 Hello and welcome to our video summarizing all you need to know about the history of Prussia. My name is Barbara, and in this video we'll gain an intricate understanding of Prussia, including its geography, its early history, its growth, the peak of this empire, as well as its decline in dissolution. So let's get started. Now to begin with, the Prussian Kingdom was founded on January 18th 1701, when the elector of Frederick III had himself crowned Frederick I at Koningsburg. Prussia was, most recently, a historical state originating in Brandenburg, an area that for centuries had a substantial influence in German and European history. Prussia's last capital was Berlin, and the Kingdom reached its zenith in the 18th and 19th centuries, and during the 18th century it became a great European power under the reign of Frederick II of Prussia. He lived between 1740 to 1786 and under the Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck during the 19th century at the Congress of Vienna, which drew the map of Europe following Napoleon's defeat. Prussia had acquired rich new territories, including the coal-rich region of Rau, which is in current modern-day Germany. Now, during the 19th century, Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck pursued a policy of uniting German principalities into what he called a lesser Germany, and this excluded the Austrian Empire. An impetus towards reunification came from Napoleon Bonaparte, whose vision for Europe was of a unified nation-state. Based on the French model and subsequently, the idea of a united Germany gained popularity with Prussia becoming the core of the German Empire. And in November 1918, the monarchies were abolished and the nobility lost its political power. During the German Revolution of 1918 to 1919, and of course this is when Germany became Weimar Germany. The Kingdom of Prussia was thus abolished in favour of a republic, the Free State of Prussia. The State of Germany came into being from 1918 all the way till 1933, and from 1933 Prussia lost its independence as a result of a Prussian coup. When the Nazi regime successfully established its laws in pursuit of a unitary state. With the end of the Nazi regime in 1945, and this was of course at the end of the Second World War, the division of Germany into Allied occupied zone and the separation of the territories which were incorporated into either Poland or the Soviet Union, the State of Prussia ceased to exist de facto, so in reality and on paper. And Prussia was formally abolished by the Allied control council in February of 1947. So now let's get a bit of an understanding of what Prussia was really like. So throughout its history, Prussia really had various meanings, even the term itself. Now old Prussia or the land of the Baltic Prussians prior to the 13th century had people who inhabited this land called Prusen in Germany, and there were Slavs related to the Lithuanians and Latvians. They were conquered and forcibly Christianized in the 13th century by the Teutonic Knights, diverted from the Holy Land. Royal Prussia in 1466 to 1772 had a territory that was awarded to Poland after victory over the Teutonic Order in the Thirteen Years War, and the Duchy of Prussia, which was established between 1525 and 1701, was a territory formed by the secularization of the monastic states of the Teutonic Knights, originally under the sovereignty of Poland, later ruled by the Hohenzon Magraves and the electors of Brandenburg. Now we then had Brandenburg Prussia, which was between 1618 to 1701, and it's a personal union between the Hohenzollern rulers of Dukau Prussia and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The Kingdom of Prussia, which was between 1701 to 1918, formed the elevation of the Brandenburg Prussia to a kingdom and this state went on to become the dominant state of the German Empire in 1871 to 1918. The province of Prussia, which was between 1829 and 1878, was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and it was created from the merger of the provinces of East Prussia as well as West Prussia. And the free state of Prussia, which was between 1918 to 1947, was the Republic state of Weimar Germany, formed after the dissolution of the Hohenzollern monarchy at the close of the First World War. Prussia as a state was then abolished by the Nazis in 1934 and then again by the Allied Control Council in 1947 in the aftermath of the Second World War. Now Prussia had an ethos that has been described as the Prussian spirit and this refers to its militaristic spirit and Prussia has been characterised as an army with a country rather than as a country with an army. Now when it comes to understanding the geographic extent, Prussia actually began as an army as a small territory in what was later called East Prussia. The region became the preferred location for immigration by later mainly Prostistan, Germans as well as Poles and Lithuanians along the border regions. Prior to its abolition, the territory of the Kingdom of Prussia included Prussia proper, which is West and East Prussia, Brandenburg, the province of Saxony, including most of present day Saxony and Nult and parts of the state of Thuringia in Germany Pomerania, Rhineland, Westphalia, Silesia, without Austrian Silesia, Lusatia, Schwallzig, Holston, Hanover, Hesse in the South and some small detached areas in the south like Hohenzollern, the ancestral home of the Prussian ruling family. In 1914 Prussia had an area which covered 354,490 square kilometres. In May 1939 Prussia had an area of 297,007 kilometres square and a population of just over 41 million inhabitants. The Principality of Nuremberg, now the canton in Switzerland, was part of the Prussian Kingdom from 1707 to 1848. So now let's look in detail at really the early history of Prussia to its decline and then its eventual dissolution. So now when it comes to its early history the original Prussians were mainly hunters and cattle breeders and they spoke a language belonging to the Baltic group of the Indo-European family. These early Prussians were related to the Latvians and the Lithuanians and they lived in tribes in the then heavily forested region between lower Vistula and Nerman rivers and the social organisation was loose and they were pagans. Early attempt to convert the Prussians to Christianity notably those made by St Albert and St Bruno of Covert at the turn of the 11th century were unsuccessful and in the 13th century however the Prussians were conquered and Christianised by the German speaking knights of the Teutonic Order which had been awarded Prussian lands by the Polish Duke Conrad of Mozovia for help against Prussian incursions. The Prussian countryside was subdued, castles were built for German nobility and many German peasants were settled there to farmland. By the middle of the 14th century the majority of the inhabitants of Prussia were German speaking and the latter part of the 14th century was characterised in Eastern Europe by a strong reaction among Slavs and Baltics against the Germans. Poland and Lithuania formed the first dynastic union in 1386 and in the 15th century defeated the Teutonic knights in the series of wars. By the Second Treaty of Turin the Polish crown acquired direct sovereignty over the Teutonic Order's former possessions along the Vistula river. These lands came to be known as Royal Prussia, thus a wedge of predominantly Polish speaking territory was consolidated between German speaking his Prussia and the German Reich to the west. Now the Teutonic Order's last one muster in Prussia, Albert of Hohenzollern, became a Lutheran and in 1525 secularised his fiefdom which he transformed into a duchy for himself. Thereafter until 1701 this territory, which is East Prussia, was known as Dukal Prussia and while Albert's son and successor Albert Frederick died sonless in 1618 the duchy passes eldest daughter's husband the Hohenzollern director of Brandenburg, John Sigismund. The union of Dukal Prussia with Brandenburg was fundamental to the rise of Hohenzollern monarchy to the rank of great power. John's grandson Frederick William of Brandenburg the great elector who ruled between 1640 to 1688 obtained by military invention in the Swedish-Polish War of 1655 to 1660 and by the diplomacy of the Peace of Bolivia in 1660 the ending of Poland's Suzerainty over Dukal Prussia. Now when it came to the growth of this kingdom what made the Hohenzollern's sovereign over Dukal Prussia was really Frederick William and his role in setting up a centralised administration in Prussia to rest control of the duchy's financial resources from the nobility. On January 18, 1701 Frederick William's son Elector Frederick III upgraded Prussia from a duchy to a kingdom. Frederick III who reigned between 1688 to 1713 then crowned himself as Frederick I at Koningsburg now Kellenengrad Russia. On January 18, 1701 and thereafter Brandenburg and other Hohenzollern possessions though theoretically remaining with the German wife and under the ultimate lordship of the Holy Roman Emperor soon came to be threatened in practice rather than belonging to the Prussian Kingdom as separate entities. Now the state of Brandenburg Prussia became known as Prussia although most of its territory in Brandenburg, Pomerania and western Germany lay outside of Prussia proper. The Prussian state grew in splendour especially during the reign of Frederick I who sponsored the arts and at the expense of the treasury. Frederick I's son Frederick William I began his reign in 1713 shortly before the conclusion of the Treaty of Utrecht which assigned to him not only the so-called Upper Quarter of Geldern on the Muse River but also the principality of Nürtel and Valenjin on the border between France and Switzerland and their participation in the Second Northern War he then acquired much of western Pomerania in 1720. Now of course at the peak of the Prussian Empire Frederick William I endured the Prussian state with military and bureaucratic character. He raised the army to 80,000 men equivalent to 4% of the population in Gid the whole organisation of the state towards the military machine. One half of his army consisted of hired foreigners and the other half was recruited from the king's own subjects on the basis of the canon system which made all young men of the lower classes mostly peasants liable for military service. While the upper bourgeoisie were exempted from military service the nobles were under a moral obligation with the king repeatedly emphasised to serve in the offices corps. To close coordination of military, financial and economic affairs this was complemented by Frederick William I's organisation of the administrative system which he came to control and this really controlled the life of the state. He had a very autocratic temperament and his fanatical addiction to work found expression and complete absolutism. To his son and successor Frederick II the Great he left the best trained army in Europe financial reserve of 8 million thalers, productive domains, provinces developed through large scale colonisation including East Russia and a hard working bureaucracy. Now when it came to Frederick the Great who reigned between 1740-1786 he put the newly realised strength of the Prussian state at the service of an ambitious but very risky foreign policy. Frederick astonished Europe within 7 months of his accession to the throne by invading Silesia in December 1740 and this bold stroke precipitated the war of Austrian succession and the Austro-Prussian Silesian wars continued with uneasy intermissions until the end of the 7 years war in 1763. The Silesian wars began more than a century of rivalry and conflict between Prussia and Austria as the two most powerful states operating within the Holy Roman Empire although ironically both had extensive territory also outside the empire. Now Silesia is a very rich province with many flourishing towns and an advanced economy and this therefore was a really important acquisition for Prussia. Frederick's wars not only established his personal reputation as a military genius but he also won recognition for Prussia as one of the great powers. Beside Silesia Frederick also acquired East Frisia along the North Sea coast and later at the first partition of Poland in 1772 he obtained West Prussia that is Polish royal Prussia thus forming a territorial ring between East Dukal, Prussia and the rest of the domains towards the west. Now Frederick made no substantial changes in the administrative system as organised by his father however he did affect improvements in the judicial and educational systems as well as the promotion of the arts and sciences. The freedom of conscience that he instituted was the product not mainly of his own sceptical indifference to religious questions but also of a deliberate intention to bring the various churches together for the benefit of the state and to allow more scope for the large Roman Catholic minority among his subjects in relation to both the Protestant majority and the evangelical establishment. Now Prussia did set or experienced several setbacks. Firstly the French Revolutionary period and the Napoleonic wars were really important. Now Prussia suffered a devastating defeat against the armies of revolutionary France. By the peace of Basel in 1795 Frederick William II consented to France's eventual annexation of the German lands west of the Rhine. Moreover the king's management of the Prussian economy was less prudent than his father's and this therefore brought the state's finances into disarray. Also his son Frederick William III who reigned between 1797-1840 pursued at first the foreign policy of caution with neutrality with respect to France and Napoleon I and when at last he went to war in 1806 it was too late to avert the catastrophe. Napoleon's overwhelming defeat of the Prussians in the Battle of Gena was followed by a rapid collapse of the state. Now by the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 the king ceded all his possessions west of the Elbe River and all that had been gained under the second and third partisans of Poland together with the southern part of what had been gained under the first so that the monarchy was reduced to Brandenburg, Silesia and the Pomeranian provinces in northern west Prussia without Danzig now Gdansk Poland. Moreover the state was required to pay an exorbitant contribution to Napoleon's finances and accept a French occupation of much of its territory and beyond that the king was obliged to make an alliance with France and joined the continental system. Now during 1812 as a result of its enforced alliance with France Prussia participated in Napoleon's attacks in Russia. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow was a signal for a rising against the French. Meanwhile among educated groups the Napoleonic domination of Europe provoked an upsurge of national sentiment in Prussia which eventually manifested itself in the war of liberation between 1813-1814. At the same time the romantic movement in the intellectual and artistic fields further stimulated patriotism in the cult of liberty. The foundation in 1809 of the Frederick Wilhelm University in Berlin affirmed Prussia's spirit in the aftermath of defeat. Now let's go on to Congress of Vienna which is between 1814-1815 this was a really defining moment in history which essentially also defined a lot of plans that were later colonised. Now although the Congress did not restore of Frinsland, Lingen, Hilsim, Ansbach and Beirut to Prussia and the later latter recovered nothing of its gains under the third partition of Perdent and regained only Danzig as well as a few other towns of the second. The rest of what Prussia had possessed in 1803 was restored partially and entirely by this Congress with considerable additions for new territory. Also the Peace Conference of Paris in 1815 led France to cede Salleus and Sara-Buchen to Prussia which incorporated them into the wine province. Thus after 1815 Prussia stretched uninterrupted from the Neyman River in the east to the Elbe River in the west and the west of the Elbe it possessed large territories in western Germany. With its major territorial axis shifted from eastern Europe to western and central Germany, Prussia was henceforth the only great power with a predominantly German speaking population and it was thus Austria's potential rival for hegemony in the German confederation to which the Congress was created. Now when it came to the Prussian Kingdom from 1815 to 1918 the first half of the 19th century really saw a prolonged struggle in Germany between liberals who wanted a united federal Germany under democratic constitution and conservatives who wanted to maintain Germany as a patchwork of independent monarchical states with Prussia and Austria competing for influence. Because of Prussia's size and economic importance smaller states began to join its free trade area in the 1820s and Prussia benefitted greatly from the creation in 1834 of the German customs union the Zolvering which included most German states but excluded Austria. In 1848 the liberals saw an opportunity when revolutions broke out across Europe. Alarmed King Frederick William IV agreed to convene the National Assembly and grant constitution. When the Frankfurt Parliament offered Frederick William the crown of the united Germany he refused the grounds that he could not accept a crown from a revolutionary assembly without the sanction of Germany's other monarchs. The Frankfurt Parliament was then forced to dissolve in 1849 and Frederick William issued Prussia's first constitution by his own authority in 1850 and the constitution provided for a two house parliament. In 1862 King William I appointed Otto von Bismarck as Prime Minister of Prussia. Bismarck himself took the lead in the fight for German unification and guided Prussia through three wars which together brought William the position of German Emperor. Now when it came to the wars of unification the Danish war of 1864 led to an Austro-Prussia condominium over Schleswig-Holstein. Bismarck realised that the dual administration of Schleswig and Holstein was only a temporary solution and tensions escalated between Prussia and Austria. In the struggle for supremacy in Germany led to the Austrian Prussian War in 1866 which was triggered by the dispute over Schleswig and Holstein. Eventually the better armed Prussian army won and the war was followed by the annexation not only of Schleswig-Holstein but also of Hanover, Electoral Nests Nassau and Frankfurt am Main to Prussia. And this now extended across the northern two thirds of Germany and contained two thirds of Germany's population. The German Confederation was dissolved and Prussia cajoled the 21st states north of the main river into forming the North German Confederation. The Franco-German War of 1870 to 1871 was another important war of unification and it really established Prussia as the leading state of the Imperial German Reich. William I of Prussia became the German Emperor on January 18, 1871. Subsequently the Prussian army absorbed the other German armed forces except the Bavarian army which remained autonomous and Bismarck combined the offices of Imperial Chancellor and Prussian Minister of President and Prussia's history merged largely to that of the German Empire. Now when it came to the German Empire and of course the latest in the evolution of Prussia on January 18, 1871 William was proclaimed German Empire and in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles while the French capital remained under siege. And the two decades after the unification of German were the peak of Prussia's fortunes but the seeds for potential strife were then built into the Prussia-German political system. Now the constitution of the German Empire was slightly amended and it essentially included the North German Confederation's constitution and officially the German Empire was stated as a federal state and in practice however Prussia's dominance over the Empire was basically absolute. The Imperial German army was in practice an enlarged Prussian army although other kingdoms such as Bavaria Saxony and Wutemberg retained their own armies. The Imperial Crown was a hereditary office and the Prime Minister of Prussia was also the Imperial Chancellor. While all men over age 25 were eligible to vote in Imperial elections Prussia retained its restrictive three class voting system and this effectively required the King or Emperor, the Prime Minister and Chancellor to seek Majorities from legislatures elected by two completely different franchises and in both the Kingdom and the Empire the original constituencies were never redrawn to reflect the changes in the population meaning that rural areas were grossly overrepresented at the turn of the century. Now when it comes to the decline of Prussia, Frederick III became really terminally ill when he was Emperor for 99 days between 1888 upon the death of his father and 1900s. He was married to Victoria, the first daughter of the Queen Victoria of England. The son was William who became Emperor at 829 after forcing Bismarck out in 1890. William embarked on a programme of militarisation and adventurism and following a policy that eventually led Germany into isolation. Misjudgment of conflict with Serbia then led to the disaster of the First World War where Germany lost. As the price of the withdrawal from the war, the Bolsheviks conceded large regions of the Western Russian Empire, some of which bordered Prussia to German control in the Treaty of Brest-Listovsk in 1918. German control of these territories lasted however for only a few months because the defeat of German military forces by Western Allies and the German Revolution. The post-war Treaty of Versailles, which held Germany solely responsible for the war, was signed in the Versailles Hall of Mirrors where the German Empire had ironically been created. Now because of the German Revolution of 1918 which essentially created Weimar Germany, William II, known as Kaiser Wilhelm, abdicated as German Empire and King of Prussia. Prussia was then proclaimed a free state, essentially a republic, within the Weimar Republic and in 1920 it received a democratic constitution. All of Germany's territorial losses specified in the Versailles Treaty were areas that had been part of Prussia. For instance, Alsace through Lorraine, which was given to France, Eupen in Malmödy, given to Belgium, North Schleiswig, given to Denmark, the Mal territory given to Lithuania, the Hodgson area given to Czechoslovakia and many of the areas which Prussia had annexed in the partitions of Poland, such as the provinces of Posen and West Prussia, as well as Eastern and Upper Silesia, went to the Second Polish Republic. Prussia essentially then became the largest state of the Weimar Republic and from 1919 to 1932 it was governed by a coalition of the Social Democrats, Catholic Centurge and German Democrats and from 1921 to 1995, coalition governments included the German People's Party. Unlike other states in the German Reich, majority rule by democratic parties in Prussia was never really endangered. However, in East Prussia and some industrial areas, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler, gained popularity and influence, especially from the lower middle classes. Now, in marked contrast to its pre-war authoritarianism, Prussia was a pillar of democracy in the Weimar Republic. However, the system was destroyed by essentially the Prussian coup of Reich Chancellor Franz von Pappen. In this coup d'etat, the government of the Reich unseated the Prussian government on July 20, 1932 under the pretext that the latter had lost control of public order and Prussia. Von Pappen appointed himself Reich Commissioner for Prussia and took control of the government and this made it easier only half a year later for Hitler to take power in Germany. Now, after the rise of power of Hitler and the Nazi Germany in 1933, the Prussian constitution was essentially set aside and the legislature abolished, though Prussia remained a unit for administrative purposes. In 1945, after the defeat in World War II, Germany essentially became under the control of the victorious Allies, including the UK, the United States, the USSR and France. Northern East Prussia was then annexed by the Soviet Union and the rest of the land east of the order Nice Line was transferred over to Poland and the remainder was divided essentially between the USSR, Britain and French zones of occupation. One of the few acts of the Allied control council was a formal abolition of the Prussia on February 25, 1947. So that's all. 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