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Brandenburg

 
Dictionary: Bran·den·burg   (brăn'dən-bûrg', brän'dən-bʊrk') pronunciation

A historical region and former duchy of north-central Germany around which the kingdom of Prussia developed. The region is now divided between Poland and Germany.

 

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Historical region and province of Prussia. The earliest Germanic inhabitants were replaced by Slavic Wends, who in turn were overcome in the 12th century by Albert the Bear, margrave of Brandenburg. It became one of the seven electorates of the Holy Roman Empire in 1356. Under the elector Frederick William (1640 – 88), Brandenburg-Prussia grew to be a leading power. It became a province of Prussia in 1815 and remained such after the unification of Germany (1871) and until the end of World War II. After the war, the eastern portion became part of Poland and the western portion part of East Germany. After Germany's reunification in 1990, the western part became a German state. Brandenburg city, or Brandenburg an der Havel (pop., 2002 est.: 76,400), was formerly the residence of Prussia's reigning family.

For more information on Brandenburg, visit Britannica.com.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Brandenburg
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Brandenburg (brän'dənbʊrk), state (1994 est. pop. 2,540,000), c.10,400 sq mi (26,940 sq km), E Germany. Potsdam is the capital; other leading cities include Cottbus, Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, and Brandenburg. The state of Brandenburg consists of the former Prussian province of Brandenburg minus those parts of the province lying E of the Oder and Neisse rivers in Poland (see Germany). It became (1949) one of the states of the German Democratic Republic, was abolished as an administrative unit in 1952, and was reestablished as a state in 1990 shortly before the reunification of East and West Germany. Berlin is situated in, but is administratively separate from, Brandenburg. A 1996 referendum on whether to merge the two entities into a single state was approved by residents of Berlin but rejected by voters in Brandenburg.

Drained by the Havel, Spree, and Oder rivers, the region encompassed by the state has many lakes and pine forests. The Spree Forest, in Lower Lusatia, is inhabited by Slavic-speaking Wends, remnants of the population that inhabited Brandenburg at the time of its acquisition (12th cent.) by Albert the Bear. The Slavic principalities had been previously subdued by Charlemagne but had regained their independence. In the 10th cent. the German kings organized the North March, a small area on the Elbe, which was bestowed on Albert the Bear in 1134. Albert expanded his territory, and in 1150 he inherited the principality of Brandenburg from its last Wendish prince. The March of Brandenburg, as Albert's lands were called, were colonized by Germans and became Christianized. Albert's descendants, the Ascanians, ruled Brandenburg until their extinction in 1320.

Emperor Louis IV, a Wittelsbach, gave (1323) the vacant fief to members of his own house, but Emperor Charles IV (who confirmed the margraves of Brandenburg as electors of the Holy Roman Empire) forced the Wittelsbachs to surrender it and conferred (1373) it on his son Wenceslaus. When Wenceslaus became (1378) German king, Brandenburg went to his brother, later Emperor Sigismund, who in 1417 formally transferred it to Frederick I of the house of Hohenzollern. Among Frederick's early successors were Albert Achilles (reigned 1470-86), who introduced primogeniture as the law of inheritance of the Hohenzollern family, and Joachim II (reigned 1535-71), who accepted the Reformation in 1539. In the 17th cent. the electors of Brandenburg acquired (1614) the duchy of Cleves and other W German territories and (1618) the duchy of Prussia (roughly, the later East Prussia). Although it suffered heavily in the Thirty Years War (1618-48), Brandenburg emerged as a military power under Frederick William, the Great Elector (reigned 1640-88), who acquired E Pomerania and freed Prussia from Polish suzerainty. His son, Elector Frederick III, in 1701 took the title "king in Prussia" as Frederick I. The later history of Brandenburg is that of Prussia.


History 1450-1789: Brandenburg
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Brandenburg's importance stems from its position within the Holy Roman Empire and its association with Prussia and the Hohenzollern dynasty. The area that later became known as Brandenburg was conquered from the Slavs in 928, but was only loosely involved in imperial politics until the ruling Ascanian dynasty died out in 1320. Under imperial law, Brandenburg now reverted to the emperor's control, and it was entrusted first to the Wittelsbachs and then to the Luxembourgs as these families successively held the imperial title. Both used it to support their imperial ambitions, resulting in Brandenburg's elevation to an electorate in 1356, permitting its rulers to participate in the choice of all future emperors. As Luxembourg imperial rule crumbled in 1415, Emperor Sigismund gave Brandenburg to Frederick, burgrave of Nuremberg, who became Frederick I, elector and margrave of Brandenburg, initiating over five centuries of Hohenzollern rule.

Brandenburg covered 14,780 square miles (38,280 square kilometers) in northeastern Germany, and was divided into five "marches," or provinces. The Altmark lay west of the Elbe River and had its administrative center in the town of Stendal. The central Mittelmark stretched east from the Elbe to the Oder River and included the major towns of Berlin-Cölln, Frankurt/Oder and Brandenburg itself. The province of Pregnitz was to the northwest as far as the border with Mecklenburg and was governed from Perleberg. The Uckermark extended eastwards from Prignitz between the Mittelmark and the duchy of Pomerania and had its capital in Prenzlau. The fifth province, Neumark, lay east of the Oder and had few towns apart from the fortress of Küstrin (Kostrzyn).

The entire area was known as the "sandbox of the empire" because of its poor soil, which sustained only 250,000 inhabitants even by the mid-seventeenth century. Thanks to intensified land use and economic development, such as the digging of canals to improve riverine transportation to the Baltic and the North Sea, the population increased considerably in the eighteenth century, reaching 980,000. The people lived in 83 towns and 1,967 villages. One third of the latter were under the direct jurisdiction of the ruler and provided much of his total revenue. While urban magistrates exercised jurisdiction over a few of the other villages, most were controlled by the Brandenburg nobility who also dominated the territory's Estates, or representative assembly. Both the elector and the nobles introduced the manorial economy (Gutswirtschaft) from the early sixteenth century onwards, binding their dependent peasants to the land and requiring them to work two or more days a week on large fields of rye to produce cash crops for export to western European cities. While still profitable, this economy was reaching its natural limits by 1626 when it was plunged into deep crisis by Brandenburg's involvement in the Thirty Years' War. Berlin's population fell by 40 percent and that of the countryside by between 20 and 90 percent, depending on the region. Historians used to think that this situation uniformly benefited the nobility, who were able to create larger farms by seizing abandoned land. In fact, the shortage of labor increased the bargaining power of the surviving peasants, who demanded improved conditions, including wages for their obligatory work on their landlords' fields. The nobles were in a weak position when they negotiated with Elector Frederick William I, known as the "Great Elector" (ruled 1640–1688), at the territorial assembly in 1653. The resulting agreement, the Brandenburg Recess, confirmed rather than extended aristocratic power over serf labor in return for significant concessions to the elector, who ruthlessly consolidated his power over the next two decades.

The elector and his successors continued to protect the peasants against lordly exploitation, but their interest was primarily fiscal rather than humanitarian. They wanted a stable economic base of viable taxpayers, and they simply diverted profits from the lords' pockets into their own treasury. The economy remained depressed because of renewed warfare after 1655. It recovered slowly from the 1680s, and the population returned to its pre-1618 level by 1713. The nobles derived only limited benefit from these developments, because the Hohenzollerns imposed a form of limited conscription, known as the canton system, by 1733, taking regular drafts of peasants to maintain their inflated military establishment.

Many nobles were reconciled by court, military, and administrative appointments that provided alternative sources of wealth and prestige. However, others continued to oppose Hohenzollern absolutism, not least because of Brandenburg's experience of the Reformation. Lutheranism arrived relatively late, in 1535, and was not fully accepted until the reign of John George (ruled 1571–1598), who secularized church property and introduced church ordinances modeled on those of Saxony to the south. This reflected Brandenburg's junior status in imperial politics where the elector generally followed the lead of his more prestigious Saxon colleague. Elector John Sigismund (ruled 1608–1619) announced a radical new course by converting to Calvinism on Christmas Day 1613. Having only recently adopted Lutheranism, few Brandenburg nobles were prepared to follow the elector's lead, and Calvinism remained restricted to those most closely associated with the electoral family. Unsure of his position at home, the elector abandoned his support for Calvinists elsewhere in the empire and swung behind Saxony's policy of neutrality during the Thirty Years' War. By the time circumstances forced Brandenburg into the war, the electorate was linked dynastically to Prussia, and its subsequent political history is more appropriately discussed under that heading.

Bibliography

Baumgart, Peter, ed. Ständetum und Staatsbildung in Brandenburg-Preußen. Berlin and New York, 1983.

Enders, Lieselott. "Die Landgemeinde in Brandenburg: Grundzüge ihrer Funktion und Wirkungsweise vom 13. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert." Blätter für Deutsche Landesgeschichte 129 (1993): 195–256.

Fürbringer, Christoph. Necessitas und Libertas. Staatsbildung und Landstände im 17. Jahrhundert in Brandenburg. Frankfurt am Main, 1985.

Göse, Frank, ed. Im Schatten der Krone: Die Mark Brandenburg um 1700. Potsdam, 2002.

Hagen, William W. Ordinary Prussians. Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers 1500–1840. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2002.

——. "Seventeenth-Century Crisis in Brandenburg. The Thirty Years War, the Destabilization of Serfdom, and the Rise of Absolutism." American Historical Review 94 (1989): 302–335.

Materna, Ingo, and Wolfgang Ribbe, eds. Brandenburgische Geschichte. Berlin, 1995.

Nischan, Bodo. Prince, People and Confession: The Second Reformation in Brandenburg. Philadelphia, 1994.

Pröve, Ralf, and Bernd Kölling, eds. Leben und Arbeiten auf märkischen Sand. Bielefeld, 1999.

Schultze, Johannes. Die Mark Brandenburg. 5 vols. Berlin, 1961–1969.

—PETER H. WILSON

Wikipedia: Brandenburg
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Brandenburg
—  State of Germany  —

Flag

Coat of arms
Coordinates: 52°21′43″N 13°0′29″E / 52.36194°N 13.00806°E / 52.36194; 13.00806
Country Germany
Capital Potsdam
Government
 - Minister-President Matthias Platzeck (SPD)
 - Governing parties SPD / [[The Left]]
 - Votes in Bundesrat 4 (of 69)
Area
 - Total 29,478.63 km2 (11,381.8 sq mi)
Population (2008-03-31)[1]
 - Total 2,531,700
 - Density 85.9/km2 (222.4/sq mi)
Time zone CET (UTC+1)
 - Summer (DST) CEST (UTC+2)
ISO 3166 code DE-BB
GDP/ Nominal € 48 billion (2005)[citation needed]
NUTS Region DE4
Website brandenburg.de

Brandenburg (De-Brandenburg.ogg listen ; Lower Sorbian: Bramborska; Upper Sorbian: Braniborska) is one of the sixteen states of Germany. It lies in the east of the country and is one of the new federal states that were re-created in 1990 upon the reunification of the former West Germany and East Germany. The capital is Potsdam. Brandenburg surrounds but does not include the national capital Berlin.

Historically, Brandenburg was an independent state, the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which grew to become the core of independent Prussia and later the German state of Prussia. About a third of historic Brandenburg (land east of the Oder River) was annexed by Poland following the establishment of the new Oder-Neisse border in 1945 by the Allies. This region was historically known as East Brandenburg. The federal state of Brandenburg is named after the town of Brandenburg an der Havel.

Contents

History

Brandenburg Wappen.svg
Coat of arms of North German Confederation.svg

History of Brandenburg and Prussia
Northern March
pre-12th century
Old Prussians
pre-13th century
Margraviate of Brandenburg
1157–1618 (1806)
Ordensstaat
1224–1525
Duchy of Prussia
1525–1618
Royal (Polish) Prussia
1466–1772
Brandenburg-Prussia
1618–1701
Kingdom in Prussia
1701–1772
Kingdom of Prussia
1772–1918
Free State of Prussia
1918–1947
Brandenburg
1947–1952 / 1990–present

In late medieval and early modern times, Brandenburg was one of seven electoral states of the Holy Roman Empire, and, along with Prussia, formed the original core of the German Empire, the first unified German state. Governed by the Hohenzollern dynasty from in 1415, it contained the future German capital Berlin. After 1618 the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia were combined to form Brandenburg-Prussia, which was ruled by the same branch of the House of Hohenzollern. In 1701 the state was elevated as the Kingdom of Prussia. Franconian Nuremberg and Ansbach, Swabian Hohenzollern, the eastern European connections of Berlin, and the status of Brandenburg's ruler as prince-elector together were instrumental in the rise of that state.

Early Middle Ages

Brandenburg is situated in territory known in antiquity as Magna Germania, which reached to the Vistula river. By the seventh century, Slavic peoples are believed to have settled in the Brandenburg area. The Slavs expanded from the east, possibly driven from their homelands in present-day Ukraine and perhaps Belarus by the invasions of the Huns and Avars. They relied heavily on river transport. The two principal Slavic groups in the present-day area of Brandenburg were the Hevelli in the west and the Sprevane in the east.

Beginning in the early 900s, Henry the Fowler and his successors conquered territory up to the Oder River. Slavic settlements such as Brenna[2] (Brandenburg an der Havel), Budusin[3] (Bautzen), and Chośebuz[4] (Cottbus) came under imperial control through the installation of margraves. Their main function was to defend and protect the eastern marches. In 948 Emperor Otto I established margraves to exert imperial control over the pagan Slavs west of the Oder River. Otto founded the Bishoprics of Brandenburg and Havelberg. The Northern March was founded as a northeastern border territory of the Holy Roman Empire. However, a great uprising of Wends drove imperial forces from the territory of present-day Brandenburg in 983. The region returned to the control of Slavic leaders.

12th century

Eisenhard Castle in Belzig

During the 12th century the Ottonian German kings and emperors re-established control over the mixed Slav-inhabited lands of present-day Brandenburg, although some Slavs like the Sorbs in Lusatia adapted to Germanization while retaining their distinctiveness. The Roman Catholic Church brought bishoprics which, with their walled towns, afforded protection from attacks for the townspeople. With the monks and bishops, the history of the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, which was the first center of the state of Brandenburg, began. In 1134, in the wake of a German crusade against the Wends, the German magnate Albert the Bear was granted the Northern March by the Emperor Lothar III. He formally inherited the town of Brandenburg and the lands of the Hevelli from their last Wendish ruler, Pribislav, in 1150. After crushing a force of Sprevane who occupied the town of Brandenburg in the 1150s, Albert proclaimed himself ruler of the new Margraviate of Brandenburg. Albert, and his descendants the Ascanians, then made considerable progress in conquering, colonizing, Christianizing, and cultivating lands as far east as the Oder. Within this region, Slavic and German residents intermarried. During the 13th century the Ascanians began acquiring territory east of the Oder, later known as the Neumark (see also Altmark).

Late Middle Ages

In 1320 the Brandenburg Ascanian line came to an end, and from 1323 up until 1415 Brandenburg was under the control of the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria, followed by the Luxembourg dynasty. Under the Luxembourgs, the Margrave of Brandenburg gained the status of a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1415, the Electorate of Brandenburg was granted by Emperor Sigismund to the House of Hohenzollern, which would rule until the end of World War I. The Hohenzollerns established their capital in Berlin, by then the economic center of Brandenburg.

16th and 17th centuries

Brandenburg converted to Protestantism in 1539 in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, and generally did quite well in the 16th century, with the expansion of trade along the Elbe, Havel, and Spree Rivers. The Hohenzollerns expanded their territory by acquiring the Duchy of Prussia in 1618, the Duchy of Cleves (1614) in the Rhineland, and territories in Westphalia. The result was a sprawling, disconnected country known as Brandenburg-Prussia that was in poor shape to defend itself during the Thirty Years' War.

Beginning near the end of that devastating conflict, however, Brandenburg enjoyed a string of talented rulers who expanded their territory and power in Europe. The first of these was Frederick William, the so-called "Great Elector", who worked tirelessly to rebuild and consolidate the nation. He moved the royal residence to Potsdam.

Kingdom of Prussia and united Germany

Sanssouci Palace, the former summer palace of Frederick the Great, today a World Heritage site

When Frederick William died in 1688, he was followed by his son Frederick, third of that name in Brandenburg. As the lands that had been acquired in Prussia were outside the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick assumed (as Frederick I) the title of "King in Prussia" (1701). Although his self-promotion from margrave to king relied on his title to the Duchy of Prussia, Brandenburg was still the most important portion of the kingdom. However, this combined kingdom is known as the Kingdom of Prussia.

Brandenburg remained the core of the Kingdom of Prussia, and it was the site of the kingdom's capitals, Berlin and Potsdam. When Prussia was subdivided into provinces in 1815, the territory of the Margraviate of Brandenburg became the Province of Brandenburg. In 1881, the City of Berlin was separated from the Province of Brandenburg. However, industrial towns ringing Berlin lay within Brandenburg, and the growth of the region's industrial economy brought an increase in the population of the province. The Province of Brandenburg had an area of 39,039 km2 (15,073 sq mi) and a population of 2.6 million (1925). After World War II, the Neumark, the part of Brandenburg east of the Oder-Neisse Line, was transferred to Poland; and its native German population expelled. The remainder of the province became a state in East Germany when Prussia was dissolved in 1947. The State of Brandenburg was completely dissolved in 1952 by the Socialist government of East Germany.

East Germany and reunified Germany

In 1952, the East German government divided Brandenburg among several Bezirke or districts. (See Administrative division of the German Democratic Republic). Most of Brandenburg lay within the Potsdam, Frankfurt (Oder), or Cottbus districts, but parts of the former province passed to the Schwerin, Neubrandenburg and Magdeburg districts (town Havelberg). East Germany relied heavily on lignite (the lowest grade of coal) as an energy source, and lignite strip mines marred areas of southeastern Brandenburg. The industrial towns surrounding Berlin were important to the East German economy, while rural Brandenburg remained mainly agricultural.

The present State of Brandenburg was re-established on October 3, 1990.[5] As in other former parts of East Germany, the lack of modern infrastructure and exposure to West Germany's competitive market economy brought widespread joblessness and economic difficulty. In the recent years, however, Brandenburg's infrastructure has been modernized and joblessness has slowly declined.

In 1995, the governments of Berlin and Brandenburg proposed to merge the states in order to form a new state with the name of "Berlin-Brandenburg". The merger was rejected in a plebiscite in 1996 - while West Berliners voted for a merger, East Berliners and Brandenburgers voted against it.

Geography

Brandenburg is bordered by Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the north, Poland in the east, the Freistaat Sachsen in the south, Saxony-Anhalt in the west, and Lower Saxony in the northwest.

The Oder River forms a part of the eastern border, the Elbe River a portion of the western border. The main rivers in the state itself are the Spree and the Havel. In the southeast, there is a wetlands region called the Spreewald; it is the northernmost part of Lusatia, where the Sorbs, a Slavic people, still live. These areas are bilingual, i.e., German and Sorbian are both used.

Protected areas

Brandenburg is known for its well-preserved natural environment and its ambitious natural protection policies which began in the 1990s. 15 large protected areas were designated following Germany's reunification. Each of them is provided with state-financed administration and a park ranger staff, who guide visitors and work to ensure nature conservation. Most protected areas have visitor centers.

National parks

Biosphere reserves

  • Spreewald Biosphere Reserve (474 km2/183 sq mi)
  • Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve (1.291 km2/0.50 sq mi)
  • River Landscape Elbe-Brandenburg Biosphere Reserve (533 km2/206 sq mi)

Nature parks

Political subdivisions

The capital, Potsdam

Brandenburg is divided into 14 rural districts (Landkreise):

  1. Barnim
  2. Dahme-Spreewald
  3. Elbe-Elster
  4. Havelland
  5. Märkisch-Oderland
  6. Oberhavel
  7. Oberspreewald-Lausitz
  1. Oder-Spree
  2. Ostprignitz-Ruppin
  3. Potsdam-Mittelmark
  4. Prignitz
  5. Spree-Neiße
  6. Teltow-Fläming
  7. Uckermark


Landkreise Brandenburg.svg

and 4 urban districts (kreisfreie Städte):

  1. Brandenburg an der Havel
  2. Cottbus
  3. Frankfurt (Oder)
  4. Potsdam

Government

Matthias Platzeck
For earlier rulers, see List of rulers of Brandenburg
  1. 1947 - 1949: Karl Steinhoff (SED, formerly SPD)
  2. 1949 - 1952: Rudolf Jahn (SED)
  3. 1990 - 2002: Manfred Stolpe (SPD)
  4. since 2002: Matthias Platzeck (SPD)

September 2009 state election

e • d Summary of the 27 September 2009 election results for the Landtag of Brandenburg
Party Vote % (change) Seats (change) Seat %
Social Democratic Party (SPD) 33.0% +1.1% 31 -2 35.2%
The Left Party (Linke) 27.2% -0.8% 26 -3 29.5%
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 19.8% +0.4% 19 -1 21.6%
Free Democratic Party (FDP) 7.2% +3.9% 7 +7 8.0%
Alliance '90/The Greens (Die Grünen) 5.6% +2.0% 5 +5 5.7%
National Democratic Party (NPD) 2.5% +2.5% 0 - -
Free Voters 1.6% +1.6% 0 - -
German People's Union (DVU) 1.2% -4.9% 0 -6 -
Others 1.8% -5.9% 0 - -
Total 88

References

  1. ^ "State population". Portal of the Federal Statistics Office Germany. http://www.statistik-portal.de/Statistik-Portal/de_zs01_bb.asp. Retrieved 2007-04-25. 
  2. ^ Barford, Paul M. (2001). The Early Slavs: Culture and Society in Early Medieval Eastern Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 421. ISBN 0801439779. 
  3. ^ Institut für Sorbische Volksforschung in Bautzen (1962). Lětopis Instituta za serbski ludospyt. Bautzen: Domowina. 
  4. ^ Room, Adrian (2006). Placenames of the World. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. pp. 433. ISBN 0786422483. 
  5. ^ Ländereinführungsgesetz (1990)

External links


 
 

 

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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
History 1450-1789. Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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