The head of at the House of Hohenzollernthe dynasty that reigned in Prussia and then in unified Germany, has announced this week that it definitively renounces its claims on thousands of works of art and buildings, including numerous objects located in Brandenburg, which were expropriated by communist germany, GDR, at the end of the Second World War. The objective of Prince Georg Friedrich of Prussia is to park the lengthy judicial process forever, but also to heal wounds with a country that has its kings written in capital letters in the history books.
The Hohenzollerns transformed Prussia in a matter of a century, from being one of the most battered and impoverished territories during the 30 Years War to rising as one of the great military powers of Europe. A series of exceptional monarchs of the Hohenzollern dynasty outlined this iron machinery in the 18th century and shaped a leading State: the Enlightenment at its best.
Federico William I and his son Federico II were directly responsible for this jump, despite the fact that their personalities were night and day. Both managed to put Prussia in the league of the great European powers. The rigid father created the structures that turned Prussia into a military mastodon, but it was, in truth, the slight son, loathed by his father, who raised to the next level the infantry that destroyed the Austrians, Russians and French without mercy at all. mid 18th century. The ant put in the work and the grasshopper took the crown, although at the cost of exhausting their weapons.
Napoleon gave a good account of the wear and tear to which Frederick II subjected his army. The Prussian force that William Frederick II and William Frederick III received was outdated, relied heavily on mercenary forces, officers were still obsessed with stopping instructions, and had hardly any snipers like the French. While Austria held out thanks to its rocky military structure, Prussia was swept away by Napoleon and treated with scorn at diplomatic tables. Prussian arms would not fully rise from the ashes until well into the 19th century, when their infantry would again win the highest praise during the period of Otto von Bismarck at the head of this superpower.
Be-Be Si Me Eligen
By the hand of Bismarck, the political primacy of the Hohenzollerns It made them the protagonists of all European disputes throughout the 19th century. When the Bourbons abandoned the Spanish throne in 1868, the Prussian dynasty dared to present its own candidate. The caretaker government canvassed Leopoldo de Hohenzollern, a Catholic relative of the Prussian royal family who, for a fine Iberian tie, was married to a Portuguese woman. Neither Leopold nor William I of Prussia were in favor of these ambitions, but Bismarck convinced both that the opportunity lay not in Spain’s poisoned throne, but in fighting Napoleon III, who had his own plans for Spain.
Wilhelm I proclamation as German Emperor
France and Prussia were locked in the bickering war that Bismarck He wanted so much, while the Spaniards contemplated resignedly that, in truth, neither one nor the other was interested in his throne. Some were almost grateful given the tongue twister that the German’s surname meant for the Spanish, who jokingly baptized him with the name of Leopoldo ‘Ole-Ole Si Me Eligen’. The resignation of the Hohenzollerns opened the range to other candidates such as Amadeo de Saboya, who would finally reign in Spain.
The Prussian statesman ended up imposing himself on France and fulfilling the Hohenzollern project of unifying the different German kingdoms. While these kingdoms retained some autonomy with the creation of the German Empire in 1870, including their crowns, the Hohenzollern Dynasty it placed the Kings of Bavaria and Saxony (the two largest kingdoms after Prussia) and other lesser princes on the path to extinction.
The Prussian statesman ended up imposing himself on France and fulfilling the Hohenzollern project of unifying the different German kingdoms
The first World War it unleashed the German warmongering that Bismarck, pulling subtlety and crossed balances, had contained for decades. Wilhelm II of Germany, German Emperor and King of Prussia, embarked on a more aggressive foreign policy aimed at reclaiming his “place under the sun” as a new world power. All this came together in the outbreak of an unknown war in Europe that, ultimately, resulted in a German defeat more in the offices than on the battlefields. However, the Monarch, given his volcanic personality and his lack of political outlook, did not intervene as much in the course of events as is usually understood by his hyper-prominence. Day by day, week by week, he was progressively removed from decision-making by the military leadership.
into exile
Con the appointment of Hindenburg and Ludendorff as leaders of the General Staff, Germany rose as a de facto military dictatorship. Following a workers’ revolution at the beginning of November 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands. On the 28th of the same month he formally abdicated, ending more than five hundred years of Hohenzollern history in Prussia. He lived in exile until his death in 1941.
After World War I, Nazi propaganda mutilated the history of the Hohenzollerns to suit their needs. In 1933, the Prussian Landtag (the last symbol of Prussian independence within Germany) was dissolved after the Nazis were unable to obtain an absolute majority in this chamber. The Reich Reorganization Law of 1934 placed regional governments under the direct authorization of the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the Prussian ministries were dissolved. Although Prussia was the only German state that was not formally absorbed by the Reich, it ceased to exist as a state after 1933. It hardly kept its name and delimitation on the map then (there were unfulfilled plans for the partition of its territories).
The militarism, the masculine tone and the Prussian sobriety fit with the idea that he wanted to project to the world the Third Reichnot so the pietistic spirituality so characteristic of the first Prussian kings, nor religious tolerance towards minorities like the Jews, nor the progressive civil code admired by the rest of the German kingdoms. Neither did he agree with the fierce struggle of some Prussians to defend themselves from German nationalism.