The settlement of Prussia by the Teutonic Order was by no means the only venture of German colonization in the east.  Charlemagne’s successful subjugation of the Saxons may be considered one of the earliest moves of eastern expansion.  This took the Germans to the river Elbe, an ideal position from which to penetrate further eastward.  There were several marches on the Reich, established for protection against the heathens such as the Wends and the Slavs.  The marcher territory of Brandenburg, the Mark Brandenburg was one of these, its origin lying in the period of Charlemagne’s reign.  It was subdivided into various parts, the most important of which, almost coinciding in terms of territory with the later Mark Brandenburg, was the Nordmark.  This consisted of all the German-colonized territories on the west bank of the river Elbe, later to be called the Altmark.  From the Altmark trade developed with the Wendish neighbors, it formed the base of power and supplies for war with them, as well as missionary activity.  Already in the tenth century, under Otto the Great, two societies were established in Havelberg and Brandenburg, supervised by the bishopric of Magdeburg which had been founded in 968.  An uprising of the Wends against their new masters and new religion had put a temporary end to these dioceses, and it was only in the twelfth century, as part of the general crusading fervor and the beginnings of a further German movement eastwards in which the Teutonic Knights were later to take part, that German settlement east of the Elbe was firmly re-established.  This process of colonization of the east had basically little to do with imperial policy, whose focus of political and military attention lay to the south of Germany, in Italy.  Rather it was the policy of several of the German territorial princes, notably Henry the Lion, who, as vassal of Frederick Barbarossa, fell out with him when he refused to support the crusade to the Holy Land, seeing his primary mission within Germany and its eastern expansion.

 

            This eastern territorial expansion aimed at enlarging land possessions with an eye mainly to their economic development.  But the rulers had spiritual as well as temporal interests; they also desired the conversion of the native heathen population.  The character of the colonization varied from region to region.  Often it was military, as in the case of the Teutonic Knights or the expansion of Henry the Lion in Mecklenburg and Holstein.  But in other areas, for example Magdeburg, colonization proceeded very peacefully.  The religious orders, such as the Premonstratensians in the twelfth centuries, provided exemplary models of expansionist economic and agricultural organization.  Poland, the predominant power in the east, under the rule of King Boleslav III, gave, in the twelfth century, vital support to the missionary activity of Bishop Otto of Bamberg.  In such territories as Pomerania and Silesia it was the native nobility who called in the Germans to colonize the region, to establish towns and villages and introduce trade.  There, the general policy followed was neither one of exterminating the native population nor of replacing it with German colonists.  No doubt isolated instances of brutality can be found, especially as the result of misdirected crusading zeal, but on the whole Wendish and German populations gradually integrated.  It was a melting pot, intermingling not only German and Wends but also other immigrant groups such as Flemings, Walloons, northern French, Englishmen and Piedmontese.  The colonists, who from the very beginning had the superior military and economic organization, naturally assumed political leadership.

 

            In Brandenburg it was the House of the Askanians, of Saxon origin, which led the colonization.  Albrecht von Ballenstedt, called the Bear, was given the Nordmark as a fief by Emperor Lothar in 1134, for services rendered in Germany and Italy.  This territory was later to be transferred to Henry the Lion.  In neighboring Pomerania, Bishop Otto of Bamberg had already managed to extend the church’s influence to the heathens on the Nordmark’s northern frontier.  Albrecht enjoyed good relations with Bishop Otto, as indeed he did with the Premonstratensian order in Magdeburg, which had founded several settlements and monasteries in Brandenburg.

 

            The rule of Henry the Lion in the north of Germany prevented to some extent the development of regions held by less powerful rulers.  But after his fall, the Margraves of Brandenburg had greater scope to pursue their political ambitions, one of which was to take Pomerania and thus gain access to the Baltic Sea.  This brought them into conflict with the Danes, who for some time had the upper hand, and it was only after the battle of Bornhoeved in 1227 in which the Danes were defeated that the Askanians were able to gain a significant foothold in Pomerania, land which they had held in fief from Emperor Frederick II since 1231.  By 1250 they had also obtained Pomerania-Stettin, as well as the Uckermark, the border territory of Pomerania.  During the same period the Lebus territory was acquired, and thus the river Oder reached.  With that the territory of the new marches, the Neumark, had been consolidated, and together with the Nordmark, was now called the Altmark.  The lands beyond the river Oder, to which, after the middle of the fifteenth century, the name Neumark was given were obtained piecemeal, party by purchase, marriage contracts, or in reward for services rendered to the Polish Piast dynasty.

 

            With the acquisition of the Lebus territory, the bulk of the territory of Brandenburg had been created.  During the course of the thirteenth century as series of settlements was founded or expanded into townships there, such as Stendal, Spandau and Brandenburg-Altstadt.  The founding of the last two actually goes back to the twelfth century.  this was followed in 1232 by Coln-Spree, in 1242 by Berlin, and in 1253 by Frankfurt-an-der-Oder.  Four years later came Landsberg-an-der-Warthe.  In contrast to the process of colonial expansion in Prussia, where new gains were always consolidated by the building of castles and fortresses, military protection in the territories of Brandenburg was provided by the Askanians, who settled Knights and warriors in open villages.  At first there were no knights concentrated in castles, these only making their appearance in the Neumark and there mainly for protection against the Polish neighbors.  It was not until the 14th century, when there was decline of imperial central power, that many castles were built.  In some cases the knights felt sufficiently independent to build these themselves; alternatively they were transferred into the hands of the knights once thy had been built.

 

            At first, the knight lived as a neighbor to the farmer in settlements built along the road or in ‘roundlings’, so called on account of their circular lay-out which was ideal for defense.  Road and roundling settlements were planned, but whenever the new settlers were left to themselves they tended to ignore military considerations and built houses and farms wherever and however it suited them.  Yet on the whole the colonists were wise enough not to settle in isolated farms.  In the newly founded towns the aim was to include the greatest possible number of houses within the protective wall.  The centre of each town was the market, around which blocks of houses were grouped.

 

            But Brandenburg could hardly have been called an agriculturally rich region, and not without reason was it later known as the Holy Roman Empire’s sand-box.  To transform sandy soil and vast forests into arable land demanded supreme effort from the colonists.  Yet to this day the area is not without its great charms – its quiet rivers and frequently hidden lakes, and the peace of the landscape which no-one has portrayed better than Theodor Fontane.

 

            Primogeniture did not exist in Brandenburg any more than elsewhere in the Reich.  All the sons of a margrave were enfeoffed with the territory, though only the eldest represented the territory at the court of the Emperor.  There, within the Empire, the Margraves of Brandenburg played an important role.  Frederick Barbarossa, for instance, appointed Margrave Otto I of Brandenburg to the important office of Reich chamberlain, and during the course of the thirteenth century they were elevated to the electoral college which elected the Emperor.  The political ambitions of the Askanians were extensive.  They had cast an eye on Danzig, but were compelled to give way to the Teutonic Order.  They also tried to obtain Lubeck, which Henry the Lion had founded, though only with short-lived success.   Their ambitions in the coastal regions of the Baltic Sea involved them again in conflict with the Danes, at whose hands they were defeated.  In 1320 the House of the Askanians became extinct.

 

            Several interim dynasties of the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach and the House of Luxembourg followed, all of them generally strong enough to maintain Brandenburg in the face of external powers but not strong enough to counteract the increasingly powerful local rulers.  In 1411 the last ruler of the House of Luxembourg died, and the internal situation in Brandenburg, had deteriorated to such an extent that the deputies of the cities requested the Emperor to send a man capable of restoring peace and order.  The man he sent as the new margrave was the Burgraf Frederick of Nuremberg of the Swabian House of Hohenzollern.

 

            In terms of constitutional and administrative development in Brandenburg, the 12th and 13th centuries are marked by rapid growth, the 14th by decay.

 

            Throughout the period of colonization the pattern was generally the same.  The process began when a nobleman was enfeoofed with a piece of land for which he in turn selected Locator, a type of entrepreneur who in return for part of the land undertook to settle it with German farmers.  The unit of area, or Hufe, was not a uniform measure but varied from region to region.  A Hufe in Magdeburg was generally slightly smaller than on in Silesia; in Brandenburg it was somewhere in between.  The Locator would receive two to four Hufe for his troubles; two were automatically allocated to the church.  Once the Locator had established the village he usually became the head of the community for administrative purposes, the Schulze.  The land he held was free except for the supply of horses for the noblemen, but the rest of the farmers had to pay tax on the ground they held, though exemptions were frequent especially  in areas where considerable sweat and toil were required to cultivate the soil.

 

            Towns were generally founded in a similar way but on a larger scale.  To begin with the area was larger, so settlement was put in the hands of a group of locators rather than one only.  These often included members of the nobility.  Jurisdiction, which in principle was in the hands of the nobility, was delegated to a deputy, the Schultheiss.  A Locator of a town, unlike those of the villages, had to pay tax, which was assessed on the type of house he owned.  Especially in regions where land distribution was complex it was customary to work all the fields communally, a practice understandable enough in an environment where, if for no other purpose than survival, people had to be able to depend upon one another.  The three-field crop rotation system was also practiced.  And of course was common forest, water and grazing land for the use of the whole of the village.  More systematic division of land tended to be practiced by the Flemings a Dutch, but these were in the minority.

 

            Apart from the peasants, knights were also settled in the villages, though whether simply as neighbors or as land-owners from the very beginning is by no means certain.  However, evidence that knights were land-owners only from the late 14th century onwards, and the estates of the nobility were a product of the 15th century.  Evidence of specific services which the farmers owed to the knights, the establishment of their vassalage, exists from the end of the 13th century.  once can assume with reasonable certainty that during the period of colonization conditions must have been favorable for the peasants, for otherwise they would not have come in the first place.  Only once erstwhile colonial territory ceased to be frontier territory, as social and economic stratifications hardened, did the nobility endeavor to extend its powers over its landed subjects and increase their economic and financial burdens.  Because of its near monopoly of arms the nobility was in a position to do this, particularly in times when the central authority grew weaker as was the case after the extinction of the House of the Askanians.

 

            During the course of the 13th century, administrative and executive power was delegated to the advocati appointed by the Margrave.  In his name they administered the surrounding district form a town or castle.  The advocati were not necessarily men with legal and administrative training, and were very often knights, who were noble servants of the Margrave or ministeriales.  They could be appointed and dismissed by the Margrave at will; in return for their efforts they took a share of the fines or taxation.  Their functions were fairly extensive, ranging form the conduct of war and preservation of the peace to judicial, financial and excise administration.  What developed fairly early on was a distinction between court officials and land officials, though during the 13th century the degree of interchange between these two types of officials was still very high and the name ministeriales could be applied to both.  They represent the basis on which a civil service was later to develop. 

 

            Courts soon developed into two types: the High Court of the Margrave, and the Lower Court of the advocatus, or Vogt as he was called ultimately.  The former and jurisdiction over numbers of the nobility, the latter over the rest of the population.  but since it was not uncommon for legal feuds to be carried on between burghers and nobility, mainly over debts, the High Court of the Margrave for some time had no firm place of residence but moved around Brandenburg, making it necessary to establish branches of the High Court in the various districts.

 

            The towns were of course also subject to the power of the Margrave.  But in the town communities a sense of unity among the burghers was not slow in developing.  Since the 13th and 14th centuries towns had begun to acquire more powers by purchasing privileges from the Margrave, including the right to their own jurisdiction.  Thus the Schulze became the town judge, and the entire judiciary of a town became municipal.  On the other hand as a result of the growing ascendancy of the nobility, judiciary rights of the town were also sold to noblemen.

 

            The administration of the towns in Brandenburg was carried out by the town councils whose members were probably also members of town courts.  As towns acquired their communal independence, the council also assumed responsibility for the administration of the town’s finance and police.  However, it was only a question of time before the individual councilors had to draw in additional personnel to look after day-to-day affairs, people who in time were to become experts in their own field.  This led ultimately to the separation of the town’s judiciary from its administrative council.

 

            As the power of the Margrave began to deteriorate, the towns acquired the power of granting supplies – or refusing them – to the Margrave.  The Margrave in turn was compelled to grant privileges which, if he infringed them, entitled the towns to take up arms against him.  A commission of six, to be elected annually, had no other task than to examine whether any action of the Margrave infringed any of the rights of the town.  Naturally enough this development did not take place without resistance from the Margraves, who at first tried to enlist the support of the nobility against the towns in order to isolate them.  But the interests of nobility and Margrave were not always identical.  Consequently internal strife in Brandenburg was not uncommon.

 

            Neither Bohemia nor Poland were averse to taking advantage of the internal dissensions in Brandenburg, particularly after the Poles had subdued the Teutonic Order.  In the Peace of Thorun of 1466, the order had acknowledged the supremacy of the Polish crown an ceded Western Prussia with the mouth of the Vistula.  Now completely separated from Germany, East Prussia lost a considerable amount of its political significance.

 

            When Margrave Frederic of Nuremberg assumed control, his task was fraught with difficulties.  The nobility was virtually in uproar against him, a situation which culminated in open warfare.  However in 1414, as he gathered his resources, he was in a position systematically to reduce the castles of his opponents to rubble – by the use of artillery.  One of the largest pieces on loan to him came from one of his relations, Frederick of Zollern who was Grosskomtur of the Teutonic Order.  Castle walls previously thought impenetrable were reduced to dust, and the Quitzow family, perhaps the most obstinate of his opponents, was subjugated one by one.  Medieval knighthood and the method of warfare associated with it had outlived itself.  Horse and shining amour were unable to resist clumsy but effective siege guns.

 

            At the general assembly at Tangermunde on 20 March 1414, Frederick held court over the rebels.  Some of them had all their property confiscated.  All estates of the land, nobility clergy and burgers, proclaimed their allegiance to the Margrave, and the regular function of all courts was restored.

 

            A little later Frederick was also given the suzerainty over Pomerania, which involved him in extensive warfare with Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and especially, Poland.  Poland was the conqueror of the Teutonic Order and was not to be underestimated.  Frederick’s plan was to establish close family times between the Hohenzollerns and the Polish crown, and so his second son was engaged to the daughter of King Vladislav of Poland, whose own marriage had not been blessed with any male successors.  This, however, brought Frederick into conflict with the man to whom he had so far owed his rise to power, Emperor Sigismund.  The Emperor clashed with the Poles over the future of Bohemia, where he pressed his own succession against the Hussites, and Sigismund’s unsuccessful campaign against them was in his mind associated mainly with Frederick’s failure to aid him successfully in his hour of need.  Revenge was not slow in coming.  He showed it first by supporting the Margrave of Saxony on various issues and then by throwing his full support behind Brandenburg’s northern opponents, especially the Dukes of Pomerania.  He granted them the right to the Uckermark, so far successfully held by Frederick.  War broke out in the spring of 1425.  Ranged against Brandenburg were Pomerania, Mecklenburg, the Teutonic Order and even Poland, which had left him in the lurch despite the betrothal of his son to Vladislav’s daughter.

 

            To all intents and purposes Frederick was defeated.  He handed over power of regency to his son John.  A year later reconciliation with Sigismund took place while in 1427 peace with Pomerania and with Mecklenburg was concluded, which left Brandenburg essentially in possession of the Uckermark.  Frederick himself, however, never returned to Brandenburg again, but turned his attention to his possessions in Franconia.  He died there as Elector in 1440.

 

            His eldest son, Margrave John, did not have anything like the ability of his father, and his lack of resoluteness very nearly led to a return of the conditions which Frederick had found on coming to Brandenburg.  The nobility once again raised its head in defiance.  Without previous consultation Berlin and Colln merged into one urban community in 1432.  for the sake of peace John had to avoid Berlin altogether, the nearest place to which he could venture being Spandau.  Frederick was still alive, and recognizing the problems divided up his property accordingly.  Brandenburg was given to his second  son Frederick, who took over its administration in 1437.  however he had to promise to rule jointly with his youngest brother, Frederick the Fat, for 16 years and then divide the territory with him.  This division actually took place in 1447 when Frederick the Fat received part of the Altmark, but since he died without issue the territory reverted to Frederick II.

 

            Frederick II, being betrothed to a Polish princess, had been raised at the Polish court in Cracow, but his fiancée had died.  He followed very much in the line of his father’s policy, reasserting his rights over his domains and subduing the feuding nobility, particularly the robber barons who threatened Brandenburg’s commerce.  He treated the towns similarly.  Significant in this context was his context was his conflict with Berlin and Colln, for they represented the example to the other towns.  He decided to curb the freedom which they had acquired in the absence of a strong ruler in Brandenburg and to demonstrate his firmness of purpose dissolved the union between them, appointed new town councilors and reserved the right of appointment for himself.  He also assumed all rights of jurisdiction.  Then the towns were compelled to give free transit to commerce – en route to Mecklenburg for example.  He took possession of the land between the two towns in order to build on it his own residence.

 

            The Berlin burghers quite rightly considered this as threatening their liberties and in 1442 there was an uprising with the aim of restoring Berlin and Colln’s autonomy.  It proved unsuccessful and finally the towns submitted to Frederick.  Their rights of establishing alliances with other towns were completely removed, particularly their connection with the Hanseatic League.  But in view of the declining importance of the Hanseatic League, that connection was becoming of only symbolic value anyway.  The church in Brandenburg was made to obey Frederick.  He insisted upon, and obtained, the right of nomination of bishops within his territory, and assured the predominance of his secular justice over ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

 

            Administratively he operated through his own chancellery, where clerical members were, by and by, replaced by secular officials.  If his internal policy assured him of supremacy within his own territory, his external policy proved rather costly, at least in financial terms.  His aim was to recover all the territories which had once been Brandenburg’s but had been lost as the result of his father’s conflict with Emperor Sigismund.  This involved him in a successful war with Mecklenburg, and he also obtained the lower Lausitz and other smaller territories.  But the most significant gain was that of the Neumark which had become the property of the Teutonic Order – significant because it was on the point of becoming Polish property.  Frederick made the decisive move and repurchased the area form the Grand Master Ludwig von Erlichhausen.  The ultimate goal of his territorial ambition, however was the acquisition of Pomerania, which would have turned Brandenburg into the dominant power in north-eastern Germany.  Once again this led to a war in which he could obtain only part of what he desired.  These efforts emptied the coffers of his treasury and he ended his reign with considerable debts.  His only son had died in 1467 and so the succession  in Brandenburg was transferred to Frederick’s brother Albrecht Achilles.

 

Albrecht Achilles had been raised in Brandenburg, then at the age of 15 became a page at the court of King Sigmund at Bratislava, participated in the Hussite wars and was involved in extensive feuds over his Franconian territories, particularly with the city of Nuremberg.

 

            Upon taking up residence in Brandenburg he concluded a peace with Pomerania that left him in possession of those lands conquered by his brother.  Nevertheless it did not take long for war between Brandenburg and Pomerania to break out again, essentially over some minor territories which by 1470 he obtained.

 

            By comparison with the reign of his brother Frederick, Albrecht left well-ordered finances and well-stocked stores of agricultural produce.  Equally important for Brandenburg’s future was his determination that it should not be divided by the succession.  He did not formally introduce primogeniture but apportioned his possessions in a way which left his sons to rule over relatively compact territories.  He was also the last Hohenzollern prince who reigned simultaneously over Brandenburg and his Franconian territories.  His successor John (1486-1499) directed his attention less to territorial aggrandizement than to internal consolidation.  Nor did he show any ambitions in the politics of the imperial court.

 

            But his reign also showed the first major signs of the growing suppression of the peasantry by the nobility.  For instance the nobility of the Altmark succeeded in making it an offence to harbor or settle peasants who had left of their own accord the estate of any nobleman in the region.  In view of the rising demand for corn and its increasing price the nobility had a particular interest in maximizing output, which led to greater rationalization in the estates and their enlargement by, among other things, reducing even formerly free peasants to a state of servitude.  Elector john firmly took the side of his nobility, since in the final analysis his economic interests were identical with theirs.

 

            His reign was also notable for the replacement of the councilors and administrators, who in previous reigns had usually been imported from the Franconian territories, by native talent from Brandenburg.  For the first time names like Bulow, Alvensleben and Schlabrendorff begin to gain prominence in the court.  Brandenburg provides an excellent example of the rise of the modern state – the product of the conflict of the ruling princes with two primary forces.  Firstly the princes had to acquire unrestricted access to financial resources.  In Brandenburg this meant that they had to maximize their successful economic activity.  In the final analysis they could no more than the Hapsburgs, rely on the resources in the possession of the holders of private financial monopoly.  Those monopoly holders, families like the Fuggers and the Welsers in whose hands economic power was concentrated, could bridge, if it lay in their interest, the endemic gap between the declining financial and feudal revenues of the prince and his actual requirements.  Jakob Fugger had no qualms in writing blandly to Emperor Charles V: ‘Without my aid Your Imperial Majesty would hardly have obtained the Roman crown.’  They could bridge the gap but they could not fill it.  The second conflict was with the estates of the realm, with the nobility, the church, the towns.  In many cases the estates had succeeded in twisting medieval feudal traditions into something akin to democracy, insisting that public power resided in the hands of that strata of society which in fact produced the necessities for the state.  What the nascent absolutist prince had to achieve and in most cases did achieve was the transfer of all power into his own hands, by turning power held by the traditional medieval institutions such as the church and the guilds, as well as that of the estates, into his personal private ‘property’.  Previously this ‘property’ had been more of less run by the estates of the realm, the holders of financial monopoly and the princes.

 

            This successful transfer of power required changes in several directions.  For one thing it affected the system of administration, in particular the bureaucracy.  The roots of modern bureaucracy, in spite of tentative beginnings in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, are really deeply buried in the Age of Absolutism.  A policy aimed at the concentration of maximum power in the hands of a prince was in need of effective centralization.  With the growing complexity of all forms of social an economic life, it was no longer enough to have a scribe as an administrator; what was increasingly needed was the specialized expert.  However, absolute monarchy and the institution of bureaucracy are, provided something more is understood by bureaucracy than the transaction of day-to-day business by underlings, not compatible but in the long term mutually exclusive.  The growing acquisition of expertise which can hardly be mastered and supervised by one man, the price, inevitably leads to claims of greater independence, and to resentment or for that matter even outright rejection of interference by the prince.  Hence the only countervailing power against this tendency was the recruitment or the re-enlistment of the nobility directly into the prince’s services, that is to say into the bureaucracy.  But not in the bureaucracy only.

 

            Another change took place in the field of warfare.  Here after the decay of chivalry and the rise of mercenary armies absolutism produced, in the jargon of our own day and age, the nationalization of the armies: in other words the professional army.  Their ownership changed form the private possession of some colonel into the hands of the prince.  Wallenstein was the first to demonstrate that change dramatically.

 

            The people, especially the unfree, were subjected to increasing severities, since of course one of the compromises upon which the integration of the nobility into the absolutist state rested was the prince’s consent to increasing the burdens of the peasants.  To remove himself from the necessity of requesting and accepting loans from private bankers he depended upon the full exploitation of all economic resources in his territory.  And for that, peasants apart, he needed again a highly efficient administration.

 

            The beginnings of all these changes which were to mark an age are clearly visible in Brandenburg in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  But on the surface this deployment seemed overshadowed by the impact on the Reformation.  The Reformation first affected the territory of the Teutonic Order.  Their state seemed to be in a condition of utter decay and it was highly questionable whether it could survive at all.  The pressure from Poland seemed irresistible: within the state the Reformation first affected Danzig, then Konigsberg where the Bishop of Samland, Georg von Polentz, also a member of the Teutonic Order, gave a famous sermon in favor of the new teachings at Christmas 1525.  The Grand Master of the Order, Margrave Albrecht of Brandenburg-Ansbach, was very much in sympathy with Luther and in view of the condition of his order could see the only avenue of salvation in its secularization.

 

            By concluding a treaty with the King of Poland he divested himself of the office of Grand Master and entrusted the state of the Teutonic Order to the crown of Poland.  In return he received form Poland Prussia in fief as a secular duchy.  Albrecht hand now become a Polish duke, but not a duke of the Reich, and Prussia a duchy.

 

            To what extent Albrecht had consulted his fellow members of the order is unknown.  In justification of his action Albrecht himself referred to the need for the secularization of all religious orders as demanded by Luther.  Immediately after returning to Konigsberg, Albrecht publicly announced his conversion to Lutheranism and his new dignity, it such it can be called, as Duke of Prussia by the grace of the King of Poland.  He revoked the vows of the Teutonic Order and married Princess Dorothea of Denmark.  If Catholism had perhaps been sever, Lutheranism as the Prussian subjects were concerned was even more so.  Regular visitations endeavored to ensure that the new religious teachings were observed everywhere and sever penalties were imposed on offenders.

 

            Albrecht’s university at Konigsberg was for more than two centuries an exclusively Protestant institution.  The first 200 students came from throughout the Duchy of Prussia, from Elbing and Danzig as well as from Poland and Lithuania.  And since Luther had insisted that the teachings of the Bible be communicated to everyone in his own native language, the university soon established a Polish and a Lithuanian Seminar within the theological faculty.  Religious texts were translated into the various languages spoken by the native population.

 

            There exists no evidence pointing to any resistance by the population to the new religion, perhaps an indication of how much the old had discredited itself in the course of time.  but the fact that it was the Teutonic Order, the very institution which had represented Catholic power, that was instrumental in spreading Protestantism may also have made the break in continuity less harsh than it otherwise might have been.  But if any resurgence of Catholicism was hardly noticeable, what surprisingly did reappear were heathen customs, particularly in the area in which the Prussian native population was still in the majority.  Although the year 1525 has entered the annals of history as the year of the Peasant Rebellion in Germany, these risings were restricted to the regions of south-western Germany and Thuringia.  East of the river Elbe there were no risings except in the Samland in Prussia.  While the estates swore allegiance to the new Duke, the peasants too were ready to do so but only to the person of the Duke alone and in return for the abolition of all the special privileges which the land-owning nobility had acquired since the beginning of the decline of the Teutonic Order, privileges which of course had meant greater burdens of servitude for the peasants.

 

            The peasants assembled before the gates of Konigsberg, where Albrecht and his troops compelled them to lay down their arms and then executed several of the leaders.  Although the main impetus of the rebellion had been broken, never to lift its head again, currents of resistance, often expressed in religious form were frequent and Prussia became quite renowned as a breeding group for Protestant sectarianism – so much so that Luther himself found it necessary to warn Albrecht to maintain the unity of the faith.  On the other hand Albrecht was aware that the successful development of Prussia depended very much on attracting new immigrants and that therefore a degree of toleration towards religious beliefs was necessary as long as the principle of the Reformation as such was not put to question.

 

            In his external policy Albrecht aimed at the consolidation of the new duchy and its general acceptance by it neighbors and by Europe as a whole.  However, within the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation he had a difficult stand, the very act of turning to the Polish crown being considered an act of betrayal of former German colonial territory to foreigners.  In 1532 Albrecht was banned by the highest court of the Empire after the Roman Catholic church had done the same.  This ban was extended over all Prussian subjects.  That no serious consequences emerged from this for Prussia can in the main be ascribed to the success of the Reformation as a whole.  Also the attitude of Poland was of decisive importance.  The Reformation left its marks in Poland too, but in spite of temporary strong Calvinist influences and occasionally strained relations with the Papacy the country remained basically true to the Roman Catholic faith.  Thus the seeming contradiction occurs that the major Catholic power on Prussia’s border took great pains to assist the survival of its new Protestant neighbor, an attitude explained only in terms of Poland’s policy toward the Reich, whose north-eastern colony it had felt as a threat to its own security.  The same motives that caused Richelieu to support Gustavus Adolphus were at the roots of Poland’s support of Albrecht of Prussia.

 

            Internally the rule of Albrecht is characterized by a development in which the estates gained the upper hand politically.  From the point of view of domestic politics, the land-owning nobility moved more and more to the fore.  Given the geography of Prussia, with its vast arable potential, then the development towards greater arable areas, estates of a larger size and a different type of economic organization to that in other parts of Germany, seem natural.

 

            Its basically simple and uncomplicated political organization was primarily a legacy of the Teutonic Order.  The administration of the territory and its effective economic organization had to be transferred onto capable shoulders.  But not onto too many, to avoid proliferation and with it excessive exercise of power.  The organization of Prussia into large landed estates administered by the nobility is a product of this policy, which, as can be expected, was carried on the backs of the peasants.  The territorial division, and subdivisions, and subdivisions of subdivisions which are so typical of the land-holding pattern of southern Germany were avoided.  Estates were aggrandized, consolidated, peasants forcibly dispossessed, reduced from freemen to a state of servitude, and entire sections of a peasant population deprived of their rights.  The 16th century in Prussia is the period in which the nobility established its strong economic position which for more than three centuries was to make its political influence felt in Brandenburg-Prussia.

 

            Albrecht, after all, could not consider his own position as fully consolidated.  He had to lean for support on someone.  The peasant rising in Samland did not make it advisable to rest his rule, like his Swedish neighbor, upon a free peasantry.  The land-owning nobility was therefore, so he believed, the only prop upon which he could rely.  On the other hand the nobility had become not only a class of agricultural entrepreneurs but also exercised judicial and policing power over their serfs and often dominated their local churches, the end result being the erosion of the authority of the state as well a serious weakening in the social and economic position of a peasantry.  Ironically, these same peasants were the descendants of many of those who had entered the country in response to the call for eastern colonization, the spreading of the mission of Christianity and the expansion of the area of Christian influence.

 

            Yet the land-owning nobility of East Prussia differed in one vital respect from similar classes in other parts of Germany, or in Europe, where in the main the land was rented out or put into the hands of bailiffs, or simply managed by others.  The Prussian land-owning nobility managed its own estates.  The Prussian land-owned noble was a farmer, plain and simple.  The suitability of Prussia’s soil for the large-scale production of wheat had been of the close bonds in the relationship between the Hanseatic League and the Teutonic Order.  North-eastern Europe including Prussia was the corn chamber of Western Europe, wheat the factor which in the first place gave cities like Stettin in Pomerania, Danzig in West Prussia, Riga in Livonia, Konigsberg and Memel, their prominence as exporting harbors.  Wheat lay at the very roots of their rapid urban growth and flourishing urban culture.

 

            Such economic power was bound to develop the dynamics necessary for its transformation into political power.  The Landtag, the assembly of the estates, had to give its agreement to requests for grants of revenue, for the levying of taxation.  The Landtag was composed of the three estates, the fist being essentially members of the nobility originating from the Reich, the second the local nobility and the third the deputies of the towns.  There are no signs to indicate that Albrecht ever attempted to rely upon the first and the third in order to contain the local nobility.  On the whole the Landtag left Albrecht in peace, since they were aware that his policy of protecting Prussia from a possible Catholic reaction coincided with their interests.  But they did not tolerate any interference with their own economic interests.  The centralizing tendencies so characteristic of the German principalities, of Brandenburg during the 16th century for instance, were at that time still in their infancy in that corner of north-eastern central Europe.  The estates managed to secure for themselves a dominant influence in the government apparatus and in the administration.  This apparatus was in the main collegiate in character and essentially adapted from the administrative apparatus of the Teutonic Order.  It was the administration which determined the selection of new recruits for itself while Albrecht was left very little say in the matter.  The nobility selected its own, it legislated in its own interest.

 

            Late in the day Albrecht seems to have noticed the immense power which the estates had acquired, with the result that he tried to change course and to introduce a more absolutist regime.  The estates were incensed and as a warning, as happened similarly a century later to Thomas Wentworth, they tried and executed several of the Duke’s councilors.

 

            The estates secured for themselves further prerogatives, for example acting as the Duke’s representative in case of his absence or death.  Albrecht died in 1568 and he left his son Albrecht II as his successor.  However he soon proved to mentally ill and elector Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg was appointed as regent of Prussia in 1605.

 

            In the meantime the Reformation had also succeeded in Brandenburg.  Elector Joachim I, who came to power in 1499, though still devout to the Catholic Church allowed the humanist currents of the late 15th century free flow and founded the University of Frankfurt-an-der-Order which endowed with papal and imperial privileges, opened its doors in 1506.  Dietrich von Bulow, the Bishop of Lebus was its first chancellor.  Joachim also founded the Stiftskirche in Halle which he decorated with works by Durer and Peter Vischer.  He was a friend of Ulrich von Hutten and Erasmus of Rotterdam.

 

            The House of Brandenburg was able to wield considerable influence in the politics of the Reich, influence which could have been greater had the family been of one mind.  These differences crystallized and came to the fore in the imperial elections of 1519 in which the contestants were the grandson of Emperor Maximilian I, Charles of Spain and Francis I of France.  Joachim’s cousin, John Albrecht, the brother of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, supported Charles from the very beginning;; Joachim on the other hand tried to keep his options open to see which of the two candidates had the most to offer him.  Ultimately, though only under strong military pressure from Charles’s forces, Joachim finally committed himself to the Hapsburg side and Charles V became Emperor on 28 May 1519.

 

            In spite of his humanist leanings Joachim opposed the rise of Luther, in contrast to his brother, the Elector of Mainz, and in return the church granted him the privilege of nominating the bishops for his own bishoprics in Brandenburg.  Charles V showed little interest in equally rewarding Joachim’s services and much to the latter’s chagrin he enfeoffed the Duke of Pomerania although that territory had previously been acknowledged by Charles as a fief of Brandenburg.  Marriage projects with the Hapsburgs failed as indeed they did with France.  Instead Joachim’s son married, in 1524, Madalene, the daughter of Duke George of Saxony which led to closer ties between the cousins of Brandenburg and Prussia.  But Charles V’s successful battle at Pavia and the acquisition by the House of Hapsburg of Bohemia and Hungary gave hum such power as to dismiss any doubts in Joachim’s mind about continuing to support him.  Nevertheless Joachim’s wife Elizabeth became a Lutheran, despite all his efforts to prevent her.  He prohibited her from participating in Lutheran communion rites and she therefore found it necessary to escape to Saxony.

 

            At the imperial diet in Augsburg in 1530 Joachim was the leader of the Catholic struggle against the Protestant cause, and he also supported the election of Charles V’s son Ferdinand as King of the Romans.  When he died in his palace in Berlin in July 1535, he left the Neumark to his younger son John of Kustrin and the Kurmark, the core of the territory, to his elders on Joachim.  Until 1570 both governed in their own part of Brandenburg.  Joachim II had none of the political ambitions of his father and was relatively mild-mannered man.  John, on the other had, was more like his father, he also believed there were definite advantages to be gained by supporting the Reformation.  Whereas Joachim like the show of wealth and lived in truly princely style, John was rather more economically minded, and was not averse to lending out money at high interest rates to his own brother and others.  Under his banner he organized formidable mercenary forces which in return for considerable sums he hired out to the Emperor and other princes.  Little wonder therefore that at the end of his reign John left a sizeable surplus in his treasury while Joachim II left considerable debts.

 

            From the outset, in spite of opposition from this father, John had been a supporter of the cause of the Reformation, but his brother Joachim was somewhat more reserved.  He converted to Lutheranism in stages by adopting certain parts of it  in that way he avoided actual conflict with either Catholics or Protestants, while the net effect was the Lateralization of the Kurmark.  In the sphere of imperial politics he was entrusted with the command of the imperial army against the Turks in 1542, but his lack of any military expertise, the rag-bag composition of his troops and other factors ensured the failure of his mission to relieve Buda from the Turks.  Neither Joachim nor John considered to wise to participate in the Schmalkaldic wars (the war of Germany’s Protestant princes and cities against Charles V between 1546 and 1547), one factor that brought the two brothers closer together again but also caused a split and then war with Charles V.  This fear of imperial attack resulted in a considerable rapprochement between Brandenburg and Albrecht I of Prussia, but neither Joachim, John, nor Albrecht was prepared to go as far as their ally, Elector Moritz of Saxony intended and attack the Emperor in alliance with France. 

 

            The Peace of Augsburg brought a temporary solution to the religious question and its wars.  Joachim I division of Brandenburg between his two sons had led to trade rivalries among the cities along the river Oder.  Frankfurt-an-der-Oder was by far the most important trading centre of Brandenburg, but Landsberg as well as Krossen, which belonged to John’s Neumark, tried to wrest the new monopoly position from Frankfurt.  The two brothers came to an agreement which maintained Frankfurt’s position but very much at the expense of Stettin in Pomerania, while John also tried to develop trade routes to Poland overland, again to the disadvantage of Stettin.

 

            In 1571 both Joachim and john died within 10 days of each other.  John did not leave any sons, only daughters.  Hence the successor was Joachim’s son John George who once again united the Kurmark and the Neumark.  John George died in 1598 to be succeeded by Joachim Frederick who at time was already 52 years of age.  He possessed extensive administrative experience and one of his first aims was to restore if not a cordial then at least a working relationship with the House of Hapsburg.  Also John George had left debts which had to be paid.  What had happened in Prussia was not also happening in Brandenburg.  The Landtag, the diet, convened to grant taxation which at least paid two-thirds of the debts, but did so only after obtaining socio-economic prerogatives which secured in essence the economic power of the nobility.  But they wanted no part in any venture which could involve them in further expense, be that a war against Spain, against the ecclesiastical princes or against the Emperor.

 

            Joachim Frederick’s son, the electoral prince John Sigismund, forced a greater activism behind Brandenburg’s support of the Protestant cause.  However, in retrospect the most important event of John Sigismund’s reign was his formal enfeoffment with Prussia in 1611.  When Albrecht II died in 1618, the right of succession when to the House of Hohenzollern.  John Sigismund’s marriage with Albrecht’s eldest daughter ultimately established his claims to the territories of Julich-Cleves.

 

           The Elector of Prussia was now a vassal of the Emperor as well as the King of Poland.  Not that either mattered very much.  What mattered was the increase in size of Hohenzollern territory, which now had almost doubled.  Brandenburg comprised 697 square miles, East Prussia 672.  the city of Konigsberg had been a commercial centre since the days of the Teutonic Knights, unrivaled by any city in Brandenburg.  But in Prussia as in Brandenburg it was the landed nobility which endeavored to play the major political role and very often succeeded in doing so.

 

          The increase in the Hohenzollern territories and the improvement of the central administration were soon overshadowed by signs of neglect during the reign of John Sigismund.  The active role he played as electoral prince had promised much, but that promise remained unfulfilled.  In March 1609 Duke John Williams of Julich died.  Electress Anne was next in line of succession and Brandenburg formally took possession of Julich-Cleves.  The Emperor objected and the Reichshofrat was convened.  The Brandenburg claim was contested by the Neuburg family and in order to appease both claimants and offend neither the Reichshofrat decreed the joint rule of Julich-Cleves by Brandenburg and Neuburg.  The local estates agreed with the solution, as long as religious tolerance for Protestants, Calvinists, and Catholics was guaranteed within the principality.

 

            John Sigismund’ health rapidly deteriorated, so much so that in November 1619 he handed over government to his son George William.  In January of 1620 Sigismund died.  Brandenburg had ceased to be simply a central-German principality but had become a neighbor of Poland and Russia on the one hand and of the Netherlands on the other.  This also influenced its immediate future.  Brandenburg could no longer insist on religious uniformity  the very composition of its population made religious toleration a political postulate which ultimately had to become policy of state.  Brandenburg had ceased to be – if in fact it had ever been – a confessional territorial state.

 

            George William’s priority was to obtain the formal investiture of the Elector with the Duchy of Prussia by the King of Poland.  But there was still one problem: his mother.  She pursued a policy of her own, namely the marriage of her daughter with King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.  George William was against this connection, primarily because the Polish King, at war with Sweden, opposed it, but while he was in Konigsberg the Elector’s mother sent her daughter to the Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna to be married in Sweden.  King Sigmund of Poland at first considered the affair pat of a Hollenzollern conspiracy and George William was highly embarrassed because of the delay in the investiture; he was prepared to join neither Gustavus Adolphus nor Sigmund.  He preferred undisturbed neutrality.  Swedish advances in Livonia seriously threatened Polish interests and as a result of this threat the Polish Court showed a greater readiness to make concessions to George William.  On 23 September 1621 he obtained Prussia under the same conditions as his predecessor.  More extensive demands originally envisaged by the Poles were dropped.

 

            Neutrality brought isolation.  While his neighbor John George of Saxony conducted special negotiations with the Catholic party, George William’s possessions in north-western Germany were occupied by the imperial troops under Tilly.  Meanwhile the enemies of the Hapsburgs, notably France, England and the Scandinavian states, planned a coalition.  Brandenburg participated on the periphery by negotiating with Gustavus Adolphus who planned a large campaign in Silesia.  This was too close for George William’s comfort and he tried to dissuade him by raising his interest for a campaign in western Germany with the object of reconquering the Palatinate.  Eventually hostility between Gustavus and King Christian IV of Denmark caused these plans to be abandoned.  George William also toyed with one of the Emperor’s most serious enemies, Prince Gabor or Transylvania, but when challenged by the imperial court in Vienna he broke off negotiations with him and refrained, for instance, from joining the alliance of the Hague of December 1625 between England and Denmark and France.

 

          To protect his neutrality George William mustered some 3,000 men – too late to prevent Mansfeld and his men from crossing the Altmark and Priegnitz.  Wallenstein’s victory over Mansfeld in 1626 temporarily deprived Brandenburg of Magdeburg and Halberstadt.

 

            While traveling the territory of Brandenburg imperial troops tended to bear in mind the country’s neutrality, but the arrival of Gustavus Adolphus forced George William to take sides against the Empire and from then on, like most other parts of Germany, Brandenburg and Prussia became a battleground of the Thirty Years War.  Changing sides did not help.  Brandenburg was ravaged and in the eyes of contemporaries it was at the point of dissolution when on 1 December 1640, at the age of 46, Elector George William died.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nobility in Prussia was more decentralized and in tune with what happened in Britain than in France were absolutism ruled.