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Prussia (Template:Audio-de) was a prominent historical German state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg, and centred on the region of Prussia. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organised and effective army. Prussia, with its capital in Königsberg and from 1701 in Berlin, shaped the history of Germany.

In 1871, German states united to create the German Empire under Prussian leadership. In November 1918, the monarchies were abolished and the nobility lost its political power during the German Revolution of 1918–19. The Kingdom of Prussia was thus abolished in favour of a republic—the Free State of Prussia, a state of Germany from 1918 until 1933. From 1933, Prussia lost its independence as a result of the Prussian coup, when the Nazi regime was successfully establishing its Gleichschaltung laws in pursuit of a unitary state. With the end of the Nazi regime, the division of Germany into allied-occupation zones and the separation of its territories east of the Oder–Neisse line, which were incorporated into Poland and the Soviet Union, the State of Prussia ceased to exist de facto in 1945.<ref name="Clark, Christopher 2006">Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947 (2006) is the standard history.</ref><ref>The various stages of transformation and dissolution of old Prussia 1871–1947 describes Golo Mann: Das Ende Preußens (in German), in: Hans-Joachim Netzer (Hrsg.): Preußen. Portrait einer politischen Kultur, Munich 1968, p. 135–165 (in German). See also another perspective by Andreas Lawaty: Das Ende Preußens in polnischer Sicht: Zur Kontinuität negativer Wirkungen der preußischen Geschichte auf die deutsch-polnischen Beziehungen, de Gruyter, Berlin 1986, Template:ISBN. (in German)</ref> Prussia existed de jure until its formal liquidation by the Allied Control Council Enactment No. 46 of 25 February 1947.<ref>Allied Control Council Enactment No. 46 of 25 February 1947 Template:Fr icon</ref>

The name Prussia derives from the Old Prussians. In the 13th century, the Teutonic Knights—an organized Catholic medieval military order of German crusaders—conquered the lands inhabited by them. In 1308, the Teutonic Knights conquered the region of Pomerelia with Gdańsk (Danzig). Their monastic state was mostly Germanised through immigration from central and western Germany and in the south, it was Polonised by settlers from Masovia. The Second Peace of Thorn (1466) split Prussia into the western Royal Prussia, a province of Poland, and the eastern part, from 1525 called the Duchy of Prussia, a fief of the Crown of Poland up to 1657. The union of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia in 1618 led to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701.

Prussia entered the ranks of the great powers shortly after becoming a kingdom,<ref> Fueter, Eduard (1922). World history, 1815–1920. United States of America: Harcourt, Brace and Company. pp. 25–28, 36–44. Template:ISBN.</ref><ref>Danilovic, Vesna. When the Stakes Are High—Deterrence and Conflict among Major Powers, University of Michigan Press (2002), p 27, p225–228</ref><ref>Aping the Great Powers: Frederick the Great and the Defence of Prussia's International Position 1763–86, pp. 286–307.</ref><ref>The Rise of Prussia</ref> and exercised most influence in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 18th century it had a major say in many international affairs under the reign of Frederick the Great. During the 19th century, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck united the German principalities into a "Lesser Germany", which excluded the Austrian Empire.

At the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), which redrew the map of Europe following Napoleon's defeat, Prussia acquired a large section of north western Germany, including the coal-rich Ruhr. The country then grew rapidly in influence economically and politically, and became the core of the North German Confederation in 1867, and then of the German Empire in 1871. The Kingdom of Prussia was now so large and so dominant in the new Germany that Junkers and other Prussian élites identified more and more as Germans and less as Prussians.

The Kingdom ended in 1918. In the Weimar Republic, the state of Prussia lost nearly all of its legal and political importance following the 1932 coup led by Franz von Papen. East Prussia lost all of its German population after 1945, as Poland and the Soviet Union absorbed its territory and expelled most of its inhabitants.

The term Prussian has often been used, especially outside of Germany, to emphasise the professionalism, aggressiveness, militarism and conservatism of the Junker class of landed aristocrats in the East who dominated first Prussia and then the German Empire.