Klaipėdos universitetas

The article analyzes the mechanisms of institutionalization of the collective memory of regional identity, as its significant dimension, and assesses discursive strategies used by different politicians. The author discloses the principal elements of the regional identity in the Soviet period and analyzes the practices of collective memory and historical consciousness in the period of 1945 to 1990. The relationship of the history policies of the Soviet period and the contemporary political processes is demonstrated.

The aim of the article is to present theoretical interpretation of the concept of Lithuania Minor as a Lithuanian memory site in the contemporary Lithuanian historical narative. The principal attention in the article is focussed on theoretical aspects that allow understanding the prerequisites of ideological receptions of the region of Lithuania Minor in the discourse of Lithuanian memory culture. From the empirical viewpoint, the content of stereotypes, images, and plots that realise the concept of Lithuania Minor as a Lithuanian memory site is analysed.

The fact that the Curonian Spit is one of the most important landscape icons of East Prussia is substantiated by reports from the travels and literary works of numerous German authors. This paper analyses articles on the Curonian Spit that were published between 1920 and 1939 in the “Ostdeutsche Monatshefte” journal that was one of the most important cultural magazines focused on the issues of the “German East”. It served as the basis for a description of elements that created the “ambience” (Georg Simmel) of this East Prussian landscape icon (dunes, the sea, the bay, the world of birds, and the ubiquitous moose), and its perception as a specifically German landscape, particularly in the inter-war period.

During the first half of the 20th century, East Prussia was described as the bulwark of Germandom against the permanent danger of a Slavic attack. The regulations of the Versailles Treaty and the founding of the Republic of Poland partly on former German soil seemed to verify this view. These fears had great influences of the identity of the East Prussians. The political culture and the public opinion were dominated by an aggressive, nationalist and anti-Polish propaganda. Many East Prussians feared a Polish attack and prepared to fight against it in volunteer battalions. The defending of East Prussia was to overrule all other conflicts, they believed. Even harsh political struggles, which where fought all over the German Reich, had to step back behind the need for a united East Prussia. In order to boost the poor province it was given economic aid and thus its role as bulwark was highlighted. On the other hand, this fighter-mentality was seen as a blueprint for the whole Reich. In 1945, this image of East Prussia was fatal. Many people believed in the government’s propaganda that they were fighters and that it would be possible to defend the province. As a result they stayed in their homes for too long and became victims of the Red Army.

The paper aims to analyse various aspects of interdependence between the nationality and the citizenship of the residents of Klaipėda region by restricting the analysis to the political and economic factors of the 20th c. The analysis was carried out on the basis of little known archival materials. The article seeks to prove that nationality and citizenship, as the principal forms of the identity expression, have not always been a matter of free self-determination; they would frequently change depending on the external political and ideological pressure.

The article analyses the transformations of the European science of philology in relation to the strengthening of nationalism, as well as the reflection of the trend in the context of East Prussia and Prussian Lithuania. The developments in comparative philology presupposed researchers’ interest in the studies of Baltic languages, Lithuanian in particular. The establishment of the Department of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Königsberg University both formed the tradition of academic Baltic studies and united the efforts of the intellectuals of East Prussia for the preservation of linguistic and ethnic-cultural heritage of Prussian Lithuania. The text Aus Baltischen Ländern by lawyer and cultural worker Ludwig Passarge is a characteristic example featuring the reflection of the ethnic-cultural model of Prussian Lithuanians against the background of predomination of comparative linguistics typical of the intellectual context of Europe in the 19th c.

Jewish immigration, which increased in East Prussia particularly after the Crimean War (1853-1856) because of an immigration policy that had been liberal for decades, brought especially young Litvak families to the region. They came with the decided endeavour to leave a part of their Litvak traditions behind and to establish themselves in Prussia. Which Jewish identity did they pass on to their children, who grew up as citizens of the Reich? And how did the identity of the grandchildren’s’ generation unfold? That very prominent change of identity is shown on the basis of one family that proves to be exemplary for Jews who immigrated in the second half of the 19th century. Several generations can be defined. The generation of the immigrants had children who explicitly felt German. The life of the grandchildren was connected to the decision for forced migration and thus with commitment to a new chosen homeland (in most cases, Palestine), in which the mental relationships to their home region were shaped in a very ambivalent way.

Between 1848 and 1871, German identity gained importance in East Prussia. The basis for the nationalization was the increased opportunities for communication in smaller cities and even villages in Prussian Lithuania provided by the newly founded associations. Additionally, the press developed into the most important medium allowing the adoption of national sentiments on a level wider than the local areas. A national movement encompassing all political camps did not appear on the German side. Only liberals and democrats supported the German national state. The conservatives remained distanced to the German nation state as they primarily identified themselves with Prussian patriotism.

The article discusses the main factors which shaped the peculiarities and distinctions of political elites in East Prussia in the first half of the 19th c. Among them, it names the growth of self-sufficiency of provincial nobility during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, the role of political elites in the liberal movement for constitutional reforms in Prussia, as well as the use of historical research and symbols of the past, increased in the first half of the 19th c. for the definition of distinction of both the province and its representatives. In the article, particular attention is paid to the examination of the factors of Russian neighbourhood and East Prussia’s position in the borderland between Prussia and Russia, showing their impact during crucial to Prussia events of 1813 and 1848. Due to the intertwining of all of those factors, in the first half of the 19th c., the consciousness of political elites in East Prussia ranged between regional provincial patriotism, Prussian patriotism (perceived through the relationship between the King and his subjects), and the growing sense of belonging to the German nation.

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.