Ducal Prussia
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Image:Rzeczpospolita Royal Ducal.pngImage:Prussia ethnicity.JPGImage:Pol-lith commonwealth map.jpg
Ducal Prussia is a synonym for the Duchy of Prussia (Template:Lang-de (Template:Audio). It was established in 1525 in the eastern part of Prussia; western Prussia had become the Polish province of Royal Prussia after the Peace of Toruń (1466). In 1701 Ducal Prussia became part of the Kingdom of Prussia.
Royal Prussia and Ducal Prussia correspond roughly to what later (1772) became West Prussia and East Prussia, respectively.
During the Reformation endemic religious upheavals and wars occurred, and in 1525, the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert of Prussia, a member of a cadet branch of the house of Hohenzollern, resigned his position, became a Protestant and was afforded the title "Duke of Prussia" from his feudal overlord, the King of Poland, Sigismund I the Old, in the Act of Prussian Homage. In a deal partially brokered by Martin Luther (under imperial ban since 1521), Ducal Prussia became the first Protestant state, along the lines of the later religious Peace of Augsburg. When Duke Albert of Prussia died in 1569, his son Albert Frederick inherited it. In 1618 Margrave John Sigismund of Brandenburg was able first to ensure the regency and then the inheritance of the duchy.
In 1660, after the Second Northern War between Sweden, Poland, and Brandenburg, the Treaty of Wehlau granted full sovereignty to Frederick William, the "Great Elector", of the Brandenburg Hohenzollerns, as "Duke of Prussia". Ducal Prussia lost its status as a Polish fief and became a part of Brandenburg-Prussia, but not part of the Holy Roman Empire. This allowed Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg to become "king in Prussia" without offending the Holy Roman Emperor.
Following Germany's defeat in 1945 (World War II) it had been tentatively agreed at the Yalta Conference that the southern two thirds of East Prussia would be assigned to Poland and the northern third to the Soviet Union. Much of the ethnic German population had then already fled westwards in the last winter of the war, fearing Soviet army atrocities, and the remaining population was expelled after the war. Poles and Russians resettled the respective territories.
