Brandenburg-Schwedt

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Schwedt Castle, the seat of the Margraves of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1669

Brandenburg-Schwedt is the subsequent name of a branch line of the Brandenburg-Prussian Hohenzollern . “Brandenburg-Schwedt” is often mistaken for a historical principality in the north of Brandenburg . In fact, the branch line in its manors Schwedt - Vierraden (Ucker- and Neumark) and Wildenbruch (Western Pomerania) had no sovereignty or sovereign rights. As royal princes of the blood with corresponding appanages and heirs of the wealthy Electress Dorothea and second wife of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm (the "Great Elector"), however, they were able to demonstrate a prosperity that exceeded that of some smaller principalities.

After the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Elector Friedrich Wilhelm pledged the area around Schwedt for 25,000 thalers to Count Varrensbach , who viewed his pledge as an object of income. In 1670, Electress Dorothea dissolved the rulership for 26,500 thalers from the pledge and thus created a basis for the provision of her son Philipp Wilhelm. Through the purchase of further manors, the property finally comprised three cities, three castles, 33 villages and 24 farms .

Electress Dorothea devoted herself to the reconstruction of the Schwedt Castle , which was damaged in the Thirty Years War, and to the economic development of the city and its surroundings. So she recruited a Dutch specialist who, in the spring of 1686, established the tradition of tobacco growing in the Uckermark region with the French Huguenots who had settled there. At the end of the 18th century, the Uckermark, with 4,400 hectares of cultivation area, was the largest contiguous tobacco growing area in Germany and, with three cigar factories, the most important economic factor in the area.

Dorothea's eldest son, Margrave Philipp Wilhelm , intensively expanded his rule and expanded the palace's precious furnishings. His younger brother Carl secretly married Countess Katharina von Salmour in northern Italy in 1695, two months before his death . As a widow, she called herself Madame de Brandebourg , which was processed into several novels, especially in the 19th century, as she refused to give up the title despite the prospect of a large payment by the elector.

The lively construction activity continued under the subsequent Margrave Friedrich Wilhelm (the great Margrave) . The planned expansion of the residential city was now carried out on a large scale.

The last Schwedt Margrave Friedrich Heinrich , the youngest son of Philipp Wilhelm, transformed Schwedt into a city of culture. With him, the line died out in 1788, and most of its land ownership fell back to the Prussian crown .

In 1794 , the palace was designated as the residence of Friedrich Ludwig Karl von Prussia , the second son of Friedrich Wilhelm II , who spent a few years there with his wife.

The bosses of the Brandenburg-Schwedt branch line