Hohenzollern dynasty

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The ruling house of Brandenburg-Prussia, the House of Hohenzollern is most famous for providing rulers of the kingdom of Prussia and later of the German empire. The ancestral home of the House of Hohenzollern is in Swabia near the sources of the Danube and Neckar Rivers, about eighty miles south of today's Stuttgart. The Hohenzollerns began their climb to dynastic fame in 1417 when Holy Roman emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg awarded the Mark of Brandenburg in what was then the far northeast to Frederick of Hohenzollern as a reward for loyal service. Although Frederick found his new land to be poor, unproductive, and exposed to danger, he decided to stay. This land, in which Berlin later rose, was the foundation of the Hohenzollern dynasty.

The second major property to come into Hohenzollern possession was the province of East Prussia. In the early thirteenth century a Polish prince invited the Teutonic Knights, an order that emerged during the Third Crusade (1189–1192), to subdue and convert the pagan Balts in the area that would become East Prussia. The Teutonic Knights did so and settled there. In 1511 the Knights chose as their grand master a Hohenzollern, and, when the Protestant Reformation swept through northern Germany, this Hohenzollern prince dissolved the order and became simply duke of Prussia, a vassal of the king of Poland.

The third major property that enhanced the family's power and made it a force in western Germany was the acquisition of Cleves and Mark on the Rhine, which the Hohenzollerns gained on a dynastic claim in 1609. In 1618 all three of these areas—Brandenburg, Prussia, and Cleves and Mark—came under the rule of a single Hohenzollern, John Sigismund (ruled 1608–1619), the grandfather of Frederick William, the Great Elector (ruled 1640–1688), who is credited with laying the foundations of the modern Prussian state.

Bibliography

Carsten, F. L. The Origins of Prussia. Oxford, 1954.

—KARL A. ROIDER