Archaeologia Baltica

For the first time in Ukrainian and world musicology, based on previously unexplored archival materials, information on one of Yakiv Yatsynevych’s most popular works – arranging of the folk song “Susidka” has been reconstructed and supplemented. In the process of research in Central State Archives Museum of Literature and Arts of Ukraine (Kyiv) were found out many valuable sources. Among them, more than twenty letters which are the correspondence of composer’s wife – Iryna Yatsynevych with the musicologist Leonid Kaufman; a letter to I. Yatsynevych from her brother, Methodiy Pavlovsky and from the editorial office of the vocal literature of the State Musical Publishing House; articles from the periodicals and posters of concerts, which inform about the performance of the work, original musical manuscript of “Susidka”. As a result of work, all founded documents were included to scientific circulation. The materials give an opportunity to supplement the history of the creation of work, to determine its place in the stage life of the twentieth century, to find out the “detective” story by I. Yatsynevych about the appropriation of the composer’s work by another artist and to establish that Y. Yatsynevych’s “Susidka” is not just a processing of folk song, but almost original author’s composition.

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.

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.

The so-called “Group of Saints” (Heilige) formed in Mazury, in the County of Neidenburg (Kreis Neidenburg), in the late 18th c. and was most active in the parishes of Jerutki (Jerutten), Rozogi (Friedrichshof), and Wielbark (Willenberg). The present article, based on the documents stored in Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin-Dahlem, discusses its activities. In particular, an effort is made to present the reconstructions of the essential policies and postulates of the activity of the group members. The author tries to answer the question about the period of time that the activities of surinkimininkai (Gemeinschaftsbewegung; participants of prayer hours held in private homes by lay preachers) in the Land of Mazury started. The official secession from Church was the principal reason which made the author support the previous researchers of the phenomenon of the “Saints” who attributed the “Saints” to non-traditional religious groups. On the other hand, because of the pietist roots and the majority of their views, they can be considered to be direct predecessors of surinkimininkai.

The year 1923 was a critical moment in the history of the Weimar Republic. Due to Germany’s delay in paying war reparations, French and Belgian forces occupied the Ruhr region in January. Shortly afterwards the Lithuanians seized Memel (now Klaipėda), which in the Treaty of Versailles had been declared a Free City with a French Governor and garrison. German public opinion was outraged by this situation. In the press, a campaign against Lithuania was started. The article is devoted to publish the results of research on the military potential of Reichswehr in East Prussia in January 1923. The hypothesis concerning the military Reichswehr impossibility to influence the Klaipėda events has to be examined in this article.