The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Brandenburg (province)

BRANDENBURG, Germany, a province of Prussia, surrounded mainly by Mecklenburg and the provinces of Pomerania, Posen, Silesia and Prussian Saxony. The soil consists in many parts of barren sands, heaths and moors, yet the province produces much grain, as well as fruits, hemp, flax, tobacco, etc., and supports many sheep. The forests are extensive. The principal streams are the Elbe, the Oder, the Havel and the Spree. There are between 600 and 700 lakes, and some of them are connected by canals with the great rivers. Brandenburg carries on an active trade in manufactured articles, containing extensive silk, woolen, linen and cotton cloth and yarn mills, also establishments for dyeing, spinning and printing of textiles, machine shops, cigar and cigarette factories, glass and chemical works. Beer and liquors are produced in large quantities. It includes, besides some other districts, the greater part of the former Mark of Brandenburg, which formed the cradle of the Prussian monarchy and the centre round which the present extensive kingdom has grown up. It is divided into the three administrative divisions of Berlin, Potsdam and Frankfort, and has a total of 15,381 square miles. The most of the inhabitants are Lutherans; the rest are chiefly Roman Catholics and Jews. From 1685 to 1688 many French refugees, Walloons and inhabitants of Lorraine and of the Palatinate settled in the Mark. At present Brandenburg is the most important of the Prussian provinces, including as it does the capital (Berlin), and the governments of Potsdam and Frankfort. The first people who are known to have inhabited Brandenburg were the Suevi. They were succeeded by the Slavonians, a barbarous people, whom Henry I conquered and converted to Christianity in the early part of the 10th century. The government was first conferred on a Saxon count, and did not become hereditary until the time of Albert, whose son succeeded to the dignity of elector in 1180. This race becoming extinct, Charles IV assigned the electorate to his son Sigismund, who became emperor in 1415, and sold the region to Frederick, Burgrave of Nuremberg, the ancestor of the present reigning family. Frederick William the Great made various accessions to the territory of his ancestors, and obliged the King of Poland, in 1656, to declare Prussia an independent state. The Old Mark was ceded to Napoleon in 1807, and formed part of the kingdom of Westphalia, but it was restored to Prussia in 1814. The Elector of Brandenburg held the seventh rank among the electors of the empire and had five votes in the Council of Princes. Pop. about 4,000,000. See Prussia.