I think they were affiliated w/ Germany in WW2, but after the war, what happened to this nation? Is it still around today?
Iran happened.
Um, I think Iran used to be Persia, not Prussia.
Prussia can now be found on your map in Germany and Poland.
The only person who is trying to contact a Prussian is Mr. Burns.
Prussia was the largest and most powerful German state during the 18th and 19th centuries. Under the leadership of Bismarck, Prussia defeated France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), and then essentially absorbed the rest of the German states into the new empire of Germany. Prussia’s king Wilhelm became Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.
PRUSSIA, not “Persia,” threemae
“East Prussia”, the NE-most bit of old Germany right next to Lithuania, was split between Poland & Russia after WWII. Those surviving inhabitants that had not yet fled as refugees were mostly displaced into Germany.
Other-than-East Prussia was really Brandenburg, Pomerania, Mecklenburg(?) and several other German states which had been ruled by the Prussian crown from the 1600’s to WWI. After WWI the kingdom of Prussia (the dominant state of the Empire) was divided into various states of the German Republic.
Except that there’s always more…
The Margraves of Brandenburg, the Hohenzollern Dynasty, were anxious to become kings, not merely margraves. So they proceeded to conquer the Old Prussians, who were Balts related to the Latvians and Lithuanians. As a distinct nationality, the Old Prussians were entitled by the standards of the day to have a king, where Brandenburg, being a relatively small piece of the German states, was not. (This is boiling down a rather complex bit of history.) So the Hohenzollerns became Kings in Prussia (there being an attitude that since the Old Prussians had not had a king, they couldn’t become Kings of Prussia – but they adopted that title a couple of decades later, when the novelty had worn off.
Old Prussia was more or less the same as what was East Prussia between the World Wars. Brandenburg was approximately central East Germany before reunification, with various bits and pieces extending out from it.
Later Prussia absorbed great parts of modern Germany and Poland, becoming a state stretching from Lithuania to the Rhine, and, as noted, the largest of the German states. It was abolished in 1945.
Another factor that led to the dissolution of Prussia was the forced de-Germanization of the region after 1945. The Soviets basically told most of the ethnic Germans living in Eastern Prussia to start walking west. Eastern Prussia was then absorbed into Poland, Russia, and Lithuania.
What happened to Prussian? Do people still speak it? Publish in it? Or is it one of the minor Dead languages that are only studied to translate rare books?
I’m pretty sure there never was such a language as “Prussian,” just as there is no “Swiss” language, though I’m sure both countries had/have idiomatic bits of their own that distinguish their dialect from plain ol’ German.
LL
The Prussian language is/was a Baltic language related to Latvian and Lithuanian.
'Twas said of Prussia that, while many countries had an army, Prussia was an army that had a country.
My ancestry is Prussian. Gerret von Divemaster came to the US in 1647, and had 4 sons. All US Divemasters can be traced back to one of the sons. My lineage is through the 4th (youngest).
My family is very organized, efficient, and punctual!
Yeah, divemaster? Well, I am directly descended, on my mother’s side, from the hereditary court musicians of Schleswig-Holstein!!
While most of my family aren’t deeply involved with music, we have the most lyrical accents!
Sua
BAM! Hit the nail square on the head!
Part of the reason the Prussia was split following WWI was the fact that the rest of Europe feared the Prussian Military Mind and Machine. So when it came down to “self determination” of people the Prussians got the short end of the stick and were split between several countries.
Just to eliminate some confusion:
Old Prussian is the name given to a Baltic language (only directly related to today’s Lithuanian and Latvian) spoken in the region around the SE-Baltic.
When the Hanseatic Germans invaded in the Middle Ages, they eventually displaced the old language with their Low German (Plattdeutsch), while adapting the tribal name of the Baltic Prussians (a fair trade?).
Centuries later, the modern state of Prussia (Preussen)arose, still keeping the old Baltic name (although probably very few were aware of its origins by then).
The German speaking areas of Europe were divided into scores of states and ministates, but Prussia and Austria (actually more of a multi-ethnic empire than strictly German, although Prussia also included other ethnicities) both gained in size and power until Prussia eventually won out in wars in the 1860’s and managed to unite most of the German-speaking world under its hegemony in 1871. many of the other German states (Saxony, Wuerttemberg, Bavaria…) kept a limited soveriegnty, however, until the end of WWI, when all the kingdoms, duchys, and other noble entities were done away with in the democratic revolution.
During the Weimar Republic period (1919-1933) Prussia was just one of the constituent states, and when the Nazis came to power in 1933, they did away with nearly all of the internal autonomy. After WWII, Prussia was in fact abolished by the allies, who were quite happy to be rid of it.
Today, Prussia (Preussen) is still used colloquially to mean the northeastern part of German, including Berlin, and is used to contrast (and insult) their “punctual, cold” culture with that of the (sometimes) more relaxed southern and central Germans.
Schleswig-Holstein! Did you know that the last Kaiserin was from that region?
LOL
My family is from Alsace Lorraine and somewhere on the German/Austrian border.
Before it was part of France, where was Alsace Lorraine? I’m thinking Baden, since that’s where it looked to be near…
Prussia became Germany. There were only “german states” before Prussia. After the takeover, there was GERMANY! (cringe when you say it schweinhund!)
They’ve been a damn nuisance ever since.
I’m from King of Prussia, PA, a suburb of Philly, which was named after the Inn in the center of town three hundred years ago. Apparently, the Prussian mercenaries in the area frequented the Inn.
This summer, the Inn was moved a mile or so away, as US-202 is being widened at the intersection of the PA Tpke, which sits literally right on top of where the Inn stood for three hundred years.
Actually, it was a unification process, and the other kingdoms, duchies, etc. kept their identities and regional governments as did Prussia.
Don’t get the “cringe” reference, and the word is Schweinehund which nobody seems to ever say in real life, not recently, anyway.
Who’s they? If you are referring to the Nazi era that is horrendous understatement. If you’re not, it’s a terrible overgeneralization, or at best an unfounded opinion.