East Prussia

 

Ger. Ostpreussen, former province of Prussia, extreme NE Germany. The region of East Prussia has low rolling hills that are heavily wooded, and it is dotted by many lakes (especially in Masuria). The region is drained by several rivers including the Nemen (Nieman); the Baltic coast is deeply indented by the Vistula Lagoon (Frisches Haff) and by the Gulf of Kursh (Kurisches Haff). In the 13th cent. the Teutonic Knights conquered the region of East Prussia from the Borussi, or Prussians (a people related to the Liths), displaced the original population, and secured the territory as a fief for their order. In 1309, Malbork became the headquarters of the grand master of the Teutonic Knights. In 1466, by the Peace of Torun, the knights ceded Pomerelia (later a part of West Prussia) and Ermeland to Poland and accepted Polish suzerainty over the rest of their domain. Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg, after secularizing the Teutonic order, took the title “duke of Prussia” in 1525, remaining under Polish suzerainty. The duchy was inherited (1618) by the elector of Brandenburg. Frederick William, the Great Elector, won full sovereignty over the duchy at the Peace of Oliva (1660), and in 1701 his son, Frederick III, had himself crowned “king in Prussia” as Frederick I at Königsberg. East Prussia, as the original Prussia came to be called, from 1701 to 1945 shared the history of Prussia. It remained the stronghold of the Prussian landowning and military aristocracy—the Junkers—whose immense estates took up a large part of the province. From 1919 to 1939 it was separated from the rest of Germany by the Polish Corridor and the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk). Königsberg (Kaliningrad) was the capital. East Prussia bordered on Poland and Lithuania in the south and east and stretched to Memel and the Baltic Sea in the north and northeast. In 1945, at the end of World War II, East Prussia was overrun by Soviet troops and about 600,000 of its inhabitants were killed. Most Germans who had not left by the end of the war were expelled by the Polish and Soviet governments shortly after its end. At the Potsdam Conference (1945), East Prussia was divided by two transfers; the transfers were made permanent by treaties between West Germany and Poland and the USSR that were signed and ratified between 1970 and 1972. The northern part was assigned at Potsdam to the USSR; it includes the cities of Kaliningrad, Sovetsk (Tilsit), Chernyakhovsk (Insterburg), Gusev (Gumbinnen), and Baltiysk (Pilau). The rest was incorporated into Poland as Olsztyn province; this part includes the cities of Olsztyn (Allenstein), Malbork (Marienburg), and Elbląg (Elbing).

"East Prussia" is sometimes used to refer to the Duchy of Prussia (1525-1618)

This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality. Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page.

East Prussia (German: Ostpreußen [ˈɔstˌpʁɔɪ̯sən] (help·info); Lithuanian: Rytų Prūsija or Rytprūsiai; Polish: Prusy Wschodnie; Russian: Восточная Пруссия or Vostochnaya Prussiya) refers to the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to 1945.^[1] From 1772-1829 and 1878-1945, the Province of East Prussia was a province of the German state of Prussia.

East Prussia enclosed the bulk of the ancestral lands of the Baltic Old Prussians, whose language became extinct by the 18th century. During the 13th century, the native Prussians were conquered by the crusading Teutonic Knights. The indigenous Balts who survived the conquest were gradually converted to Christianity. Because of Germanization and colonization over the following centuries, Germans became the dominant ethnic group, while Poles and Prussian Lithuanians formed minorities.

From the 13th century on, East Prussia was part of the monastic state of the Teutonic Knights, which became the Duchy of Prussia in 1525. The duchy entered into a personal union with the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg, as Brandenburg-Prussia in 1618. Because the duchy was outside of the Holy Roman Empire, the prince-electors of Brandenburg were able to proclaim themselves as kings in Prussia in 1701. After the annexation of most of Polish Royal Prussia in the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the territory of the former Duchy of Prussia was reorganized into the Province of East Prussia the following year.

Between 1829 and 1878, the Province of East Prussia was joined with West Prussia to form the Province of Prussia. The Kingdom of Prussia became the leading state of the German Empire after its creation in 1871. The Treaty of Versailles following World War I then made East Prussia an exclave from the rest of Germany, and separated also the Memelland. Following Nazi Germany's defeat in World War II in 1945, the territory was partitioned between Russia (the Kaliningrad Oblast), Poland (now the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship), and Lithuania (the constituent counties of the Klaipėda Region). The East Prussian capital of Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946. The German population of the province largely evacuated during the war, but several hundreds of thousands died^{[citation needed]} during the years 1944–46 and the remainder were subsequently expelled.

History

From Catholic monastic state to Protestant duchy

Upon the invitation of Duke Konrad I of Masovia, the Teutonic Knights invaded "Old Prussia" in the 13th century and created a monastic state to administer the conquered Old Prussians. 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 (Tannenberg) 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.

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. Albert established himself as the first duke of the Duchy of Prussia and a vassal of the Polish crown (see Prussian Homage). 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. In 1569 the Hohenzollern prince-electors of the Margraviate of Brandenburg became co-regents with Albert's son, the feeble-minded Albert Frederick. 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^{[citation needed]} Duchy of Prussia in 1660.

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.

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 Low Prussian dialect predominated in East Prussia, although High Prussian was spoken in Warmia. The numbers of Poles (Masurians) and Prussian Lithuanians decreased over time due to the process of Germanization. The Polish-speaking Prussians concentrated in the south of the province (Masuria and 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.

World War I

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.

Weimar Republic

With the abdication of Emperor William II in 1918, Germany became a republic. Most of West Prussia and the former Prussian Province of Posen, territories annexed by Prussia in the 18th century Partitions of Poland, were ceded to the Second Polish Republic according tot he Treaty of Versailles. East Prussia became an exclave of Germany, separated by the Polish Corridor.

In 1920 amidst the backdrop of the Polish-Soviet War, 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 the Free State of Prussia's Province of East Prussia. 96.7% of the people voted for remaining within Germany.

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.

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 (unless they died in captivity before liberation).

World War II

In 1939 East Prussia had 2.49 million inhabitants, 85% of them ethnic Germans, the others being Polish Masurians speaking Masurian (Slavic) in the south or Lietuvininkai speaking Lithuanian (Baltic) in the northeast. Most German East Prussians, Masurians, and Lietuvininkai were Lutheran, while the population of Warmia was mostly Roman 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^{[citation needed]} conscripted into the Wehrmacht and killed in action.

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^{[citation needed]} 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 retreating Wehrmacht units and 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,^{[citation needed]} with most of them dying under miserable conditions. However, most of the German inhabitants, which at that point consisted mainly of children, women, and old men, did escape the Red Army as part of the largest exodus of people in human history. ^{[citation needed]}"A population which had stood at 2.2 million in 1940 was reduced to 193,000 at the end of May 1945."^[2]

Post-World War II

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.

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". Aimed at Polonization of the southern part was the policy of communist Poland after the war, as German names were systematically removed, church-yards and gravestones were ploughed under or demolished, and houses were stripped of elements that recalled the past germanisation of the area. A policy was made which punished the usage of the German language by the partially Germanised Masurians, many of whom spoke fluent German rather than their native Polish dialect, 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.

Bibliography

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.
• Wieck. Michael: A Childhood Under Hitler and Stalin: Memoirs of a "Certified Jew," University of Wisconsin Press, 2003, ISBN 0-299-18544-3.
• 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
• Nitsch, Gunter, Weeds Like Us, AuthorHouse, 2006, ISBN 9781425967550

Publications in German

• B. Schumacher: Geschichte Ost- und Westpreussens, Würzburg 1959
• Boockmann, Hartmut: Ostpreußen und Westpreußen (= Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas). Siedler, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-88680-212-4
• 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 8385135936. 
• Wieck, Michael: Zeugnis vom Untergang Königsbergs: Ein "Geltungsjude" berichtet, Heidelberger Verlaganstalt, 1990, 1993, ISBN 3-89426-059-9.

Publications in French Pierre Benoit, Axelle Georges Blond, L'agonie de l'Allemagne Michel Tournier, Le roi des aulnes

Publications in Polish

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

See also

• Lithuania Minor
• List of cities and towns in East Prussia
• Drang nach Osten
• East Colonisation
• Kaliningrad Oblast
• Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen
• Masuria
• Teutonic Knights
• Warmia

Notes and references

External links

• East Prussia FAQ
• East and West Prussia Gazetteer
• Provinz Ostpreußen (German)
• Ostpreußen.net (German)
• Ostpreußen Info - East Prussia Information (German)
• German Empire: Province of East Prussia (German)
• Britannica 2007 article

Territories and Provinces of Prussia (1525 – 1947)
Before 1701	Duchy of Prussia · Margraviate of Brandenburg Farther Pomerania · Magdeburg · Halberstadt · Cleves · Mark · Ravensberg · Minden Colonies of Brandenburg-Prussia: Groß Friedrichsburg · Arguin · Crab Island · Tertholen
After 1701	Neuchâtel · Hither Pomerania · East Frisia · Silesia (1740) · Glatz (1763) · Polish Prussia, Netze District (1772) · South Prussia (1793) · New East Prussia, New Silesia (1795)
Reorder after 1814–5	East Prussia & West Prussia (1824–78 joined to Province of Prussia) · Brandenburg · Pomerania · Posen · Saxony · Silesia · Westphalia · Rhine Province (1822, Lower Rhine & Jülich-Cleves-Berg) · Hohenzollern (1850) · Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Nassau (1866–8)
Territorial reforms after 1918	Lower Silesia, Upper Silesia (1919) · Greater Berlin, West Prussia (district) (1920) · Posen-West Prussia (1922) Halle-Merseburg, Magdeburg, Electoral Hesse, Nassau (1944)

Donate to Wikimedia