Permanent exhibition of the East Prussian state museum

East Prussia is the name of the former most eastern Prussian province, which existed until 1945 and whose extent (regardless of historically slightly changing border courses) roughly corresponds to the historical landscape of Prussia. The name was first used in the second half of the 18th century, when, in addition to the Duchy of Prussia with its capital Königsberg, which had been promoted to a kingdom in 1701, other previously Polish territories in the west (for example, the so-called Prussia Royal Share with Warmia and Pomerania) were added to Brandenburg-Prussia and formed the new province of West Prussia.
Nowadays, the territory of the former Prussian province belongs mainly to Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast) and Poland (Warmia-Masuria Voivodeship). The former so-called Memelland (also Memelgebiet, lit. Klaipėdos kraštas) first became part of Lithuania in 1920 and again from 1945.

Nida is a small town on the Lithuanian Baltic coast. The city is in the west of the country directly on the border with the Russian oblast Kaliningrad. It is inhabited by just under 2,400 people and is the most western city in Lithuania.

The Curonian Spit is a peninsula on the Baltic Sea coast, which belongs to Lithuania and the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast. The peninsula is 98 km long and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It divides the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea and is known for the artists' colony.

The Baltic States is a region in the north-east of Europe and is composed of the three states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The Baltic States are inhabited by almost 6 million people.

The Romincka Forest (also: Romincka Heath) is an extensive forest and heathland area stretching along the Polish-Russian border in the southeast of Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast and the northeast of Poland's Warmia-Masuria Voivodeship. Before 1945, the area was part of the Prussian province of East Prussia and known as a Royal Prussian hunting ground. Emperor Wilhelm II (1859-1941) had a wooden hunting lodge built here starting in 1891, which was merged after his death with the nearby Reichsjägerhof Rominten, built by the National Socialists under Hermann Göring (1893-1946), and expanded to include bunkers and other infrastructure. Göring also used the Reichsjägerhof and the military facilities as his personal headquarters and the representative buildings, including the hunt itself, for propagandistic self-dramatization.

The Baltic Sea peninsula Samland stretches between the Vistula Lagoon and the Curonian Lagoon, thus connecting the two spits. Until 1945 it belonged to the Province East Prussia, since the end of the Second World War to the Soviet Union or today to Russia. The Samland developed with Baltic seaside resorts such as Cranz (today Selenogradsk) or Rauschen (today Swetlogorsk) since the 19th century to a much-visited tourist attraction.

Latvia is a Baltic state in the north-east of Europe and is home to about 1.9 million inhabitants. The capital of the country is Riga. The state borders in the west on the Baltic Sea and on the states of Lithuania, Estonia, Russia and Belarus. Latvia has been a member of the EU since 01.05.2004 and only became independent in the 19th century.

Estonia is a country in north-eastern Europe. It is inhabited by around 1.3 million people and borders Latvia, Russia and the Baltic Sea. The most populous city and capital is Tallinn.

Today's Estonian state only regained its political independence in 1991 as a result of the so-called “Singing Revolution” in the Baltic states and in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Estonian independence was first proclaimed in 1918 and achieved through the “Estonian War of Independence” (1918-1920). As early as 1940, this first Estonian state was replaced by the “Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic”, which was founded under Soviet occupation. With an interruption due to the German occupation during the Second World War (1941-1944) and with slightly different borders, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union until 1991. Before 1918, the territory of present-day Estonia was part of the Russian Empire, with its northern part forming the Baltic Governorate of Estonia and its southern part the northern half of the Baltic Governorate of Livonia. In the High and Late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the early modern period, parts of today's country were also under Swedish, Danish and Polish rule, while the Livonian part was also under the sovereignty of the Teutonic Order until 1561.

Estonia has been part of the European Union and NATO since 2004.

Livonia (Livonija in Latvian, Liivimaa in Estonian) is a historical landscape in the Baltic States. It comprises the southern part of present-day Estonia and the part of present-day Latvia north of the Daugava River. The landscape was named after the Livonians, a population group that hardly exists today.

Historically, the name Livonia can refer to other, different contexts. The governorate of the same name, which was one of the three Baltic Sea governorates of the Russian Empire, is particularly influential for today's understanding of the historical region. It existed from the beginning of the 18th century until 1918 and its capital was Riga, located at the mouth of the Duna.

Livonia had previously given its name to other states and confederations, most notably the Livonian Confederation, which had existed since the High Middle Ages. The Livonian part of the Teutonic Order as well as regional ecclesiastical states belonged to the confederation. The confederation also included large parts of the present-day states of Latvia and Estonia. After the dissolution of the confederation and the Teutonic Order state in the 16th century, sovereignty changed several times. Without the southern and northern areas, Livonia initially came under Polish-Lithuanian rule, later also under Swedish suzerainty, before coming under Russian rule in the course of the Great Northern War (1700-1721). Until the beginning of the 20th century, the central role of the landowning German-speaking nobility was particularly influential in the internal social organization of the rural area.