Encyclopedia
East Prussia 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, where it enclosed the bulk of the ancestral lands of the now-extinct
Old Prussians. Following
Nazi Germany's defeat in
World War II, the territory was partitioned in 1945 into
Russia's
Kaliningrad Oblast,
Poland's
Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, and the constituent counties of
Lithuania's
Klaipeda Region. The East Prussian capital of Königsberg was renamed
Kaliningrad in 1946.
Because of its exposed position at the Imperial Russian border, its front-line position in
World War I, its separation from Weimar Germany by the
Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the violent excesses during the occupation by the
Red Army in 1945, and the
expulsion of Germans after World War II, East Prussia has become a symbol for nationalists in all involved parties for the horror of war and
war crimes against civilians in general. The history of East Prussia indicates the 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 crusading
Catholic Teutonic Knights 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 Teutonic 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 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 . 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 and
Lithuanians decreased over time due to the process of Germanization. The Polish-speaking Prussians concentrated in the south of the province , while Lithuanian-speaking Prussians concentrated in the northeast . The
Old Prussian ethnic group became completely Germanized over time and the Old Prussian language died out in the 18th century.
Population in 1890
| Inhabitants | Foreign nationals* |
|---|
| East Prussia | 1,958,663 | 2,189 |
The number for "Foreign nationals" represents people who 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 .
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 one-third 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 , were sent to
concentration camps and kept there until their liberation.
World War II
In 1939 East Prussia had 2.49 million inhabitants, 85% of them ethnic Germans, the others describing themselves as culturally German and religiously Lutheran, but linguistically Masurian or
Lithuanian . The population of
Warmia was mostly Catholic.
During
World War II, the province was extended . 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
conscripted into the
Wehrmacht and killed in action.
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 erroneously 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 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, with most of them dying under miserable conditions.
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. 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 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". Equally anti-German was the policy of communist Poland after the war, as 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.
Since the
fall of Communism in 1991, some German 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 vengeance 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-founded villages are still intact, though they have become dilapidated over the course of time. The city centre of Kaliningrad, however, was entirely rebuilt, as
British bombs and the Soviet siege had left it in ruins.
The parts annexed by Poland are still heavily guarded by the central Polish government against reinstating parts of the German heritage and history. Until 1990 Polish activists took consequent measures in demolishing churches, graveyards and road signs bearing indications to German history or which were in German entirely. This Polish-Slavic nationalistic approach towards the
"Recovered Territory" of southern East Prussia remains vivid even today, with old, German expellees trying to erect expulsion commemoration monuments, but except for being supported by Roman Catholic Polish
Archbishop of
Warmia , Dr. Edmund Piszcz, most Polish authorities heavily evade recognizing southern East Prussia's German history and cultural heritage.
Further reading
Publications in English
- Baedeker, Karl, Northern Germany, 14th revised edition, London, 1904.
- 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, , 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.
- Woodward, E.L., Butler, Rohan; Medlicott, W.N., Dakin, Douglas, & Lambert, M.E., et al , Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, Three Series, Her Majesty's Stationary Office , 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.
- Balfour, Michael, and John Mair, Four-Power Control in Germany and Austria 1945-1946, Oxford University Press, 1956.
...
,
To Be Preserved Forever, , 1976.
- Koch, H.W., Professor, A History of Prussia, Longman, London, 1978/1984, , ISBN 0-582-48190-2
- Koch, H.W., Professor, A Constitutional History of Germany in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Longman, London, 1984, , ISBN 0-582-49182-7
- MacDonogh, Giles, Prussia, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1994, ISBN 1-85619-267-9
Publications in German
- B. Schumacher: Geschichte Ost- und Westpreussens, Würzburg 1959
- 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
- Martin, Bernd: Masuren, Mythos und Geschichte, Evangelische Akademie Baden, Karlsruhe 1998, ISBN 3-87200-122-6
Publications in Polish
- K. Piwarski, Dzieje Prus Wschodnich w czasach nowozytnych, Gdansk 1946
- Gerard Labuda , Historia Pomorza, vol. I–IV, Poznan 1969–2003
- collective work, Szkice z dziejów Pomorza, vol. 1–3, Warszawa 1958–61
External links
See also
