East Prussia

East Prussia ( , or Rytprūsiai; ; Russian: Восточная Пруссия — Vostochnaya Prussiya) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia from 1773-1824 and 1878 to 1945. Between 1824 and 1878 it was joined with West Prussia in the Province of Prussia. It had been created out of the territories of Ducal Prussia and Warmia.

East Prussia was located along the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. It enclosed the bulk of the ancestral lands of the now-extinct Baltic Prussians. Its capital was Königsberg, renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 by the Soviet Union. The former province of East Prussia is divided into Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast, Poland's Warmian-Masurian Voivodship, and the constituent counties of Lithuania's Klaipėda Region.

Because of its exposed position at the Russian border, its front-line position in the First World War, the separation from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the violent excesses during the occupation by the Red Army in 1945, and the 1944/1945 flight and 1945-1950 expulsion of the originally German population, East Prussia has become a symbol for nationalists in all involved parties for the horror of war and war crimes against 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 cultural heritage as well as on long-term economic development.

History

From knights to vassals

From the latter half of the 13th century to the 15th century, the Roman Catholic Teutonic Order ruled over the lands of Prussia through their monastic state. 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 Order at the Battle of Grunwald 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, establishing himself as Duke Albert of Prussia and a vassal of the Polish crown. 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. 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, Elector and Duke Frederick William succeeded in revoking Polish sovereignty over the largely Germanized 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 former Ducal 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 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 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 Baltic Prussian ethnic group completely Germanized over time and the old Prussian language died out in the 18th century.

Population 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 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.

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. During the interwar period, East Prussia and parts of West Prussia were exclaves of Germany, created as a result of the Treaty of Versailles when most of West Prussia and the former Prussian Province of Posen were ceded to Poland to create the Polish Corridor and the Free City of Danzig.

In 1920 plebiscites in eastern West Prussia and southern East Prussia were held to determine if the areas should join the Second Polish Republic or remain in Prussia within Germany; 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 1/3 of the toponymy 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 Mazurs), were sent to concentration camps.

World War II

In 1939 East Prussia had 2.49 million inhabitants, 85% of them being ethnic Germans, the others describing themselves as culturally German and religiously Lutheran, but linguistically Masurian (Slavic) (in the south) or Lithuanian (Baltic) (in the east).

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, the Reich's statistics in 1939 show that only 31,000 out of 994,092 people in annexed Polish western territories were German.

Many German inhabitants of East Prussia were killed in the war, many of whom were young people conscripted into the Wehrmacht and killed in action.

Catastrophe and doom of 1944/45

In 1944 the old city of Königsberg, which had never been severly destroyed in its 700-year history in any war before, was nearly entirely destroyed by two Allied air raids on the night of 26/27 August and three nights later on the 29/30 August 1944. Winston Churchill Book XII erroneously considered it as "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 the rapidly advancing Red Army and suffered from abuses and mistreatments by Red Army soldiers indoctrinated and incited by Soviet war propaganda to take revenge.

It is estimated that over one million civilians died during the years 1944 and 1945, mostly due to precipitous evacuations, hunger, illnesses, assaults and rapes by invading Red Army soldiers. Reports of atrocities at Nemmersdorf and organized rape spread fear and desparation among the civilian population. 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.

Post-World War II

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 Memel Territory 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 Warmian-Masurian Voivodship. 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". Equally anti-German was the policy of communist Poland after the war. In southern East Prussia German names were systematically removed, church yards and grave stones were ploughed or demolished, houses were stripped of elements reminding of their German history, culture and language, and a policy was made which punished even the unofficial use of the German language by linguistically Slavic Masurian inhabitants, even though some still identify themselves with Germany and are able to speak German, especially elderly inhabitants.

History

From knights to vassals

Kingdom of Prussia

German Empire

Population in 1890

World War I

Weimar Republic

Nazi Germany

World War II

Catastrophe and doom of 1944/45

Post-World War II

Further reading

Publications in German

Publications in Polish

Publications in English

External links

See also

Gourt Home::Gourt :: East Prussia

History

From knights to vassals

Kingdom of Prussia

German Empire

Population in 1890

World War I

Weimar Republic

Nazi Germany

World War II

Catastrophe and doom of 1944/45

Post-World War II

Further reading

Publications in German

Publications in Polish

Publications in English

External links

See also