Frederick William - The Great Elector (1620 – 1688)

Frederick William was Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, thus ruler of Brandenburg-Prussia, from 1640 until his death in 1688. Thus, was the elector of Brandenburg from 1640 until his death in 1688. In the Holy Roman Empire, electors were members of a body that voted to select the Holy Roman Emperor.

Frederick William was the eldest son of the elector George William and Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate, a granddaughter of William the Silent, prince of Orange.

At the age of seven Frederick William left Berlin to avoid approaching Catholic armies, and at the age of fourteen he was sent to Holland to study and to live with his relatives of the House of Orange.

When he came to power in 1640, his first action was to disband his army and make a separate truce with Sweden. However, the Swedes turned on him at the behest of King Louis XIV and invaded Brandenburg. After marching 250 kilometers in 15 days back to Brandenburg, he caught the Swedes by surprise and managed to defeat them on the field at the Battle of Fehrbellin, destroying the myth of Swedish military invincibility.

He restored the traditional rights of the Estates of Prussia and Cleves and Mark and granted the Estates of Brandenburg additional privileges in exchange for a monetary contribution.

Frederick William was known as "the Great Elector," and he was responsible for reforms that laid the basis for the elevation of Prussia from duchy to kingdom under his son, Frederick III, elector of Brandenburg (1657--1713), who became King Frederick I of Prussia in 1701.

Friedrich-Wilhelm was a staunch pillar of the Calvinist faith, associated with the rising commercial class. He saw the importance of trade and promoted it vigorously. His shrewd domestic reforms gave Prussia a strong position in the post-Treaty of Westphalia 1648.
Frederick William - The Great Elector (1620 – 1688)

Otto von Bismarck (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898)

Otto von Bismarck unified Germany under a conservative government and altered the balance of power in nineteenth century Europe. He founded the German Empire in 1871 and served as its chancellor for 19 years.

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck was born in Schönhausen to the Junker family of Prussia in 1815, the year peace was restored to Europe after the tumultuous Napoleonic Wars.

He was the fourth of six children – four sons and two daughters - of whom the eldest was born in 1807 and the youngest in 1827.

In his youth he preferred drinking and duels to his law studies in Berlin and his later duties as a civil servant.

Otto von Bismarck in 1874

In 1847, desirous of more excitement and power than he could find in the country, he reentered public life. Four years later he began to build a base of diplomatic experience as the Prussian delegate to the Parliament of the Germanic Confederation.

In 1849, the Prussian king arrested the Frankfurt Assembly, Bismarck expressed his approval. His support of the Prussian monarchy won him a post in the government and in 1862 he was appointed chancellor.

When he took office, Prussia was widely considered the weakest of the five European powers, but under his leadership Prussian won a war against Denmark in 1864, the even Weeks’ War in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71).

Through these wars he achieved his goal of political unification of a Prussian-dominated Germane Empire.

He was not a political gambler but a moderate who waged war only when all other diplomatic alternatives had been exhausted and when he was reasonably sure that all the military diplomatic advantages were on his side.

In 1890 William II dismissed Bismarck. In 1898 the frustrated ‘Iron Chancellor’ died.
Otto von Bismarck (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898)