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Brandenburg (general region) |
Note: Brandenburg is a region in Eastern Europe in modern Poland and Germany. Slavic Wends replaced the ancient Semnones inhabitants. Charlemagne failed to conquer it, but it succumbed to Lothar, Duke of Saxony and his ally, Albert I the Bear, from 1106 to later in the 12th century. Germans began moving in and imposing Christianity and other aspects of their society and culture, and the Slavic population became largely assimilated over the 12th and 13th centuries. By the mid-12th century Brandenburg's ruler became an elector, one of the princes who elected the Holy Roman Emperor. In the 14th century, local nobles gained power at the expense of the elector and the common people. The electorate was divided into three portions, the Old March, the Middle March, and the New March. A stronger central government developed in the 15th and 16th centuries, and Lutheranism became the most widespread religion. In 1618, the elector John Sigismund inherited the duchy of Prussia through marriage. Occupied by Sweden during the Thirty Years' War, Brandenburg-Prussia under William Frederick, the Great Elector, became free and stable again, acquired new territories and power, and by 1688 was the most powerful Protestant German state, second only the Catholic Austria. In 1701 the elector Frederick II Hohenzollern also obtained the title of King of Prussia for himself and his heirs. The Hohenzollerns seized much of western Poland and northern Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries, and finally united Germany with Berlin as its capital in 1871. The end of the First World War in 1918 saw the collapse of the Hohenzollern dynasty and a reduced Brandenburg became a province of the state of Prussia. Upon the dissolution of Prussia after the Second World War, Brandenburg west of the Oder River became a separate state of West Germany The eastern portion was a state of East Germany until 1952 when that nation was reorganized the Brandenburg ceased to exist there as an administrative entity. In 1991 the eastern and western portions of Brandenburg were reunited as the single state of Brandenburg in the new reunified Germany. Its sandy soil with frequent areas of richer soil produces a wide variety of agricultural products, and steel making, engineering, and textile manufacture are important industries. Its principal cities are Frankfurt an der Oder, Cotthus, Brandenburg, and Potsdam. It covers 11,219 square miles in area, and its 2003 estimated population is 2,651,200. |
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of Prussia |
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