Province of Brandenburg capital Potsdam
The Province of Brandenburg (German: Provinz Brandenburg) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1945. Brandenburg was established in 1815 from the Kingdom of Prussia's core territory, comprised the bulk of the historic Margraviate of Brandenburg (excluding Altmark) and the Lower Lusatia region, and became part of the German Empire in 1871. From 1918, Brandenburg was a province of the Free State of Prussia until it was dissolved in 1945 after World War II, and replaced with reduced territory as the State of Brandenburg in East Germany, which was later dissolved in 1952. Following the reunification of Germany in 1990, Brandenburg was re-established as a federal state of Germany, becoming one of the new states.
Brandenburg's provincial capital alternated between Potsdam, Berlin, and Charlottenburg during its existence.Geography
The province comprised large parts of the North German Plain, stretching from the Elbe river in the west to beyond the Oder in the east, where the Neumark region bordered on the Prussian Grand Duchy of Posen (Province of Posen from 1848). Other neighbouring provinces were Pomerania in the northeast, Silesia in the southeast, and Prussian Saxony in the southwest. Brandenburg also shared a common border with the grand duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz in the northwest as well as with Anhalt in the west.
Beside the Elbe and Oder river areas, the province covered large parts of the Spree and Havel basin. The largest cities were Berlin, located in the centre together with the growing suburbs of Spandau, Charlottenburg, Schöneberg and Neukölln. Larger towns were the royal residence Potsdam and the regional capital Frankfurt (Oder), furthermore Landsberg (present-day Gorzów Wielkopolski) in the east, the historic capital Brandenburg an der Havel as well as Cottbus, Forst and Guben (Gubin) in Lower Lusatia.Establishment
The margraviate remained a constituent part of Prussia, until after the Napoleonic Wars and the 1815 Congress of Vienna the kingdom's administration was divided into ten provinces. Most of the Margraviate's territory was incorporated into the new Province of Brandenburg, most notably the Mittelmark between the rivers Elbe and Oder and the Neumark region east of the Oder River. However, the Altmark on the western bank of the Elbe was incorporated into the Prussian Province of Saxony. The Province of Brandenburg also encompassed the territory of Lower Lusatia (where Cottbus had been a Brandenburgian exclave since the 15th century) as well as the area around Belzig and Jüterbog, all annexed from the Kingdom of Saxony for her alliance with Napoleon.
The Province headed by an Oberpräsident was subdivided into two governorates (Regierungsbezirke) named after their respective capitals, Potsdam in the northwest (Mittelmark, Prignitz and Uckermark) and Frankfurt (Oder) in the southeast (Neumark and Lower Lusatia). The provincial government was at first situated at the Potsdam royal residence. In 1827, it moved to Berlin, returned to Potsdam in 1843 and in 1918 finally settled in Charlottenburg. The Prussian capital Berlin originally formed part of the Province, but in the course of the Industrial Revolution from the 1830s onwards quickly developed to a metropolis, from 1871 as capital of the German Empire, and on 1 April 1881 was made an autonomous city district (Stadtkreis Berlin).
In contrast, the rural outer regions, though serfdom had been officially abolished by the 1807 Prussian reforms, was still characterised by large–scale land holding of the Junker nobility, similar to the eastern Prussian provinces of Silesia and Pomerania. The conditions in the countryside remained largely untouched, even during the Revolutions of 1848 that led to violent fights in the streets of Berlin. The large estates had to deal with low soil quality and—except for brown coal occurrences in Lower Lusatia—the lack of natural resources. The provincial life was perpetuated in the novels by Theodor Fontane and especially in his 1862–89 descriptive work Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg.
seat of government administrative center headquarters main city principal city