Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 30 (2015): Contact Zones in the Historical Area of East Prussia = Kontaktų zonos istoriniame Rytų Prūsijos regione, pp. 229–247
Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 30 (2015): Contact Zones in the Historical Area of East Prussia = Kontaktų zonos istoriniame Rytų Prūsijos regione, pp. 225–228
Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 30 (2015): Contact Zones in the Historical Area of East Prussia = Kontaktų zonos istoriniame Rytų Prūsijos regione, pp. 221–224
Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 30 (2015): Contact Zones in the Historical Area of East Prussia = Kontaktų zonos istoriniame Rytų Prūsijos regione, pp. 218–220
Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 30 (2015): Contact Zones in the Historical Area of East Prussia = Kontaktų zonos istoriniame Rytų Prūsijos regione, pp. 213–217
Pub. online:2 Dec 2015Type:Source PublicationOpen Access
Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 30 (2015): Contact Zones in the Historical Area of East Prussia = Kontaktų zonos istoriniame Rytų Prūsijos regione, pp. 191–210
Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 30 (2015): Contact Zones in the Historical Area of East Prussia = Kontaktų zonos istoriniame Rytų Prūsijos regione, pp. 170–188
Abstract
The paper discusses different appropriation strategies applied to the same historical region of East Prussia. By dating the beginning of the symbolic appropriation to the early 19th century, the author reviews the strategies, first applied by Germans and Poles, and later also by Lithuanians and Russians, to make East Prussia or their respective part (Warmia and Masuria, Lithuania Minor, and the Kaliningrad Oblast) their own. This is demonstrated by several periods, starting with the situation before 1914, the First World War, the interwar period, and the Second World War, when East Prussia still existed; and finishing with the postwar period and the changes after 1989. A distinction is made between national and regional East Prussia appropriation strategies, as well as different levels of the process, i.e. publicistic (literary) and practical.
Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 30 (2015): Contact Zones in the Historical Area of East Prussia = Kontaktų zonos istoriniame Rytų Prūsijos regione, pp. 146–169
Abstract
Changes in the political power and the population in the southern part of East Prussia, which went to Poland in 1945, led to the removal of traces of the German past in the region, and to its Polonisation immediately after the war. After discussing the de-Germanisation policy, typical of the postwar period, the removal of symbols of ‘German power’, the elimination of the ‘German spirit’, and trends in the adaptation of the new population to the cultural landscape, the author raises the question how relations between the population of the territory and the German heritage and past changed after 1989. The issue is considered in the context of the discussion among intellectuals in Poland as to what the relationship with the German heritage should be. The answer is based on the results of a sociological poll carried out by the Institute for Western Affairs in 2001.
Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 30 (2015): Contact Zones in the Historical Area of East Prussia = Kontaktų zonos istoriniame Rytų Prūsijos regione, pp. 126–145
Abstract
The paper characterises the several-decades-long process of rehabilitation of the prewar cultural heritage in the Kaliningrad. After the northern part of the former East Prussia (Königsberg, and since 1946, the Kaliningrad Oblast) had been annexed by the USSR, and after basically a total change of the population had taken place, the authorities started to Sovietise the region. Knowledge of the prewar past was prohibited from the very beginning, and Stalin-era propaganda formed the founding myth of the Kaliningrad region with reference to the notion of ‘a Slavic land from time immemorial’. Despite the significant shifts that took place in the process of research into the history of the Kaliningrad Oblast during the Soviet period, carried out by historians from Russia and other countries, the adaptation by the postwar settlers to the socio-cultural landscape remains a poorly researched theme. The paper argues that the rehabilitation of the prewar (and primarily German) cultural heritage took place all through the Soviet era, by gradually converting the initially alien environment into their own. Ultimately, a fundamental shift took place in the cultural memory of Kaliningrad’s inhabitants; from the fear of staying ‘in an empty land’, they moved to the compatibility of ‘memory and desire’: the understanding that the metaphor of ‘paradise lost’, which revealed the nostalgia of the former inhabitants of East Prussia, also defined the feelings of Kaliningrad residents for the land that had become their home.
Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 30 (2015): Contact Zones in the Historical Area of East Prussia = Kontaktų zonos istoriniame Rytų Prūsijos regione, pp. 101–125
Abstract
After the Evangelical-dominated Territory of Memel (the Klaipėda Region) had been integrated into the Republic of Lithuania in 1923, the issue of the situation of the Catholics, non-dominant religious group in the region, accounting for 5 per cent of its population in 1925, had to be solved. In 1926, they were separated from the Diocese of Warmia, and joined the newly formed Klaipėda Prelature, part of the Diocese of Telšiai. Thus, the Catholics of the Klaipėda Region were integrated into Church structures controlled from Lithuania, unlike the Evangelicals, who remained part of the composition of the Prussian Evangelical Church. This paper, mainly on the basis of ecclesiastical documents, presents for the first time a broader analysis of the structure of the Catholic Church and its activities in the Klaipėda Region, as part of Lithuania, in the years 1923 to 1939.