From Prussia With Love

How does an entire state simply disappear?

It's a question that fascinated me. What was Prussia, and where did it go? It's why I slowly but methodically worked my way through a hefty tome entitled Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947.

If you're American, you might be forgiven with not knowing what exactly Prussia is (Is that part of Russia? is a question I often get asked). Unless you took a college-level European History class, you've probably only encountered it as a footnote in a forgotten history textbook. And that's too bad. Because Prussia was a progressive and cultured German kingdom which was a major influence on European history up until the early twentieth century, when it more or less vanished.

Like me, you might be curious about how a major political entity, with a strong government and distinctive culture simply vanished around the beginning of the twentieth century. How does one go about losing a whole country? If so you too might consider picking up Christopher Clark's heavy volume on the subject.

But this book taught me that there is much more to the story of Prussia than its disappearance. The story of rise and fall of the fortunes of Prussia is gripping, one of those underdog stories that makes you want to stand up and cheer. Major players include bloodthirsty Swedes, protestant knights, Napoleon Bonaparte and Hitler. All this in a history text!

One reason why North Americans don't know much about Prussia is that as a nation state, it was an amorphous creature, constantly in flux. Originally it wasn't an independent country at all, but a piece of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by the Hapsburg family from Vienna. At the time, despite supposedly being an emperor, the Austrian ruler of the German feudal states was beholden to a group of powerful nobles known as electors.

One of the German 'electorates', an area called Brandenburg, was acquired by the politically ambitious Hohenzollern family. Through a lot of clever maneuvering and strategic marriages one of them, a man named Frederick III (now referred to as The Great Elector), managed to secure the Holy Roman Emperor's blessing to call himself a king. And with that, Prussia was born, a plucky kingdom carved out of a feudal electorate.

Geographically, describing Prussia is also a bit tricky. Prussia was mostly located in the east of modern day Germany, except when it wasn't; the Hohenzollerns early on acquired islands of territory to the west and east, most notably carving out chunks of northern Poland as their inheritance. To add to the confusion, most of the Prussian regimes were distinctly expansionistic, so they were always winning (and losing) new slices of their budding kingdom. This was a period of European history when redrawing the borders of kingdoms was quite fashionable, and the Hohenzollerns went about this with gusto. So about the only safe statement one can make geographically about Prussia is that it was definitively not located in Russia.

Amazingly, the Hohenzollern kings of Prussia managed something that most ambitious princelings never bother with, which was to establish a national identity within their fluctuating borders. As a people, the Prussians had a love of social order and military efficiency; yet they enjoyed personal freedoms that were very progressive by the standards of their times. They also had an unusually long run of gifted and competent rulers, culminating in the reign of Frederick the Great, the third king of Prussia.

Interesting fellow, Frederick. He had a rocky relationship with his dad, which was brought to a head when he attempted to run away with the help of his best friend. They were both caught, and then Senior had Junior's best friend executed right in front of him. Ouch.

Amazingly, after this young Frederick settled down into the kingship and proved himself a gifted military leader and liberalizing reformer. He had a spartan sense of style and was extremely self-deprecating, desiring few of the trappings of kingship. His countrymen and subjects loved him for this, and quite a cult of personality grew up around him. He was very much the George Washington of the Prussian nation.

Prussia would go on to effectively neutralize the Holy Roman Emperor, be invaded by Napoleon, help defeat Napolean, unify Germany and help kick-start World War I. It was a pretty happening place.

That last event was in many ways its downfall. Prussia was on the losing side in that war and surrendered a great deal of its territory, not to mention its blood and treasure. In the political upheaval that followed, Prussia became part of the Weimar Republic, but democracy only persisted for a few short years before a young ideologue named Adolph Hitler took advantage of the political power vacuum and began molding Prussia in his own image. Old Prussia by that time was effectively dead. And at the end of the Second World War the Allies made it official - Prussia as a political state would be henceforth stricken from the record.

So although Prussia is no longer place on the map, its impact on history has been tremendous. And its capital is still around: a town called Berlin in the heart of Mark Brandenburg.

Prussia's legacy also lives on through the many influential historical figures who hailed from it: Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant and Otto von Bismark, to name just a few. And if you have 'German' ancestors who hailed from central-to-east Germany before the twentieth century, they were probably Prussian too.

Author Christopher Clark brings Prussia back to life in vivid colors in Iron Kingdom. And although not every page demands immediate turning (it was a slog getting through certain sections on administrative reform) ultimately he kept me coming back for more. If you're interested in finding out more about a province that became a kingdom, a kingdom that became an empire, an empire that became a republic, and a republic that vanished, be sure to give Clark's Iron Kingdom a look.