Figure 1.--This is a 19th century depiction of "The Prussian Homage". It was painted by Jan Matejko in 1882. It is located in the National Museum in Kraków. Here Albert of Prussia receives Ducal Prussia in fief from Sigismund I of Poland in 1525. There are boys in the painting, but we cannot identify them at this time. |
Prussia is today seen as the genesis of Imperial Germany and the modern German state. The original Prussians were, however, not Germans at all, but rather a Baltic tribe, the Prussi. The Prussi were eventually conquered and Christinized by the Germna Teutonic Knights and the Germans became the ruling class in Prussia. The principality was eventually obtained by the Hohenzollern dynasty which in combination with Brandeberg became the Kingdom of Prussia. Germany was later unified under the leadership of the Hohenzollerns and Chancellor Bismarck.
The Prussi or Borussi were one of the many Indo-European tribes which participated in the
Indo-European invasions. Very little is known of the Prussi. They were the Baltic peoples which had the greatest contact with the Celts and are known to have traded amber. Tacitus in the first known reference to the Blatic peoples mentions a northern people trading amber, but he does not mention specific tribes. The Prussi appear to have had especially close ties with the Lithuanians, but few details are available.
Actual written references to the Prussi are not known until the Medieval era. Both the Germans and Poles pressured the Prussi both culturally and militarily. Saxon missionaries attempted to convert the Prussi. Saint Adalbert was martyred by the Prussi while trying to convert them (997). King Boleslav I of Poland conquered some of the Prussi tribes and forcibly converted them (about 1018). Holy Roman Emperor Conrad IV authorized the Teutonic Knights (Order) to wage a crusade against the pagan Prussi (mid-13th century). Conrad offered their lands as a feudal fiedom to the Order.
The Teutonic Knights after a brutal 50-year campaign completed the subgegation of the Prussi (1285). Prussia thus became the bastion for the Teutonic Knights. The Prussi became peasants working the estates of the Order. The Teutonic Knights Christianized the Prussi. Dutch and Germans emmigarted into the area as priests, merchants, and artisans. Towns were established often with large German populations. The native Prussi remained the primary agrarian work force.
The Prussi were a relatively small tribe. The German in the East faced a much larger group--the Slavs. German writers descrive the Drag nach Ost, the struggle between the Germans and Slavs. The most important Slacic state was at first Poland. Later it became Tsarist Russia wgich developed from Muscovy. Prussia became a prize which the Germans and Poles struggled to control. It was this historic cobflict that Hitler would presue in Wirld War II.
A Lithuanian-Polish army decisively defeated the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Tannenberg (1410). This fundamentally altered the political situation in the Baltics. The Poles forced the Teutonic Knights to ceed the western area of Prussia to the Polish kingdom. This area became known as Polish Royal Prussia. The eastern part of Prussia was retained by the Order, but as a Polish fiefdom. Polish control continued until the Polish partitions of the late 18th century.
The Prussian and German Imperial royal family, the Hohenzollern originated as a family of counts in Swabia during the 11-12th century and were named for their ancestral castle Zollern, later termed Hohenzollern which is located near Hechingen in Swabia. The first to bear the ancestral name was Wezel of Zolorin or Zollern. Two branches developed from the family, the Swabian and Franconian branches. It was the Franconian brach that was to become the ruling family of Prussia
(1525-1918) and later Imperial Germany (1871-1818) and play a major role in modern European history.
Eastern Prussia after the defeat of the Order in 1410 gradually became increasingly secular. The Order elected Albert Grand Master (1511). He was a Hohenzollern as well as related to the king of Poland at the time. Albert had a huge impact on German history. He was an early convert to Martin Luther and the Reformation. We do not know the strength of his religious conversion, but it had obvious political benefits. After disavowing the sumpremecy of the pope, he then turn his elected position as Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights into the hereditary Duke of Prussia (1525). Prussia was thus one of the northern German states which joined the Reformation. Prussia nominally remained a fiedom of Poland (figure 1). Albert was succeeded by his son Albert-Frederick who went insane late in his reign.
Albert's son-in-law John Sigismund, the German Elector of Brandenburg, was appointed regent and later duke (1618). John was succeeded by George William (1619-40) who had the misfortune of reihning during the Thirty Years War. Several important battles were fought in Prussia and the principality was devestated.
The Thirty Years War was the most bloody and destructive war ever fought in Europe until the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. It was not as the name suggests one single war lasting 30 years, but rather a series of related wars fought over that period. The War began in Germany (Holy Roman Empire) and gradually spread to much of the rest of Europe. It was actually a series of wars involving most European countries, but fought primarily in Germany. The war was exceedingly brutal, in part because of the religious passions of the Reformation. The struggle was between Catholic and Protestant princes aided by non-German coregilionalists. While initially a religious war, the fighting was complicated by dynastic rivalries and the desire of the Sweeds and French to curb the power of the German Holy
Roman Empire dominated by the Hapsburgs. The War devestated Germany. It is believed that about 6 million civilians, mostly Germans, perished in the conflict. More Germans died in this War than in either World war I or II.
Elector Frederick William after the Thirty Years War not only repaired much of the damage but expanded the principality's territory. It was at this time adter a conflict with Poland that Prussia was declared to no longer be a Polish fuefdom (1660). Frderick-William's son proclaimed himself Frederick I King of Prussia (1701). His son Frederick II known as Frederick The Great further expanded the kingdom amd made Prussia one of foremost countries in Europe.
The fight for German unity after the Napoleonic wars was led by German liberals. They almost succeeded during te Revolitions of 1848. Germany was, however, finally unified under the leadership of the conservative Hohenzollern dynasty goverened by Chancellor Bismarck.
East Prussia remained a part of the Prussian Kingdom and German Empire. It was a very conservative area of Germany where German Junkers were the land owners over an almost feudal agrarian worker class. Chancellor Bismark was one of those Junkers. Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty (1919) officially ending World War I, a new Polish nation was created which was given a corridor to the Blatic sea port of Danzig (today Gadansk). This physically cut East Prussia off from the rest of Germany. Hitler made the "dismemberment" of Germany and the shame of Versailles Treaty a major issue in his rise to power. Later Hitler made the Polish Corridor the cause belli for World War II (1939). After the defeat of World War II, the Soviets made East Prussia part of the new Polish state, except for Kalingrad which is still part of Russia. The Soviets and Poles then expelled the Germans from what had been East Prussia and other former German areas. This made room for the Poles which the Soviets expelled from Belarus and the Ukraine. This was one of the major forced populations movements in history and has not been well described in the historical record. A Polish reader writes, "This makes it sound as if the decision to expell Germans was made by Poles and the decission to expell Poles was made by the Soviets. Actually it was the decison of treaties from peace conferecies, signed by all countries (the United States, Germany, France as well as Poland, USSR)." [HBC note: I know America and the other Western Allies agreed to the Polish borders demanded by the Soviets, but I do not know to what extent the Western Allies approved of forced expullsions. Of course Germany did not sign a peace traty until several years after these forced expullsions. The Polish Government at the time was a tool of the Soviet Union. The subject, however, needs some looking into. I do know that Poland and Czechoslovakia passed laws expelling Germans and there were attacks by locals on Germans after the War which encouraged emmigration. These attacks may not have been sanction by authorities, but little was done to prevent them. Many first hand accounts describe the violence directed at those of German ancestry. We have begun to collect information on the HBC Volksdeutsche page. We know even less about how the Soviets handled the deportation of Poles, but it is a topic we hope to persue.]
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