Everything about The Duchy Of Magdeburg totally explained
The
Duchy of Magdeburg was a province of
Brandenburg-Prussia from 1680–1807. It replaced the
Archbishopric of Magdeburg after its secularization by Brandenburg. The
duchy's capitals were
Magdeburg and
Halle, while
Burg was another important town. Dissolved during the
Napoleonic Wars in 1807, its territory was made part of the
Province of Saxony in 1815.
History
The
Roman Catholic Archbishopric of Magdeburg began to be administered by secular princes, mostly
Lutheran, in 1545 during the
Protestant Reformation. In the 1648
Treaty of Westphalia, the archbishopric was promised to the
House of Hohenzollern of the
Margraviate of Brandenburg upon the death of its incumbent administrator,
August, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. The city of Magdeburg was also required to pay homage to the
prince-electors of Brandenbug. In 1666, Elector
Frederick William used his
developing army to install a permanent Brandenburger garrison in the city.
Brandenburg-Prussia inherited the Archbishopric of Brandenburg upon the death of August of Saxe-Weissenfels in 1680 and reorganized the secularized territory as the Duchy of Magdeburg, with the electors of Brandenburg as hereditary dukes. The Halle region (
Saalkreis), an exclave of the province, was surrounded by the Principality of
Anhalt, the
County of Mansfeld (acquired by Prussia in 1790), and the
Electorate of Saxony. Against the wishes of the duchy's Lutheran nobility, a
Calvinist chancellor was appointed to govern the duchy. Through the leadership of
August Hermann Francke, Halle became the center of
Pietism in Brandenburg-Prussia.
Justus Henning Böhmer became chancellor of the province in 1743.
With the creation of the
General Directory in 1723 by Frederick William I, the Duchy of Magdeburg, the
Principality of Halberstadt, and the Margraviate of Brandenburg were administered by the second department of the General Directory. A state-capitalized agricultural
credit union (
Landschaft) was created in the duchy in 1780 for the exclusive use of the nobility. Control over the Magdeburg lands gave the monarchy a lucrative
monopoly over the
Stassfurt and Halle
salt deposits.
The estates of
Pomerania voluntarily raised 5,000 troops for the Prussian Army during the
Seven Years' War; their initiative was duplicated by the nobility of Magdeburg and neighboring provinces.
In the War of the
Fourth Coalition, Prussia was defeated by
Napoleon in 1806. In the
Treaty of Tilsit the following year, the Duchy of Magdeburg was dissolved. The ducal territory west of the
Elbe River, including the cities Magdeburg and Halle, were made part of the
Kingdom of Westphalia, a client state of the
First French Empire. The ducal territory east of the Elbe remained in a drastically reduced Kingdom of Prussia.
Prussia reacquired the Magdeburg and Halle territories during the
War of the Sixth Coalition. In 1815 after the
Napoleonic Wars, the territory of the Duchy of Magdeburg, the
Altmark, and territory annexed from the
Kingdom of Saxony formed the new Prussian
Province of Saxony.
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