ABSTRACT
Brandenburg was the nucleus of the modern state of Prussia. It began as a frontier province on the west bank of the lower Elbe—the Altmark, established in the tenth century. Eastward territorial expansion with the conquest of the Slavs carried its frontier to the districts between the Elbe and the Oder in the thirteenth century, and these were grouped together as the Mittelmark, together with Prignitz and Uckermark. This was soon followed by the addition, beyond the Oder, of the Neumark in 1260. The capital cities of the province shifted eastwards, beginning on the lower Elbe with Tangermünde, then shifting to Brandenburg, then to Berlin, while Frankfurt-on-Oder was used as the military base for the conquest of the Neumark. The margravate of Brandenburg was established in 1157 and it became an electorate of the Empire in 1351. The Hohenzollerns came into control in the early fifteenth century and the territories of the march were made indivisible. The real growth of Berlin, however, upon which the present unity of Brandenburg largely depends, began in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries under the Hohenzollerns, as the capital of Prussia.
