Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The article is the publication of an ash-pan discovered almost three decades ago in the southeast part of the underground burial site of the Mount of Giants (the southern outskirts of Pionersky). This ash-pan, as well as a number of plots in eight other Sambian burial grounds, contains the remains of kurs (a rite of the Aschenplatz-2 type) that appeared on the Amber Coast in the mid-11th century after the termination of contacts between the Prussians and the Scandinavians. This westward movement of inhabitants of the Lithuanian coast was accompanied by or preceded by the settlement of the Curonian Spit beside the Curonian Lagoon, and was largely due to the unwillingness of the Prussians (for cult reasons?) to engage in navigation and settle on the seashore. The Curonians took their place in northern Sambia.

The major for archeology of southeast Baltic of an era of Vikings are Korallenberge connected among themselves the settlement and Stangenwalde burial ground. These monuments of archeology are located in southwest part of Curonian Spit. The thesis about synchronism and communication among themselves “before - and early Ordertime” time in O. Tishler and other Prussian archeologists of the XIX century of doubt didn’t cause these two monuments. Nowadays this point of view was supported by R. A. Shiroukhov. Got by excavation on Korallenberge settlement the material allows to call into question synchronism of this settlement and a soil burial ground of Stangenwalde. The joint analysis of the finds occurring from these monuments to archeology, allows to assume that the population which has left traces in settlement activity on a platform of the settlement of the X-head of the XII centuries, buried dead on a site of a burial ground of Stangenwalde, while unknown to archeologists.

The article discusses the origin of the place-name Preila. Preila is a settlement located in the Curonian Spit. To this day, there is no obvious and definitely proven interpretation of this name’s origin. The reason for this is a failure to detect linguistic motivation of the origin of the onym in the kursenieku language. The settlement itself was set about as late as the 19th century, while most linguists tend to look for ancient (Curonian of Prussian) origin of its name. Both phonetic and morphologic structure of the name seems to support this approach, but there was a shortage of proof that motivating lexeme with the theme Preil- could survive through to the 19th century in the language or onomastics of kursenieku language.The article employs several analysis methods, in particular: comparative, internal reconstruction, cartographic, geolinguistic. As some proof surfaced of presence of the onym in cartography prior to establishment of the settlement, the author makes assumption that it was an undocumented Curonian person’s name that gave birth to a place-name, which could initially be just a name of a steading or a micro-toponym.

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.

The end of the Second World War vitally influenced the fate of East Prussia not only from a historical point of view, but also its collective memory. The main object of the article is an analysis of the local aspects of this issue. This included the Curonian Spit as an important evacuation route for Klaipėda/Memel inhabitants at the end of 1944 and a reflection of this process in the collective memory. An important aspect of this analysis is connected with the problem of contemporary Curonian Spit residents in relating with the past as a part of their identity.