East Prussia was the north-easternmost province of Prussia and at times one of the largest provinces of the Prussian state. The province goes back to the Duchy of Prussia, which was elevated to a kingdom in 1701. It emerged from the Teutonic Order in 1525, was initially a Polish fiefdom and only came under Brandenburg sovereignty in 1618. The territory was not formally given the name East Prussia until the 1770s, following the annexation of previously Polish territories as “West Prussia” as part of the first partition of Poland-Lithuania in 1772. In 1824, the two provinces were even merged to form a single province of Prussia, but separated again in 1878. The capital of the duchy and province was Königsberg until the end.
Kaliningrad is a large city in present-day Russia with almost 500,000 inhabitants. It is located in the Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland, which roughly corresponds to the northern part of the Prussian province of East Prussia before 1945 (today excluding Lithuanian areas). Before 1945, Königsberg was not only the capital of the province and the northeasternmost major city in Prussia, but also royal capital and residence in Prussia from 1724.
With almost 170,000 inhabitants, Klaipėda is Lithuania's third largest city and is located at the mouth of the Dange River (Danė in Lithuanian) into the Curonian Lagoon. Located on the Baltic Sea opposite the Curonian Spit, it has one of the largest year-round ice-free Baltic ports.
Šilutė (formerly Heydekrug) is a town in the far west of Lithuania, just a few kilometers from the border with the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast in the south and from the shore of the Curonian Lagoon. Within the Prussian province of East Prussia, the town has been a district town since 1818. From 1920, the town and large parts of the district were part of Memelland, which was initially administered by France from 1920 as a result of the Treaty of Versailles and annexed by Lithuania in 1923.
The Memel is a 937-kilometre-long river that rises not far from Minsk in Belarus and flows into the Baltic Sea via the Curonian Lagoon south of the Lithuanian city of Klaipėda. On its lower course along the northern border of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, it is at times a Lithuanian-Russian border river, before briefly forming a small part of the Belarusian-Lithuanian border on its middle course. For centuries, the Memel was used as a waterway, and in the 18th and 19th centuries it was expanded and connected to other rivers by canal systems. However, its economic importance came to an end after the First World War. Before Kaunas, the Memel has been dammed for a hydroelectric power plant since 1960.
The Vistula Lagoon is largely separated from the Baltic Sea by the Vistula Spit. Almost two thirds of its 838 km² have belonged to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad since 1945, the rest to Poland. The lagoon is located in the historical region of West Prussia. The right branch of the Vistula - the Nogat - flows into the lagoon. In addition to the natural passage near the Russian town of Baltiysk (formerly Pillau), an artificial canal has existed on the Polish side since 2022, creating a new artificial island in the lagoon. Both during the Third Reich and after the Second World War in Poland, there were plans to drain the Vistula Lagoon.
Poland is located on the Baltic Sea and is the largest state (population in 2023: 37,636,508, area: 313,964 km²) in East Central Europe. The name of the state is derived from the West Slavic Polans, who brought more and more territories under their rule from the 9th century onwards, which were known as Duchy of Poland in the 10th century. Under Mieszko (ca. 960-992), the extent of the country reached approximately its current borders. He was at times subject to tribute to the German Emperor, at least for parts of his land. Poland probably adopted Christianity in 966 and from 1025 it was a kingdom. Between 1138 and 1295, the country was fragmented as a result of inheritance disputes. The extinction of the ruling Piast dynasty led to a Polish-Hungarian personal union in 1370, which was replaced by a Polish-Lithuanian dual monarchy as early as 1386 due to pressure from the Polish nobility. The growing role of the nobility resulted in an elective monarchy in 1572. However, the disunity of the nobility led to the three partitions of Poland (1772-1795) between Prussia, Russia and the Habsburg Monarchy. Poland only became independent after the end of the First World War in 1918 and lost its independence in 1939 after the German attack from the west at the beginning of the Second World War and the Russian invasion from the east. From 1945-1989 it was a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Poland has been a member of the European Union since 2004.
Return to the Memel Territory
The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (LiSSR) was one of the union republics of the Soviet Union for the first time from 1940 and again from 1944 - after the end of the German occupation in the Second World War. LiSSR was founded on the basis of falsified elections after the occupation of the country by Soviet troops, who had been stationed in Lithuania since October 1939. The first years after the expulsion of the German occupiers in World War II and the restoration of Soviet power were marked by a partisan war and mass deportations of the Lithuanian population to the interior of the USSR. Russian-speaking populations were settled on a large scale, especially in the cities. On March 1, 1990, the Lithuanian government declared the country's independence, which was not recognized by the USSR until September 6.
Königsberg
Southern East Prussia
The Olsztyn Voivodeship was established in 1945 as one of the higher-level administrative units of the People's Republic of Poland, whereby it was initially one of 14 voivodeships (plus the cities of Warsaw and Łódź, which also had the status of a voivodeship). The eponymous capital was the East Prussian city of Olsztyn (Allenstein). After changing borders several times in the course of territorial and administrative reforms in 1950 and 1975, the voivodeship was merged into the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship (województwo warmińsko-mazurskie) in 1999.
The historical landscape of Volhynia is located in northwestern Ukraine on the border with Poland and Belarus. Already in the late Middle Ages the region fell to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and from 1569 on belonged to the united Polish-Lithuanian noble republic for more than two centuries. After the partitions of Poland-Lithuania at the end of the 18th century, the region came under the Russian Empire and became the name of the Volhynia Governorate, which lasted until the early 20th century. The Russian period also saw the immigration of German-speaking population (the so-called Volhyniendeutsche), which peaked in the second half of the 19th century. After the First World War Volhynia was divided between Poland and the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, from 1939, as a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, completely Soviet and already in 1941 occupied by the Wehrmacht. Under German occupation there was systematic persecution and murder of the Jewish population as well as other parts of the population.
After World War II, Volhynia again belonged to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and since 1992 to Ukraine. The landscape gives its name to the present-day Ukrainian oblast with its capital Luzk (ukr. Луцьк), which is not exactly congruent.
The Vilnius region is a large area around the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, which in the years following the First World War was claimed equally by the two states that became independent in 1918, Poland, Lithuania and the Soviet Union. From the beginning of 1919, there were several alternating occupations of the area, which was annexed by Poland in the fall of 1920 as a result of the Polish-Lithuanian War. The region subsequently declared itself independent as the Republic of Lithuania Minor (Litwa Środkowa), before joining Poland in 1922.
From today's perspective, the Vilnius region extended on both sides and almost along the entire length of today's Lithuanian-Belarusian border.
Braniewo ist eine Kleinstadt im äußersten Norden Polens mit gut 16.000 Einwohner:innen (Januar 2024). Sie liegt nur wenige Kilometer entfernt von der Grenze zur russischen Oblast Kaliningrad und dem Frischen Haff im historischen Ostpreußen. Die Stadt war im Mittelalter nicht nur bedeutende Hafen- und Handelsstadt und Mitglied der Hanse, sondern auch Standort einer bis heute erhaltenen Deutschordensburg.
Vištytis is a town with just over 300 inhabitants (2021) in south-western Lithuania, located directly on the border with the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast.
Kaliningrad Oblast (rus. Калининградская область) is located between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. The oblast is an exclave of Russia and at the same time its westernmost part. It is inhabited by around 1 million people. The capital of the oblast is Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg).
Reparations, violence, and looting
Moscow (population 2024: 13,146,907) is the capital of the Russian Federation and the most populous city located entirely in Europe. It is situated in the west of the country. Moscow is also the capital of the Central Russian Federal District. The administrative unit “City of Federal Significance Moscow” includes several other towns and has a population of 13,258,262. The city is by far the most important political, economic, scientific, and cultural center of the country.
Moscow was founded around the 11th/12th century. The construction of the fortification (Kremlin) is dated to the beginning of the second half of the 12th century. In the 13th century, Moscow became the capital of a sub-principality of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir. In the 14th century, the princes of Moscow established themselves as rulers of the entire Rus. However, from 1247 to 1480, it was required to pay tribute to the Golden Horde, which devastated Moscow in 1238. In 1571, the city, which was almost entirely built of wood, was burned down by Tatar troops. By this time, however, Moscow was already the undisputed center of power in Russia. In 1687, the city's first college was opened, followed by its first university in 1775. Peter the Great moved the capital to Saint Petersburg in 1712. Weakened by unrest and plague, Moscow's development lagged behind that of the new capital. The invasion of Napoleon's troops in 1812 brought a deep cut in Moscow's development, with the city's population setting their houses on fire to repel them. The rapid reconstruction gave Moscow a modern cityscape.
After the October Revolution and the relocation of the capital back to Moscow in 1918, the city experienced an enormous expansion of its public infrastructure, and numerous prestigious buildings were erected until World War II. However, the expansion of residential space was never able to keep pace with population growth. This growth could not be slowed down, even by various restrictions on in-migration, some of which are still in force today. However, the city also grew through incorporations, particularly in 1960 and 2012.
In 1980, Moscow hosted the Summer Olympics. In the years that followed, however, the growing crisis in the Soviet Union also affected the city, which, following decentralization movements in the republics and unrest in Russia itself, was ultimately directly affected by the attempted coup in 1991. After the final collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, Moscow remained the capital of Russia. Since then, the city center in particular has been increasingly characterized by modern, prestigious buildings. Other features of the city's development in the post-Soviet era include the reconstruction of churches destroyed or repurposed during the Soviet era, the renovation of pre-Soviet buildings in the city center, and the expansion of transport infrastructure on the outskirts.
