Frederick William I (1688-1740) was king of Prussia from 1713 to 1740. He inherited a state whose resources were meager and turned it into a leading German power. The son of the elector Frederick III of Brandenburg and of Sophie Charlotte of Hanover,...

For the many Germans who were happily sure that Prussia with its "blood and iron" tradition was dead, this summer is proving unsettling. Bad enough, the Prussia-fearers say, that the Bundestag and government agreed last month to shift to Berlin, Bismarck's (and Hitler's)...

January 18th, 1701 PRUSSIA, which was to become a byword for German militarism and authoritarianism, began its history outside Germany altogether. The people called Preussen in German, who inhabited the land on the south-eastern coast of the Baltic, were Slavs, related to...