I.

Introduction

Prussia (in German, Preussen), former kingdom and state in Germany. At the height of its expansion, in the late 19th century, Prussia extended along the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea, from Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Luxembourg in the west to the Russian Empire in the east, to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the east, south-east, and south, and to Switzerland in the south.

Modern Prussia was successively, with geographical modifications, an independent kingdom (1701-1871); the largest constituent kingdom of the German Empire (1871-1918); a constituent state, or Land, of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933); and an administrative division, comprising 13 provinces, of the centralized German Third Reich (1934-1945). After World War I, West Prussia was lost to Poland, and East Prussia was separated from the rest of German Prussia in 1919, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, by a strip of formerly Prussian territory known as the Polish Corridor, designed to give Poland an outlet on the Baltic Sea. The other provinces of Prussia between World Wars I and II were Rhine, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Berlin, Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Westphalia, Grenzmark Posen-Westpreussen (now in Poland), Hesse-Nassau, and Hohenzollern (both now in Germany), and Silesia (now partly in Poland and partly in the Czech Republic). In 1947, after World War II, Prussia was abolished as a political unit and, with the exception of East Prussia, partitioned into various parts of the four zones of occupation in Germany, and administered by France, Britain, the United States, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The north-eastern part of East Prussia was annexed by the USSR, and the remainder was put under Polish administration. Berlin was the capital, and the principal cities included Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Essen, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Magdeburg, Stettin (now Szczecin), and Königsberg (now Kaliningrad).