Georg Wilhelm Hohenzollern, elector of Brandenburg, duke of Prussia, was born 1595 in Berlin. He acceded to government in Brandenburg Prussia in 1619 and died 1640 in Königsberg Prussia.

He was the son of Johann Sigismund of Prussia, elector of Brandenburg, born 1572, who acceded in 1608 and had died in 1619, and Anna of Prussia.

In 1616 Georg Wilhelm married Charlotte von der Pfalz (of the Palatinate). Their only son Friedrich Wilhelm later became known as the Grosse Kurfürst Great Elector.

Georg Wilhelm took over the reign of the Kurfürstentum Brandenburg, which included Ducal Prussia. His sister Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg was queen of Sweden and Georg Wilhelm had to maneuver between the Catholic Holy Roman Empire and his Protestant brother-in-law Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, between his Catholic chancellor Graf Adam von Schwarzenberg at the Brandenburg government and his Protestant counselors in Brandenburg Prussia on the other side. The country suffered greatly during the Thirty Years War. Friendly and enemy troops equally burned and plundered and the population greatly decimated. Retreating in 1637 to a relative safer region Georg Wilhelm died at Königsberg in 1640.

His great-great-grandson Frederick II the Great later wrote about him, that this was the unluckiest time, it is a shame that Georg Wilhelm did not put up an army, before the combatants of the Thirty Years War destroyed the land, where the ravages can still be witnessed so many years later.