X-Nico

35 unusual facts about Prussia


Alf Lüdtke

His article describes the idea that state violence under the feudal system was necessary to create a control amongst the Prussian working class in order to prepare them for the different structure of capitalist society.

Amlishagen Castle

The castle was finally bought by Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher the Prussian Generalfeldmarschall who led his army against Napoleon I at the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig in 1813 and at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 with the Duke of Wellington.

André Lichnerowicz

His grandfather fought in the Polish resistance against the Prussians.

Anton von Schmerling

This brought him into opposition to the party of Prussian supremacy; and when they attained a majority, he resigned, and was succeeded by Heinrich von Gagern.

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After the abortive election of king Frederick William IV of Prussia to be emperor, he, with the other Austrians, left Frankfurt.

Balkan League

Bulgaria then turned to the more direct method of expansion through winning a war, building a large army for that purpose and started to see itself as the "Prussia of the Balkans".

Calvörde Castle

The little town, along with several nearby villages, belonged to the castle and formed a Brunswick exclave in what later became Prussian territory.

Chief fireman

In imperial Prussia, the title was known as brandmeister (from German Brand - "fire" and Meister - literally "master") and was the police officer, the chief of one of city fire-fighting crews.

Divorce

The Enlightened absolutist, King Frederick II ("the Great") of Prussia enshrined a new divorce law in 1752, in which marriage was declared to be a purely private concern, allowing divorce to be granted on the basis of mutual consent.

Earl of Stair

He sat in the House of Lords as a Scottish Representative Peer from 1793 to 1807 and from 1820 to 1821 and also served as Ambassador to Prussia.

Emile Wauters

He received the Order of Merit of Prussia, and is Commander of the Order of Leopold, and of that of St. Michael of Bavaria, Officer of the Légion d'honneur, among other awards.

Erwin Planck

In August 1939, a group including Prussian Finance Minister Johannes Popitz, Planck, and Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht approached General Georg Thomas, head of the Defence Economy and Armament Office asking him to do something to thwart the outbreak of the forthcoming war.

Eusebio Bava

Born at Vercelli, in 1806 he fought as a volunteer under the French flag against Prussia.

Gustaf Douglas

Gustaf Archibald Siegwart Douglas (born 3 March 1938) is the oldest son of count Carl Ludvig Douglas (26 July 1908 Stjärnorp - 21 January 1961 Rio de Janeiro), a Swedish nobleman and diplomat who was Royal Swedish Ambassador to Brazil, and his Prussian wife Ottora Maria Haas-Heye (13 February 1910 Partenkirchen - 17 July 2001).

Hanoverian prince

Despite Hanover's annexation by Prussia in 1866, male-line descendants of George III continue to style themselves as a prince or princess of Hanover.

Heinrich Alexander von Arnim

On the same day he took office as Foreign Minister of Prussia in the government that was led first by Adolf Heinrich von Arnim-Boitzenburg, then by Gottfried Ludolf Camphausen; this government already resigned on 20 June, however.

Iron armour

One well known example of cast-iron armour for land use is the Gruson turret, first tested by the Prussian government in 1868.

Jakob Salomon Bartholdy

Jakob Ludwig Salomon Bartholdy (May 13, 1779 – July 27, 1825) was a Prussian diplomat, born Jakob Salomon in Berlin of Jewish parentage, and educated at the University of Halle.

Johann Georg Ziesenis

On behalf of Duchess Philippine Charlotte of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, the sister of King Frederick II of Prussia, he had the opportunity to make a portrait of the regent in the period from 17 to 20 June 1763 at Castle Salzdahlum.

John George, Elector of Brandenburg

Upon the death of his kinsman Albert I, Duke of Prussia in 1568, the Duchy of Prussia was inherited by the latter's underage son Albert Frederick.

Kaliopa House

According to a legend, the house was bestowed upon the beautiful Kaliopa (born Maria Kalish), the wife of the Prussian consul Kalish, by the governor of the Danubian Vilayet, Midhat Pasha, who was in love with her.

Karl Ernst Jarcke

It met the emphatic approval of the circle of friends of the then Crown Prince (later King Frederick William IV of Prussia), which was composed of men of anti-revolutionary views, influenced by Romanticism and by Karl Ludwig von Haller.

La Terre

The war with Prussia had just broken out, and Jean, disgusted with his life, again enlisted in the service of his country.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

Within the Galactic Empire, based on mid 19th century Prussia, an ambitious military genius, Reinhard von Müsel, is rising to power.

Leichhardt Highway

It is named after Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt who travelled a route in the 19th Century that roughly parallels today's highway.

Lord John series

Set in 1758, the story finds Lord John in Prussia serving as the English liaison officer to the First Regiment of Hanoverian Foot.

Military tradition

In Prussia and the German Empire, states relied on their own history as a state rather than as a regiment, while some specific regiments within elite formations did maintaining unit histories.

Musket Model 1777

7 million muskets were produced, including variants 1800 (an IX), 1816 and 1822, but not including muskets like the Austrian 1798 or the Prussian 1809, which were mere clones of the French 1777.

Ōshima Yoshimasa

In 1887 he became chief of staff of the Tokyo Garrison and following the reorganization of the Imperial Japanese Army under the advice of Prussian military advisor Jakob Meckel, he became chief of staff of the IJA 1st Division.

Oxapampa

In March 1857 a group of 300 Tyrolean and Prussian settlers, consisting mainly of poor peasant families and couples who weren't allowed to marry in their home countries, boarded the “Norton” to go to Peru.

Rudolf von Scheliha

Scheliha was born in Zessel, Oels, Silesia (now Cieśle, Gmina Oleśnica, Poland), as the son of a Prussian squire.

Sir John Swinton, 14th of that Ilk

This unusual "contract" shows that Sir John must already have acquired a solid reputation as a fighter, perhaps in Prussia or Spain or even both, some time before 1371, when it was made.

Sønderborg Castle

After the war of 1864, the province and the castle became Prussian property and served as barracks from 1867 until the area was reunified with Denmark in 1920.

Staffort

During the 18th and 19th centuries nearly 100 inhabitants left the village to relocate in America, Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Jutland, Prussia, Russia, Serbia and Styria.

Wojciech Bartosz Głowacki

Polish forces, 15,000 strong, were defeated by a combined Prussian and Russian army, some 27,000 strong.


Administrative division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

On July 29, 1657 they signed the Treaty of Wehlau in Wehlau (Polish: Welawa; now Znamensk), whereby Frederick William renounced a previous Swedish-Prussian alliance and John Casimir recognised Frederick William's full sovereignty over the Duchy of Prussia.

Alexandra of Glucksburg

Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (1887–1957), wife of Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia

Andrzej Wiszowaty, Jr.

It appears that Andrzej Jr. was born while his father Benedykt Wiszowaty was a Unitarian minister in Kosinowo, in the Duchy of Prussia.

Anne of Austria, Landgravine of Thuringia

Margaret of Thuringia (1449 – 13 July 1501), who married John II, Elector of Brandenburg, and whose direct main heirs have been Electors of Brandenburg, then Kings of Prussia, and then German Emperors.

Augustus III of Poland

English translation: August III, by the grace of God, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, Ruthenia (i.e. Galicia), Prussia, Masovia, Samogitia, Kiev, Volhynia, Podolia, Podlaskie, Livonia, Smolensk, Severia, Chernihiv, and also hereditary Duke of Saxony and Prince-elector.

Austro-Prussian War

The war left Prussia dominant in German politics (since Austria was now excluded from Germany and no longer the top German state), and German nationalism would compel the remaining independent states to ally with Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and then to accede to the crowning of King Wilhelm as German Emperor.

Battle of Hennersdorf

The Battle of Hennersdorf, sometimes referred to as Catholic-Hennersdorf, was a minor encounter that took place on November 23, 1745 in Katholisch-Hennersdorf in Silesia (Prussia, present-day Poland) during the War of the Austrian Succession.

Bundesstraße 1

From the late 18th century onwards, parts of the route were rebuilt as a chaussee, mainly in the area between Aachen and Jülich as well as on the nearby territory of the County of Mark, promoted by the Brandenburg-Prussian administration under Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein.

Chatham Ministry

Its major foreign policy objective - to secure Britain a major alliance partner in Europe that would end its diplomatic isolation - failed when Frederick the Great of Prussia rejected an offer to reform the Anglo-Prussian Alliance.

Congress of Hanover

The Austrians were preparing for a war with Prussia in which they would need France as allies, and so they had no wish to risk offending them.

Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Her niece Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, daughter of Duke Charles II, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, married Frederick William III of Hohenzollern in 1793 and became queen consort of Prussia in 1797.

Duchy of Oldenburg

In 1937 (with the Greater Hamburg Act), it lost the exclave districts of Eutin near the Baltic coast and Birkenfeld in southwestern Germany to Prussia and gained the City of Wilhelmshaven; however, this was a formality, as the Hitler régime had de facto abolished the federal states in 1934.

Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg

In accordance with traditional Prussian noble practices, the children were at first strictly educated privately by a governess.

George Frederick Charles, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth

Schloss Weferlingen had been assigned to his family as an appanage by King Frederick I of Prussia, after George Frederick Charles's heavily indebted father had renounced his succession rights to the Franconian Hohenzollern estates of Bayreuth and Ansbach in favour of Prussia in the Contract of Schönberg.

German question

A unification of Germany led by Prussia would mean the domination of the new state by the Protestant House of Hohenzollern, a more palatable option to Protestant northern German states.

German town law

Magdeburg law was popular around the March of Meißen and Upper Saxony and was the source of several variants, including Neumarkt-Magdeburg law (Środa Śląska), used extensively in Upper Silesia, and Kulm law, used in the territory of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia and along the lower Vistula in Eastern Pomerania.

Grumbkow

Joachim Ernst von Grumbkow (1637–1690), general and politician of Brandenburg-Prussia

Henry of Stolberg-Wernigerode

Count Henry was canon of the cathedral in Halberstadt, Knight of the Prussian Royal Order of the Black Eagle and a member of the Order of Saint John.

Jean Roemer

At the close of the war he visited the great military establishments of France, Prussia, and Austria, and completed his studies in Lombardy under the guidance and auspices of Field-Marshal Count Radetzky.

Jean-Baptiste Bernard Viénot de Vaublanc

Nevertheless, Jean-Baptiste makes it to Gambinen in Prussia, near Vilnius, Lithuania, before finally succumbing to the ravages of war.

Joe Gaetjens

His great-grandfather Thomas, a native of Bremen, had been sent to Haiti by Frederick William III, the King of Prussia, as a business emissary.

Johann Baptist Alzog

He defended with ardour the Archbishop of that city, Martin von Dunin, during his persecution by the Prussian government, became vicar-capitular, professor and regens at Hildesheim in 1845, and in 1853 was appointed to the chair of Church History in the University of Freiburg (Breisgau); at the same time he was appointed an ecclesiastical councillor (geistlicher Rat).

Kaiser-Walzer

The waltz was originally titled Hand in Hand and was intended as a toast made in August of that year by Austrian emperor Franz Josef on the occasion of his visit to the German Kaiser Wilhelm II where it was symbolic as a 'toast of friendship' extended by Austria to Germany.

Kehdingen

Until 1932 there was a Prussian district known as Land Kehdingen, and until 1975 there was an Evangelical-Lutheran parish of Kehdingen with its base in Drochtersen, which was absorbed on 1 January 1976 into the parish of Stade.

Killingworth locomotives

It was named after the Prussian general Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, who, after a speedy march, arrived in time to the battle of Waterloo and helped defeat Napoleon.

Klara Löbenstein

Löbenstein was born in Hildesheim, Prussia on February 15, 1883 to merchant Lehmann Löbenstein and his wife Sofie (née Schönfeld).

Lands of Bogston

Robert Montgomerie Borland as the only son of Robert Wilson Montgomery's sister Mary Borland, married Charlotte Roche and their son Robert Borland Montgomerie, having taken his grand-uncle's surname, inherited Bogston but lived at Malmedy in Prussia and only visited once in 1842.

Lutynia, Środa Śląska County

It is the site of the Battle of Leuthen, where Frederick the Great of Prussia inflicted a heavy defeat on the Austrians in 1757.

Marianne Kirchgessner

After that she traveled throughout Europe for ten years, visiting Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg and Magdeburg, playing four times at the Prussian court for King Friedrich Wilhelm II in Berlin.

Melbourne Hebrew Congregation

The 1850s saw the arrival of some 300 Jewish families from London and the Province of Posen, Prussia to Melbourne, prompting the construction of a new larger synagogue on the Bourke Street site.

Norway in 1814

He learned that Prussia and Austria were waning in their support of Sweden's claims to Norway, that Tsar Alexander I of Russia (a distant cousin of Christian Frederik's) favored a Swedish-Norwegian union but not with Bernadotte as the king, and that the United Kingdom was looking for a solution to the problem that would keep Norway out of Russia's influence.

Old Western Pomerania

The name Old Western Pomerania was first used when that area of Swedish Pomerania that had been remained with Sweden after the Treaty of Stockholm, later transferred to Prussia under the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and was named New Western Pomerania.

Partitions of the Duchy of Pomerania

After the war, the Swedish Empire and Brandenburg-Prussia succeeded the Griffin dukes in the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and divided it in the Treaty of Stettin (1653) into a Swedish Pomerania and a Brandenburg-Prussian Pomerania.

Princess Irene

Princess Irene, Duchess of Aosta (1904 – 1974), daughter of Constantine I of Greece and his wife, the former Princess Sophie of Prussia

Princess Louise of Schleswig-Holstein

Princess Louise Sophie of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg (1866-1952), daughter of Frederick VIII, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, wife of Prince Friedrich Leopold of Prussia

Queen Louise of Sweden

Louise of the Netherlands (1828–1871), daughter of Prince Frederick of the Netherlands and Princess Louise of Prussia (1808–1870); wife of Charles XV of Sweden

Retterath

Under Prussian administration, Retterath was a municipality in the Bürgermeisterei (“Mayoralty”) of Kelberg in the Adenau district.

Royal Hanoverian State Railways

The Göttingen–Arenshausen and Northeim–Ellrich lines were not completed until after the transfer of the Hanoverian State Railways to Prussia after the War of 1866.

Rudolf Diels

Göring was made minister for Prussia in 1933, replacing Carl Severing, and was impressed with Diels' work and new-found commitment to the Nazi Party.

SMS Scharnhorst

The ship was named after the Prussian reformer General Gerhard von Scharnhorst and commissioned into service on 24 October 1907.

Sweden–Ukraine relations

Finally an agreement was signed between Sweden and three Ukrainian commanders (Ivan Bohun, the leader of the Ukrainian Protestants Yuri Nemyrych and Ivan Kovalivsky) on 6 October 1657 in Korsun where Sweden acknowledged the Ukrainian borders all the way to Wisła in the west and Prussia in the north.

Vincent, Count Benedetti

In 1866 the Austro-Prussian War broke out, and during the critical weeks which followed the attempt of Napoleon to intervene between Prussia and Austria, he accompanied the Prussian headquarters in the advance on Vienna, and during a visit to Vienna he helped to arrange the preliminaries of the armistice signed at Nikolsburg.

Vladas Žulkus

Two years later together with Alvydas Nikžentaitis he founded Centre of History of Western Lithuania and Prussia (from 2003 - Institute of Baltic Sea Region History and Archaeology) and Historical Department at Klaipėda University.

William Rosenau

William Rosenau (1865, Wollstein, Province of Posen, Prussia - 1943, United States) was a leader of Reform Judaism in the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States.