Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach, First Duke of Prussia

ALBERT OF BRANDENBURG-ANSBACH, First Duke of Prussia. - B. 16 May 1490 at Ansbach, d. 20 March 1568 at Tapiau. Destined for the ecclesiastical life, he entered the Teutonic Knights, and scarcely twenty years old, on 14 Dec. 1510, was elected grand master, the last of the Order. Enthroned on 22 Dec. 1511, he continued the policy of his predecessor, Frederick of Saxony, and sought to make himself independent of Poland. He refused to take the oath of vassalage, whence followed an unhappy war against the Poles, who devastated his territory from 1519 until 1521, when a four-year armistice was concluded. A. took advantage of it to go to Germany to ask help from the German princes. His stay at Nuremberg in 1522 marked the beginning of his orientation toward the Lutheran reform, especially under the influence of Lazarus Spengler and of the sermons of Andreas Osiander. Having returned the following year to Prussia, he had some evangelical preachers sent to him by Luther, with whom he remained in constant correspondence. Having himself publicly gone over to the new confession and laid down the office of grand master, he had himself created and recognized head of East Prussia, changing the religious State of the Teutonic Order into a temporal duchy, placed under the vassalage of Poland by the treaty of Cracow of 8 Apr. 1525. There followed the systematic Protestantization of the whole duchy, where the Teutonic Order was condemned to disappear. In 1526, A. married Dorothea, daughter of Frederick, king of Denmark. This was the first Protestant marriage among the Hohenzollerns. In 1544 A. established a university, the "Albertina," in the capital Königsberg, which became a center of the new religion.

Anselmo Musters