Frederick made Berlin his residence, although he retired to his Franconian possessions in 1425. He granted governance of Brandenburg to his eldest son John the Alchemist while retaining the electoral dignity for himself. The next elector, Frederick II, forced the submission of Berlin and Cölln, setting an example for the other towns of Brandenburg. He reacquired the Neumark from the Teutonic Knights and began its rebuilding. Brandenburg accepted the Protestant Reformation in 1539. The population has remained largely Lutheran since, although some later electors converted to Calvinism. At the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, Brandenburg was recognized as the possessor of territories, which were more than 100 kilometers from the borders of Brandenburg and formed the nucleus of the later Prussian Rhineland.

Brandenburg-Prussia

When Duke of Prussia Albert Frederick died in 1618 without having had a son, his son-in-law John Sigismund, at the time the prince-elector of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, inherited the Duchy of Prussia. He then ruled both territories in a personal union that came to be known as Brandenburg-Prussia. Prussia lay outside the Holy Roman Empire and the electors of Brandenburg held it as a fief of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to which the electors paid homage.

The electors of Brandenburg spent the next two centuries attempting to gain lands to unite their separate territories (the Mark Brandenburg, the territories in the Rhineland and Westphalia, and Ducal Prussia) and form one geographically contiguous domain. In the Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, Brandenburg-Prussia acquired Farther Pomerania and made it the Province of Pomerania. In the second half of the 17th century, Frederick William, the “Great Elector,” developed Brandenburg-Prussia into a major power. The electors succeeded in acquiring full sovereignty over Prussia in 1657.

Kingdom of Prussia

In return for aiding Emperor Leopold I during the War of the Spanish Succession, Frederick William’s son, Frederick III, was allowed to elevate Prussia to the status of a kingdom. In 1701, Frederick crowned himself Frederick I, King of Prussia. Prussia, unlike Brandenburg, lay outside the Holy Roman Empire, within which only the emperor and the ruler of Bohemia could call themselves king. As king was a more prestigious title than prince-elector, the territories of the Hohenzollerns became known as the Kingdom of Prussia, although their power base remained in Brandenburg. Legally, Brandenburg was still part of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by the Hohenzollerns in personal union with the Prussian kingdom over which they were fully sovereign. For this reason, the Hohenzollerns continued to use the additional title of Elector of Brandenburg for the remainder of the empire’s run. However, by this time the emperor’s authority over the empire had become merely nominal. The various territories of the empire acted more or less as de facto sovereign states and only acknowledged the emperor’s overlordship over them in a formal way. For this reason, Brandenburg soon came to be treated as de facto part of the Prussian kingdom rather than a separate entity.

From 1701 to 1946, Brandenburg’s history was largely that of the state of Prussia, which established itself as a major power in Europe during the 18th century. King Frederick William I of Prussia, the “Soldier-King,” modernized the Prussian Army, while his son Frederick the Great achieved glory and infamy with the Silesian Wars and Partitions of Poland. The feudal designation of the Margraviate of Brandenburg ended with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, which made the Hohenzollerns de jure as well as de facto sovereigns over it. It was replaced with the Province of Brandenburg in 1815 following the Napoleonic Wars. Brandenburg, along with the rest of Prussia, became part of the German Empire in 1871 during the Prussian-led unification of Germany.

Attributions

• • The Hohenzollerns
    • “House of Hohenzollern.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Hohenzollern. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
    • “Margraviate of Brandenburg.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margraviate_of_Brandenburg. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
    • “Personal union.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_union. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
    • “Golden Bull of 1356.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Bull_of_1356. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
    • “Fief.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fief. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
    • “John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sigismund,_Elector_of_Brandenburg. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
    • “Friedrich_I._von_Brandenburg.jpg.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Hohenzollern#/media/File:Friedrich_I._von_Brandenburg.jpg. Wikipedia Public domain.