Provinces of Prussia in the context of "East Prussia"

The Province of Pomerania (German: Provinz Pommern; Polish: Prowincja Pomorze) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1945. Pomerania was established as a province of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1815, an expansion of the older Brandenburg-Prussia province of Pomerania, and then became part of the German Empire in 1871. From 1918, Pomerania was a province of the Free State of Prussia until it was dissolved following World War II by decree of the Allied Control Council with the de jure abolition of Prussia on 25 February 1947, and its territory divided between Poland and Allied-occupied Germany. The city of Stettin (present-day Szczecin, Poland) was the provincial capital.

The Frontier March of Posen–West Prussia (German: Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen; Polish: Marchia Graniczna Poznańsko-Zachodniopruska) was a province of Prussia that existed from 1920 (de facto) and 1922 (de jure) until its dissolution in 1938. It comprised most of the former territory of West Prussia and parts of the Province of Posen that had remained within Germany following the territorial losses to the Second Polish Republic after the Greater Poland Uprising, and confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles. The province was created in 1922 as part of the Free State of Prussia within Weimar Germany, incorporating three remaining non-contiguous territories of the former provinces of Posen and West Prussia.

Schneidemühl (present-day Piła) served as the provincial capital. From 1934 onwards, the province came under the de facto administration of the Province of Brandenburg, and on 1 October 1938, the territory was officially dissolved by Nazi Germany. Its lands were subsequently incorporated into the neighbouring provinces of Pomerania, Brandenburg and Silesia. Following the end of World War II and the redrawing of borders, the entire area of the former province was incorporated into Poland, lying east of the Oder–Neisse line.

East Prussia (German: Ostpreußen [ˈɔstˌpʁɔɪ̯sn̩] ) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1772 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 1871); following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's Free State of Prussia, until 1945. Its capital city was Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad). East Prussia was the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast.

The bulk of the ancestral lands of the Baltic Old Prussians were enclosed within the later province of East Prussia. During the 13th century, the native Prussians were conquered by the crusading Teutonic Knights. After the conquest they were gradually converted to Christianity. As a result of the medieval Ostsiedlung, Germans became the dominant ethnic group, while Poles and Lithuanians formed sizeable minorities. From the 13th century, the region of Prussia was part of the monastic state of the Teutonic Knights. After the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 it became a part of the Kingdom of Poland, either directly (Warmia) or as a fief (remainder). In 1525, with the Prussian Homage, the territory became the Duchy of Prussia, a vassal duchy of Poland. It gained full sovereignty in 1657, when Poland renounced its feudal rights in the Treaty of Bromberg.

The North German Confederation (German: Norddeutscher Bund) was initially a German military alliance established in August 1866 under the leadership of the Kingdom of Prussia, which was transformed in the subsequent year into a confederated state (a de facto federal state) that existed from July 1867 to December 1870. A milestone of the German Unification, it was the earliest continual legal predecessor of the modern German nation-state known today as the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Confederation came into existence following the Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 over the lordship of two duchies (Schleswig-Holstein) resulting in the Peace of Prague, where Prussia pressured Austria and its allies into accepting the dissolution of the existing German Confederation (an association of German states under the leadership of the Austrian Empire), thus paving the way for the Lesser German version of German unification in the form of a federal state in Northern Germany. The construction of such a state became a reality in August 1866, following the North German Confederation Treaty, initially as a military alliance only, while its first federal constitution establishing a constitutional monarchy with the Prussian king holding as the head of state the Bundespräsidium was adopted on 1 July 1867. Laws could only be enabled with the consent of the Reichstag (a parliament based on universal male suffrage) and the Federal Council (Bundesrat, a representation of the states). During the initial three and a half years of the Confederation, a conservative-liberal cooperation undertook important steps to unify (Northern) Germany with regard to law and infrastructure. The designed political system and the political parties remained essentially the same also after 1870.

The Rhine Province (German: Rheinprovinz), also known as Rhenish Prussia (Rheinpreußen) or synonymous with the Rhineland (Rheinland), was the westernmost province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia, within the German Reich, from 1822 to 1946. It was created from the provinces of the Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg. Its capital was Koblenz, with the provincial assembly meeting in Düsseldorf. In 1939 it had 8 million inhabitants. The Province of Hohenzollern was militarily associated with the Oberpräsident of the Rhine Province. Also, for a short period of time, the Province of Hohenzollern was indirectly and de facto controlled by the Rhine Province.

The Rhine Province was bounded on the north by the Netherlands, on the east by the Prussian provinces of Westphalia and Hesse-Nassau, and the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, on the southeast by the Palatinate (a district of the Kingdom of Bavaria), on the south and southwest by Lorraine, and on the west by Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The Province of Nassau (German: Provinz Nassau) was a province of Prussia from 1944 to 1945.

Although all German states (including Prussia) had been de facto dissolved since 1933, the Nazi government formally partitioned the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau into two provinces with a decree issued on 1 April 1944 and effective on 1 July 1944. The two new provinces were the province of Kurhessen and the province of Nassau.

The Prussian State Council (German: Preußischer Staatsrat) was the second chamber of the bicameral legislature of the Free State of Prussia between 1921 and 1933; the first chamber was the Prussian Landtag (Preußischer Landtag). The members of the State Council were elected by the provincial parliaments and gave the provinces of Prussia a voice in the legislative process. The Council had an indirect right to introduce legislation, could object to bills passed by the Reichstag and had to approve expenditures that exceeded the budget.

The Province of Prussia (German: Provinz Preußen; Lithuanian: Prūsijos provincija; Polish: Prowincja Prusy; Kashubian: Prowincjô Prësë) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1824 to 1878. The province was established in 1824 from the provinces of West Prussia and East Prussia, and was dissolved in 1878 when the merger was reversed.

Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad, Russia) was the provincial capital.

The Province of Hesse-Nassau (German: Provinz Hessen-Nassau) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1868 to 1918, then a province of the Free State of Prussia until 1944.

Hesse-Nassau was created as a consequence of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 by combining the previously independent Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), the Duchy of Nassau, the Free City of Frankfurt, areas gained from the Kingdom of Bavaria, and areas gained from the Grand Duchy of Hesse (including part of the former Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg from Hesse-Darmstadt). These regions were combined to form the province Hesse-Nassau in 1868 with its capital in Kassel and redivided into two administrative regions: Kassel and Wiesbaden. The largest part of the province surrounded the province of Upper Hesse in the Grand Duchy of Hesse (People's State of Hesse from 1918).