Berlin Berlin Germany
Related Events
Showing 10 events out of 210 total
The joint Polish-Lithuanian army loots and robs Frankfurt, Berlin, and surrounding territories.
Thus, the pagans reach Central Europe and strike the Holy Roman Empire, which shocks western rulers.
Not meeting any organized resistance, they plunder churches and monasteries for about a month.
Reportedly, they take six thousand prisoners as slaves and much booty.
The loot is large enough to allow Samogitian duke Margiris to pay twenty thousand florins to King John of Bohemia when he raids Medvėgalis in 1329.
German chronicles, including Nikolaus von Jeroschin, vividly describe atrocities committed by the invaders.
They are particularly scandalized by pagan Lithuanians who show no respect for Christian symbols, establishments, or personnel.
Reportedly distraught by Lithuanian cruelty, Masurian nobleman Andrew Gost ambushes and kills David of Hrodna and their way back to Lithuania.
Frederick Hohenzollern, by his many services as Burggraf (count) of Nuremberg, has earned the gratitude of the German king Sigismund of Luxembourg, who had rewarded in 1411 him with the office of administrator of Brandenburg, then in 1417 makes him hereditary elector of Brandenburg.
Ruling from Berlin, his primary tasks are to curb the fractious nobility, restore order, repel external foes, and recover alienated properties.
Joachim I Nestor, the eldest son of John Cicero, Elector of Brandenburg, had received an excellent education under the supervision of Dietrich von Bülow, Bishop of Lebus and Chancellor of Frankfurt University.
Becoming Elector of Brandenburg upon his father's death in January 1499, he soon afterwards married Elizabeth of Denmark, daughter of King John of Denmark.
They have five children: Joachim II Hektor, Anna, Elisabeth, Margaret, and John.
Joachim has taken some part in the political complications of the Scandinavian kingdoms, but the early years of his reign had mainly been spent in the administration of his electorate, where he had succeeded in restoring some degree of order through stern measures.
He has also improved the administration of justice, aided the development of commerce, and is sympathetic to the needs to the towns.
On the approach of the imperial election of 1519, Joachim's vote is eagerly solicited by the partisans of King Francis I of France, and Charles of Burgundy.
Having treated with both parties, and received lavish promises from them, he appears to have hoped to be Emperor himself; but when the election comes, he turned to the winning side and votes for Charles.
In spite of this, relations between the Emperor and the Elector are not friendly, and during the next few years Joachim will frequently be in communication with Charles' enemies.
In the course of Hohenzollern power politics Joachim Nestor and his brother had managed to get the latter, Albert of Mainz, first onto the sees of Magdeburg and then its suffragan of Halberstadt, both prince-bishoprics also comprising princely territories.
Since prince-episcopal sees are so influential, competing candidates usually run for them.
A candidature can turn into a bribery competition, without ever knowing exactly how much competitors pay to obtain office.
The expenditures involved, as far as they exceed one's own potential, are usually advanced by creditors and have then to be recovered by levying dues from the subjects and parishioners in the prince-bishoprics and dioceses that have just been acquired.
The acquisition in 1514 of the very influential Prince-Archbishopric-Electorate of Mainz for Albert was a coup that had provided the Hohenzollerns with control over two of the seven electoral votes in imperial elections and many suffragan dioceses to levy dues.
According to canon law, Albert was too young to hold such a position and since he would not give up the archiepiscopal see of Magdeburg (in order to terminate the accumulation of archdioceses, which was also prohibited by canon law), the Hohenzollerns had to dispense ever greater briberies at the Holy See.
This had exhausted their means and caused them to incur vast debts with the Fuggers.
To assist in the recovery of the enormous expenditures employed to assist Albert, mediators stipulate with the Holy See that the pope will allow Albert to sell indulgences to the believers in his archdioceses and their suffragans.
The sales proceeds have to cover the amortization and servicing of the debts; a share for the Holy See, for allowing this exploitation of the believers; the expenditure paid from the Hohenzollerns’ own pockets; and the charges involved with the sales.
The neighboring Electorate of Saxony also bid for the See of Mainz, but failed to secure it.
The Saxon elector Frederick the Wise had debts of his own as a result, but no see to show for it and no privilege to sell indulgences to recover his expenditures.
Frustrated, he has forbidden the sale of indulgences in his electorate and allowed Martin Luther to polemicize against them.
Joachim Nestor, in contrast, has become known as a pugnacious adherent of Roman Catholic orthodoxy who needs the sales of indulgences and the necessary intimidation of the believers in order to recover his expenditures.
Joachim Nestor's brother, Archbishop Albert, is the initial object of Luther's attack.
He urges on the Emperor the need to enforce the Edict of Worms, and at several diets is prominent among the enemies of the Reformers.
Prussia (officially so named in 1807) begins to rise as a European military power.
Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Prussia had begun to develop as a state
In 1618 the Brandenburg lineage of the Hohenzollern Dynasty had acquired possession of the Duchy of Prussia.
Through a series of agreements, the Hohenzollerns increase their territory by acquiring a string of principalities in northern Germany.
Frederick William the Great Elector (1640-88) establishes absolute monarchical rule within this territory by making an alliance with the Junkers, the landed aristocracy comprising the officer corps of the Prussian army, who in turn are guaranteed the perpetuation of an agrarian economy based on serfdom.
Originally a small and insignificant state, Prussia requires a standing army for protection.
In order to maintain the army and to ensure growth of the state, Prussian rulers introduce centralized taxation and a bureaucratic system of civil officials.
Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, reconfirms the nobility's freedom from taxation and its unlimited control over the peasants.
Brandenburg in 1648 had been a small state in northern Germany.
It has been ruled by the Hohenzollern Dynasty since the late fifteenth century and consists of the core region and its capital, Berlin: eastern Pomerania; an area around Magdeburg; the former holdings of the Knights of the Teutonic Order in eastern Prussia; and some smaller holdings in western Germany.
Brandenburg becomes known as Prussia in 1701 when its ruler crowns himself King Frederick I of Prussia.
Prussia acquires the rest of Pomerania after defeating Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700-21).
Prussia's increase in size and influence may be attributed to a succession of capable leaders, all of whom enjoy long reigns.
The first is Frederick William (r. 1640-88), known as the Great Elector, who increases his family's power by granting favors to the nobility, weakening the independence of the towns, and maintaining a professional standing army.
His son Frederick I (r. 1688-1713) establishes Prussia as a kingdom.
Frederick further strengthens the army, but not nearly as much as his son Frederick William I (r. 1713- 40), who also modernizes the kingdom's bureaucracy.
Frederick II (r. 1740-86), known to posterity as Frederick the Great, continues along the same lines as his father but shows much greater imagination and ruthlessness, transforming his small kingdom into one of the great powers of Europe.
The competition culminates, fifty years later, in the Seven Years' War (1756-63).
Fought by Prussia under Frederick II (Frederick the Great, 1740-86) against Austria, Russia, and France, the conflict demonstrates the superiority of the disciplined Prussian armies.
...Berlin to become provost of St. Nicholas' Church.
Here he gains from the Brandenburg-Prussian court the support that enables him to carry out numerous reforms.
Willem van Royen, a still life and flower painter who moved to Berlin in 1669, had become court painter to Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, after van Royen's predecessor, the flower painter Adriaen van der Spelt returned to the Netherlands.
After a period in Potsdam in 1689, he had become one of the founders of the Berlin academy in 1695, where he will die in 1723.
He was probably born in Haarlem and during the years 1661-1668 became a pupil of Arnold van Ravesteyn there or in The Hague, according to the Netherlands Institute for Art History.
Prince-elector Frederick III of Brandenburg founds the Prussian Academy of Sciences under the name of Kurfürstlich Brandenburgische Societät der Wissenschaften ("Electoral Brandenburg Society of Sciences") upon the advice of Gottfried Leibniz, who is appointed president.
Unlike other academies, the Prussian Academy is not directly funded out of the state treasury.
Frederick grants it the monopoly on producing and selling calendars in Brandenburg, a suggestion by Leibniz.
When, in 1701, Frederick is crowned "King in Prussia", creating the Kingdom of Prussia, the academy will be renamed Königlich Preußische Sozietät der Wissenschaften ("Royal Prussian Society of Sciences").