Hohenzollern, Dynasty of the

HOHENZOLLERN, Dynasty of the. - The cradle of the dynasty that rose to great power in Prussia is found in the Swabian Jura: on a ridge at 800 m. the ruins of Zollern castle remain. They were originally petty vassals of the Staufers: at the end of the 12th century FREDERICK of Zollern became burgrave of Nuremberg; the Swabian domains were developing, and others were added in Franconia, so that on the death of Frederick III the family divided into two branches (1201): CONRAD III created the line of the burgraves of Nuremberg with the Franconian possessions, FREDERICK IV retained the title of count of Zollern with the Swabian possessions. The Zollern line branched out considerably; marriages and inheritances created a rich patrimonial base for each of the branches; the H.-Hechingen died out only in 1869, and in 1891 the H.-Sigmaringen died out, of which one branch survived, represented by the dynasty reigning in Romania from 1866.

The burgravial dynasty of Nuremberg shifted the center of its activity at the beginning of the 15th century, when the emperor Sigismund, to reward FREDERICK VI of H. for the support he had given him, granted him the margraviate of Brandenburg (1415). Frederick VI then acquired such prestige that on the death of Sigismund the electors remained uncertain between Albert of Habsburg and the Brandenburg elector. The H. were to reach the imperial crown four centuries later. In

1486 the margrave ALBERT ACHILLES established a family statute (Dispositio Achillea) to avoid the dangerous dismemberment of the domains. Yet precisely from Albert Achilles the house of Brandenburg divided into two branches: one held the Brandenburg electorate, the other the burgraviate of Nuremberg and the Franconian possessions. The electoral house shows in the 16th century various ramifications such as the margraves of Bayreuth, who died out in 1769, and the margraves of Ansbach, who died out in 1807. To the Ansbach branch belonged at the beginning of the 16th century ALBERT of H., who in 1511 was elected grand master of the Teutonic Order; in 1525 he adhered to the Lutheran Reformation, dissolved the Order and proclaimed himself duke of Prussia, paying feudal homage to the king of Poland. The H., dukes of Prussia, died out as early as 1618 with ALBERT FREDERICK, whose succession was taken up by the elector of Brandenburg JOHN SIGISMUND, who consented to pay homage to the king of Poland, undertaking to guarantee to Catholics the free exercise of their religion. The electors of Brandenburg had in fact passed to the Lutheran Reformation in 1539 with JOACHIM II (1535-71). As a consequence of the acquisition of Prussia, the H. of Brandenburg had two principal nuclei of domains: those of Brandenburg, for which they depended on the emperor of Vienna, and those of Prussia, for which they were vassals of the king of Poland. In 1657 FREDERICK WILLIAM I succeeded in freeing himself from the bonds of vassalage toward Poland, and from this moment he was a wholly independent prince in Prussia.

The family agreement of Gera of 1603 established that the domains of the dynasty were to be indivisible and were to be transmitted only in the line of primogeniture. Consequently the margraviates of Franconia, on the extinction of the families that held them, passed to the principal branch of Brandenburg. During the 17th century enlargement had been sought through a skillful policy of marriages and inheritances. In the 17th century the great European wars opened to the electors of Brandenburg the possibility of achieving the unification of their various domains through conquests on various fronts. The Thirty Years' War put at risk the existence of Brandenburg, caught between Swedes and imperial forces, but revealed to the electors the necessity of a skillful policy of wavering between the contending parties. GEORGE WILLIAM did not yet take a clear position; greater energy was shown by his son FREDERICK WILLIAM, called the Great Elector (1640-88). At the Peace of Westphalia he obtained eastern Pomerania. It was the first revelation for the H. of the possibility of an expansion: then a political program began, directed at making itself felt among the second-rank powers that were in the Empire. The Great Elector organized a standing army, creating with feudal elements a corps of trained officers; he reorganized the finances into a regular system of taxes; he gave the government an organic administration with stable, salaried and disciplined officials; he repopulated the countries devastated by wars by sheltering the French Huguenots driven from France by Louis XIV with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; he gave the house and the country an example of a pietistic and fanatical religious policy with absolute devotion to Lutheran traditions and legislation hostile to Catholicism. Thus, applying those that could be called the fundamental characteristics of the race — tenacity, discipline, thrift — the Great Elector laid the foundations of the Prussian State: a disciplined and loyal army based on the devotion of the feudal nobility, glad to provide the officers, and of the agricultural class, blindly obedient; a state administration organized militarily with officials convinced of carrying out a mystical mission in the service of God and of their prince; devoted populations ready to let themselves be manipulated by the prince who does everything and disposes of everything. The battle of Fehrbellin of 1675 was for Europe the revelation of an unsuspected political reality; a new country organized by a dynasty; an army and a bureaucracy led by the will of a prince; a single program of dynasty and people: loyalty, honor, discipline.

FREDERICK III with different intelligence, but with equal tenacity, continued his father's work (1688-1713). He knew how to take advantage of the wars of the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th to impose on the imperial house of Habsburg, in need of his military contribution, the recognition of his desire to become king. The Emperor recognized him as king of Prussia, the former Polish fief where the H. were absolute masters. On 18 Jan. 1701 Frederick crowned himself in the cathedral of Koenigsberg and created in memory of the event the knightly Order of the Black Eagle.

Now the State of the H. acquired in Germany a new importance; in the face of the Empire the Kingdom of Prussia, of which electoral Brandenburg and the other domains of a feudal character were only appendages, appeared as an independent and dangerous power. The H. were to be like the rallying center of all German Lutheran forces against the Catholic Habsburg Empire. Frederick III (now I as king) found not a few oppositions to his recognition on the part of the European princes, but he placed his troops at the service of the Emperor and remained faithful to him. At the Peace of Utrecht he obtained a conspicuous territorial enlargement: the H. now had three principal groups of domains, those of Prussia, of Brandenburg, of the Rhine, not counting the ancestral fiefs of Swabia and Franconia. Relations between the various groups were difficult. FREDERICK WILLIAM I (1713-40) with great patience attended to consolidating the organization of the State: he felt that the day of trial would not be too long in coming. Avaricious, dominated by the passion for gold, he was preoccupied throughout his reign by the need to create a strong and numerous army. His measures brought it about that the charcareer of arms became the absolute occupation of the nobility, that the educated class regarded the bureaucracy as the most valuable career after the military one. It was Frederick William I who created the Prussian tradition of precision in the state services. The last of the great H. was FREDERICK II the Great (1740-86). Like his father, he faithfully observed the principle that the king must be the first servant of the State and that he must set the example of continuous, methodical work in government. He, however, wanted his State to be not merely military and bureaucratic, but also civil and cultured, and he strove to create in Prussia a tradition of culture, not by initiating it, but by imposing it. The idea that Prussia would be the definitive rival of Austria led him to face war outright in order to wrest Silesia from the enemy, just as the partitions of Poland gave him the means to unite Brandenburg and Prussia firmly. The Seven Years' War brought the H. to the brink of ruin: they emerged from it as undisputed lords of one of the principal powers of Europe. The French Revolution determined the clash of the new democratic political conceptions with the old world dominated by monarchical traditions. The H., defeated by Napoleon, lost a good part of their domains, but remained faithful to their dynastic traditions. Thus, after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire, FREDERICK WILLIAM III (1790-1840) sought to preserve his autocratic power, relying on the bureaucracy and on the army in which the aristocracy dominated, jealous in the preservation of its privileges. Around him, however, the parties were stirring: the absolutists and the liberals. He heard talk of national unity, but he distrusted unitarianism and the unitarians; he wanted to preserve Prussia intact as his forebears had entrusted it to him. Thus in the liberal crisis of 1848 FREDERICK WILLIAM IV (1840-61) was full of distrust for the liberals who dreamed of the unity of Germany and wanted to offer the crown of emperor to the king of Prussia. A traditionalist, he was a convinced follower of the divine right of kings and hated constitutions. But the resumption of the conflict with Austria over the Danish duchies and the war of 1866 brought Prussia face to face with the definitive problem of the arrangement to be given to Germany. The minister of WILLIAM I (1861-88), Count von Bismarck, while at the opportune moment he veiled the dissension with Austria so that it would not reach its extreme consequences - the destruction of the Empire of Vienna - knew how to bind tightly the fortunes of the dynasty of the H. to the urgency of the conflict with France for the independence of Germany. Thus, at Versailles, on 18 Jan. 1871, William I assumed the crown of emperor of the Deutsches Reich, in which there was to be the reconciliation between the absolute, militarist traditions of the H. and German liberal unitarianism. The experiment failed under WILLIAM II (1888-1918); in this prince there appeared some of the traditional qualities of his stock, but not the best ones. The dynasty of the H. fell with the abdication of William II after the armistice of Rethondes, on 11 Nov. 1918: it had, however, given Germany the political unity that was to survive.

Francesco Cognasso