Province of Brandenburg Provinz Brandenburg | |||||||||||||||
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Province of Prussia | |||||||||||||||
1815–1945 | |||||||||||||||
![]() Brandenburg (red), within the Kingdom of Prussia (white), within the German Empire | |||||||||||||||
Anthem | |||||||||||||||
Brandenburglied | |||||||||||||||
Capital | Potsdam (1815–1827) Berlin (1827–1843) Potsdam (1843–1918) Charlottenburg (1918–1920) Berlin (1920–1945) | ||||||||||||||
Area | |||||||||||||||
• 1939 | 38,275 km2 (14,778 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||
Population | |||||||||||||||
• 1939 | 3,023,443 | ||||||||||||||
History | |||||||||||||||
• Established | 1815 | ||||||||||||||
• Greater Berlin Act | 1 October 1920 | ||||||||||||||
• Disestablished | 1945 | ||||||||||||||
Political subdivisions | Potsdam Frankfurt | ||||||||||||||
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Today part of |
The Province of Brandenburg (German : Provinz Brandenburg) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1945. Brandenburg was established in 1815 from the Kingdom of Prussia's core territory, comprised the bulk of the historic Margraviate of Brandenburg (excluding Altmark) and the Lower Lusatia region, and became part of the German Empire in 1871. From 1918, Brandenburg was a province of the Free State of Prussia until Prussia was dissolved in 1945 after World War II, and replaced with reduced territory as the State of Brandenburg in East Germany, which was later dissolved in 1952. Following the reunification of Germany in 1990, Brandenburg was re-established as a federal state of Germany, becoming one of the new states.
Brandenburg's provincial capital alternated between Potsdam, Berlin, and Charlottenburg during its existence.
The province comprised large parts of the North German Plain, stretching from the Elbe river in the west to beyond the Oder in the east, where the Neumark region bordered on the Prussian Grand Duchy of Posen (Province of Posen from 1848). Other neighbouring provinces were Pomerania in the northeast, Silesia in the southeast, and Prussian Saxony in the southwest. Brandenburg also shared a common border with the grand duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz in the northwest as well as with Anhalt in the west.
Beside the Elbe and Oder river areas, the province covered large parts of the Spree and Havel basin. The largest cities were Berlin, located in the centre together with the growing suburbs of Spandau, Charlottenburg, Schöneberg and Neukölln. Larger towns were the royal residence Potsdam and the regional capital Frankfurt (Oder), furthermore Landsberg (present-day Gorzów Wielkopolski) in the east, the historic capital Brandenburg an der Havel as well as Cottbus, Forst and Guben (Gubin) in Lower Lusatia.
The first people who are known to have inhabited Brandenburg were the Germanic Suebi. During the Migration Period, they were succeeded by the Polabian Slavs, whose fortress at Brandenburg an der Havel was conquered by the German king Henry the Fowler in 928/29. Henry subdued the Slavic tribes up to the Oder river and his son Otto I established the marca Geronis on their territory, with the government first conferred to the Saxon count Gero.
The Northern March was split off in 965, however, large parts were again lost in the Great Slav Rising of 983, and the margravial title did not become hereditary until the time of Albert the Bear, another Saxon count from the noble House of Ascania, who established the Margraviate of Brandenburg in 1157. His son Margrave Otto I already achieved the dignity of an Arch-Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Empire in 1177. Emperor Charles IV by the Golden Bull of 1356 confirmed the electoral dignity of the Brandenburg margraves and in 1373 assigned the electorate to his son Wenceslaus in 1373. The Elector of Brandenburg held the seventh rank among the electors of the Empire and had five votes in the Council of Princes. [1]
In 1415 Brandenburg was acquired by Burgrave Frederick of Nuremberg, the first member of the Swabian House of Hohenzollern to rule the margraviate. [1] Over the centuries, the Hohenzollerns gradually rose to one of the most important dynasties of the Empire, rivalling with the ruling House of Habsburg, a process that intensified with the Protestant Reformation and the inheritance of the Polish Duchy of Prussia in 1618. The margraviate formed the core of the Brandenburg-Prussian state and the "Great Elector" Frederick William I made various accessions to the territory, the Treaty of Königsberg of 1656 marking a significant turn in its evolution. [1] By the 1657 Treaty of Wehlau, Frederick William reached full sovereignty in his Prussian territories, which enabled his son Frederick I to assume the crown of a "King in Prussia" in 1701.
The margraviate remained a constituent part of Prussia, until after the Napoleonic Wars and the 1815 Congress of Vienna the kingdom's administration was divided into ten provinces. Most of the Margraviate's territory was incorporated into the new Province of Brandenburg, most notably the Mittelmark between the rivers Elbe and Oder and the Neumark region east of the Oder River. However, the Altmark on the western bank of the Elbe was incorporated into the Prussian Province of Saxony. The Province of Brandenburg also encompassed the territory of Lower Lusatia (where Cottbus had been a Brandenburgian exclave since the 15th century) as well as the area around Belzig and Jüterbog, all annexed from the Kingdom of Saxony for her alliance with Napoleon.
The Province headed by an Oberpräsident was subdivided into two governorates ( Regierungsbezirke ) named after their respective capitals, Potsdam in the northwest (Mittelmark, Prignitz and Uckermark) and Frankfurt (Oder) in the southeast (Neumark and Lower Lusatia). The provincial government was at first situated at the Potsdam royal residence. In 1827, it moved to Berlin, returned to Potsdam in 1843 and in 1918 finally settled in Charlottenburg. The Prussian capital Berlin originally formed part of the Province, but in the course of the Industrial Revolution from the 1830s onwards quickly developed to a metropolis, from 1871 as capital of the German Empire, and on 1 April 1881 was made an autonomous city district (Stadtkreis Berlin).
In contrast, the rural outer regions, though serfdom had been officially abolished by the 1807 Prussian reforms, was still characterised by large–scale land holding of the Junker nobility, similar to the eastern Prussian provinces of Silesia and Pomerania. The conditions in the countryside remained largely untouched, even during the Revolutions of 1848 that led to violent fights in the streets of Berlin. The large estates had to deal with low soil quality and—except for brown coal occurrences in Lower Lusatia—the lack of natural resources. The provincial life was perpetuated in the novels by Theodor Fontane and especially in his 1862–89 descriptive work Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg .
After World War I and the resolutions of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the Province of Brandenburg shifted to the eastern edge of the German Weimar Republic, sharing a 35 km (22 mi) long common border with the Second Polish Republic. In 1920, the Greater Berlin Act expanded the borders of Berlin, incorporating numerous surrounding districts and towns from Brandenburg to form Greater Berlin (Groß-Berlin) with a population of about 2,000,000, including the former town of Charlottenburg, the seat of Brandenburg's provincial government. The Great Depression helped the Nazi Party to establish itself as an important political power. After the Machtergreifung on 30 January 1933, the Nazi Gauleiter Wilhelm Kube held the office of the Oberpräsident, succeeded by Emil Stürtz in 1936. Due to its location in the vicinity of the German capital, Brandenburg was a centre of the Nazi terror regime, with concentration camps like Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück and Nazi residences like Karinhall.
Under the Nazi government, repressions of Poles intensified. From early 1939, Germany resumed expulsions of Poles, increased censorship of Polish newspapers, conducted invigilation, arrests and assassinations of Polish leaders, activists, teachers and entrepreneurs, closed various Polish organizations, enterprises and libraries and seized their files and funds. [2] Some Polish activists fled German arrest or conscription to the German army to Poland. [3]
During the German invasion of Poland, which started World War II in September 1939, persecution further intensified with mass arrests of Polish leaders, activists, editors, entrepreneurs, etc., who were deported to concentration camps, expulsions and closure of remaining Polish organizations, schools and enterprises. [4]
During the war, Germany operated several prisoner-of-war camps, including Stalag III-A, Stalag III-B, Stalag III-C, Stalag III-D, Oflag II-A, Oflag III-A, Oflag III-B, Oflag III-C, Oflag 8 and Oflag 80 for Polish, Belgian, British, Dutch, French, Serbian, Italian, American, Czechoslovak, Soviet, Romanian, Greek, Bulgarian and other Allied POWs with numerous forced labour subcamps in the province. [5] In early 1945, the death marches of prisoners of various nationalities from various dissolved camps passed through the region. [6] [7]
In the late days of World War II it was the site of the bloody encounters of the Seelow Heights, at Halbe and finally the Battle of Berlin, won by the Soviet and Polish armies.
In 1945, after the war, the Neumark territory east of the Oder–Neisse line was ceded to the Republic of Poland to form the Zielona Gora Voivodeship (initially part of Poznan Voivodeship between 1945 and 1950, became Lubusz Voivodeship in 1998 after merging with Gorzów Voivodeship). The remaining territory became part of the Soviet occupation zone and was transformed into the state of Brandenburg, with Potsdam becoming state capital. In 1949, the state of Brandenburg became part of East Germany and, along with the other states of Eastern Germany, in 1952 was dissolved and divided into administrative districts. Brandenburg's territory roughly corresponded with the districts of Potsdam, Frankfurt/Oder and Cottbus. In 1990, following German reunification, Brandenburg was re-established as a state of the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Prussian central government appointed for every province an Oberpräsident ("Upper President") carrying out central prerogatives on the provincial level and supervising the implementation of central policy on the lower levels of administration.
Since 1875, with the strengthening of self-rule within the provinces, the urban and rural districts (Kreise) elected representatives for the provincial Landtage diets. These parliaments legislated within the competences transferred to the provinces. The provincial diet of Brandenburg elected a provincial executive body (government), the provincial committee (Provinzialausschuss), and a head of province, the Landesdirektor ("Land Director"). [8]
From 1822 the province of Brandenburg was divided into two Regierungsbezirke (governorates): Frankfurt and Potsdam . Between 1816 and 1822 there was a third governorate – the Governorate of Berlin – comprising the urban district of Berlin, the city of Charlottenburg and the municipalities of Gesundbrunnen, Lichtenberg, and Stralau. [9] In 1822 the Berlin region merged into the Potsdam region.
Established in 1816 this governorate, an enclave in the Potsdam region, merged into the latter in 1822.
Urban districts ( Stadtkreise )
Rural districts ( Landkreise )
Urban districts (Stadtkreise)
Rural districts (Landkreise)
Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg, is a state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an area of 29,480 square kilometres and a population of 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth-largest German state by area and the tenth-most populous. Potsdam is the state capital and largest city, and other major towns are Cottbus, Brandenburg an der Havel and Frankfurt (Oder).
East Prussia was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 ; following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's Free State of Prussia, until 1945. Its capital city was Königsberg. East Prussia was the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast.
Cottbus or Chóśebuz is a university city and the second-largest city in the German state of Brandenburg after the state capital of Potsdam. With around 98,000 inhabitants, it is the most populous city in Lusatia. Cottbus lies in the Sorbian settlement area of Lower Lusatia, and is the second-largest city on the River Spree after Berlin, from which it is situated around 125 km (78 mi) upstream. The city is located on the shores of Cottbus Eastern Lake, which will be Germany's largest artificial lake by surface area when flooding is completed.
Lusatia is a historical region in Central Europe, territorially split between Germany and Poland. Lusatia stretches from the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers in the east to the Pulsnitz and Black Elster rivers in the west, and is located within the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg as well as in the Polish voivodeships of Lower Silesia and Lubusz. Major rivers of Lusatia are the Spree and the Lusatian Neisse, which defines the border between Germany and Poland. The Lusatian Mountains of the Western Sudetes separate Lusatia from Bohemia in the south. Lusatia is traditionally divided into Upper Lusatia, the hilly southern part, and Lower Lusatia, the flat northern part.
The Neumark, also known as the New March or as East Brandenburg, was a region of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and its successors located east of the Oder River in territory which became part of Poland in 1945.
Guben is a town on the Lusatian Neisse river in Lower Lusatia, in the state of Brandenburg, in eastern Germany. Located in the Spree-Neiße district, Guben has a population of 20,049. It is a divided city on the border between Germany and Poland, having been separated into Guben and Gubin in 1945.
Lower Lusatia is a historical region in Central Europe, stretching from the southeast of the German state of Brandenburg to the southwest of Lubusz Voivodeship in Poland. Like adjacent Upper Lusatia in the south, Lower Lusatia is a settlement area of the West Slavic Sorbs whose endangered Lower Sorbian language is related to Upper Sorbian and Polish.
Fürstenwalde/Spree is the most populous town in the Oder-Spree District of Brandenburg, in eastern Germany.
Lübben (Spreewald) is a town of 14,000 people, capital of the Dahme-Spreewald district in the Lower Lusatia region in Brandenburg, in eastern Germany.
Friedland is a town in the Oder-Spree district, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated in the historic Lower Lusatia region, about 8 km (5.0 mi) south of Beeskow, and 39 km (24 mi) north of Cottbus.
Storkow (Mark) is a town in Oder-Spree district, in Brandenburg, Germany.
The Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia is a United Protestant church body in the German states of Brandenburg, Berlin and a part of Saxony.
The Margraviate of Brandenburg was a major principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1157 to 1806 that played a pivotal role in the history of Germany and Central Europe.
The administrative divisions of the German Democratic Republic were constituted in two different forms during the country's history. The GDR first retained the traditional German division into federated states called Länder, but in 1952 they were replaced with districts called Bezirke. Immediately before German reunification in 1990, the Länder were restored, but they were not effectively reconstituted until after reunification had completed.
Groß Schacksdorf-Simmersdorf is a municipality in the district of Spree-Neiße, in Lower Lusatia, Brandenburg, Germany.
The Diocese of Görlitz is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic church in Germany. The current ordinary is Wolfgang Ipolt
The German term Kurmark referred to the Imperial State held by the margraves of Brandenburg, who had been awarded the electoral (Kur) dignity by the Golden Bull of 1356. In early modern times, Kurmark proper denoted the western part of the margraviate to the exclusion of later acquisitions.
The abolition of Prussia took place on 25 February 1947 through a decree of the Allied Control Council, the governing body of post-World War II occupied Germany and Austria. The rationale was that by doing away with the state that had been at the center of German militarism and reaction, it would be easier to preserve the peace and for Germany to develop democratically.
The Frankfurt Region was a government region in the Prussian Province of Brandenburg between 1815 and 1945. Its administrative capital was Frankfurt (Oder). Today its western part is in the State of Brandenburg while the eastern part, following frontier changes agreed by the Soviet Union in 1945, is part of Poland, roughly corresponding to the Lubusz Voivodeship.
The State of Brandenburg was a subdivision of the Soviet occupation zone and state of East Germany which corresponds widely to the present-day German state Brandenburg. The state was originally formed as administrative division Province of March Brandenburg by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) in July 1945, a re-establishment of the Prussian Province of Brandenburg, excluding the Eastern parts behind the Oder–Neisse line to Poland. With the abolition of Prussia in February 1947, it was named State of March Brandenburg but in June 1947 the SMAD forced to change the name to State of Brandenburg. In August 1945, a transfer of territory was ruled out between Allied-occupied Berlin. Compared to the administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, it comprised the Western part of the Gau March Brandenburg and small parts of Berlin.