The pre-order period

At the beginning of the Common Era, the landscape that later became East Prussia was largely populated by Germanic tribes, especially the Gepids, who had populated the Vistula estuary up to the Passarge since around 100 BC, but apparently also by Burgundians from Bornholm, Rugians from Rügen, Goths from Gotland and Vandals from Jutland[1].

When they moved away from around 200 AD, Baltic tribes of the Indo-European family of peoples[2], who had already been living in eastern East Prussia since the turn of time and to whom the Prussians belong, gradually advanced westwards. In 98 AD, Tacitus described the Aesir in his “Germania” as the Goths’ eastern neighbors in the Vistula Delta. Around 250 AD, Ptolemy from Alexandria named two Prussian tribes: the Galindians and the Sudauers. The Byzantine historian Jordanes, who lived with the Goths, reported on the Aestians around 550 AD, as did Einhard, Charlemagne’s biographer, around 800 AD. Around 890, the Anglo-Saxon traveler Wulfstan, sent by the English King Alfred as a scout, sailed from Haithabu near Schleswig to Truso near present-day Elbing and called the local inhabitants there “Aesten”. Around 965, the Spanish Jew Ibrahim ibn Ja’qub, envoy of the Caliph of Córdoba al-Hakam II, who traveled the Baltic Sea countries as a merchant, described the eastern neighbors of the Slavs living in the West Prussian-Pomeranian region as the “Brus”, who probably called themselves “prusai”, did not understand the language of their neighboring peoples and were considered very brave. The picture changed around 1000: the chronicler Canaparius accused the Prussians of murderousness at this time, while the Polish chronicler Gallus anonymus saw them as a highly unruly people[3]. Over time, the name “brus” developed into the names Pruci, Pruzi, Pruzzi, Prusi, Pruteni, Prutones etc. (according to Bruno Schumacher, Geschichte Ost- und Westpreußens) for the people who are generally referred to today as the Prussians. Ästier and Prussians are identical. [4]

The Prussians did not form a political entity, but were divided into tribes, which were divided into 11 districts at the beginning of the Order’s time and were led by princes or noblemen: Pomesania, Pogesania, Warmia, Sassen, Barten, Natangen, Samland, Galinden, Sudauen, Nadrauen and Schalauen.[5] They were tall and well-grown, had blue eyes, a fresh face and long blond hair and were regarded as a highly active and industrious people. Their oldest pictorial representation can be found on the bronze cathedral door of Gniezno from the second half of the 12th century, probably cast in Magdeburg. The martyrdom of St. Adalbert is depicted here on 18 bas-reliefs[6].

According to Hans-Ulrich Kopp, the size of the Prussian people is estimated at 120,000, assuming a population density of 3 inhabitants per km². The Prussian Association Tolkemita, which has analyzed the literature on this subject, assumes a population of 4 to 5 Prussian inhabitants per km², which is even exceeded in the various treatises, and cautiously estimates the number of Prussians around 1200 at 200,000 people, the loss during the conquest of the Knights of the Order in 1231 – 1284 due to death and flight at 60,000 people. In the following centuries, the number of Prussians rose again in line with the growth of the overall population and the Prussians did not die out. In 1775, the Tolkemita estimated the number of their compatriots at 165,000, in 1939 at 162,000, and even in the Federal Republic of Germany there were still many Prussians, at least more than Sorbs. [7]

Their small villages were scattered far and wide. The Prussians lived in thatched wooden houses with awnings – the same awnings that were later encountered in parts of East Prussia. The patriarchal clan associations led by a hereditary noble lived quite autonomously and only gathered under an elected supreme commander in times of external threat. A Pruze was allowed to have up to three wives, who ran the household and could be offered to male guests without a female partner for the night. (Lecture: The Prussian people, held on October 16, 1987 at the 13th Baltic Conference in Lüneburg).

One of the Prussians’ main occupations was beekeeping, with honey being used not only to sweeten food but also to make a honey drink, which was continued in the highly alcoholic East Prussian Bärenfang. From the wild Tarpans, the Prussians developed their domestic horse, the “Schweiken”, which were frugal, tough, fast and extremely hardy and were later very useful to the Order state. [8]

In addition to agricultural work, the Prussians were already involved in international trade. They sold amber, furs, leather, dried fish, honey and slaves and bought precious metals, jewelry, weapons, cloth and salt. In the 9th and 10th centuries, there was a lively exchange of goods with the Vikings, who had established settlements in Truso near Elbing, near Wiskiauten in the Samland and probably also on the Memel opposite Tilsit.

There is a legend about the origins of the Prussians, the only known one. According to this legend, the brothers Waidewut and Bruteno came with the Goths from Scandinavia and gave the Prussians a large empire. The 12 sons of Waidewut are considered to be the founders of the 12 Prussian tribes, while Bruteno is said to have been the founder of the Sacred Grove of Romowe. [70] The Prussians adhered to a belief in gods that was very close to nature. The supreme deity was Perkunos, god of thunder and nature in general. He was assisted by Potrimpos, the young god of life and fertility crowned with ears of grain, and Pikollos, the punishing old man, the god of farewell and death. There was also the harvest god Kurche and many other deities. The chief priest was the Kriwe Kriwaitis, along with a number of Kriwen. The Kriwen were assisted by the Waidelotten as a kind of priest. The gods were worshipped in the sacred grove of Romowe, which probably existed in several places[9].

When the basically peaceful Prussians went on the warpath, they could become feared enemies. Their weaponry was quite simple. They fought with throwing clubs about 25 cm long, long clubs, crossbows, double-edged swords, spears and javelins. They defended themselves with a shield, usually made of leather, and thickly padded clothing that resembled armor. Apart from that, they were good horsemen and enjoyed the tactical advantage of good knowledge of the terrain. With this equipment, however, they were no match for the army of the Knights of the Order, which was modern in every way at the time and had been tried and tested in the Crusades. [10]

The Prussian language was largely lost because the Order forbade its use and a written language did not exist. Fragments of the Prussian language were mixed with the East Prussian dialects over time and are difficult to trace back. The “Elbinger Vokabular” is considered to be the oldest documentation of Prussian vocabulary: 820 Prussian words were recorded on 16 pages with the German translation. Although this booklet has been lost, it was copied beforehand and published as a book so that this vocabulary was not lost. Another old source are the notes of Simon Grunau, a monk in the Dominican monastery in Elbing, from 1525, which list 100 words with a German translation. Under Duke Albrecht, three catechisms were printed in Prussian with a German context in 1545 and 1561. In addition, translators, so-called Tolken, were trained to promote understanding between the two ethnic groups [11]

The religious state

From the 10th century onwards, the land of the Prussians became a sphere of interest for Poles and Germans. However, the Prussians defended themselves more fiercely against invaders than expected. In 997 AD, Adalbert of Prague and soldiers of King Boleslaw I Chrobry of Poland marched into Prussian territory, advanced as far as the Baltic Sea and was probably slain by Prussians in Samland.

Another martyr of that time was Bruno von Querfurt. He came from a Saxon-Thuringian family of counts, was educated in Rome and achieved missionary success in Transylvania and southern Russia. Boleslav I Chobry brought him to his court as a spiritual advisor and had him proselytize in Prussia. He was so successful that the Prussian leaders regarded him as a danger to their society. After he had been unsuccessfully warned, he was killed along with his 18 companions. After Bruno of Querfurt also suffered martyrdom in 1009, Christian missionary attempts came to a halt. Towards the end of the 12th century, German immigrants from Westphalia and the Elbe-Weser region began to build fortified settlements to secure trade. In 1182, the Cistercian monk Meinhard arrived at the mouth of the River Düna from Lübeck via Visby with North German merchants and built a stone castle and the first Christian church on the River Düna in 1184. After Meinhard’s death in 1196, he was succeeded by Berthold von Loccum, who led the first crusader army to the Düna to protect those who had already been baptized and to pacify rival tribes. After his death on horseback in 1199, Pope Innocent III appointed the Bremen canon Albert von Buxhövden as missionary bishop for Livonia in 1199. He founded the city of Riga in 1201. He was followed in 1215 by the Cistercian monk Christian from the monastery of Lekno as the first bishop in Prussia. The Pope called for crusades against the heathens in the East. The crusaders were to receive the same indulgences as the crusaders to the Holy Land. The Order of the Brothers of the Sword was founded in 1202. Livonia comprises the whole of present-day Estonia and Latvia, including Courland, Latgale and Semgale. [12]

After a first crusade into Prussia, approved by Pope Honorius III in 1220, achieved some success, regional rulers such as Duke Konrad of Mazovia, Duke Swantopolk of Pomerelia, Bishops Gethko of Mazovia and Michael of Kujawy and a few others attempted to conquer the Prussian Kulm region in the winter of 1221. Mazovia was one of the Polish principalities that had become independent after the disintegration of Poland following the death of Boleslav III Chobry in 1138 and lay roughly between the Narew and Bug rivers. However, the enraged Prussians fought back fiercely from 1224 and now invaded Pomerelia and Mazovia, where they devastated Gdansk, killed the Cistercian monks of Oliva Monastery and besieged Plock Castle, where Konrad of Mazovia had entrenched himself. [13] The Piast Duke Conrad I ascended the throne in 1206 and sought to missionize the pagans and thus expand his power base at the same time. Pope Innocent III supported him in this by appointing the Cistercian monk Christian from the monastery of Oliva as missionary bishop in 1215. However, Conrad I’s efforts did not bear fruit.

In order to get rid of the threat posed by the now extremely belligerent Prussians, Conrad of Mazovia called on the Teutonic Knights for help in 1226 and offered them the Kulm lands, which he did not possess, as a gift. The Order accepted and in this situation also found itself in an extremely favorable constellation for conquering territory on the Baltic Sea at the time: King Waldemar of Denmark had lost the Battle of Bornhöved in 1227 and thus his supremacy in the Baltic region. There was no other aspirant who could take over his power and put a stop to the Order. After lengthy diplomatic negotiations, the Kruschwitz Treaty was concluded between Duke Konrad of Mazovia and the Teutonic Order in June 1230. In it, Duke Konrad, with the consent of his wife and their three sons, as well as the bishops, magnates and great men of his country, transferred the land of Kulm to the Order without reservation or restriction as true and perpetual property. The borders of the Land of Kulm were defined by the rivers Drewenz, Weichsel and Ossa as well as the border to the land of the Prussians. [14]

The prospect of conquering land in Prussia came at a time of conflict between the Emperor and the Pope, who were both trying to assert their claims to power over new territories. The extremely capable diplomat Grand Master Hermann von Salza (1170 – 1239), fourth Grand Master after Walpot von Bassenheim, Otto von Kerpen and Heinrich von Tunna [15] Therefore, in addition to the offer made by Konrad of Mazovia, he had the two highest social authorities of the time contractually assure him that the Kulm region and “all land that he will conquer in Prussia with God’s help” would be recognized as the territory of the Order like that of an imperial prince and endowed with all sovereign rights such as customs, coinage, tithes, market rights, judicial sovereignty and the right to build the Order’s castles in stone.

As German king, Frederick II of Hohenstaufen had the right to all “ownerless land” according to the General Royal Land Regal and, as Holy Roman Emperor, he was above all kings and his power extended to all regions of the world.[16] After the emperor gave his consent in 1226, the Golden Bull of 1235[17] and Pope Gregory IX (1227 – 1241) gave his verbal consent in 1230. (1227 – 1241) gave his verbal consent in 1230 (the papal promise followed in writing in the Bull of Rieti in 1234) and Conrad of Mazovia confirmed the donation of the Kulm land “for perpetual possession” in the Treaty of Kruschwitz in 1230, and in the same year the Pope preached a new crusade against the Prussians, In the spring of 1231, an army of the Order led by the Land Master Hermann Balk with 7 Knights of the Order at the head of a number of crusaders and 200 squires as well as 1000 followers invaded the Kulm region and quickly conquered the entire settlement area of the Prussians. The Holy See took possession of the new land of the Order. As a result, the German Emperor could not grant it as a fief and the state of the Order did not become part of the German Empire.

The religious state that developed here had its own character. It was shaped according to the principles of the chivalric-monastic corporation, it was both ecclesiastical and secular, chivalrous and bourgeois at the same time, designed according to German ideas, but also had a European orientation.

The small battle group of the Knights of the Order, which was soon accompanied by a 5,000-strong crusader army, initially fought its way along the Vistula to the Baltic Sea in order to secure the homeland connection by sea, then turned east towards Samland and Memel and finally gradually took over the Prussian hinterland. The Prussians resisted as best they could, their great uprising in 1263 – 1284 even caused serious difficulties for the Order, but the military superiority of the Order in terms of weaponry and the never-ending supply of fighters and material ultimately left the Prussians no chance. Many of them were killed and many fled to neighboring areas. However, there was no systematic extermination, no genocide, as begrudging commentators sometimes claim. Much of the knowledge of these military conflicts between the Prussians and the Order has been handed down in the “Chronicon Terrae Prussiae” by Peter von Dusburg, a monk and priest of the Order, who described the period from 1290 to 1326 and presented his chronicle to his Grand Master Werner von Orselen in 1326. His focus is on praising the knights of the order for their bravery and strength of faith in this “holy war” against the enemy heathens. But he also provides a wealth of information about life at that time that we would not otherwise have. [18]

Many Prussians, especially those who converted to the Christian faith, became valuable members of the Order and later of East Prussian society, and there are still German families today who proudly trace their origins back to Prussian roots. Prussians were allowed to acquire property and enter the clergy under the order, Prussian nobles could become knights and, according to medieval understanding, personal freedom rights were guaranteed. The Samland nobility of the Prussians in particular were granted special privileges in order to win them over to the Order. [19] In the 16th century, the native inhabitants of Prussia still made up 60% of the total population of the Order of Prussia (according to Beate Szillis-Kappelhoff, see also Wulf D. Wagner, Kultur im ländlichen Ostpreußen, Volume I, pp. 39, 240) [20]According to another source, the proportion of Prussians in the East Prussian population around 1400 was still about 50 %, in the Samland even up to 90 %. (Marianne Kopp) [21]

Once the land of the Prussians had been pacified, a highly fruitful phase of cultural development began. The Order brought with it useful knowledge and techniques from Western Europe and the Orient that were foreign to the Prussians. A standard example of this is the iron plowshare, which was able to prepare the soil of the fields much better and more profitably than the Prussian wooden zoche. The cultivation of the fields according to the principle of three-field farming was also superior to the monoculture of the Prussians. The cattle from the west were more efficient and were kept in more advanced stables. The conditions for farming in East Prussia were much more demanding than in West Germany: the growing season was 50 days shorter, spring arrived three to four weeks later and was interspersed with late frosts. In the fall, the fields had to be cleared of crops quickly to enable the winter cereals to be sown before the frosts from mid-October. On the other hand, the sunshine duration was about 200 hours/year longer, with the result that the grain ripened in a shorter time. On balance, however, work had to be more intensive and faster. This meant, for example, that only horses could be used as draught animals and not oxen as in the West, which explains why horse breeding became so important in East Prussia. Livestock farming as a whole, together with fodder cultivation, was more important than in the West and ensured employment during the long winter months. The beginning motorization of agriculture from around 1935 made field work easier, but also reduced the importance of horses. During the flight in 1945, however, horses were again the more reliable draught animals.

The soil in East Prussia consisted of silty sand. Silt is very finely weathered rock, e.g. of quartz or feldspar in the finest grain size, which occurs in various mixtures with sand or clay and is commonly referred to as loam. East Prussia has predominantly medium soils of sandy loam or loamy sand, sometimes mixed with clay. Overall, East Prussia had 16 % clay and loam soils, 52 % medium soils, 23 % sandy soils and 5 % peat soils. The rest was water. The medium soils had the advantage of being easier to work. [71] Due to their small population, the Prussians only farmed around 20% of the land area of East Prussia. The rest was forest and scrub, which had to be cleared by the new settlers. But they did this with perseverance and meticulousness, so that by 1938 only around 20% of the land was still forest. The subsoil under the arable land often consisted of poorly permeable boulder clay, so that damaging waterlogging could occur. For this reason, rivers and streams were regulated and ditches were dug to drain off water. Where this was not sufficient, drainage began around 1850. In most cases, clay pipes were used to achieve rapid water drainage. Although this was expensive, it was advantageous because the soil dried out more quickly in spring and could be planted, thus gaining seven to fourteen growing days. In the post-war period, many clay pipes of the drainage systems in the Kaliningrad Oblast were destroyed by the Russian plows working deeper, and the drainage ditches and canals silted up and became overgrown. A further measure in German East Prussia to cultivate agricultural land was the dredging and straightening of rivers, especially in the estuaries of the Vistula, Nogat and Memel rivers, so that the highest unit values in East Prussia were recorded in the districts of Marienburg and Elchniederung.

The order introduced writing, laid out towns based on the Italian model, whereby the urban plot sizes were standardized at two rods wide (8.60 m) and six rods long (26 m), and soon had solid bricks fired for its castles instead of wood-earth fortifications, with which admirable ecclesiastical and secular brick Gothic buildings were built. The castles generally had central heating, which was not even found in German castles of the time, as well as a danzker, a privy area away from the living quarters that avoided possible infections under the conditions of the time and was situated above running water that could be brought from miles away by means of water pipes if necessary. In addition, the central state principle of the Order was considerably superior to the loose tribal association of the Prussians, although the latter did have a ruling elite, and there was a highly developed, exemplary legal system in the land of the Order, even for the peoples of the West: Kulm law, based on Magdeburg law, and in individual cases Lübeck law.

The Kulm Charter was issued on December 28, 1232. It was initially only a deed of foundation for Thorn and Kulm, but very quickly became the most important legal foundation of the Order’s rule in Prussia. It regulated municipal jurisdiction and the ownership of land as well as the regalia relating to the exploitation of natural resources, which were reserved for the Order. [22] The legal basis of this handfast corresponds to the “Magdeburg town law”, which was influenced by the feudal and land law recorded in the“Sachsenspiegel” by Eike von Repkow. The Kulmer Handfeste was a step forward in particular because it gave the town or settlement community the opportunity to largely administer itself, organize its trade and practice crafts. [23] In addition to towns and villages, there were also Lischken. These were town-like village settlements as economic sub-centers to the towns. [24] Many handfests have been preserved and can be found in the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin, State Archives Königsberg, Department of Parchment Documents, printed up to the year 1351 in the Prussian Book of Documents Vol. 1 – 4 Königsberg/Marburg 1882 – 1964.

The Order regulated settlement very systematically. Prussians, Germans or settlers from other regions were settled in closed villages. A locator was appointed who recruited the settlers, founded the village and distributed the land, namely 2 – 3 plots of 16.8 ha per farmer and 4 plots for himself and for the church. In this way, each village had 10 – 20 farming posts = 40 – 60 hooves. In terms of size, these were healthy farms, which generally retained their size, as there were hardly any inheritance divisions, as further heirs were able to establish new farms over the centuries when the forests in the east of the country were cleared. However, those Prussians who initially resisted the order and later submitted were only given 2 hooks of land of 10 ha = 20 ha each and were liable to pay interest and service. The villages were laid out as elongated street villages with a village green and village pond in the middle, so that the land of each farmer could begin at the farmstead. The settlers paid levies such as interest and taxes in kind, but no serfdom. The order remained the formal landowner, but the landowner could bequeath his farm, even to female descendants, and de facto had almost complete ownership rights. Once the village had been founded, the locator became hereditary village mayor and Krüger, whereby the office was tied to his hooves.

The Order’s finances were based on four sources of income: court fees, money and taxes in kind from the inhabitants, revenue from the regalia and income from foreign trade. In addition, there was an effective administration of the land, an exemplary tax system and duty regulations, and clear specifications for length, area, hollow measurements and weights. A series of hospitals ensured the most modern medical care for the population at the time. The economy was based on a reliable currency system and the trading organization of the Order, represented by the large sheep factories in Marienburg and Königsberg, worked internationally, in an exemplary and highly profitable manner to market the large grain surpluses and amber deposits. The trade in amber, for which the Order had secured a monopoly, brought the most profit. The goods were transported by sea to and from the various ports in the Order’s territory. Since the opening of the 33 km long Königsberg Sea Canal from Pillau to Königsberg in 1901, the port of Königsberg was considered the largest Baltic port in the German Empire after Stettin. In 2023, Szczecin is still in 6th place in the ranking of Baltic Sea ports. Kaliningrad is no longer mentioned at all.

The combination of all these advantages gave rise to an unprecedentedly efficient and powerful medieval state in Europe, which is even regarded as the best organized and most modern of the entire Middle Ages.[25]. Er wurde Mitglied der Hanse und der internationale Handel mit Produkten einer blühenden heimischen Wirtschaft machten den Ordensstaat lange Zeit so reich, dass er keine Steuern zu erheben brauchte. Sein Herrschaftsgebiet reichte zeitweilig vom Baltikum bis zur Oder. So erwarb er mit Übernahme des livländischen Schwertbrüderordens 1236 nach dessen vernichtender Niederlage bei Schaulen in Schamaiten Ländereien im Baltikum und kaufte 1404 die Neumark an der Oder von der Mark Brandenburg, weil Markgraf Sigismund von Luxemburg sich in Geldnöten befand und drohte, andernfalls an Polen verkaufen zu wollen.

The origins of the state of the Order were documented by the Dominican monk Dusberg. Peter von Dusberg, also known as Peter von Duisburg because he came from this town, was the first chronicler of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. His book “Chronicon terrae Prussiae ” (Chronicle of the Land of Prussia) was completed in 1326. Dusberg dedicated it to the then reigning Grand Master Werner von Orseln. Little is known about Peter von Dusberg’s life. He was a priest of the commandery of the Teutonic Order at the Salvator Church in Duisburg. After a major town fire in 1283, which destroyed the church and the priests’ dwellings, he probably moved to Prussia and lived to see the last battles against the rebellious Prussians. His chronicle, which he then wrote, also contains information about the formation of the order, but refrains from a factual description of the structure of the order and its activities and understood his work more as a book of edification, with which he wanted to swear his brothers to the old missionary spirit with sermon and sword. [26] Dusberg’s work was made public by the historian and cartographer Christoph Hartknoch in 1679 in his work “Petri de Dusberg Chronicon Prussiae”.

In the early years of the Reformation, in the 1520s, the Dominican monk Simon Grunau wrote the much more factual “Chronica und Beschreibung der allerlustichen, nutzlichen und wahren Historien des namkundigen Landes zu Preußen” (Chronicle and description of the amusing, useful and true histories of Prussia), in which he expressed criticism of the recently expired Order of Poland and took sides with its opponents. [27]

The Order’s colonizing achievements are documented by the founding of over 1,000 villages by 1400, 93 towns by 1410 and 120 castles.

As long as there were pagans in Eastern Europe, the Order received the support of crusading knights from Western Europe, from Bohemia, France, England and above all, of course, from the lands of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Enmity, on the other hand, grew with its immediate neighbors.

In order to destroy paganism, the Order, supported by knights from Western Europe, undertook so-called “journeys ” against the pagans, which in the 14th century became journeys against the Lithuanians, the last pagans in Europe. The annals document 299 journeys, most of which took place in winter when the lakes and marshes were frozen over. The largest warlike undertaking with 40,000 participants took place in 1346/47. However, there were also smaller campaigns with 60 people. The meeting point was generally Königsberg and the guest list included illustrious names such as the burgraves of Nuremberg as well as counts and landgraves from Thuringia, the Palatinate, etc. [28]

The Order of Prussia experienced its heyday under the Grand Master Winrich von Kniprode. (around 1310 – 24. 6. 1382). He was born in Knipprath, a former district of Monheim am Rhein in the Bergisches Land region, the scion of a Lower Rhine knightly family. He became the 22nd Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. He first appeared in 1334 as a crony of the Commander of Elbing, Siegfried von Sitten, who was Supreme Spittler and Grand Commander. From 1338 to 1341 he was commander in Danzig under Grand Master Dietrich Burggraf zu Altenburg, and from 1342 under the new Grand Master Ludolf König he was commander in Balga, leading the Order’s forces as Marshal of the Order and Commander of Königsberg until 1346. In 1346 he was appointed Grand Commander by Grand Master Heinrich Dusemer with his seat in Marienburg and in the same year the Order was able to acquire the province of Estonia from Danish ownership. As Grand Commander, he probably worked well with the Grand Master. This is also assumed to be the case for the great campaign against the Lithuanians, which culminated in victory at the Battle of the Strebe south of Vilnius on February 2, 1348 and brought a few years of peace to the hostilities. Following the resignation of Grand Master Dusemer due to illness, he was elected Grand Master on September 14 or 16, 1351. His long reign was characterized by strong settlement activity, as evidenced by a large number of foundation documents. He also took in numerous refugees from Lithuania. Kniprode promoted the economy and thus ensured the enormous wealth of the Order at that time. Dike construction, drainage and clearing were promoted. Overseas trade, and in particular trade with England, received sustained support and the Order’s land had attractive products to offer: grain surpluses and surpluses from the Order’s agricultural levies, timber for shipbuilding and mast trees, ash and yew wood for archery bows were in great demand. Amber, tar, potash, honey, leather and fine furs were also in great demand. The Order was also an important importer of Western European goods and a transit point for trade with Poland and Russia. Viticulture was promoted. There were numerous vineyards, but they did not produce top-quality wines. However, the quality was sufficient for domestic consumption. To promote infrastructure, standardized measurements of length and area were introduced. The legal basis was standardized. The towns of Danzig, Elbing, Braunsberg, Frauenburg and Memel, which had been granted the Lübisch town charter, also adopted the generally accepted Kulm law. The Order needed political peace to promote its prosperity. Winrich von Kniprode therefore maintained friendly contacts with most of the neighboring countries. The Order kept out of the sometimes fierce competition with and between the cities of the Hanseatic League. Only with the Lithuanians were there constant armed conflicts.

These flared up again after a period of calm from 1353/54. In 1357, the Lithuanian princes Olgierd, Kinstut and Patirke made destructive advances as far as the area around Allenstein and Guttstadt. In response, crusaders from Germany, France, England and Scotland flocked to Prussia and harassed the Lithuanians. In 1362, Kovno was destroyed and in 1355 the Order’s army penetrated as far as the Vilnius region. The Order won a major victory at the Battle of Rudau in 1370, where the Order’s Marshal Henning Schindekop was killed. After this, the clashes with the Lithuanians slowly subsided and power struggles developed in the Grand Duchy, especially after the death of Prince Olgierd in 1377. However, when his son Jagiello married the Polish king’s daughter Hedwig in 1386 and an alliance was formed between Lithuania and Poland, a dangerous constellation arose for the Order’s territory.

Winrich von Kniprode died in 1382. During his long reign, the cultural and economic foundations were laid or consolidated that enabled the Order of Prussia to survive the turbulence of the 15th century and made it the leading power in the Baltic region and a pillar of the West in Eastern Europe. [29]

In 1308, during the reign of Grand Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, the conflict between the Margraviate of Brandenburg and Poland over Pomerelia escalated into the Sundian War. At the request of the Polish duke, the Teutonic Order occupied Gdansk. When the agreed reward was not paid, the Order remained in Gdansk and now demanded that the Poles sell it their claims to Pomerelia. When the Poles refused, the Order bought their claims from the Polish enemy Brandenburg in the Treaty of Soldin. [30]

With the acquisition of Pomerelia with Gdansk, Dirschau and Schwetz from the Brandenburg Ascanians for 10,000 marks of silver in the Treaty of Soldin on 13 September 1309, confirmed by Emperor Henry VII in 1313, the Order blocked the Poles’ desired access to the Baltic Sea. This led to war from 1327, which ended in the Peace of Kalisch in 1343. In the peace treaty, Poland was forced to give up Pomerelia, the Kulm Land and Michelau forever and the Order returned Kujawy and Dobrzin to Poland. This did nothing to diminish the drive towards the Baltic Sea.

The Polish king from 1370 was Louis I of Hungary from the House of Anjou. His younger daughter Hedwig (1374 – 1399), Polish Jadwigawas crowned queen of Poland in 1384 and two years later – at the age of 12 – married the Lithuanian prince Jagiello (c. 1351 – 1434), who on this occasion had to undertake in the Treaty of Krewo in 1385 to convert the Lithuanians to Christianity before he himself was crowned queen of Poland. Vladislav II. Jagiello was to be crowned King of Poland. He kept his word and reigned from 1386 – 1434. This marriage in turn prompted Pope John Paul II to canonize Hedwig on 8 June 1997 in Krakow in front of a million believers: she was aware that her mission was to evangelize the Lithuanian brothers.

With the unification of Lithuania and Poland, the Order now had an incredibly powerful and dangerous opponent. At the same time, the Christianization of the Lithuanians by Poland removed the Order’s essential mandate to convert the pagans, for which it had received the support of the Curia and the Christian crusaders. The Emperor, the Pope and the whole of Western Europe became increasingly neutral towards the Order and the pent-up tensions between the Order and its opponents came to a head in the Battle of Tannenberg in 1410, which the Order lost and which cost the lives of the Grand Master, the territories and many nobles.

This was followed by the 1st Peace of Thorn on February 1, 1411, which did not yet encroach on the territory of the Order, but imposed a heavy fine of 100,000 Bohemian groschen (= approx. 22.2 tons of silver). [31] 500 €/kg = approx. 11.1 million €, which seems surprisingly little to drive a rich country into bankruptcy) in addition to the costs of war meant that the Order’s wealth quickly melted away and its decline became irreversible. This was followed on September 27, 1422 by the Peace of Melnosee between the Order and the Kingdom of Poland together with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in which the Order renounced the Lithuanian Samaiten and the Polish territory around Nieszawa – Nessau.

This development was further encouraged by the Order’s inability to come to terms with the social changes that were occurring in parallel with the political upheavals throughout Europe. The cities and the estates increasingly demanded a say in the country’s governments. However, the rules of the order, which were geared towards absolute obedience, did not provide for a say and so financial hardship was compounded by internal political tensions. Although the foundation of the Prussian Confederation in 1440 was not originally directed against the Order, it demanded a say in the government as compensation for the newly levied state taxes, and the association of towns and estates increasingly formed a catch basin for the opposition to the Order. The latter was also formed by the fact that the brothers of the order, who were not assimilated due to their celibacy, were increasingly perceived as foreign rulers.

The estates were the members of the Prussian aristocracy, forerunners of the noble landowners, who had grown considerably in number as a group. The estates also included, as a separate class, the councillors and civil servants in the service of the government, who were mainly recruited from the nobility, the free peasants (Kölmer and Dorfschulzen) and the towns. [32] The demand of the powerful cities of Thorn, Elbing and Danzig for self-determined action was met soon after the outbreak of the following city war by granting them the status of a “free city” under the aegis of the Polish king in 1457. This concession gave these cities considerable powers: they were allowed to conduct their own foreign policy, maintain their own troops, mint their own flag and their own coins. [73]

The dissatisfaction in the country led to the so-called City War of 1454 – 1466, in which the Prussian League allied itself with the King of Poland and both attacked the Order together. After neither party was able to completely defeat the other, the 2nd Peace of Thorn was concluded in 1466. This now led to the division of the Order’s lands. The western territories – the Kulm region, Pomerelia and the regions of Christburg, Marienburg, Stuhm, Elbing and the diocese of Warmia became autonomous territories of the Crown of Poland, although they naturally remained German-speaking [33]thus covered around 23,900 square kilometers. The territory remaining with the Order still covered around 32,000 square kilometers. Through the granting of extraordinary privileges, Danzig assumed the status of a free state within the Polish Crown. After the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466, the respective Grand Master of the remaining territory of the Order had to swear an oath of allegiance to the King of Poland. By recognizing the supremacy of the Polish king, the Order’s territory left the union of the German Empire, even when it was later independent of Poland, and only rejoined when it was incorporated into the North German Confederation in 1867.

The Prussian virtues, which are described as such: Bravery, justice towards all, loyalty and discipline, moderation, protection and care for the poor and weak, can certainly be traced back to the knightly virtues as represented by the Order of the Teutonic Knights[34]

The Duchy of Prussia

The election of Albrecht of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1490 – 1568) from the Franconian line of the Hohenzollerns, son of Margrave Frederick of Ansbach and the Polish king’s daughter Sophie, as Grand Master on July 6, 1511 (according to another source on February 13, 1511[35]) are linked to two significant developments in Prussia.

The Prussian Order lands became a secular duchy dependent on Poland as a fiefdom. Albrecht did attempt to free himself from Polish feudal subjugation by military means in the so-called War of the Horsemen in 1520/21 with a truce until 1525, mediated by Emperor Charles V and King Louis II of Bohemia. However, he was not strong enough to do so, nor did he find any support in the German Empire, and on the advice of Martin Luther, he had himself proclaimed Duke of Prussia in the Peace of Krakow on April 8, 1525. His brothers from the Frankish line were also enfeoffed. Only when all the male heirs had died out would the enfeoffed duchy revert to Poland. The Order of the Teutonic Knights’ Prussia had thus ceased to exist. The Teutonic Order itself survived the following centuries and still exists today. The leadership of the shrunken Order was taken over by the former Master of the Teutonic Knights in Mergentheim, who in future also exercised the function of Grand Master. Since 1809, the headquarters have been located in Vienna. The last Grand Master resigned in 1923. Since then, a priest has been at the head of the order, who now concentrates on his pastoral and charitable duties. [36]

Even though Prussia was now in a feudal relationship with Poland, Duke Albrecht remained a German imperial prince. Unlike West Prussia since the Imperial Diet in Lublin in 1569, his land was not united with Poland through a real union.

Duke Albrecht’s other historic act was to be one of the first sovereigns in Europe to introduce Luther’s Reformation and found the first Protestant regional church in the German-speaking world. The monasteries were secularized and their assets seized by the state or passed on to pious foundations. The land in the diocese made available to the bishops was also secularized because the bishops of Samland and Pomesania, Polentz and Speratus, made their territories available to the duke.

As a sign of the upheaval in the church, the holy water fonts were removed from the churches, but strangely enough, the old baptismal fonts were also removed. This is probably the reason why granite baptismal fonts from the Middle Ages can be found in many churches today in vestibules, in some parish gardens or elsewhere around the churches. Sometimes they are also reused as holy water fonts.

The fact that the political and religious upheaval took place largely without a hitch is also thanks to the district councillors appointed by the rulers. These were the representatives of the zu Dohna, zu Eulenburg and von Kittlitz families, who came from the imperial nobility, as well as representatives of the knighthood such as von Kunheim, von Rautter, von Lehndorff and the now married knights of the order such as von Heydeck and Truchsess von Waldburg. The zu Dohna family also claims credit for the fact that Fabian Burggraf zu Dohna made the enfeoffment of the Brandenburg Hohenzollerns to Prussia possible at all during his negotiations at the royal court in Warsaw, despite considerable opposition from the Prussian estates. [37]

Another outstanding act of the duke was the founding of Königsberg University in 1544, which made Königsberg a center of education in Eastern Europe. In the 16th century, theology was at the top of the curriculum and so the new university also had the task of training pastors in the new Protestant denomination.

Ultimately, the duke organized the state administration, following the administrative hierarchy of the order, regulated the school and church system and laid the foundation stone for the public ducal palace library in 1540. The famous Silver Library, which was initially lost after the end of the war in 1945, is more likely to be attributed to his generous second wife Anna Maria von Braunschweig. Today, 14 volumes of this library are in the possession of the Copernicus University in Torun – Thorn. [38] Book printing also flourished. Duke Albrecht resumed settlement activities, which had become increasingly dormant during the end of the Order’s reign. He brought Dutchmen persecuted for their faith and Bohemian Brethren into the country, endeavored to attract West German settlers, promoted the arrival of Polish colonists, especially in the Masurian region, and thus increasingly put an end to the wilderness. Duke Albrecht’s reign had a very beneficial effect on East Prussia as a whole, even though he lost his strength, especially after his stroke in 1563, and became the victim of intrigues instigated by his ambitious son-in-law Duke Johann Albrecht of Mecklenburg, who had married Albrecht’s daughter Anna Sophia in 1555, and the adventurer Paul Skalich abused the Duke’s trust.

With the beginning of the ducal era, the estates were given more rights of co-determination and privileges, such as the privilege of indigency (offices were only given to members of the native nobility!) The estates’ provincial assemblies became something like constitutional institutions. The estates were strengthened by the fact that they increasingly acquired ownership of the land they farmed, which was not possible during the time of the Order. The starting point for this were the estates of the time of the Order and the considerable grants of land in connection with the War of the Cities to mercenary leaders such as the Dohna, the Eulenburgs and the Zehmen from Saxony, the Finck, the Oelsnitz, the Kreytzen from Thuringia and the Schlieben from Lusatia. [39] Some of the secularized church land was used to create new feudal estates, while others were ruthlessly and arbitrarily appropriated by the estates during the period of upheaval. In the course of colonization, the large landowners were often given additional large grants of land. The Prussian nobility received support from the King of Poland, who provided the Duke with four “regimental councillors”, the Landhofmeister, Chancellor, Oberburggraf and Oberhofmarschall, who increasingly seized governmental power and, if necessary, ruled against the will of the sovereign. [40]

The increasing power of the nobility meant that the rural population was increasingly forced into serfdom due to growing economic dependence. This ultimately led to a passage in the Prussian Land Code in 1577, which stipulated that peasants were no longer allowed to leave their place of residence without the permission of the lord of the manor(peasant bondage). Although the gagging of the peasants led to resistance, such as that which erupted in the Samland peasant uprising of 1525, it did not change the basic trend. The sovereigns, on the other hand, struggled to come to terms with or fight against the estates until the time of the Great Elector and the execution of Christian Ludwig von Kalckstein in 1672.

Albrecht’s son and heir Duke Albrecht II. Frederick married Duchess Marie Eleonore of Jülich-Kleve-Berg in 1573 and had seven children with her, including two boys. The young duke was – presumably due to his inheritance – increasingly feeble-minded and he was soon referred to as the “stupid lord”. For this reason, Margrave Georg Friedrich von Bayreuth-Ansbach-Jägerndorf was appointed guardian and administrator of the duchy by the Polish King Stephan Bathory in 1577 – against the resistance of the estates and the ducal councillors. A year later, Georg Friedrich was officially given the title of Duke of Prussia.

In the Treaty of Krakow of 1525, it was agreed with the King of Poland that if no male heirs were available from Duke Albrecht’s direct line, the duke’s brothers and then his nephew Margrave George Frederick of Ansbach and his descendants would inherit. It was not until 1563, after laborious negotiations, that the Electorate of Brandenburg was included in the succession. After Albrecht’s death, his disabled son Albrecht Friedrich inherited first. As both of Duke Albrecht Friedrich’s sons died in infancy, he had no male heirs. Albrecht’s brothers had also died in the meantime and Margrave Georg Friedrich von Ansbach had no children. With his death in 1603, the old Franconian line of the Hohenzollerns died out.

It was thus the marriage of the eldest daughter Anna of Prussia (1576 – 1625) of Duke Albrecht Friedrich to the heir to the throne of the Electorate of Brandenburg, Johann Sigismund, which united the Hohenzollern dynasty of Brandenburg with Prussia and also brought the hereditary rights to the lands of Jülich-Kleve-Berg into the dynasty, as Anna was also the granddaughter of Duke Johann Wilhelm III of Jülich, Kleve and Berg, Count of Mark and of Ravensberg. After his death on March 25, 1609, as he had left no children, the Jülich-Kleve succession dispute arose, in the course of which the Brandenburgers came to an agreement with the Duchy of Palatinate-Neuburg on the division of the rich inheritance and thus with the Duchy of Cleves (Duisburg, Wesel, Xanten), the County of Mark (Bochum, Hagen, Gelsenkirchen, Soest) and the County of Ravensberg (Bielefeld, Herford, Gütersloh) and the city of Minden [41] achieved a considerable increase in territory and assets.[42] The Prussian succession occurred with the death of Duke Albrecht’s son in 1618. Prussia came to the Electorate of Brandenburg through Duke Albrecht Friedrich’s eldest daughter Anna and was now linked to the Margraviate of Brandenburg in personal union .

The validity of the succession in the Duchy of Prussia always had to be bought anew: for example, after the death of the regent Margrave George Frederick in 1603, the Brandenburg Elector Joachim Frederick had to pay 300,000 guilders to the King of Poland for the continuation of the regency in Prussia and his son John Sigismund, who succeeded him in 1608, was allowed to pay another 30,000 guilders.[43]

The next historically significant events took place during the reign of the Great Elector, who ruled from 1640 to 1686. During this time, the Duchy of Prussia was more populous than the geographically larger Margraviate of Brandenburg. Königsberg had 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants – much more than Berlin at the time. The duchy had better soil conditions and was well developed and more prosperous than Brandenburg, mainly due to the successful policies of the Teutonic Order. [44]

At the end of the Thirty Years’ War, which had caused little damage to East Prussia, Frederick William raised a standing army so that he would never again be drawn defencelessly into the conflicts of third parties like his father. The decision was made in the Privy Council on June 5, 1644. The standing army quickly reached a strength of 25,000 men. On this basis, the Elector succeeded in freeing Prussia from its feudal dependency on Poland in the Treaty of Wehlau in 1657, using the swing policy that was widespread in the Baroque period, and on the other hand successfully resisted the Swedes’ attempts at conquest. However, this came at the price of the invasion of a Tataris Polish soldiery under the leadership of the field hetman of Lithuania, Wincenty Gosiewski, whose devastation and enslavement traumatized the population of East Prussia for a long time. During this invasion in 1656/57, 13 towns, 249 villages, hamlets and farms as well as 37 churches were burned or destroyed. 23,000 people were killed, 34,000 were forced into slavery and over 80,000 died of starvation and the plague. After the winter campaign against the Swedes in 1678/79 and the Peace of St. Germain in 1679, Sweden ceased to be a threat to the country.

The estates, which had acquired a strong legal position vis-à-vis the sovereign over the previous 100 years, lost the backing of their Polish mentor with Prussian sovereignty and the Great Elector immediately exploited his new authority and military power. The uncompromising champion of the rights of the estates, the Schöppenmeister of Kneiphof, Hieronymus Roth, chairman of the town court in Kneiphof and spokesman for the citizenry, who was of the opinion that the estates should have been involved in the conclusion of the treaties of Wehlau and Oliva, disappeared after his arrest on October 18, 1662 until his death in 1678 in a cell in the fortress of Peitz in the Spreewald. A plea for clemency to the Great Elector had been rejected in 1676. The highly recalcitrant representative of the nobility, Colonel Christian Ludwig von Kalckstein, was kidnapped in Warsaw and executed in Memel in 1672. The Elector had thus finally gained the upper hand over the Estates.

The stable legal system and the high economic and cultural status had been attracting politically and religiously persecuted people from many parts of Europe since the 16th century. The Protestant Christians from Mazovia and Lithuania found protection from Catholic persecution, but also from harassment by their landlords and the increasing spread of serfdom among the Poles in Lithuania. In the 17th century, the pronounced religious tolerance of the pietistic Hohenzollerns offered the Huguenots refuge in Prussia under Frederick William and in the 18th century under Frederick William I the Salzburgers. They were followed by Mennonites from Holland, who brought with them their knowledge of wetland reclamation, Swiss experts in dairy farming and religiously persecuted Russians. They all assimilated and established Prussia’s reputation as a haven of tolerance.

The Kingdom of Prussia

The son of the Great Elector, Frederick III, a native of Königsberg, sought to increase the importance of his house by striving for kingship. By providing troops for the War of the Spanish Succession and paying generous subsidies, he obtained Emperor Leopold I’s permission to become King of Prussia and thus gain his recognition as a European sovereign. On January 18, 1701, the most magnificent coronation as Frederick I took place in Königsberg Palace, where he placed the crown on his head in the palace’s audience hall and then had himself anointed in the palace church. Because Frederick I exaggerated his ostentatiousness and thus squandered the state’s assets, he was despised not only by his thrifty son, the Soldier King, but also by his grandson, Frederick the Great. Nevertheless, by elevating the ruling dynasty to the rank of ruler at a time when great importance was attached to questions of title and labels, he strengthened the unity of the state and the internal ties between the Prussian territories, which were widely scattered across the map, and the crown and laid an important foundation stone for Prussia’s imminent meteoric rise to become a major European power. In this respect, the coronation is seen in retrospect as a masterpiece of statesmanship. [45] The former Order of Prussia gave the name Prussia to the Hohenzollern state as a whole and established its state symbols with the eagle and the colors black and white.

Frederick I also achieved spectacular success in the cultural field: under his aegis, the Collegium Fridericianum was founded in 1701, which was characterized by pietism and soon developed into the most important school in the city, attended by Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottfried Herder, among others. The rector from 1702 was the pietist Heinrich Lysius from Flensburg.

The Great Plague broke out in East Prussia between 1709 and 1711, while Frederick I was still in power. It claimed the lives of 240,000 children, 40 percent of the population, including 128,000 in the four districts of Prussian Lithuania, 15,000 in the Samland, 45,000 in the six districts of Masuria and 13,364 in the capital Königsberg. [46] Almost 11,000 peasant jobs were deserted, the land was desertified and the empty houses collapsed. It was the great achievement of his successor, Frederick William I, to heal this enormous bloodletting through his retablissement. He was helped in this by the intolerance of the potentates of his time, above all the Archbishop of Salzburg Leopold Anton Count v. Firmian, who in their religious zeal chased away their children of other faiths. Frederick William I granted all expellees generous support if only they would come to him – and many took advantage of this opportunity. Immigrants came from French-speaking Switzerland, Nassau, the Palatinate and Magdeburg-Halberstädt – around 2,000 Swiss from the Neuchatel area, 290 families from Nassau and 40 families from the Palatinate. As a result of an edict issued by Bishop Firmian on October 31, 1731, around 30,000 Salzburg Protestants were expelled from the country. As a result, 20,794 Salzburgers immigrated to Prussia in 1732/33. Of these, 10,625 Salzburgers traveled on 33 ships from Stettin and 5,533 Salzburgers traveled overland to East Prussia. Most of the 15,508 Salzburgers who immigrated in 1732 came to Prussian Lithuania, which later became the administrative district of Gumbinnen. [47] 3,200 Swabians from the Durlach and Pforzheim area immigrated in 1785 (according to Ziesemer, Die ostpreußischen Mundarten). Prior to this, around 8,000 Huguenots had already come to East Prussia as a result of the Edict of Potsdam issued by the Great Elector in 1685.

During the reign of Frederick William I, the population of East Prussia rose again from 400,000 inhabitants to 600,000 between 1713 and 1740. This success of the Retablissement was flanked by the creation of a powerful state administration with incorruptible officials, whereby he introduced the title of “Oberpräsident” and included the extensive domain holdings in his organizational efforts. At that time, 3,200 villages in East Prussia belonged to the domains, whereas only 900 villages were noble. Other achievements included the founding of 11 new towns, the establishment of 1,500 elementary schools and the systematic filling of the country with preacher positions in numerous new parishes. The taxation system was handled more fairly, with the quality class of the land being included in the calculation basis rather than just the area, and the king ensured that the extent of land ownership was precisely verified, with numerous unlawfully appropriated properties falling to the treasury. The survey of the estates ended with the result that an additional 587,800 hectares had to be subjected to the tax. After the simultaneous determination of land classes, the Generalhufenschoß, a uniform land tax, was introduced, which in future was also levied on the nobility. The amount of the Hufenschoß was determined by a commission on the basis of a precise examination of the economic situation of the estate. General tenants were now appointed to manage the estates. They were civil servants who were entrusted with the administration of the entire chamber office, including the police force, and were responsible for the jurisdiction over the farmers. They were subject to state supervision and control. Lease agreements were only concluded with farmers with proven experience. If they proved themselves, they were given the title of Amtmann, Oberamtmann or Amtsrat. For the central administration of the domains, King Frederick William I created the “War and Domain Chamber“, to which all domains were subject. [48]

One focus of King Frederick William I’s government policy was the attempt to improve the education of his subjects. To this end, he founded 884 village schools, according to another source (Tautorat) 1,500, of which 1,100 were new buildings by 1740. But these needed trained teachers, and there was a lack of them. In Klein Dexen, in the district of Pr. Eylau, efforts were made in East Prussia to establish a seminary on a private manorial basis in 1774. This was ultimately unsuccessful. Under the aegis of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who had been made responsible for the section of culture and public education in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior in 1809, “normal institutes” were established for the training of young teachers, initially from 1809 to 1811 in Königsberg, Braunsberg and Karalene, not far from Insterburg. The royal orphanage in Königsberg from 1701 was dissolved and converted into a normal institute in 1809 with 30 pupils aged seven to ten, who were to be educated for the teaching profession and given the best possible training. The subjects taught included religion, arithmetic, form and size theory, singing, writing, gymnastics, drawing and the German language. [49]

Frederick II probably did not hold East Prussia in high esteem, although he would not have been king without Prussia. The intellectual on the throne remained untouched by the concentration of intellectual power in Königsberg at the time, by Hamann, Herder, Hippel and Kraus, perhaps especially because they cultivated the German language, which the king was less familiar with. He took no notice of the great philosopher Kant. [50] All the more astonishing is the reverence in which he was held in later generations in East Prussia.

In 1752, East Prussia underwent an administrative reform in which the country was divided into new districts. For example, the old Oberländische Kreis was dissolved and replaced by the three new districts of Mohrungen with the main offices of Pr. Holland, Liebstadt, Morungen, Osterode, Hohenstein and the hereditary office of Dt. Eylau, Marienwerder with the main offices of Riesenburg, Marienwerder, Pr. Mark and the hereditary office of Schönberg, and Neidenburg with the main offices of Ortelsburg, Neienburg, Soldau and the hereditary office of Gilgenburg.

Frederick the Great won his Silesian Wars with difficulty, during the course of which East Prussia was occupied by Russia for four years, and thus became a major European power, which his neighbors had to allow to participate in serious political developments. As a result, Russia and Austria, taking advantage of the weakness of the aristocratic Republic of Poland, involved Frederick in the partition of Poland. In three partitions, the territory of Brandenburg-Prussia increased by 235,000 square kilometers (in comparison: Russia occupied 811,000 square kilometers, the old Federal Republic of Germany had 250,000 square kilometers).

After the first partition of Poland in 1772, Frederick II issued a cabinet order to Chief President v. Domhardt on January 31, 1773, stipulating that the newly added territories of Elbing, Stuhm, Marienburg, Kulmerland and Pommerellen, supplemented by the previously royal Prussian districts of Marienwerder and Riesenburg and the hereditary districts of Schönberg and Deutsch-Eylau, were to be referred to as West Prussia and the previous royal Prussian province, supplemented by Warmia, as East Prussia. East Prussia and West Prussia together formed the Kingdom of Prussia. The cities of Danzig and Thorn, which were only added with the 2nd partition of Poland, were still missing. On the occasion of this new partition, the new province of South Prussia was formed from parts of the newly acquired historical regions of Greater Poland and Mazovia. Three years later, the newly acquired Podlaskie Voivodeship and the remaining parts of Mazovia, with the exception of the city of Warsaw and its western environs, which were incorporated into South Prussia, were united to form the province of New East Prussia by cabinet order of November 20, 1796. In the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, Prussia had to relinquish the two new provinces, from which Napoleon then formed the Duchy of Warsaw, which only lasted until 1815. [69]

An important agricultural revolution took place during the reign of Frederick the Great: the introduction of the potato. It began its triumphant advance in East Prussia around 1780.

Prussia suffered an ignominious defeat in Napoleon’s wars of aggression. The royal family fled to Memel and Königsberg became the secret capital of Prussia and the city of structural renewal for several years.

The burdens of French rule for troop rations and compulsory levies, the economic consequences of the Continental Blockade and a failed harvest in the province in 1811 had a long-lasting effect. The contributions and damages in 1807 alone are said to have amounted to 4.5 million thalers. The abolition of the guild obligation and the monopoly for bakers, butchers and butchers also contributed to the fact that trade in Königsberg largely came to a standstill. [51] The last debts were repaid in 1901. The plundering of Prussia by Napoleon was ended by the Wars of Liberation from 1813.

The turning away from France began on December 30, 1812, when Yorck von Wartenburg concluded the Tauroggen Convention and an armistice with the Russians in the mill of Poscherun without consulting the king, opening up East Prussia to the troops of Tsar Alexander I. The French then left Königsberg in great haste on the night of January 4-5, 1813. A short time later, the Russians moved in and on January 8, Yorck von Wartenberg also arrived. [52] The estates were enthusiastic about this act and met in Königsberg from February 5 to 9, 1813 as a 64-member provincial assembly, not as a provincial parliament, which was reserved for the sovereign alone. Here, under the presidency of Alexander zu Dohna (1771 – 1831), it was decided, among other things, to establish a provincial army of 20,000 men, led by a general commission, the formation of a Landsturm and the establishment of a regiment of national cavalry consisting of 1,000 volunteers. It was not until February 23, 1813 that Frederick William III was convinced of the need to change sides, concluded the Alliance of Kalisch with the Russians on February 27/28 and had the declaration of war handed over to the French on March 17, 1813. The French army, weakened by its flight from Russia, was completely defeated in several battles and Napoleon finally met his well-known end at St. Helena. [53] It should be noted at this point that even at the time of the Prussian-Russian negotiations, suspicions were rife in the king’s entourage that Tsar Alexander I was looking for ways to annex East and West Prussia.[54]

The defeat of Jena and Auerstedt and the complete collapse of the Prussian army was not only a military event, but also revealed the bankruptcy of the previous absolutist system. It awakened unexpected forces for reform. This reformist period is also known as “the unforgettable years of blessing of misfortune“. [55] On October 4, 1807, Baron vom Stein was appointed Chief Minister in Memel. The king appointed an Immediate Commission to work out the necessary reforms. It was significantly influenced by the representatives of East Prussian liberalism, the Provincial Minister von Schroetter, the Privy Chief Finance Councillor Theodor von Schön, later Chief President of East and West Prussia, and the later War Minister Hermann von Boyen, who were influenced by the ideas of Immanuel Kant, the teachings of the national economist Christian Jacob Kraus and Adam Smith. On October 9, 1807, the king issued the “Edict concerning the facilitated possession and free use of landed property and the personal circumstances of the inhabitants of the countryside” and on October 24, 1808, a decree followed which reorganized the state administration of Prussia. The police director of Königsberg, Johann Gottfried Frey, made significant contributions here. The Prussian Minister of the Interior, Alexander Burggraf zu Dohna, was instrumental in implementing the “Regulations for All Towns of the Prussian Monarchy” of November 19, 1808.

This led to the abolition of serfdom in 1807/08, along with the freedom to choose an occupation and freedom of trade. It was time for people to free themselves from the paternalism and shackles of the authorities and the aristocratic lords of the manor. In this context, it should be noted that the practiced system of peasant dependence also had its advantages. It offered a stable social orientation and a comfortable life for the farm workers: the lord of the manor provided the farm dwelling with cowshed, pigsty, poultry shed, vegetable garden, early potato garden, potato field, fuel supplies, cereal supplies, winter fodder and summer pasture for the cows and sheep. Families had hardly any cash, but the free benefits in kind ensured that no one, even in families with many children, had to go hungry or freeze. No one had to fear for their job. It was not uncommon for farm workers to be loyal subjects of the estate for generations. [72]

The lords of the manor were quite successful in their attempts to strengthen their own interests through ordinances and edicts in the realization of peasant freedoms. However, the state reform, which led to the separation of the judiciary and administration and thus introduced the principle of the separation of powers in Prussia, was essential. A work of the century was the town ordinance with self-administration of the municipalities, which gave the citizenry a new structure and introduced the right to vote for all citizens – and which is still the spiritual basis of the self-administration of our German municipalities in the 21st century. At that time, however, the right to vote still had to be acquired by providing proof of income. Jews were granted freedom of establishment. The Army Ordinance not only abolished corporal punishment in the army, but all citizens were called upon to defend the country and officer positions were no longer reserved for the nobility. There was also an educational reform, largely driven by Wilhelm von Humboldt. A Königsberg school plan served as a model for his three-stage teaching model of “elementary, school and university education”. [56] There were social and economic reforms – compulsory drinking and drinking establishments, compulsory meals, dress codes and a multitude of other restrictive regulations were abolished, guilds were abolished, the food market was liberalized, price controls on bakers, butchers, etc. were lifted and controls at the city gates were suspended. Most of this was prepared in Königsberg, but only announced in Berlin. [57]

The reform movement after the collapse of Prussia under Napoleon was the result of a unique concentration of intellectual forces in East Prussia. It began with the realization of Nicolaus Copernicus, canon in Frauenburg, that not the earth but the sun is the center of our solar system. The philosopher Immanuel Kant revolutionized philosophy, gathered a number of intellectuals around him in the 18th century and inspired others. In the 19th century, this movement developed a radiance that lasted well into the century and encompassed disciplines such as medicine, physics, mathematics, chemistry and astronomy. Even in the 20th century, East Prussia produced four Nobel Prize winners: Emil von Behrinng, Wilhelm Wien, Fritz Lipmann and Otto Wallach. From the school of Kant came Johann Georg Hamann, the Magus of the North, Johann Gottfried Herder, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Hermann Sudermann, Arno Holz, Agnes Miegel, Paul Fechter and Ernst Wiechert. Art shone with the painters Lovis Corinth and Käthe Kollwitz and music with the composers Otto Nicolai and the master of the light muse Walter Kollo.

The education system also flourished over the course of the century. There was compulsory schooling and the necessary large number of elementary schools. These were flanked by secondary schools, which were the link to higher educational institutions such as grammar schools, secondary modern schools and upper secondary modern schools, which provided access to universities after passing school-leaving examinations. There were three universities in East Prussia: the Albertus University founded by Duke Albrecht in 1544, the Academy of Arts and the College of Commerce. The upswing in education in East Prussia was due to strong personalities such as the Königsberg school inspector Paul Stettiner (1862 – 1941). Almost every pupil could read, write and do arithmetic. The illiteracy rate was far below 1%. By way of comparison, the illiteracy rate in Berlin today is almost 10%!

The spiritual awakening was also reflected in the politics of Prussian liberalism. From 1824 to 1829, the provinces of East Prussia and West Prussia were united in terms of personnel and from 1829 to 1878 in reality to form the “Province of Prussia”. This merger was then reversed. The unification of East and West Prussia was largely due to the great personality of Chief President Theodor von Schön, who was one of Prussia’s liberal leaders. In general, the intellectuals of East and West Prussia in the 19th and early 20th centuries were largely influenced by the ideas of liberalism. The repression, persecution and police harassment by the reactionary Prussian state power after the revolutionary events of 1848 did nothing to change this, as liberalism was firmly anchored among the intellectual elite. This continued into the 20th century. For example, the Goethebund was founded in 1901. It was not founded to venerate the great poet, but was a meeting point for artists, scientists, theologians, lawyers, theater people, merchants and politicians who protested against the restrictions imposed by the Prussian state. They saw themselves as a “fighting association for the free development of intellectual life, especially science, art and literature.” They staged plays such as “The Weavers” by Gerhart Hauptmann and “The Youth” by Max Halbe against the will of the police and contrary to the “common sense of the people”, soon had over 3,000 members and remained in existence until 1931. So when it is occasionally claimed that East Prussia was characterized by reactionaries and always lagged behind social developments, this is simply one-sided. [58]

In 1861, a royal coronation took place in Königsberg for the second time: on October 18, the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig and the homage of the estates to Elector Friedrich Wilhelm. The coronation of Wilhelm I of Prussia, which had taken place in the castle church, was celebrated from October 14-19. Just a few weeks after the election, the Liberals won the elections to the House of Representatives and the military conflict began.

East Prussia in the 19th and 20th centuries

The triumphant advance of the railroad in the 19th century also reached East Prussia. The Berlin – Königsberg line, built by the Prussian state, was open to traffic for the first time with the opening of the last section from Braunsberg to Königsberg on August 2, 1853. [59] In the early years of the railroad era, the expansion of the rail network was primarily promoted by Bethel Henry Strousberg, who was born in Neidenburg and was extremely innovative in matters of financing. The first railroad line in East Prussia under his management ran from Königsberg to Güldenboden in the district of Mohrungen (105 km long), followed in 1860 by the Königsberg – Insterburg – Eydtkuhnen line (153 km long) and the East Prussian Southern Railway from Pillau via Königsberg – Korschen – Lyck to Prostken, built under the entrepreneur Strousberg between 1865 and 1871. The Schichauwerke in Elbing played a direct part in this, but a number of other industrial enterprises also emerged, such as shipbuilding, wagon construction, several machine factories such as the Union machine factory and iron foundry and the Steinfurt machine factory, as well as pulp factories, industrial amber mining and processing, timber and sawmills. However, East Prussia remained primarily an agricultural region and benefited from the new means of transportation, as its agricultural produce could now be easily marketed in the rich western regions of Germany. Grain prices rose since England switched to free trade in 1846, crop rotation brought better yields than three-field farming, further increased by the use of modern fertilizers, the potato, which was successful in East Prussia, became a premium product, livestock farming took off and increased melioration improved the quality of the soil. The grain trade in Königsberg played an important role, with the Castell company, founded in 1840, being the most important firm, whose owner family Wien included the famous scientists Max and Wilhelm Wien. The milling industry also flourished in connection with the grain trade. Until the First World War, agricultural yields not only increased the prosperity of the farming communities, but above all the wealth of the landed gentry, as can be seen from the ever larger, lavishly furnished new or extended manor houses and castles.

In return for this positive development, an estimated one million East Prussians emigrated between 1865 and 1933 as a result of the high birth surplus, mainly to the Ruhr region, where mining and industrialization developed a great demand for labour after the war against France in 1870/71 and East Prussia, as a purely agricultural region, could not show any comparable economic development. Neidenburgers and Ortelsburgers settled mainly in Gelsenkirchen and around 1930 the East Prussians made up 20 to 25 % of the population of this Ruhr metropolis. The Lötzeners increasingly moved to Wanne-Eickel and the Osteroders to Bochum. [60] The parents of many footballers at Schalke, such as Ernst Kuzorra and Fritz Szepan, came from East Prussia.

During the First World War, East Prussia and Alsace were the only German provinces to be overrun and damaged by enemy troops. However, East Prussia in particular also experienced the triumph of victorious battles, which were won under the leadership of the East Prussian commander Paul von Hindenburg, the victor of the battles at Tannenberg (26 – 30 August 1914), at the Masurian Lakes (8 – 11 September 1914) and in the Masurian Winter Battle (7 – 21 February 1915) in the Lyck area. Although the damage caused by the war was considerable, it was still manageable: 1,500 East Prussian civilians lost their lives, by February 1915 around 13,600 civilians had been deported and 400,000 were on the run [61]The material damage amounted to 1.5 billion Reichsmark, 135,000 horses, 250,000 cows, 200,000 pigs and the entire harvest in 1914. The longer-term consequences of the lost world war were dramatic for East Prussia, as the province was now separated from the rest of the Reich by the Polish corridor.

With the Peace of Versailles, West Prussia was mainly divided between Poland and the Free City of Danzig without a referendum. Some western parts remained with the Reich, while the remaining eastern part with the districts of Marienburg, Marienwerder, Stuhm, Rosenberg and Elbing was annexed to the province of East Prussia as the “administrative district of West Prussia” with its seat in Marienwerder. The Soldau region, which had never belonged to Poland, was also annexed to Poland because the railroad line from Gdansk to Warsaw ran through the town of Soldau and it was practical to integrate it into Polish territory straight away. The Memelland, which had belonged to East Prussia since the times of the Order, was placed under the administration of the League of Nations without a vote and occupied by Lithuania on January 10, 1923, without the victorious powers caring much about this breach of international law. With the treaty of March 22, 1939, the Memelland was returned to Germany for a short time.

The referendum in East Prussia on July 11, 1920 in the districts of Neidenburg, Ortelsburg, Sensburg, Johannisburg, Lyck, Oletzko, Lötzen, Allenstein Stadt und Land, Rößel and Osterode resulted in an overwhelming commitment of the population to Germany: 97.8 % voted to remain part of the German Reich, only 2.2 % voted for Poland, and in the remaining West Prussian voting districts east of the Vistula only 7.5 % voted for Poland.

The isolation of East Prussia cut off important sales routes to neighboring markets, which put a heavy strain on the economy. Most of the road connections and railroad lines through the corridor were closed by the Poles, and the Vistula could no longer be used as a transport route. The Polish corridor, which separated East Prussia from the previously lucrative sales areas in the west, made transportation more expensive and damaged the competitiveness of East Prussian agricultural products. The “East Prussian Aid”, which was largely initiated by Reich President Hindenburg and took effect from 1928, was unable to fundamentally improve conditions. Things became particularly difficult for agriculture with the onset of the global economic crisis, triggered by “Black Friday” in 1929. The “Eastern Aid” introduced in response to this, which also supported western parts of the country by relieving the debts of individual farms, could only slow down the decline, not stop it. More and more farms, including many estates, had to be foreclosed. This and the humiliation of the losers by the victors and the occupiers associated with them led to a lasting radicalization, particularly in East Prussia, where the National Socialists were able to record considerable gains in votes. In East Prussia, Erich Koch agitated from 1928 as Gauleiter, who was a member of the Reichstag from 1930 and was appointed Chief President of East Prussia in September 1933. Reich President von Hindenburg, characterized by people who knew him personally as a dutiful, constitutionally faithful, loyal, correct, old-style nobleman, was no match for the brutal political aggression and fanatical racial arrogance of the Nazi movement. By the time Hindenburg died in 1934 at the latest, the path to the Second World War was unstoppable, and this meant the final loss of East Prussia and the expulsion of its inhabitants.

It is understandable that the East Prussians were particularly susceptible to extremist political currents due to their perceived threat of being cut off from the Reich. It is perhaps not surprising that the Polish-speaking East Prussians, the Masurians, succumbed to the wooing of the National Socialists: the Nazis, especially Hitler, gave them the feeling that they had finally been accepted into the national community. [62] Even at the end of the 1920s, the Nazis enjoyed disproportionate electoral success here. Hitler’s trips to Masuria in 1932 were like triumphal processions and it was precisely in the Masurian districts that he received the highest share of the vote in the last free elections on November 6, 1932: 66.3% in the district of Lyck, 63.8% in the district of Neidenburg and 61.9% in the district of Treuburg. In comparison: 23.6 % in Catholic Rößel, 35.9 % in middle-class Königsberg and 32.5 % in red Elbing. On the one hand, this voting behavior certainly resulted from the fact that the Masurians were particularly hard hit by the economic crisis on their poor soil and, since the imperial government largely overlooked or underestimated the plight of Masuria in its aid to the East, they turned to other directions in search of help. Secondly, with the abdication of the Kaiser, the Masurians had lost their figure of identification and they never arrived in the Weimar Republic. When the Nazis came to power, they ensured economic recovery in Masuria and the leader figure created new trust. However, this was in no way rewarded to the Masurians. At the end of their rule, the Nazis classified them as politically unreliable Slavs, and those who did not fall victim to the war or were expelled as Germans after the war fell victim to forced Polonization, with the result that of the approximately 150,000 Masurians still remaining in 1946 (out of 365,000 before the war), well over 100,000 left their homeland in the 1950s and 1970s.

An inglorious act by the Nazis in East Prussia was the decree issued by the Gauleiter and Chief President of East Prussia Erich Koch on July 16, 1938, to replace the characterful names of many villages, lakes and rivers, which were deeply rooted in history right back to the Prussian era, on a grand scale with Germanic names without tradition according to the motto, what is called German will remain German. The war destroyed this misconception. The concept was drawn up by a commission of professors from the University of Königsberg and affected over 1,500 places at once. In the later renaming campaign carried out by Poland, however, the new Polish names were often based on the old names.

East Prussia was an important deployment area for the attacks on Poland in 1939 and on the Soviet Union in 1941, which resulted in return marches after sensational victories. On June 22, 1944, the first major Soviet offensive began on their own doorstep, which ended with the evacuation of the eastern border districts of East Prussia in October. The Red Army’s major offensive then began on January 13, 1945 and was final. The 3rd Belorussian Front under General Ivan D. Chernyakovsky (1906 – 1945) advanced from the east towards Königsberg, while the 2nd Belorussian Front under Marshal Konstantin K. Rokossovsky (1896 – 1968) moved from the Narew towards the southern border of East Prussia – following the same pattern as the Russian invasion in the First World War. 1.67 million soldiers with 3,800 tanks and 3,100 aircraft set off on this cold January day. The German defenders with their 580,000 available fighters, including Volkssturm men and Hitler Youth, and 1,363 tanks were no match for the superior force. Hitler is said to have dismissed the possibility of a major Soviet offensive announced by Reinhard Gehlen as the biggest bluff since Genghis Khan, and Gauleiter Koch (1896 – 1986) perhaps really believed that he would be able to repel this Russian attack, if it took place at all, and therefore gave the order for the population to flee far too late. [63]

Due to the state permission to flee being granted too late on January 21, 1945[64] and the fury of the Soviet soldiers, who were furious with the German Wehrmacht and invaded Reich territory for the first time in East Prussia, and boosted by Soviet propaganda, this province suffered the highest number of victims within the Reich’s borders: in addition to around 212,000 war-related deaths in the Wehrmacht and as victims of the air war, 299,000 civilians died in the face of and on the run, through suicide, murder, lack of internment, disease, hunger and cold. Together, this amounted to 511,000 deaths or 20.7% of the population in 1939 [65] ( 2,490,000 inhabitants). The German navy had achieved incredible feats by rescuing refugees and the wounded at sea as part of “Operation Hannibal” and prevented even worse: 500,000 people escaped from Pillau, 900,000 from Danzig-Gotenhafen and 390,000 from Hela on ships of all kinds to the West. From January 25 to May 9, 1945, 672 merchant and passenger steamers and 409 warships were used for this purpose – according to another source, 2,022,602 people were rescued by 281 warships. And 509 merchant ships were brought to safety. (Wolfgang Reith, Mein Regierungsprogramm war einfach, PAZ 37/2016, p. 10) Rear Admiral Conrad Engelhardt (1898 – 1973) was in charge of this operation. Of the total of 1,081 ships, 245 were lost due to mines and shelling. Around 35,000 people lost their lives. [66]

However, the magnificent rescue operation by the Reichsmarine was apparently not carried out at the instigation of Grand Admiral Dönitz, possibly – as has been reported – even with the agreement of the Führer. As Dr. Dieter Hartwig, retired sea captain and historian at the Mürwik Naval Officers’ School, reported. On January 23, 1945, when the stream of civilian refugees from East Prussia was already swelling, Dönitz ordered: “Civilian transport only insofar as military transport is not impaired! There is no further capacity available for the transportation of the civilian population. Military transports have absolute priority over all others.” [74] In March/April 1945, the evacuation of the military from Norway still took priority over the rescue of refugees. By the end of March, around 40,000 wounded had been taken in by the army, but only 100,000 refugees. It was probably only thanks to the private initiative of merchant ship captains and a few military ships that the transport of refugees by sea got underway. When U 999 rescued 100 women in March, the captain only narrowly escaped a court martial. The party and SS leaders, on the other hand, often fled in great comfort and selfishly, as did Gauleiter Koch. Despite the adverse circumstances, the merchant navy and navy were ultimately able to rescue 2 million refugees and 600,000 soldiers and wounded from the East. In the first week of May there were still 150,000 people.

What remained were 600,000 who did not flee and 200,000 who were overrun by the Soviet army and sent back. The remaining survivors were finally expelled from East Prussia in 1947/48. Considering the total losses of the East Prussian population, this province lost about 25% of its population. In Germany as a whole, the loss amounted to 9% by comparison. [67]

After the end of the expulsions in 1950, 8.1 million people were expelled from the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany and 4 million from the territory of the GDR. Together with other refugees in Austria, the rest of Europe and overseas and at least 2.2 million deaths, the expulsion affected around 15 million people. [68] Among the expellees in the GDR there were prominent personalities such as Ursula Karrusseit (Elbing), Kurt Masur (Brieg/Lower Silesia), but also functionaries such as Günter Mittag (Stettin), Hans Modrow (Jasenitz/Pomerania) and Egon Krenz (Kolberg/Pomerania).

After the Second World War, East Prussia was divided up between Poland and the Soviet Union in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement. The northern Soviet part was mainly repopulated by Russians and Belarusians. The southern Polish part was divided between the then voivodeships of Gdansk (Danzig), Olsztyn (Allenstein) and Bialystok and resettled primarily by Poles from pre-war eastern Poland. Following the administrative reform in 1975, the former southern part of East Prussia was divided into the voivodeships of Elblag (Elbing), Olsztyn (Allenstein), Ciechanów [Zichenau] and Suwalki (Sudauen).

The GDR officially recognized the Oder-Neisse line as the final border with Poland in 1950, but at the time there was a great deal of non-public discussion about the Szczecin/Swinemünde area, which, although located to the west of the Oder, still belonged to Poland and is still there today. German communist councils had already been founded here after the war, which were then expelled. Willy Brandt also recognized the border for West Germany in the 1970s, which caused great excitement not only among the expellees in West Germany, but is now generally regarded as a courageous step, as it led to the de-escalation of the Cold War and also to the political rapprochement of the two German states. In the course of German reunification, the Federal Republic confirmed in the German-Polish border treaty of November 14, 1990 that it had given up its claims to the former East Prussia. At the beginning of the 1990s, Germany allegedly received a Russian offer to reacquire the Russian part of East Prussia, but this was rejected. A price of 60 billion DM (approx. 31 billion euros) is said to have been quoted. The German Finance Minister at the time, Theo Waigel, probably said that he would not even want to take Königsberg as a gift today and former Foreign Minister Genscher expressed similar views. So politically, East Prussia is lost, but in our hearts it will keep its place as long as the memory does not fade. And this website aims to make a contribution to this.

How serious was the report that Moscow had sought negotiations on the Königsberg region in May 1990 and had come up against granite in Bonn? As early as 1999, “Der Spiegel” itself reported “a rumor that was never convincingly denied”: Gorbachev had offered Chancellor Kohl the sale of “Kaliningrad” for 70 billion marks in 1991, and Yeltsin had later renewed this offer. Kohl was “not prepared to say anything on this subject”.

As early as May, July and August 1991, the Ostpreußenblatt reported on corresponding explorations by Moscow, which Hans-Dietrich Genscher rejected at the time. East Prussia spokesman v. Gottberg explained in an interview in 2002: “At the time, there was a concrete purchase price demand of 48 billion Deutschmarks, whereby Genscher’s statement that he did not even want ‘Königsberg as a gift’ has been passed down.”

The rejection of such an initiative even before the signing of the 2+4 Treaty on September 12, 1990 is also legally extremely piquant, because East Prussia was de iure part of Germany until that day.

Wilhelm v. Gottberg, then spokesman for the East Prussian Landsmannschaft, explained at the Germany Meeting 2000: “We don’t know whether God’s mantle will pass by again in the foreseeable future – as with Gorbachev’s offer. We hope so, but then there must also be someone who will make an effort to catch a corner of the mantle.” (Badenheuer, PAZ , 29. 5. 10)

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[1] What you should know…, Neidenburger Heimatbrief, Christmas 1979

[2] Lecture by Hans-Ulrich Kopp on October 16, 1987 on The Prussian People, Tolkemita Texte 24, p. 4

[3] Lecture by Hans-Ulrich Kopp on October 16, 1987 on The Prussian People, Tolkemita Texte 24, p. 7

[4] Fritz Alshuth, Die Prußen, Tolkemita-Text, p. 11 f

[5] Fritz Alshuth, The Prussians, Tolkemita text, p. 13

[6] Fritz Alshuth, Die Prußen, Tolkemita-Text 71, p. 24 f

[7] Lecture by Reinhold Grunenberg, September 4, 2010

[8] Fritz Alshuth, The Prussians, Tolkemita text, p. 14

[9] Fritz Alshuth, Die Prußen, Tolkemita-Text 71, p. 22 f

[10] Reinhard Grunenberg, The technical possibilities of the Prussians in the fight for freedom, Tolkemita I/2012, p. 12

[11] Fritz Alshuth, The Prussians, Tolkemita-Text 71, p. 24

[12] History of Education in the Baltic States: 7th Baltic Seminar in Libau/Liepaja, Latvia, at the University from April 27 to 29, 2009, p. 24 f

[13] Fritz Alshuth, Die Prußen, Tolkemita-Text 71, p. 34, Hans Ulrich Kopp, Das Volk der Prußen, op. cit. p. 16

[14] Prof. Dr. Bernhart Jähnig, Berlin, in a lecture at a seminar of the Kreisgemeinschaft Lyck 2012 in the Ostheim in Bad Pyrmont

[15] Manuel Ruofff, The greatest statesman among the Hochmeisters, PAZ No. 46/2011 of November 10, p. 11

[16] Fritz Alshuth, The Prussians, Tolkemita-Text 71, p. 37

[17] New scientific findings show that the Golden Bull was issued in Germany in 1235 under the leadership of the head of the imperial chancellery Petrus de Vinea (before 1200 – 1249) and not in Rimini in 1226. According to Prof. Dr. Bernhart Jähnig, Berlin, in a lecture at a seminar of the Kreisgemeinschaft Lyck 2012 in the Ostheim in Bad Pyrmont. The original of the Golden Bull was kept in the state archives of Königsberg. After the Second World War, it was transferred to the Göttingen State Archives and is now kept in the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage in Berlin-Dahlem. A second copy on parchment is kept in Warsaw. This contains several text variants (Tokemita-Mitteilungen II/2012, p. 17)

[18] Klaus Weigelt, 690 years Chronicon Terrae Prussiae – Chronicle of the Prussian Land, Königsberger Bürgerbrief, Winter 2016, p. 48/49

[19] Hans-Ulrich Kopp, op. cit. p. 19

[20] Beate Szillis-Kappelhoff, Twangste – Könisgberg in Memeler Dampfboot, 20 5. 2005

[21] Marianne Kopp, The Prussians in Agnes Miegel’s poetic work, Storchenpost Oct. 2009, p. 37

[22] Prof. Dr. Bernhart Jähnig, Berlin, in a lecture at a seminar of the Kreisgemeinschaft Lyck 2012 in the Ostheim in Bad Pyrmont

[23] Königsberg Citizens’ Letter, Summer 2011, p. 8

[24] Prof. Dr. Bernhart Jähnig, Berlin, in a lecture at a seminar of the Kreisgemeinschaft Lyck 2012 in the Ostheim in Bad Pyrmont, p. 16

[25] Manthey, Königsberg, p. 20, see also Wulf D. Wagner, Gerdauen, p. 39

[26] Lorenz Grimoni, Peter von Duisburg: The first chronicler of the Teutonic Order, Königsberger Bürgerbrief, Summer 2012, p. 13

[27] Wulf D. Wagner, The Prussian Antiquity Society, Husum 2019, p. 32

[28] Manfred E. Fritsche, Prussian Journeys of the Franks, PAZ No. 44/09 (Oct. 31), p. 10

[29] See also Erich Weise, Winrich von Kniprode – Hochmeister des Deutschen Ordens, Neidenburger Heimatbrief, Whitsun 1983, p. 5 f

[30] Manuel Ruoff, Relocation to Marienburg, PAZ No. 39/2012 (September 29), p. 11

[31] Manuel Ruoff, Division of the Teutonic Order State, PAZ No. 41/2016 (October 14), p. 11

[32] Manthey, Königsberg, p. 61. At the instigation of the Grand Master Ludwig von Erlichshausen, the Emperor ordered the dissolution of the League on December 1, 1453. Thereupon, on February 4, 1454, the Confederation renounced obedience to the Order and asked the Polish king for his protection, which he granted. (Manuel Ruoff)

[33] Manthey, Königsberg, p. 61

[34] M.R., 90 years ago the monarchy ended in Prussia, PAZ Nr. 47/08 (22. 11.), p. 11

[35] Manuel Ruoff, Hohenzollern at the head of the order, PAZ No. 6/2011 (Feb. 12), p. 11

[36] Veit-Mario Thiede, Ein Hoch auf die Hochmeister, Oprbl. No. 3/1920 (January 17), p. 9

[37] Lothar Graf zu Dohna, The Dohnas and their houses II, p. 413

[38] Lorenz Grimoni, The Wallenrodt Library in Königsberg Cathedral, Königsberger Bürgerbrief, Summer 2013, p. 58

[39] Lothar Graf zu Dohna, The Dohnas and their houses I, p. 189

[40] Horst Schulz, the Natang district of Preußisch Eylau, 1972, p. 45

[41] Jan von Flocken, Brandenburg wants to join the Rhine, Brandenburger Blätter, October 17, 2014, p. 6

[42] Bernd Rill, How Prussia came to the Rhine, PAZ No. 12/09 (March 21), p. 10

[43] Manthey Königsberg, p. 73

[44] Manthey, Königsberg, p. 60

[45] Manthey, Königsberg, p. 89

[46] Horst Schulz, der Natanger Kreis Preußisch Eylau, 1972, p. 131

[47] Gumbinner Heinatbrief No. 1/2000, Angerapper Heimatbrief December 2001 – transmitted by Peter Sziedat, 25. 8. 2014

[48] Bärbel Beutner, On the history of the domains, Our beautiful Samland, Summer 1991, p. 23

[49] Margund Hinz, The beginnings of teacher training, PAZ No. 40/2023 (October 6), p. 23

[50] Manthey, Königsberg, p. 278

[51] City Councillor Dr. Kuno Raabe, Königsberg’s economy, Königsberger Bürgerbrief, Winter 2016, p. 16

[52] Wulf D. Wagner, The Convention of Tauroggen 200 years ago, Königsberger Bürgerbrief, Winter 2012, p. 44

[53] Manuel Ruoff, Survey of the East Prussian Estates, PAZ No. 4/08, p. 14

[54] Manthey, Königsberg, p. 392

[55] Manthey, Königsberg, p. 351

[56] Manthey, Königsberg, p. 357

[57] Klaus Weigelt, The Prussian Reforms, Königsberger Bürgerbrief, Summer 2008, p. 42 ff

[58] Fritz Gause, Highlights of the history of Königsberg, Königsberger Bürgerbrief, 1967/68, p. 26

[59] Siegfried Dreheer, The Zinten railroad station, local history journal of the Heiligenbeil district, May 2017, p. 112

[60] Dagmar Jestrzemski, Refuge for thousands of East Prussians: the Ruhr area, Masurische Storchenpost, June 2013, p. 37 f

[61] Neumärker/Knopf, Göring’s territory, p. 31

[62] Andreas Kossert, Masuren – Ostpreußens vergessener Süden, Berlin 2001, reprinted in the Osteroder Zeitung, May 2013, p. 47

[63] Wolfgang Kaufmann, When the storm broke out in East Prussia, PAZ No. 2/2015 (January 10), p. 11

[64] Welf Grombacher, Escape into death, MOZ January 25/26, 2020, Journal p. 2

[65] Neidenburger Heimatbrief, Christmas 1981, p. 3

[66] Wolfgang Kaufmann, The biggest maritime rescue operation of all time, PAZ No. 3/2015 (January 17), p. 10

[67] From the speech of Stephan Grigat, spokesman of the East Prussian Landsmannschaft, at the large rally on the occasion of the East Prussian Reunion on May 29, 2011 in Erfurt, printed in “von tohus”, June 2011, p 98

[68] Finanztreff.de, 18. 3. 2009
[69] Wolfgang Reith, Eine Folge der preußischen Staatsreformen, PAZ No. 15/2024 (April 12), p. 23
[1].

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[70] Walter Görlitz, Die Prußen, Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen, Department of Culture, 1980, p. 3
[71] Dr. Hans Bloech, Ostpreußens Landwirtschaft, published by the Landsmannschaft, p. 3 f
[72] Dr. Hans Bloech, Ostpreußens Landwirtschaft, published by the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen 1983, p. 19
[73] Georg Hermanowski, Historischer Überblick über das Bistum Ermland, in Das Ermland, published by the Landsmannschaft Ostpreußen 1983, p.6
[74] Annual conference of the “GIS Friends of Samland”, Our beautiful Samland, Fall 2024, p. 23 f