375th birthday of the great elector - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1995 - 300 Pfennig

Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg, already known as the Great Elector in his lifetime, was born into a difficult time. The youth and the beginnings of his rule (since 1640) were under the tribulations of the Thirty Years' War. At the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 he obtained some land acquisition, only on the important Vorpommern with Szczecin he had to give up. The exposed position of the free-flowing Brandenburg estate from the Lower Rhine to (East) Prussia repeatedly entangled the elector in the great politics of the European powers. Warlike conflicts repeatedly forced him to intervene militarily to safeguard his possessions. In the Swedish-Polish war he reached in 1657 the liberation of Prussia from the Polish feudal sovereignty, and in the battle of Fehrbellin 1675 he expelled the Swedes from German soil. This victory established the fame of Frederick William as a general. With irrepressible energy the Great Elector succeeded in a thorough reconstruction of the state. He overcame the old form of government and created a centralist, dependent on the sovereign administration, which helped above all to secure the maintenance of the new standing army and formed the basis for the Prussian officer and civil service. Thus he initiated the rise of Brandenburg-Prussia to the modern power state of European rank.