Early History of House Hohenzollern (1200-1640) | History of Brandenburg-Prussia #4

Last week we've looked at the prehistory of the territories that would eventually be united in the state of Prussia and the Teutonic Order, the Warrior Monks that colonized it. Their atrocities left permanent marks on the lands. Yet it was the Teutonic Knights whose Grand Master, Albrecht of Brandenburg-Ansbach, in 1525, decided to use the Reformation as a pretence to secularize and claim the territories for himself and name himself 'Duke of Prussia'. It was the beginning of a long reign of the territory by the ambitious Hohenzollern clan, already Margraves of Brandenburg. This week, we'll look at the Hohenzollern dynastic history, how they became Margraves of Brandenburg and their ambition as a family. Welcome to the complete history of Prussia.

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Time Codes:

01:04 The First Hohenzollerns
3:54 The Hohenzollerns in Prussia
8:57 The First Interesting Hohenzollern (1608-1619)
12:59 Brandenburg-Prussia and the Thirty Years' War

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It was (in part) thanks to the prudence and ambition of the Hohenzollern clan that led to the unpromising territory of Brandenburg-Prussia to become one of Europe’s most powerful states. The Hohenzollern family was originally from Swabia, a region in south-west Germany. Around the end of the twelfth century they had settled in Franconia and for the next 2 centuries, they enjoyed the title of Burgraves of Nuremberg. It wasn't really a position of rule, they were more or less nobility in name. As Burgraves, over the years they managed to acquire territorial domains in and around Ansbach and Bayreuth in the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1417 Frederick Hohenzollern, Burgrave of Nuremberg, a small and wealthy territory, purchased Brandenburg from its then sovereign, Emperor Sigismund. He had helped Sigismund to get elected as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 400.000 Hungarian gold guilders were paid, and in turn, it brought the Hohenzollerns land as well as prestige. His new title was Frederick the First, Elector of Brandenburg, a hereditary title. Brandenburg was one of the 7 electorates of the Holy Roman Empire. - then a patchwork of states and domains. Prince-Electors were members of the electoral college that elected the Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick suddenly gained much more power than he had as a simple Burgrave: he was 1 of the 7 Princes that elected the Emperor.

Sources (excerpt):

Clark, C. M. (2006). Iron kingdom: the rise and downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947. Harvard University Press.
Clark, C. (2009). Kaiser Wilhelm II: a life in power. Penguin UK.
Clark, C. (2016). Fathers and Sons in the History of the Hohenzollern Dynasty. In Sons and Heirs (pp. 19-37). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Haffner, S. (2019). The rise and fall of Prussia. Plunkett Lake Press.
Koch, H. W. (2014). A history of Prussia. Routledge.
Pflanze, O. (2008). Bismarck: Der Reichskanzler (Vol. 2). CH Beck.
Steinberg, J. (2011). Bismarck: a life. OUP Oxford.

Photos, paintings and imagery: Public Domain, Wikicommons

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