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Kingin Prussia (German:König in Preußen) was a title used by thePrussian kings (also in personal unionElectors of Brandenburg) from 1701 to 1772. Subsequently, they used the titleKingof Prussia (König von Preußen).
TheHouse of Hohenzollern ruledBrandenburg asPrince-Electors, and were subjects of theHoly Roman Emperor. Since 1618, the Electors of Brandenburg had also ruled theDuchy of Prussia, which lay outside the empire, in apersonal union. The dual state was known unofficially asBrandenburg-Prussia. Originally the dukes of Prussia held the fief as vassals of the King of Poland, until the Treaties ofLabiau (1656) andBromberg (1657), with whichFrederick William, the Great Elector, achieved full sovereignty from the Polish Crown. His son, ElectorFrederick III, then sought to show his greatness by adopting the titleking.
At the time, the only royal titles within the Holy Roman Empire were those ofKing of the Romans (held by the Holy Roman Emperor or theirheir apparent) andKing of Bohemia (held more or less continuously since the 16th century by the Holy Roman Emperors in ade facto personal union). However, Prussia lay outside the empire, and the Hohenzollerns were fully sovereign over it. Frederick thus argued that German law of the time allowed him to rule Prussia as a kingdom, outside the borders of the Holy Roman Empire.
In theCrown Treaty of 16 November 1700, in return for Hohenzollern assistance in theWar of the Spanish Succession and support for theHabsburg candidate in the subsequent imperial election, EmperorLeopold I allowed Frederick to crown himself "Kingin Prussia".[1] The title "King in Prussia" reflected thelegal fiction that Frederick was only sovereign over his former duchy. In Brandenburg and other Hohenzollern domains within the borders of the empire, he was legally still an elector under the ultimate overlordship of the emperor. By this time, however, the emperor's authority had become purely nominal. The rulers of the empire's member states acted largely as rulers of sovereign states, and only acknowledged the emperor's suzerainty in a formal way. Hence, even though Brandenburg was still legally part of the empire and ruled in personal union with Prussia, the two states came to be treated as onede facto. Although Prussia's royal title gave the Hohenzollern rulers higher status, Brandenburg was the wealthier and more populous portion of the combined realm, and Brandenburg's capitalBerlin remained the primary residence of the King and his administration. In addition, the Duchy was only the eastern bulk of the region of Prussia; the westernmost fragment constituted the part ofRoyal Prussia east of the Vistula, held along with the titleKing of Prussia by theKing of Poland.
On 17 January 1701, Frederick dedicated the royal coat of arms, thePrussian black eagle with the motto "suum cuique" imprinted.[1] On 18 January, he crowned himself and his wifeSophie Charlotte in a baroque ceremony inKönigsberg Castle.[1] Frederick's move was controversial, and only became widely accepted after theTreaty of Utrecht in 1713. Throughout the 18th century, the Hohenzollerns increased their power. They were victorious over the AustrianHabsburg monarchy in the threeSilesian Wars, greatly increasing their power through the acquisition ofSilesia.
KingFrederick II adopted the titleKing of Prussia in 1772, the same year he annexed most of Royal Prussia in theFirst Partition of Poland. The Hohenzollerns continued to be both Kings of Prussia and Electors of Brandenburg until the empire's dissolution in 1806. At that point, the entire realm was formally unified as the Kingdom of Prussia, with Brandenburg one of its provinces and Berlin the kingdom's capital, though the two parts became partially distinct again during the existence of theGerman Confederation (1815–1866).