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DAY 25/249 1981 – WARSAW, POLAND TO BERLIN, GERMANY

Slavs are a European ethno-linguistic group of people who speak the various Slavic languages. They are native to Eurasia, stretching from Central, Southeastern and Eastern Europe, all the way north and eastwards to Northeast Europe, Northern Asia (Siberia and the Russian Far East), and Central Asia, as well as historically in Western Europe (particularly in Eastern Germany). From the early 6th century they spread to inhabit most of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

By the 8th century, Slavs started to move into the Brandenburg area, and intermarried with Saxons and Bohemians.

When Albert Frederick, Duke of Prussia, died without a son in 1618, his son-in-law inherited the Duchy of Prussia. He then ruled two territories in a personal union which came to be known as Brandenburg-Prussia. In this way, Brandenburg acquired territory both in the Rhineland and on the Baltic coast. Prussia lay outside the Holy Roman Empire and the electors of Brandenburg held it as part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, to which the electors paid homage.

The electors of Brandenburg spent the next two centuries attempting to gain lands to unite their separate territories (the Mark Brandenburg, the territories in the Rhineland and Westphalia, and Ducal Prussia) to form one geographically contiguous domain.

In the Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years' War in 1648, Brandenburg-Prussia acquired  the Province of Pomerania  (1653). In the second half of the 17th century, Frederick William, the "Great Elector", developed Brandenburg-Prussia into a major power, and constructed Brandenburg's first navy

The Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom  between 1701 and 1918. It was the driving force behind the unification of Germany in 1871 and was the leading state of the German Empire until its dissolution at the end of Word War I in 1918. Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg (1417-1701). Its capital was Berlin.

As a kingdom, Prussia continued its rise to power, especially during the reign of Frederick II (Frederick the Great), who was instrumental in starting the Seven Years' War (1756–63), holding his own against Austria, Russia, France and Sweden and establishing Prussia's role in the German states, as well as establishing the country as a European great power. Prussia was then a major power among the German states. Throughout the next hundred years Prussia won many battles, and many wars. Because of its power, Prussia continuously tried to unify all the German states (excluding the German cantons in Switzerland) under its rule. Whether Austria would be included in such a unified German domain was an ongoing question.

After the Napoleonic Wars led to the creation of the German Confederation, the issue of unifying the German states caused a number of revolutions throughout the German states, with all states wanting their own constitution. Attempts to create a federation remained unsuccessful and the German Confederation collapsed in 1866 when war ensued between its two most powerful member states, Prussia and Austria. The North German Confederation, which lasted from 1867 to 1871, created a closer union between the Prussian-aligned states while Austria and most of Southern Germany remained independent. 

 The German Empire lasted from 1871 to 1918 with the successful unification of all the German states aside from Austria under Prussian hegemony due to the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. The war united all the German states against a common enemy, and with the victory came an overwhelming wave of nationalism including some who had been against unification. In 1871, Germany unified into a single country, minus Austria and Switzerland, with Prussia the dominant power.

Prussia is considered the legal predecessor of the unified German Reich (1871–1945) and as such a direct ancestor of today's Federal Republic of Germany. The formal abolition of Prussia, carried out on 25 February 1947 by the Allied Control Council, referred to a tradition of the kingdom as a bearer of militarism and reaction, and made way for the current setup of the German states. 

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