Treaty of Wehlau
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Treaty of Wehlau (German: Vertrag von Wehlau; Polish: Traktat Welawski) was a treaty signed in the eastern Prussian town of Wehlau (Welawa, now Znamensk) between Poland and Brandenburg-Prussia during the Swedish Deluge on September 19, 1657.
In his capacity as Duke of Prussia, Margrave Frederick William, the "Great Prince-elector" of Brandenburg, had revoked his oath of loyalty to his sovereign King John II Casimir of Poland in 1656 and allied against him with King Charles X Gustav of Sweden, whom Frederick William recognized as sovereign over Prussia. In the Treaty of Labiau later that year Charles granted the margrave sovereignty over Prussia and Warmia. After his defeat in the Battle of Warsaw in 1656, John Casimir met with Frederick William at Wehlau. In return for the margrave's renunciation of the Brandenburg-Sweden alliance, the Polish king recognized Frederick William's full sovereignty over the Duchy of Prussia, which was since the 2nd Peace of Thorn of 1466 a Polish and also briefly a Swedish fief. In case Brandenburg-Prussia's Hohenzollern dynasty died out, Duchy of Prussia was to return to the crown of Poland.
Johann von Hoverbeck was one of the Brandenburg-Prussian diplomats during the negotiations of this treaty. The treaty was amended by the Treaty of Bromberg (Bydgoszcz) of 6 November 1657 and confirmed by the Treaty of Oliva in 1660. The treaties were to be renewed at death or change of each ruler, which happened in 1672, 1677, 1688, and 1698, after which they were no longer renewed.
Because Hohenzollern sovereignty in Prussia lay outside of the Holy Roman Empire, Elector Frederick III was able to elevate the Duchy of Prussia to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701. One aspect of this is that according to constitutional law East Prussia was never a part of Germany but an independent German state in personal union with Electoral Brandenburg except during two rather short periods of time. At first briefly during the revolutions of 1848, and the second time 1871-1950 from the creation of the Second Reich to the victory of the Allies when East Germany accepted the Oder-Neisse line as its eastern border, which was confirmed by the government of the reunited Germany in 1990.
