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External Image
My name is Eugen
"Thirteen young Russian Germans bear the name Eugen. They have never met each other, yet they share a striking experience: they were all formerly called Evgenij. Their stories and experiences are unique. The author Eugen Litwinow travelled with them into the past, sharing long conversations about...
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Research institute
Nordost-Institut
The research of the Nordost-Institut centers around the history and culture of the countries from Poland to Russia. The focus is on the manifold interconnections of these regions with German history. Therefore, questions of relationship and regional history are pursued as well as aspects of minority...
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Projekttypen
Transfer project | Infrastructure project
Onlineportal Geschichte und kulturelles Erbe im östlichen Europa (Copernico)
Within the framework of two projects funded by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), the Herder Institute for Historical Research on Eastern Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association established the topic-based research portal “Copernico. History and Cultural...
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Museum | Archive
Ostpreußisches Landesmuseum mit Deutschbaltischer Abteilung ("East Prussian State Museum with a Baltic German Department")
This museum, located right in the center of Lüneburg, is dedicated to the subject of East Prussia and the Baltic Germans. Here you will discover a fascinating region in East Central Europe, which, for 700 years, was shaped by the German language. Never before has a museum in Germany focused on the...
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Object story
Papierówki – “Paper Apples”
A summer apple. The first to ripen. In Polish, it is called "papierówka", in German "Papierapfel" (paper apple). It once grew almost everywhere in Masuria and Warmia, including in the garden of Stefan Tymiec's grandmother, Gertrud. "It smelled and tasted delicious," he remembers. "And that yellow!" For his 60th birthday, he brought seedlings from a Polish nursery all the way to Wuppertal.
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Permanent exhibition of the East Prussian state museum
East Prussia: Formerly the easternmost German province, today it covers parts of Poland, Russia and Lithuania. With its family-friendly presentation style and high-quality, informative exhibits, the East Prussian state museum conveys as complete a picture as possible of the history, art, culture and...
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Publikationsreihentyp
Series
Potsdamer Bibliothek östliches Europa (Potsdam Library Eastern Europe)
Literary tours through Gdansk, the so-called "Bohemian Spa Triangle" or the region of Upper Silesia. Cultural tours through Neumark and Transylvania. Richly illustrated non-fiction books about the Danube Swabians, the Bessarabian or the Dobruge Germans.
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Biography
Stefan Tymiec Junior
Stefan Tymiec was born in Sztynort in July 1950. “I had a happy childhood”, he says. He hardly felt anything of the tragedies that his parents had lived through. His mother was German and remained in her homeland in 1945. His father was Ukrainian, one of many people who had been forcibly resettled from southeastern Poland. Stefan's childhood happiness lasted eight years, then the family set off for the West.
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Editorial
Steinort – a European place of remembrance
Steinort is a European place of remembrance, because it is a place where the most diverse stories and memories intersect, intertwine, and overlap. The interview project by Ulla Lachauer and Agata Kern explores these subjective strands of memory and reveals a number of different cultures of remembrance.
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Introduction
Steinort/Sztynort Migration Stories
Steinort Palace in northern Masuria was the seat of the noble Lehndorff family until 1945. The last Count, Heinrich von Lehndorff, was one of the conspirators of July 20, 1944. These stories tell of the fate of the East Prussian noble family and follow the lives of people who lived in the village, which is called Sztynort today. Others tell of German and Polish enthusiasts who are working to revive the run-down manor house. 17 biographical texts explore themes of expulsion and new beginnings, tragedy and awakening in this multi-ethnic region.
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Biography
The Four Lehndorff Daughters
"I lost my home," Vera von Lehndorff once said, "but lost childhood is a better description." When her father was executed on September 4, 1944, she was five years old. Her sister Eleonore, "Nona," was six and a half, and Gabriele was two. Catharina was only 19 days old; she was born in the Torgau prison hospital. The Nazis had taken the girls and their mother Gottliebe into custody, a practice known in German as "Sippenhaft” or “kin liability". It was a traumatic time and was by no means over when the war ended in 1945.
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Background article
The Lehndorff Family and the East Prussian Nobility
The East Prussian noble Lehndorff family can be traced back to the 13th century. The history and culture of remembrance around the family are exemplary for many other noble families in Eastern Europe. Our author Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg explains the role of commemorating the nobility and calls for a new approach to regional history.
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Background article
The Lehndorff Hunting Lodge
This charming wooden building was once the hunting lodge of the Lehndorff counts. Here they would gather after the great hunts to feast and celebrate together. Later, the building was leased to an innkeeper. After 1945 it was used as a storehouse, and for a while it served as a village store. It gradually fell into disrepair until one day it caught the eye of the young businessman Alexander Potocki.
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Object story
The Odyssey of a Rococo dresser
For more than 150 years, the Rococo dresser stood on the upper floor of the Steinort castle, in the so-called "Simson room". It bears witness to the lifestyle of an East Prussian noble family. Behind it lies an adventurous journey that began after the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, when Heinrich Graf von Lehndorff, the last lord of the castle, was arrested and executed.
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Recherchetooltyp
Online publication
The ebook "Russian-German Cultural History"
The digital ebook "Russian-German Cultural History" is a digital study and workbook developed by the Institute for Digital Learning in cooperation with the Museum for Russian-German Cultural History. In telling the story of the Russian-Germans, it shows how experiences such as being on the move,...
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Object story
The linen dresser
A simple chest of drawers, which came from the Steinort manor house, probably from the servants' quarters. In 1945 it was still quite new, made of pine, unpainted. Ten years ago, an old gentleman donated it to the Museum of Folklore in Węgorzewo, formerly Angerburg, along with other things he had taken from the manor after the end of the war.
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Projekttypen
Research project
The rural-urban migration of Russian Germans and other national minorities between 1953 and 1982
The 1960s and 70s in the Soviet Union were marked by an ideological aspiration to unify people's social reality. The goal was the completion of the "Soviet citizen". How did the Russian-German minority react to the propagated "Soviet way of life"?
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Unpacked
In this permanent exhibition, pieces of luggage and the stories of their Russian-German owners, are "unpacked". These are stories are marked by repeated migrations, different homelands and identities – and are still today an important part of German society as a whole.
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Biography
Verus von Plotho
"There was no culture of remembrance in my family," says Verus von Plotho. He grew up in a cosmopolitan world. He was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1969 and grew up in Munich. His mother is Gabriele Freifrau von Plotho, the third daughter of Heinrich and Gottliebe von Lehndorff. There was hardly any talk at home about his grandfather and his resistance to Hitler, nor about his earlier life at Steinort Castle. Grandson Verus grew up – unencumbered – in the shadow of a dramatic past.
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Podcast
Wenzel
Hans-Eckardt Wenzel, or "Wenzel" as he calls himself, is a poet and singer with Bohemian roots, born in Wittenberg in 1955. In GDR times, he studied farewell letters of young communists who lost their lives in the resistance against Hitler. Through his friendship with Antje Vollmer, he became acquainted with the story of Heinrich and Gottliebe von Lehndorff in 2008 and dedicated a song to the young aristocratic couple entitled: “The Final Letters."
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