50 Fun Facts About Prussia

Which Latin name for Prussia survives in football club names in Dortmund and Mönchengladbach?

Borussia is the Latin name for Prussia, and Dortmund and Mönchengladbach both lay in Prussian provinces when their clubs were founded.

Which crop did Frederick the Great promote so keenly that visitors still leave it on his grave?

Potatoes earned Frederick the nickname Der Kartoffelkönig, the Potato King, for introducing the new crop to his country.

King of Prussia, a community famous for its huge shopping mall, is in which US state?

Pennsylvania's King of Prussia took its name from an 18th-century tavern, the King of Prussia Inn, which honoured Frederick the Great.

Which material lined the room, later looted by the Nazis, that Prussia gave Russia's tsar in 1716?

Amber panels backed with gold leaf made up the room, which the Prussians handed over to seal an alliance against Sweden.

Königsberg, the old capital of East Prussia, took which new name after the Soviet Union annexed it?

Kaliningrad honours the Soviet leader Mikhail Kalinin, who had died shortly before the city was renamed in 1946.

Which Prussian province on the Baltic, governed from Stettin, shares its name with a fluffy toy dog?

Pomerania gave its name to the Pomeranian, a spitz breed whose smaller variety became popular after Queen Victoria owned one.

Prussic acid, first made from the pigment Prussian blue, is an old name for which deadly poison?

Hydrogen cyanide was first isolated from Prussian blue in 1782 by the Swedish chemist Scheele, and Germans still call it Blausäure, literally blue acid.

Which high-kicking parade march, now used by armies worldwide, began in 18th-century Prussian drill?

The goose step was known in Prussia as the Stechschritt, or piercing step, and began as a way of keeping troops in line as they advanced.

What is the German name for the spiked leather helmet that the Prussian army adopted in 1842?

The Pickelhaube was widely imitated by other armies, and Germany's own troops wore it until a steel helmet began replacing it in 1916.

Which Prussian-born officer drilled George Washington's Continental Army at Valley Forge in 1778?

Friedrich von Steuben wrote his drills in French because he spoke little English, and his manual stayed in US Army use until 1814.

Which Austrian province did Frederick the Great seize in 1740 and then fight three wars to keep?

Silesia was invaded weeks after Emperor Charles VI died without a male heir, and its coal later fuelled Prussian industry.

Which Baltic port, West Prussia's chief city, became a League of Nations 'Free City' in 1920?

Danzig and nearly 200 surrounding localities formed a city-state that lasted until 1939; the port is now Gdańsk.

Which kingdom, once ruled in personal union with Britain, did Prussia annex as a province in 1866?

Hanover had voted to mobilise troops against Prussia in June 1866, and its British link had ended because its law kept Queen Victoria off the throne.

Which twin duchies did Denmark lose in 1864, only for them to become a Prussian province?

Schleswig-Holstein was at first occupied jointly by Prussia and Austria, and their dispute over running it set off the war of 1866.

Which Rhine Province city saw its Gothic cathedral completed in 1880, with Prussia paying a third?

Cologne celebrated the completion as a national event, 632 years after building began; a civic association raised the other two-thirds.

Which city, where the Moselle joins the Rhine, was the official capital of Prussia's Rhine Province?

Koblenz kept the title although the provincial assembly met in Düsseldorf, and Prussia built its Ehrenbreitstein fortress to guard the middle Rhine against French invasion.

Which city, host of talks ending the Thirty Years' War, became capital of Prussian Westphalia?

Münster hosted the 1648 talks between the Holy Roman Emperor and France, while the emperor's envoys dealt with Sweden in nearby Osnabrück.

Which city, famed for a vacuum experiment with two hemispheres, was capital of Prussian Saxony?

Magdeburg's mayor, the scientist von Guericke, showed that teams of horses could not pull the hemispheres apart once the air inside was pumped out.

Which free city, where Holy Roman Emperors were crowned until 1792, did Prussia annex in 1866?

Frankfurt was annexed by decree of the Prussian king in September 1866 and folded into the new province of Hesse-Nassau.

Which grand duchy, created for Prussia in 1815 from Polish lands, became a regular province in 1848?

Posen at first had a Polish prince, Antoni Radziwiłł, as the king's governor, and the kings of Prussia kept the title of its grand duke until 1918.

Which crusading order conquered the pagan Old Prussians and ruled their land from Marienburg Castle?

The Teutonic Knights moved their headquarters from Venice to Marienburg in 1309, putting themselves beyond the reach of secular rulers.

Which dynasty ruled Prussia as dukes, kings and German emperors until its last monarch fell in 1918?

The Hohenzollern family took its name from a castle in Swabia, and a Catholic branch of it went on to rule Romania until 1947.

In 1525 the Duchy of Prussia became the first state to make which faith its official church?

Lutheranism came on the advice of Martin Luther himself, who urged Duke Albert to turn the land of a monastic order into his own principality.

Which persecuted religious minority did the Great Elector invite to Brandenburg-Prussia with his 1685 Edict of Potsdam?

Huguenots, French Protestants fleeing Louis XIV, took up the offer about 20,000 strong; it promised refugees rent-free housing for up to four years.

Which Prussian 'Soldier King' collected unusually tall recruits for his Potsdam Giants regiment?

Frederick William I stood only about 1.60 m tall himself, and foreign rulers sent him tall soldiers to win his friendship.

Which instrument did Frederick the Great play so keenly that he wrote 121 sonatas for it?

The flute sonatas were often written with Johann Joachim Quantz, his boyhood tutor, who joined the court in 1741 as composer and instrument maker.

Which French Enlightenment writer moved to Potsdam in 1750 as the guest of Frederick the Great?

Voltaire was made a royal chamberlain on 20,000 livres a year, but a feud with the head of the Berlin Academy soured his stay.

Which rococo summer palace did Frederick the Great build above terraced vineyards at Potsdam?

Sanssouci, French for carefree, is also where Frederick asked to be buried, a wish granted only in 1991, when his casket was interred on its vineyard terrace.

Which Russian empress, born a German princess in Prussian Stettin, helped Prussia partition Poland?

Catherine the Great was born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst in 1729, when her father was a Prussian general serving as governor of Stettin.

Which Russian tsar saved Frederick the Great in 1762 by abruptly quitting the Seven Years' War?

Peter III also handed back the territory Russia had conquered, and after a reign of just 186 days he was overthrown by his own wife.

At which double battle of 1806 did Napoleon shatter the Prussian army and open the road to Berlin?

Jena–Auerstedt was two separate fights on one day, and Marshal Davout's corps earned the honour of entering Berlin first eleven days later.

Which East Prussian town gave its name to a cheese and to the 1807 treaties that halved Prussia?

Tilsit is where Napoleon and the Russian tsar met on a raft in the middle of the Neman river; the town is now Sovetsk in Russia.

Which Prussian field marshal, nicknamed 'Marshal Forwards', joined Wellington to win at Waterloo?

Gebhard von Blücher, aged 72, had lain trapped under his dead horse at Ligny two days earlier, yet still marched his army to Waterloo.

Which military decoration did Prussia's king create in 1813, during the war to drive out Napoleon?

The Iron Cross was awarded without regard to rank, enlisted men included, at a time when most German states handed out medals by rank.

Which institution did Prussia's October Edict of 1807 abolish, after crushing defeat by Napoleon?

Serfdom ended in law, but the edict said nothing about the unpaid labour peasants owed their landlords, so those duties dragged on.

Which gathering of the great powers in 1814–15 awarded Prussia the Rhineland and Westphalia?

The Congress of Vienna also handed Prussia about three-fifths of the territory of Saxony, whose king had sided with Napoleon.

What was the German name of the customs union that Prussia led from 1834, uniting German markets?

The Zollverein shut out Austria, whose protectionist trade policy and Prince Metternich's opposition kept it outside the union.

Which Prussian general wrote the unfinished military classic 'On War', published by his widow?

Carl von Clausewitz is best known for the idea that war continues politics by other means; his wife Marie edited the book and wrote its introduction.

Which Prussian statesman edited the Ems Dispatch in 1870 to goad France into declaring war?

Otto von Bismarck released a sharpened version of an internal royal telegram to the press, stirring up feeling on both sides of the border.

In which room at Versailles was Prussia's King Wilhelm I proclaimed German Emperor in January 1871?

The Hall of Mirrors was chosen again on purpose in 1919, when French premier Georges Clemenceau made it the place where Germany signed the peace treaty.

At which 1866 battle in Bohemia, also called Sadová, did Prussia decisively defeat Austria?

Königgrätz was won with the breech-loading needle gun, which Prussian infantry could fire lying down while the Austrians had to stand to reload.

Which Prussian chief of staff, a pioneer of moving armies by rail, won the wars of 1866 and 1870?

Helmuth von Moltke lived long enough to speak into a phonograph, leaving the only known voice recordings of a person born in the 18th century.

Which philosopher, author of the 'Critique of Pure Reason', was born and taught in Königsberg?

Immanuel Kant so irritated a censor with his writing on religion that a royal order barred him from publishing or speaking publicly on it.

Which astronomer, born in the Royal Prussian city of Thorn in 1473, put the Sun at the centre?

Copernicus was born to German-speaking parents under the Polish crown, and in 1517 he also worked out an early quantity theory of money.

Which two colours of the old Prussian flag survive in the German national football team's home kit?

Black and white formed a flag striped in three bands, with the Prussian eagle holding its orb and sceptre on the broad middle band.

What name was given to the landed nobles east of the Elbe who dominated Prussia's officer corps?

The Junkers traced their estates to the medieval German settlement of Slavic lands, and they ceased to exist as a class in 1945.

Which Nazi became Prussia's minister-president in 1933 and founded the Gestapo from its police?

Hermann Göring also ran the Prussian police, and he handed the Gestapo over to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934 as the two moved against the SA.

Which chancellor used the 'Prussian coup' of July 1932 to oust Prussia's state government?

Franz von Papen acted through a presidential decree, and the governing Social Democrats chose not to resist for fear of provoking a civil war.

Under Prussia's three-class franchise of 1849 to 1918, voters were sorted into classes by what?

Taxes they paid decided the class, and each class covered an equal share of the total, so a handful of rich voters outweighed crowds of poor ones.

Which occupation authority formally abolished the state of Prussia in 1947 with its Law No. 46?

The Allied Control Council's law called Prussia a bearer of militarism and reaction that had in practice already ceased to exist.