East Prussia
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East Prussia (Template:Lang-de Template:IPAudio, Lithuanian: Rytų Prūsija or Rytprūsiai; Polish: Prusy Wschodnie; Russian: Восточная Пруссия — Vostochnaya Prussiya) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia (1773-1945) and of Germany (1871-1945), situated on the territory of former Ducal Prussia.
Today the northern part of East Prussia, with the exception of the "Memelland" which is now part of Lithuania, corresponds to Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast (Königsberg); the southern parts form Poland's Warminsko-Mazurskie Voivodship. East Prussia enclosed the bulk of the ancient ancestral lands of the Baltic Prussians.
East Prussia was located along the south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. Its capital was Königsberg, which was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 by the Soviet Union.
Because of its exposed position at the Russian border, its front position in the First World War, the separation from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles 1919, the violent excesses during the occupation by the Red Army in 1945, and the flight and expulsion of the population, East Prussia has become a symbol for nationalists in all involved parties for the horror of war and war crimes againts civilians in general. Especially looking at today’s situation one can get an impression of the fatal implications of systematically planned and executed ethnic cleansings on the cultural heritage as well as on the long-term economic development. Image:Eastprussia flag.png
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From Knights to Vassals
During the 15th century, the Teutonic Knights ruled over the land of Prussia through their monastic state. The Knights' rivalry with the Kingdom of Poland embroiled them in several wars, including the Thirteen Years War. Its end at the Second Treaty of Thorn in 1466 left western Prussia under Polish control as the province Royal Prussia and eastern Prussia remaining under the knights, but as a Polish fief. Throughout these turbulent years of pre-Reformation, Reformation and aftermath, both parts of Prussia kept common bonds. In 1497 the grand master again pledged allegiance to the empire and when a later grandmaster, Albrecht of Brandenburg Prussia resigned, in order to be able to take the ducal title of Prussia, the empire enfieffed the next grandmasters, starting with Walter von Cronberg, with Prussia.
Eventually, the Order lost eastern Prussia as well, when in 1525 Grand Master Albert Hohenzollern secularized the Prussian branch of the Teutonic Order, establishing himself as the Duke of Prussia as a vassal of the Polish crown. Albert's line died out in 1618, and Ducal Prussia passed to the electors of Brandenburg, forming Brandenburg-Prussia. Through the Treaties of Wehlau, Labiau, and Oliva, the elector and duke Frederick William succeeded in revoking Polish sovereignty over the Duchy of Prussia, leaving the Holy Roman Emperor as his only liege.
The 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. This independence allowed Elector Frederick III to crown himself King Frederick I 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 (Ermland in German), part of the former Polish Royal Prussia, was merged with the eastern Duchy of Prussia. On January 31, 1773 King Frederick II (Frederick the Great) announced that the newly annexed lands were to be known as "Westpreußen" (West Prussia) and the old Duchy of Prussia was to be known as "Ostpreußen" (East Prussia).
German Empire
Along with the rest of Prussia, East Prussia became part of the German Empire at its creation 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"). 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) were decreasing over the time due to the process of Germanization. The Polish-speaking Prussians concentrated in the south of the area (Masuria, Warmia), while Lithuanian-speaking Prussians concentrated in the northeast (Lithuania Minor). The Prussian nation completely Germanised over the time and thus old Prussian language died out in the 18th century.
Population of East Prussia in 1890
| Inhabitants | non-German inhabitants* | |
|---|---|---|
| East Prussia | 1,958,663 | 2,189 |
The number for "non-German inhabitants" represents only people who were not German citizens, but excludes German citizens of non-German descent, since German law differentiates between inhabitants (Einwohner), i.e. all the people living in the territory, and citizens (Bürger), i.e. that portion of the population who have German citizenship.
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 stagnacy in population despite a high birth surplus in the East was due to the fact that many people from the East Prussian countryside moved westward seeking work in the expanding industrial centres in the Ruhr Area and Berlin.
Weimar Republic
With the abdication of Emperor William II in 1918, Germany became a republic. From World War I until World War II, East Prussia and parts of West Prussia were exclaves of Germany, created as a result of the Treaty of Versailles when parts of West Prussia and the former Prussian Province of Posen were ceded to Poland to create the so-called Polish Corridor and the Free City of Danzig. A plebiscite was to be held in the eastern parts of West Prussia as well as in the southern parts of East Prussia. In 1920 local inhabitants had to decide whether these areas should be ceded to Poland or remain German. 96.7 % of the people voted for remaining within Germany. The Klaipėda Region (Memel Area, Memelland) was occupied by Lithuania in 1923 without giving the inhabitants a choice on the ballot.
Nazi reign
Image:East Prussia 1939.JPG In 1938, the Nazis altered about 1/3 of the toponymy of the area, eliminating or simplifying a number of original Prussian names, as well as those Polish or Lithuanian originating from refugees to Prussia during and after the Reformation. Activist members of minorities with Polish roots (see Mazurs) who did not co-operate with the new rulers were sent to concentration camps.
World War II
In 1939, East Prussia had 2.49 million inhabitants, 85 % of them being ethnic Germans, the other describing themselves as culturally German and religiously Lutheran, but linguistically Masurian Slavic. The latter lived in the southern parts of East Prussia
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 population that wanted reunification with Germany, Reich's statistics show that in 1939 out of 994,092 people in annexed Polish territory only 31.000 were Germans. This new demarcation was symptomatic of the Nazis' disregard for historical connections.
Many German inhabitants of East Prussia were killed in the war, most of whom were young people conscripted to the German army and killed in action.
Gauleiter Erich Koch protracted the evacuation of the German civilian population until the front approached the East Prussian border in 1944. As a result many civilians fleeing to the West were overtaken by the rapidly advancing Red Army and directly became involved in acts of war. It is estimated that 300.000 civilians died during the years 1944 and 1945, mostly due to hunger, illnesses and assaults and rapes by invading Red Army soldiers. Several thousands lost their lives with the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the Goya and the General von Steuben. Lew Kopelew, who took part in the invasion, sharply criticized the atrocities against the German civilian population and was arrested in 1945, then sentenced to a ten-year term in the Gulag for "fostering bourgeois humanism" and for "compassion towards the enemy". Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also served in East Prussia in 1945 and was arrested for criticising Joseph Stalin in private correspondence with a friend. Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to an eight-year term in a labour camp.
After the war, some ethnic Germans who had fled in early 1945 tried to return to their homes in East Prussia. The remaining German population of East Prussia was 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 Memelland becoming part of the Lithuanian SSR. In July of that year, the capital city Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad and the area renamed the Kaliningrad Oblast. After the expulsion of the German population beginning in late 1947 from the territory, 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 Warminsko-Mazurskie Voivodship. Especially 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 on order of Leonid Brezhnev to make way on the site for the new "House of Soviets".
Further reading
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
- Kibelka, Ruth: Ostpreußens Schicksaljahre, 1945-1948
- Martin, Bernd: Masuren, Mythos und Geschichte, Evangelische Akademie Baden, Karlsruhe 1998, ISBN 3872001226
Publications in Polish
- K. Piwarski, Dzieje Prus Wschodnich w czasach nowożytnych, Gdańsk 1946
- Gerard Labuda (ed.), Historia Pomorza, vol. I–IV, Poznań 1969–2003 (also covers East Prussia)
- collective work, Szkice z dziejów Pomorza, vol. 1–3, Warszawa 1958–61
Publications in English
- Lew Kopelew To Be Preserved Forever ("Хранить вечно"), 1976
External links
- German Empire: Province of East Prussia
- German Empire: Province of East and West Prussia
- Online heritage book Memelland
See also
- List of cities and towns in East Prussia
- Drang nach Osten
- Kaliningrad Oblast
- Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen
- Masuria
- Union of Poles in Germanyda:Østpreussen
de:Ostpreußen eo:Orienta Prusio fi:Itä-Preussi fr:Prusse orientale ko:동프로이센 id:Prusia Timur it:Prussia Orientale nl:Oost-Pruisen nds:Oostpreußen ja:東プロイセン no:Østpreussen pl:Prusy Wschodnie ro:Prusia Răsăriteană sk:Východné Prusko sv:Ostpreussen zh:東普魯士