History
Brandenburg is one of Germany’s sixteen Bundesländers. Historically, Brandenburg was a quasi-independent country and the core of the unified German state. It contained the future German capital Berlin and since 1618 both Brandenburg and Prussia, then Brandenburg-Prussia, were ruled by Hohenzollern dukes and later kings of Prussia. The Frankish Nuremberg, Ansbach and southern German Hohenzollern and the eastern European connections of Berlin and the prince-elector together were instrumental in the rise of that state. Brandenburg is situated entirely in territory of Germania recorded by Tacitus in 98 AD. By 600 first groups of Slavic people arrived. In 948 Emperor Otto I the Great established German control over the now largely Slavic inhabitants of the area and founded the dioceses of Havelberg and Brandenburg; he died in 983. In the great uprising in 983 the Slavs wiped out German control from the territory of present day best generic levitra overnight Brandenburg. The monasteries were buried, priests and Germans officials killed or expelled. The Slavic tribes living east of Elbe remained independent and pagan for the next 150 years.