and Prussia legally continued until the end of the empire in 1806, from 1701 onward, Brandenburg was de facto treated as an integral part of the kingdom. Since the Hohenzollerns were nominally still subjects of the emperor within the parts of their domains that were part of the empire, they continued to use the additional title of Elector of Brandenburg until the empire was dissolved. It was not until 1772 that the title "King of Prussia" was adopted, following the acquisition of Royal Prussia in the First Partition of Poland.

1701–1721: Plague and the Great Northern War

The Kingdom of Prussia was still recovering from the devastation of the Thirty Years' War and poor in natural resources. Its territory was disjointed, stretching 1,200 km (750 mi) from the lands of the Duchy of Prussia on the south-east coast of the Baltic Sea to the Hohenzollern heartland of Brandenburg, with the exclaves of Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg in the Rhineland. In 1708 about one third of the population of East Prussia died during the Great Northern War plague outbreak. The bubonic plague reached Prenzlau in August 1710 but receded before it could reach the capital Berlin, which was only 80 km (50 mi) away.

The Great Northern War was the first major conflict in which the Kingdom of Prussia was involved. Starting in 1700, the war involved a coalition led by Tsarist Russia against the dominant North European power at the time, the Swedish Empire. Crown Prince Frederick William tried in 1705 to get Prussia involved in the war, stating "best Prussia has her own army and makes her own decisions." His views, however, were not considered acceptable by his father, and was not until 1713 that Frederick William ascended to the throne. Therefore, in 1715, Prussia, led by Frederick William, joined the coalition for various reasons, including the danger of being attacked from both her rear and the sea; her claims on Pomerania; and the fact that if she stood aside and Sweden lost, she would not get a share of the territory. Prussia only participated in one battle, the Battle of Stresow on the island of Rügen, as the war had already been practically decided in the 1709 Battle of Poltava. In the Treaty of Stockholm Prussia gained all of Swedish Pomerania east of the River Oder. Sweden would however keep a portion of Pomerania until 1815. The Great Northern War not only marked the end of the Swedish Empire but also elevated Prussia and Russia at the expense of the declining Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as new powers in Europe.

The Great Elector had incorporated the Junkers, the landed aristocracy, into the kingdom's bureaucracy and military machine, giving them a vested interest in the Prussian Army and compulsory education. King Frederick William I inaugurated the Prussian compulsory conscription system in 1717.

1740–1762: Silesian Wars

In 1740, King Frederick II (Frederick the Great) came to the throne. Using the pretext of a 1537 treaty (vetoed by Emperor Ferdinand I) by which parts of Silesia were to pass to Brandenburg after the extinction of its ruling Piast dynasty, Frederick invaded Silesia, thereby beginning the War of the Austrian Succession. After rapidly occupying Silesia, Frederick offered to protect Queen Maria Theresa if the province were turned over to him. The offer was rejected, but Austria faced several other opponents in a desperate struggle for survival, and Frederick was eventually able to gain formal cession with the Treaty of Berlin in 1742.

To the surprise of many, Austria managed to renew the war successfully. In 1744 Frederick invaded again to forestall reprisals and to claim, this time, the Kingdom of Bohemia. He failed, but French pressure on Austria's ally Great Britain led to a series of treaties and compromises, culminating in the 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle that restored peace and left Prussia in possession of most of Silesia.