Prussia (region)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Prussia was a region in the Polish kingdom and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the 15th century until 1660, consisting of a Royal Prussia, a semi-autonomous province, and Ducal Prussia, a vassal state that paid homage to the Polish king.
During the reformation endemic religious upheavals and wars occurred, and in 1525, the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert of Brandenburg, a member of a cadet branch of the House of Hohenzollern, resigned his position, adopted the Lutheran faith and assumed the title of "Duke of Prussia." In a deal partially brokered by Martin Luther, Ducal Prussia became the first Protestant state. In 1618 the dukedom of Prussia passed to the senior Hohenzollern branch, the ruling Margraves of Brandenburg.
The ducal capital of Königsberg (now the Russian city of Kaliningrad) with the Albertina University established by Duke Albrecht of Prussia in 1544 became a centre of learning and printing. In 1492 a life of Dorothea of Montau, published in Marienburg/Prussia, became the first printed publication in Prussia.
The second Peace of Toruń 1466 had left eastern Prussia as a fief of the Polish Crown. In 1660, after the Northern Wars between Sweden, Poland and Brandenburg, the Treaty of Wehlau (Welawa) granted full sovereignty to Frederick William I, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, as Duke of Prussia.
In 1618 the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg were joined under the same ruler and became known as Brandenburg-Prussia, until 1701 when it was elevated and renamed as the Kingdom of Prussia. By the Treaty of Versailles some territories that had belonged to Prussia and the German Empire were ceded to the Second Polish Republic, coinciding with provisions of the Treaty of Wehlau that had stipulated that land would revert to the Polish crown, when the Hohenzollern rule expired. The main part of the duchy was however retained by the German Weimar Republic also after 1918 under the name of East Prussia.
