Flag of Prussia

Karl Richard Lepsius and his team fly the Prussian flag from the top of the Pyramid of Cheops (painted by Johann Jakob Frey)

Prussian flag on an 1890 cigarette card; this is the civil flag.

Prussian flag captured by Swedish soldiers during The Battle of Frisches Haff in 1759

The state of Prussia had its origins in the separate lands of the Margraviate of Brandenburg and of the Duchy of Prussia. The Margraviate of Brandenburg developed from the medieval Northern March of the Holy Roman Empire, passing to the House of Hohenzollern in 1415. The Duchy of Prussia originated in 1525 when Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach, a member of a cadet branch of the Hohenzollern house, secularized the eastern lands of the Teutonic Knights as a Polish fief. Prince-elector John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, inherited the Duchy of Prussia in 1618, thus uniting Brandenburg and Prussia under one ruler in a personal union; the Elector's state became known as Brandenburg-Prussia. The Kingdom of Prussia formed when Elector Frederick III assumed the title of Frederick I, King in Prussia, on 18 January 1701.

Hohenzollern monarchical rule of Prussia ceased in 1918 after the fall of the German Empire in the aftermath of World War I; the Kingdom becoming instead the Free State of Prussia. The Allied Control Council decreed the formal abolition of the state of Prussia in 1947 following World War II.