The March of Brandenburg, known as the Holy Roman Empire's 'sandbox' (Streusandbüchse), was granted in 1415 to Burggrave Frederick VI of Nuremberg of the House of Hohenzollern.

The blue escutcheon with the golden sceptre, as symbol of the office of archchamberlain (Erzkämmerer) of the Empire, was added under Frederick II (1440-70).

[citation needed] The quarters and crests of these duchies and the Principality of Rügen (parted horizontally, a black lion in gold and a wall of bricks in red and blue), however, were incorporated in the Brandenburg arms.

Elector John Sigismund (1572–1619) inherited the Duchy of Prussia, outside the Holy Roman Empire on the Baltic Sea, in 1618.

A compromise over them with the House of Wittelsbach (Palatinate-Neuburg), giving Brandenburg only Cleves and Mark, was reached in the 1614 Treaty of Xanten, but the arms of the other principalities were put in nevertheless.