Posted on 02/24/2025 2:08:47 PM PST by BenLurkin
The name “Prussia” itself originated in the Middle Ages when pagan tribes inhabited the area adjoining the Baltic Sea between Pomerania and Lithuania. These tribes were conquered by the Roman Catholic Order of the Teutonic Knights in the 1200s, who organized the territory into a fiefdom of Poland.
The region was ruled by a succession of the Knights’ grand masters for the next few centuries. But when Albert I of the Hohenzollern family became the Knights’ grand master, he converted to Lutheranism. He recast the Teutonic States as the secular Duchy of Prussia in 1525, becoming the first major Continental ruler to break from the Catholic Church’s authority during the Reformation.
Prussia became the crown jewel of the Hohenzollern family.
During the whole of the 1700s, the Hohenzollerns embarked on a mission to unite its scattered territories into one contiguous land mass. Along the way...Frederick the Great (1740–1786) conquered Silesia from the Austrians in the 1740s.
Then, Prussia—along with the Austrian and Russian Empires—dismantled the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a state large in land area but weak in military. The final result connected the family’s Prussian holdings with the rest of its territory—and wiped Poland off the map of Europe for more than 100 years.
During the 1800s, Prussia dominated the smaller and weaker constituent states of the Empire, continuing its drive toward a contiguous territory with several stages and drawing it into conflict with Austria (the other prominent German-speaking power). First, there was the “soft” solution of forming a customs union (Zollverein) with other German states that excluded Austria. Then Prussia outright annexed Hanover and parts of Hesse after the two states sided with Austria in an 1866 war.
Prussia also led the charge against the French in the Franco-Prussian War, resulting in the 1871 declaration of the Second German Empire.
(Excerpt) Read more at familytreemagazine.com ...
Or, as I've heard elsewhere, the unification of all the Germanies.
That’s about when my Prussian ancestors dipped out for the US.
The more I read of European (and especially UK) history the more glad I am that the ancestors came over here when they did.
Prussia is a "was," not an "is."
In the early 1970s I knew a girl from Hamburg, Germany whose mother came from Königsberg in East Prussia. She said that Prussians were known as the Italians of the north because of their love for art and music. Interestingly, her husband was from Austria, at the opposite end of the German-speaking world.
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“What is Prussia?...”
Prussia is a “was,” not an “is.”
“And wiped Poland off the map for a 100 years”....
“What is Poland?...”
Poland is a “was,” not an “is.”
See. It goes both ways.
The Teutonic knights were initially hired to come and protect a Polish Dukes territories from the Pagans. They were given a swath of land in exchange, and eventually took over.
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