Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The paper is a keynote address to the conference ‘Contacts and Cultural Transfer in the Historical Region of East Prussia (1700–2000)’ that took place in Nida in September 2013. It considers what the East Prussia region means, and what it is associated with today, after it stopped existing 70 years ago. The question is asked what the current situation of East Prussian historiography is, and potential directions for the development of new relevant research are outlined. The author argues that in the process of the cognition of East Prussia, a shift was made from the conservative system of meanings, developed mainly by the former local elites in Germany after the Second World War, to the cognition of regional diversity, which existed before the era of nationalism, and to coping with national narratives about East Prussia. Simultaneously, in the former territory of East Prussia, which currently belongs to Poland, Russia and Lithuania, individual elements of the past of the region continue to occupy an increasingly important role in layers of the local identity, and form opportunities for local cultures of remembrance.

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 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 purpose of this paper is to examine the solution (?) of the case. People, because of famine and the occupation of the East Prussia by the Stalinists, fled the Kaliningrad region to Lithuania and other regions in search of bread and work. How many were there? There are hypothesis that 5-7 thousand or more people from Kaliningrad roamed Lithuania in 1946-1947. After the deportation of the ethnic people from the Königsberg/Kaliningrad region in 1947-1949, the MGB and Soviet militia structures searched for them in the neighbouring territories. The net result of the action was the deportation of the so called “Kaliningrad Germans” in 10-12 May, 1951 from Lithuania to Germany. The total amount of deportees, who declared their birth place as East Prussia, was 3415 persons from Lithuania and 275 other regions. The principal result of these deportations of unnecessary, ideologically foreign people was that East Prussia became homogeneously Soviet and all that remained of Königsberg and East Prussia were historical facts.

The paper gives an overview of military developments on the final stage of Second World War in the East Prussia territory. The events in this area had been sticked in collective German memory as an Apocalypse. The extensive crimes committed by the conqueror, the motives for the mass criminality in East Prussia are examined as well. These events left a collective trauma in the culture of German remembrance, but the consequences for the Soviet Union were also negative.