East Prussia

East Prussia (German: Ostpreußen [ˈʔostʰˌpʰrɔɪ̯sn] (help·info), Lithuanian: Rytų Prūsija or Rytprūsiai; Polish: Prusy Wschodnie; Russian: Восточная Пруссия — Vostochnaya Prussiya) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1773-1829 and 1878 to 1945. Between 1829 and 1878 it was joined with West Prussia in the Province of Prussia. It had been created out of the territories of the Duchy of Prussia and Warmia.

East Prussia was located along the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea, where it enclosed the bulk of the ancestral lands of the now-extinct Old Prussians. Following Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II, the territory was partitioned in 1945 into Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast, Poland's Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, and the constituent counties of Lithuania's Klaipėda Region. The East Prussian capital of Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946.

Because of its exposed position at the Imperial Russian border, its front-line position in World War I, its separation from Weimar Germany by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the violent excesses during the occupation by the Red Army in 1945, and the expulsion of Germans after World War II, East Prussia has become a symbol for nationalists in all involved parties for the horror of war and war crimes against civilians in general. The history of East Prussia indicates the implications of systematically planned and executed ethnic cleansings on cultural heritage, as well as on long-term economic development.

1 History
2 Bibliography
3 External links
4 See also

[edit] History

[edit] From knights to vassals

From the latter half of the 13th century to the 15th century, the crusading Teutonic Knights ruled over the lands of Prussia through their monastic state. The Knights' expansionist policies brought them into conflict with the newly-reunited Kingdom of Poland and embroiled them in several wars, culminating in the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War, whereby the united armies of Poland and Lithuania, bolsted by Bohemian mercenaries, defeated the Teutonic Order at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410. Its defeat was formalised in the Second Treaty of Thorn in 1466 ending the Thirteen Years' War, leaving western Prussia under Polish control as the province of Royal Prussia and eastern Prussia remaining under the knights, but as a fief of Poland.

Image:Albrecht von Hohenzollern-Ansbach.jpg

The Teutonic Order lost eastern Prussia when, with the advance of Lutheranism, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach secularized the Prussian branch of the Teutonic Order in 1525, after having converted to Lutheran Protestantism, establishing himself as Duke Albert of Prussia and a vassal of the Polish crown. Walther von Cronberg, the next Grand Master, was enfeoffed with the title to Prussia after the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, but the Order never regained possession of the territory. Albert's line died out in 1618, and the Duchy of Prussia passed to the Electors of Brandenburg, forming Brandenburg-Prussia. Through the Treaties of Wehlau, Labiau, and Oliva, Elector and Duke Frederick William succeeded in revoking Polish sovereignty over the largely Germanized Duchy of Prussia in 1660.

[edit] Kingdom of Prussia

Although Brandenburg remained theoretically subordinate to the Holy Roman Emperor, the Prussian lands were not within the Holy Roman Empire and were outside the jurisdiction of the Emperor. In return for supporting Emperor Leopold I in the War of the Spanish Succession, Elector Frederick III was allowed to crown himself "King in Prussia" in 1701. The new kingdom ruled by the Hohenzollern dynasty became known as the Kingdom of Prussia.

After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Warmia, part of the former Polish province Royal Prussia, was merged with the former Duchy of Prussia. On January 31, 1773 King Frederick II announced that the newly annexed lands were to be known as the Province of West Prussia, while the former Duchy of Prussia and Warmia became the Province of East Prussia.

From 1824-1878 East Prussia was combined with West Prussia to form the Province of Prussia, after which they were reestablished as separate provinces.

[edit] German Empire

Along with the rest of the Kingdom of Prussia, East Prussia became part of the German Empire during the unification of Germany in 1871.

In 1875 the ethnic make-up of East Prussia was 73.48% German-speaking, 18.39% Polish-speaking, and 8.11% Lithuanian-speaking (according to Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego). 2,189 people of 1,958,663 living in East Prussia in 1890 were not German citizens. From 1885 to 1890 Berlin's population grew by 20%, Brandenburg and the Rhineland gained 8.5%, Westphalia 10%, while East Prussia lost 0.07% and West Prussia 0.86%. This stagnancy in population despite a high birth surplus in eastern Germany was because many people from the East Prussian countryside moved westward seeking work in the expanding industrial centres of the Ruhr Area and Berlin (see Ostflucht). The population of the province in 1900 was 1,996,626 people, with a religious make up of 1,698,465 Protestants, 269,196 Roman Catholics, and 13,877 Jews. The numbers of Poles (Masurians) and Lithuanians (Lietuvininks) decreased over time due to the process of Germanization. The Polish-speaking Prussians concentrated in the south of the province (Masuria, Warmia), while Lithuanian-speaking Prussians concentrated in the northeast (Lithuania Minor). The Old Prussian ethnic group became completely Germanized over time and the Old Prussian language died out in the 18th century.

[edit] World War I

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At the beginning of World War I, East Prussia became a theatre of war when the Russian Empire invaded the country. The Russian Army encountered little resistance at first because the bulk of the German Army had been directed towards the Western Front according to the Schlieffen Plan. In the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914 and the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes in 1915, however, the Russians were decisively defeated and had to retreat, followed by the German Army advancing into Russian territory. The majority of the civilian population fled from the invading Russian Army and some thousand remaining civilians were deported to Russia. Treatment of civilians by the armies was mostly disciplined, however, in contrast to later conduct in World War II. The region had to be rebuilt owing to damage caused by the war.

[edit] Weimar Republic

Image:East Prussia 1923-1939.png

With the abdication of Emperor William II in 1918, Germany became a republic. During the interwar period, East Prussia was an exclave of Germany, created as a result of the Treaty of Versailles when most of West Prussia and the former Prussian Province of Posen were ceded to Poland to create the Polish Corridor and the Free City of Danzig.

In 1920 plebiscites in eastern West Prussia and southern East Prussia were held under Allied supervision to determine if the areas should join the Second Polish Republic or remain in Prussia within the new Weimar Republic; 96.7% of the people voted for remaining within Germany, although a minority was of Polish language.

The Memel Territory, a League of Nations mandate since 1920, was occupied by Lithuania in 1923 without giving the inhabitants a choice on the ballot.

[edit] Nazi Germany

In 1938 the Nazis altered about one-third of the toponyms of the area, eliminating, Germanizing, or simplifying a number of linguistically Baltic, Old Prussian names, as well as those Polish or Lithuanian names originating from refugees to Prussia during and after the Protestant Reformation. All persons who did not co-operate with the rulers of Nazi Germany, including activist members of minorities with Polish roots (see Masurians), were sent to concentration camps and kept there until their liberation.

[edit] World War II

In 1939 East Prussia had 2.49 million inhabitants, 85% of them ethnic Germans, the others describing themselves as culturally German and religiously Lutheran, but linguistically Masurian (Slavic) (in the south) or Lithuanian (Baltic) (in the northeast). The population of Warmia was mostly Catholic.

During World War II, the province was extended (see Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany). Despite Nazi propaganda presenting all the regions annexed as possessing significant German populations that wanted reunification with Germany, the Reich's statistics in 1939 show that only 31,000 out of 994,092 people in the annexed Polish western territories were German.

Many inhabitants of East Prussia were killed in the war, many of whom were young Germans conscripted into the Wehrmacht and killed in action.

[edit] Evacuation of East Prussia

Main article: Evacuation of East Prussia

In 1944 the medieval city of Königsberg, which had never been severely damaged by warfare in its 700 years, was almost entirely destroyed by two Allied air raids on the night of 26/27 August 1944 and three nights later on the 29/30 August 1944. Winston Churchill (The Second World War, Book XII) erroneously considered the city "a modernised heavily defended fortress".

Gauleiter Erich Koch protracted the evacuation of the German civilian population until the Eastern Front approached the East Prussian border in 1944. The population of the province had been systematically disinformed by Endsieg Nazi propaganda about the real military state of affairs. As a result many civilians fleeing westward were overtaken by the rapidly advancing Red Army. Reports of Soviet atrocities at Nemmersdorf and organized rape spread fear and desperation among the civilian populace. Thousands lost their lives during the sinkings of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the Goya, and the General von Steuben. The capital Königsberg surrendered on April 9, 1945, following the desperate four-day Battle of Königsberg. The exact number of civilian victims has never been determined but is estimated to be at least 300 000, with most of them dying under miserable conditions.

[edit] Post-World War II

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Image:Königsberg Castle.jpg

Shortly after the end of the war in May 1945, some Germans who had fled in early 1945 tried to return to their homes in East Prussia. However, they were stopped. The remaining German population of East Prussia was almost completely expelled by the Communist regime. During the war and shortly thereafter, many people were also deported as forced labourers to eastern parts of the Soviet Union, including the Gulag camp system. German place names were changed to either Russian or Polish names.

In April 1946, northern East Prussia became an official province of the Russian SFSR, with the Memel Territory becoming part of the Lithuanian SSR. In July of that year, the historic city of Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad and the area named the Kaliningrad Oblast. After the expulsion of the German population, beginning in late 1947 ethnic Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians were settled in the northern part, and Polish expatriates from Polish lands annexed by the Soviet Union were settled in the southern part of East Prussia, now the Polish Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship.

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In the Soviet part of the region, a policy of eliminating all remnants of German history was pursued. In 1967 this resulted in the demolition of the remains of Königsberg Castle by order of Leonid Brezhnev to make way on the site for the new "House of Soviets". Equally anti-German was the policy of communist Poland after the war, as German names were systematically removed, church yards and grave stones were ploughed under or demolished, houses were stripped of elements reflecting their German history, culture and language, and a policy was made which punished even the unofficial use of the German language by linguistically Slavic Masurian inhabitants, even though some continue to identify themselves with Germany and are able to speak fluent German, especially elderly inhabitants.

Since the fall of Communism in 1991, some German groups, among them also nationalists from the West have tried to help settle Volga Germans from eastern parts of Russia in the Kaliningrad Oblast. This initiative was only a small success, however, as most impoverished Volga Germans preferred to immigrate to the richer Federal Republic of Germany, where they could become German citizens through the right of return.

Although the 1945-1949 expulsion of Germans from the northern part of former East Prussia often was conducted in a violent and aggressive way by Soviet officials seeking revenge for Nazi crimes in the Soviet Union, the present Russian inhabitants of the Kaliningrad Oblast have much less animosity towards Germans. German names have been revived in commercial Russian trade and there is sometimes talk of reverting Kaliningrad's name back to the original name of Königsberg. Because the exclave during Soviet times was a military zone which nobody was allowed to enter without special permission, many old German villages are still intact, though they have become dilapidated over the course of time. The city centre of Kaliningrad, however, was completely rebuilt, as British bombs (1944) and the Soviet siege (1945) had left it in ruins.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Publications in English

Baedeker, Karl, Northern Germany, 14th revised edition, London, 1904.
Beevor, Antony (2002). “chapters 1-8”, Berlin: The Downfall 1945. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-670-88695-5. (on the years 1944/45)
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950, 1994, ISBN 0-312-12159-8
Dickie, Reverend J.F., with E.Compton, Germany, A & C Black, London, 1912.
von Treitschke, Heinrich, History of Germany - vol.1: The Wars of Emancipation, (translated by E & C Paul), Allen & Unwin, London, 1915.
Powell, E. Alexander, Embattled Borders, London, 1928.
Steed, Henry Wickham, Vital Peace - A Study of Risks, Constable & Co., London, 1936.
Newman, Bernard, Danger Spots of Europe, London, 1938.
Woodward, E.L., Butler, Rohan; Medlicott, W.N., Dakin, Douglas, & Lambert, M.E., et al (editors), Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, Three Series, Her Majesty's Stationary Office (HMSO), London, numerous volumes published over 25 years. Cover the Versailles Treaty including all secret meetings; plebiscites and all other problems in Europe; includes all diplomatic correspondence from all states.
Previté-Orton, C.W., Professor, The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History, Cambridge University Press, 1952 (2 volumes).
Balfour, Michael, and John Mair, Four-Power Control in Germany and Austria 1945-1946, Oxford University Press, 1956.
Kopelev, Lev, To Be Preserved Forever, ("Хранить вечно"), 1976.
Koch, H.W., Professor, A History of Prussia, Longman, London, 1978/1984, (P/B), ISBN 0-582-48190-2
Koch, H.W., Professor, A Constitutional History of Germany in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Longman, London, 1984, (P/B), ISBN 0-582-49182-7
MacDonogh, Giles, Prussia, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1994, ISBN 1-85619-267-9

[edit] Publications in German

B. Schumacher: Geschichte Ost- und Westpreussens, Würzburg 1959
Buxa, Werner and Hans-Ulrich Stamm: Bilder aus Ostpreußen
Dönhoff, Marion Gräfin v. :Namen die keiner mehr nennt - Ostpreußen, Menschen und Geschichte
Dönhoff, Marion Gräfin v.: Kindheit in Ostpreussen
Falk, Lucy: Ich Blieb in Königsberg. Tagebuchblätter aus dunklen Nachkriegsjahren
Suchenwirth, Dr.Richard, Deutsche Geschichte, Dollheimer, Leipzig, 1934.
Kibelka, Ruth: Ostpreußens Schicksaljahre, 1945-1948
Bernd, Martin (1998). "Masuren, Mythos und Geschichte". Karlsruhe: Evangelische Akademie Baden. ISBN 3-87200-122-6.

[edit] Publications in Polish

K. Piwarski (1946). "Dzieje Prus Wschodnich w czasach nowożytnych".
(1969–2003) Gerard Labuda: "Historia Pomorza", vol. I–IV.
collective work (1958–61). "Szkice z dziejów Pomorza", vol. 1–3.

[edit] External links

German Empire: Province of East Prussia (German)
Online heritage book Memelland (German)
Ostpreußen Info - East Prussia Information (German)
Questions and Answers about East Prussia(English)

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