Klaipėdos universitetas

On the basis of the research papers in the present collection, the author focuses on the issue of how specific the symbolic appropriation of the former East Prussian territories (and primarily cities, such as Kaliningrad, Olsztyn, and Klaipėda) was as compared to the expression of the process in other Lithuanian cities, such as Vilnius, Kaunas, and Šiauliai. The article discusses the role of capital cities as standards for building the cultures of remembrance in regions, the role of national (or communist) symbols as instruments of symbolic appropriation, and the impact of the communication milieus that formed and maintained the cultures of remembrance in cities. The author identifies the similarities and differences in the processes of symbolic appropriation of Klaipėda, Kaliningrad, Olsztyn, and Vilnius.

Like many other towns in East Prussia, Klaipėda lost almost all its former population during World War II and was inhabited by newcomers after 1945. After an example of Klaipėda, the article analyzes the process of comprehension of a newly inhabited area and making it one’s own. Klaipėda became a former East Prussian city having returned to Lithuania and simultaneously incorporated into the Soviet Union. That caused the clash of interests, the development of which also changed the systems of meanings that provided a framework for the appropriation process. The city was gradually comprehended in the process of formation of unique interrelationships of the meanings of Soviet ideology, all-Union patriotism, Lithuanian national culture, and East Prussian cultural heritage. In the article, the author identifies the processes that affected different configurations of the said interrelationships in different post-war periods.

The article analyzes the issue of East Prussian meanings in the environment of Prussian Lithuanians in terms of their “mental maps” and “symbolical geography”. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the communication channels that affected the process of mental appropriation of “our own region” – East Prussia – by the ethnic group of Prussian Lithuanians. The significance of the historical tradition related to the reformationist provision of protection of the status of the Lithuanian language in churches and schools of Prussian Lithuania, as well as of the periodicals published in Lithuanian at the turn of the 20th c. in East Prussia, is emphasized, as it is considered to be a significant communication channel that formed the conception of East Prussia, a close and “one’s own” space from the geographical, administrative-political, and civilization viewpoints. The analysis is oriented towards the problem of “appropriation of the past”, and it contributes to the understanding how the meanings of East Prussia topical for Prussian Lithuanians formed and which symbols marked the presently imaginary spaces identified with East Prussia and Prussian Lithuania/ Lithuania Minor as its part.

The article reveals the assumptions under which Polish claims to Warmia and Masuria Regions were legitimated in the 20th c. and the impact made on the starting points of the policies applied after WWII to the integration of Warmia and Masuria into Poland by the ideological political situation and the ratio of powers formed in the years of the war. The author pays great attention to the disclosure of the policy of “de-Germanization” and its practices by demonstrating the ways of instrumentalization of anti-German attitudes by the postwar Polish authorities, thus promoting the symbolical integration of former German territories (the Recovered Lands) into the minds of Polish settlers in them.

The article focuses on the role of the specificity related to East Prussia and its past in the current self-consciousness of the population of Kaliningrad Oblast and in the future strategies of the said territory of Russia. The author questions both the impact of the above mentioned specificity on the formation of uniqueness of Kaliningrad people in the context of other Russian territories and the existence of a special Kaliningradian identity. To his mind, for the population of Kaliningrad, East Prussia is a multidimensional symbol that provokes different social-cultural phenomena and simultaneously is used in order to trigger, maintain, and enhance the phenomena.

The article analyzes the competition between the official and alternative discourses of the region’s past that formed in Kaliningrad over the 70s to the 80s of the 20th c. The author notes that, next to the efforts of the government to form a respective image of the past of the pre-war Kaliningrad Oblast, different behaviour strategies formed which enabled the preparation of the ground for the rehabilitation of the prewar cultural heritage even under the conditions of ideological dictate. The process of the formation of a mechanism of continuous interest in the past of the region is examined, and formal and informal groups that undertook to meet the interest in the years of Perestroika are characterized.

The article intends to establish which images of East Prussia and its local population were maintained and what kind of relations with the “German heritage” was formed in the documents of the official military and civil authorities in Kaliningrad Oblast in the period of 1945 to 1950. The question of the impact of the cultural uniqueness of East Prussia made on the official propaganda-supported approach to East Prussia and the local population is raised. The author demonstrates that the said approach did not always coincide with the approach that was forming due to the daily social interaction between the newcomers and the old “German” residents with their cultural heritage.

On the basis of statistical economic indicators, diplomatic correspondence, diaries of Russian travellers, memoirs, essays, and letters, the article seeks to answer the question of what place East Prussia occupied in the economic, political, and cultural space of Russia. When considering the dimensions making up the image of East Prussia that was maintained in the consciousness of Russian people, the author identifies six of them and demonstrates the changes of their content in different discourses supported within the Russian Empire from the mid-19th c. to World War I.

The article analyses the formation of mental links between the population of East Prussia and the natural and cultural landscape of the said German province after World War I. By interpreting landscape as an imaginary space whose symbols may impact identity, the author analyzes several ways of nationalization of the East Prussian landscape. They include: studies of the homeland newly defined by the Versailles Peace Treaty at school and in daily life; popularization of tours for youth of the pre-promoted places of the province; organized care of wartime military cemeteries moderately integrated into the landscape; the construction of the Tannenberg memorial complex and giving meanings to it; and reconstruction of war-devastated cities and towns of East Prussia. The article demonstrates that the creation of meaningful links between the German population, the homeland (East Prussia), the elements of its natural and cultural landscape, and the Fatherland (Germany) formed a unique perception of the region which was primarily related to its meaning of a German outpost in the East.

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.