Klaipėdos universitetas

The paper analyses particular meanings which integrated the Germans and Lithuanians living in Prussian Lithuania, defined their regional patriotism, and constituted the fundamentals of the regional culture of remembrance in the 19th and the early 20th c. It also examines the circumstances which, at the turn of the 20th c., gave an opportunity for part of Prussian Lithuanians to create alternative meanings, based on the Lithuanian historical master narrative, and encouraged Prussian Lithuanians to maintain their ethnic peculiarity and to support their distinction from Germans. Since Lithuanian historical narrative, created in Prussian Lithuania, became a source of alternative meanings, its structure, as well as the sources of its formation, is exhaustively analysed in the article. The author tries to resolve the issue whether the alternative culture of remembrance, based on the structure of meanings which were consolidated in the Lithuanian historical narrative and characterized by its own ceremonies, rituals, and monument erection practices, had formed in Prussia Lithuania.

The paper analyses the context of the formation and the narrative structure of the borussianistic historical master narrative based on the myth of Prussia’s German mission. By examining the relationship between the master narrative and the culture of remembrance, the article shows how, during the period of 1871-1914, the meanings of the borussianistic historical master narrative were consolidated into public commemoration practices of East Prussia and how that consolidation changed the multiplicity of identity intrinsic to East Prussia in the first half of the 19th century. On the basis of a case study analysis (the erection of a national monument “Borussia” in Klaipeda/ Memel), the article investigates the forms of application of borussianistic historical master narrative meanings on the territory of East Prussia, inhabited by mixed Lithuanian and German population.