Prussia Intervenes in War of Austrian Succession

Date: August 7, 1744 • Location: Berlin, Germany

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 1744–1745.

Prussia declared its intervention in the War of the Austrian Succession on behalf of Charles VII, beginning the Second Silesian War.

Prussia was a German state centred on the North European Plain. It originated from the 1525 secularization act of the Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, expanding its size with the Prussian Army. Prussia, with its capital at Königsberg and then, when it became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany. Prussia formed the German Empire when it united the German states in 1871. It was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947.