It was created in 1815, when
Prussia reorganised its internal administration. It comprised the mostly rural eastern part of
Brandenburg, including the
New March and
Lower Lusatia. From 1871 Prussia itself was part of the newly founded
German Empire.
In aggregate these changes reduced the land area of the Frankfurt Region from 20,731 km2 to 18,390 km2.[1]
In 1945 the part of the region to the east of the
Oder and
Western Neisse rivers (the
Oder–Neisse line) became part of Poland while the western part fell within the
Soviet Zone of occupation in Germany. West of the Oder–Neisse line, the
Land of Brandenburg, created in 1946, was not administratively subdivided into "government regions". Three years later, however, the newly evolving
East German state undertook further administrative reforms in 1952 and the western areas of the former Frankfurt Region became part of the new
Frankfurt Bezirk (district).
Demographics
According to the Prussian census of 1890, the Frankfurt Region had a population of 1,137,157, of which 1,090,794 (95.92%) spoke
German, 36,720 (3.23%) spoke
Sorbian, 4,813 (0.42%) spoke
Polish, 413 (0.04%) spoke
Czech, and 3,993 (0.35%) identified as bilingual (speaking German and another language).[2]
Spremberg (Lusatia) [
de] (1818–1993; in 1825 southern area ceded to the Silesian
Hoyerswerda [
de]; 1947–1952, and from 1990 part of Brandenburg state), based in
Spremberg
Sternberg [
de], (1816–1873; partitioned into Ost- and Weststernberg), based in
Zielenzig (till 1852), thereafter in
Drossen
Weststernberg [
de], (1873–1945; partitioned from Sternberg district), based in
Drossen (till 1904), thereafter in
Reppen
^As of 1939 Nazi centralism levelled terminological regional peculiarities and Prussian rural Kreise were — like their non-Prussian comparable administrative units — all uniformly termed as Landkreise.