History of Prussia
The area known as Prussia was inhabited in early times by West Slavic tribes, ancestors of the modern Poles, in the West, and Baltic tribes, closely related to Lithuanians, in the East. Sometime after the seventh century, the area was invaded and settled by pagan German tribes, later known as Prussians.
In 1226, Prussia was conquered by the Teutonic Knights, a military religious order, who converted the Prussians to Christianity. The Teutonic Knights were overthrown by the Prussians with help from Poland and Lithuania in 1454. Prussia was divided into Royal Prussia in the west and Ducal Prussia in the east. Royal Prussia was incorporated into Poland providing it with a corridor to the Baltic Sea (the "Danzig Corridor"). Ducal Prussia became a Polish territory. At this time, the port city of Danzig (modern day Gdansk) was designated a "free city".
The Protestant Reformation in the early to mid 1500s saw most Prussians convert to Protestantism whereas Poland remained, and still remains, solidly Roman Catholic. In 1525 Ducal Prussia became a hereditary duchy under Albrecht Hohenzollern, the last grand master of the Teutonic Knights.
In 1657, after an invasion by the Swedes, Poland surrendered sovereignty over Ducal Prussia which then became the Kingdom of Prussia headed by the Hohenzollern line. Prussia's power grew and in 1772, under King Friedrich II (Frederick the Great), consisted of the provinces of Brandenburg, Pomerania, Danzig, West Prussia and East Prussia (modern day East Germany, northern Poland, and a small portion of the Soviet Union).
A major event in German history was the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, making Germany a world power. It was during this war that, in 1870, Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck orchestrated the unification of the German states.
The German Empire was established under Prussian leadership with Bismarck as Chancellor. Wilhelm II, the last of the Hohenzollern dynasty, became Emperor of Germany (Kaiser) in 1888 and ruled until Germany's defeat in World War I.
After defeat in World War I, Germany was forced to give up the Danzig Corridor to Poland and Danzig once again became a free city. This caused the province of East Prussia to be separated from the rest of Germany. The Rosenberg District was at this time contained in East Prussia.
After Germany's defeat in World War II, West Prussia and East Prussia were divided by Poland and the Soviet Union. The old Rosenberg District in now part of the Itawa District of Poland. All of the Villages now have Polish names.
Check out these old Maps of the West Prussia area.
Why was Prussia dissolved?
Prussia was expunged from the map of Europe when the Allied authorities passed judgement upon it after WW2. So on 25 Feb. 1947, representatives of the Allied occupation authorities in Berlin signed a law (Law No. 46) abolishing the state of Prussia, and from that time on, Prussia belonged to History.
They believed that it was the very source of the German malaise that had afflicted Europe. They believed that a political culture marked by illiberalism and intolerance, an inclination to revere power over legally grounded rights, and an unbroken tradition of militarism... is the symbol of Prussia.
So by this judgement by the victors, they branded Prussia as the bane of modern German and European history. They blamed Prussian culture because it stifled and marginalized the more liberal cultures of the German south and thus laid the foundations for political extremisms and dictatorship...Nazism. Its habit of authoritarianism, servility and obedience prepared the ground for the collapse of democracy and the advent of Nazi dictatorship. In other words, they blamed Prussia and its culture and what they perceived to be what Prussia stood for as the reason for abolishing/dissolving it.
Visitors to Brandenburg (Brandenburg-Prussia), the historic core province of the Prussian state have always been struck by the meagreness of its resources, the sleepy provinciality of its towns. There was little here to suggest the extraordinary historical career of Brandenburg. Situated in the midst of the dreary plain that stretches from the Netherlands to north Poland, the Brandenburg countryside has rarely attracted visitors and possessed no distinctive landmarks. The rivers that cross it are sluggish streams which lacked the grandeur of the Danube or the Rhine. Its soil was poor quality.
Metternich famously remarked that Italy was a "geographical expression." This cannot be said of Brandenburg-Prussia. It was landlocked and WITHOUT DEFENSIBLE BORDERS OF ANY KIND. It also didn't enjoy the self-sufficiency in armaments that enbaled Sweden to assert itself as a regional power in the early 17th century. So how did this unpromising territory became the heartland of a powerful European state? Because of the sheer will and discipline of its people, and its love for ORDER. Other dynastic territories fractured over time into even smaller states, but Brandenburg-Prussia remained intact-and expanded. It had no choice but to be a military power, because of its geographical position, as pointed above.
So Prussia has been bound up in public awareness with the memory of military success: Rossbach, Leuthen, Leipzig, Waterloo, Koniggratz, Sedan...and so therefore, in the judgment of the victors over Nazi Germany, Prussia had to go.
With the end of Nazi rule in 1945 came the division of Germany into Zones of Occupation, and the transfer of control of everything east of the Oder-Neisse line, (including Silesia, Farther Pomerania, Eastern Brandenburg, and southern East Prussia), to Poland, with the northern third of East Prussia, including Konigsberg, now Kaliningrad, going to the Soviet Union. Today the Kaliningrad Oblast is a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland. During the Soviet Army's takeover of eastern Germany an estimated ten million Germans fled, were expelled from (or were not able to return) to these territories as part of the Potsdam Agreement and the sanctioned German exodus from Eastern Europe.
Millions of ethnic Prussian-Germans were expelled upon the abolition of the Prussian state. With at least 12 million Germans directly involved, possibly 14 million or more, it was the largest movement or transfer of any single ethnic population in modern history and largest among the post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe (which displaced more than twenty million people in total). Estimates of total deaths of German civilians have ranged from 500,000 to a maximum of 3 million people. The number of deaths and their causes remain a topic of tense debate among historians.
The exact number of Prussian-Germans expelled after the war is still unknown, because most recent research provides a combined estimate which includes those who were evacuated by the German authorities, fled or were killed during the war. However, it is estimated that between 12 and 14 million ethnic Prussians/Germans and their descendants were displaced from their homes.
In abolishing Prussia, the victorious Allied powers only saw and perceived the evil of Nazism as a byproduct of Prussia. They totally ignored its positive achievements-an incorruptible civil service, a tolerant attitude to religious minorities, a law code from 1794 that was admired and imitated throughout the German states, a literacy rate (in the 19th century) unequalled in Europe, and a bureaucracy of EXEMPLARY EFFICIENCY. All this they ignored, because of Nazism. The Prussia they depicted was not without flaws (what state doesn't have its built in flaws?)-but it had little in common with the racial state created by the Nazis!
As Churchill told the British Parliament on 21 September 1943 in the midst of WW2:** "The core of Germany is Prussia. There is the source of the recurring pestilence."
The excision of Prussia from the political map of Europe, according to the Allied Powers, was thus a symbolic necessity.
It was basically a collective judgement imposed for the atrocities of the murderous regime of Nazi Germany and its leaders, and once more innocent people paid for it by being driven off from their ancestral lands.
It was simply the judgement of the victors.
Source(s):
**Churchill's speech to Parliament, 21 Sep 1943, "The Second World War" Vol 5
Geschichte kennen und verstehen- Fink, Hans-Georg . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag.
this is why I made the story The pain I feel because of this when I was looking it over I just felt mad that this
was done to people who were just live out the lives push off the land they live. it was just wrong I hope when your were done you will see the truth