Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The paper aims to analyse various aspects of interdependence between the nationality and the citizenship of the residents of Klaipėda region by restricting the analysis to the political and economic factors of the 20th c. The analysis was carried out on the basis of little known archival materials. The article seeks to prove that nationality and citizenship, as the principal forms of the identity expression, have not always been a matter of free self-determination; they would frequently change depending on the external political and ideological pressure.

During the first half of the 20th century, East Prussia was described as the bulwark of Germandom against the permanent danger of a Slavic attack. The regulations of the Versailles Treaty and the founding of the Republic of Poland partly on former German soil seemed to verify this view. These fears had great influences of the identity of the East Prussians. The political culture and the public opinion were dominated by an aggressive, nationalist and anti-Polish propaganda. Many East Prussians feared a Polish attack and prepared to fight against it in volunteer battalions. The defending of East Prussia was to overrule all other conflicts, they believed. Even harsh political struggles, which where fought all over the German Reich, had to step back behind the need for a united East Prussia. In order to boost the poor province it was given economic aid and thus its role as bulwark was highlighted. On the other hand, this fighter-mentality was seen as a blueprint for the whole Reich. In 1945, this image of East Prussia was fatal. Many people believed in the government’s propaganda that they were fighters and that it would be possible to defend the province. As a result they stayed in their homes for too long and became victims of the Red Army.

The fact that the Curonian Spit is one of the most important landscape icons of East Prussia is substantiated by reports from the travels and literary works of numerous German authors. This paper analyses articles on the Curonian Spit that were published between 1920 and 1939 in the “Ostdeutsche Monatshefte” journal that was one of the most important cultural magazines focused on the issues of the “German East”. It served as the basis for a description of elements that created the “ambience” (Georg Simmel) of this East Prussian landscape icon (dunes, the sea, the bay, the world of birds, and the ubiquitous moose), and its perception as a specifically German landscape, particularly in the inter-war period.

The aim of the article is to present theoretical interpretation of the concept of Lithuania Minor as a Lithuanian memory site in the contemporary Lithuanian historical narative. The principal attention in the article is focussed on theoretical aspects that allow understanding the prerequisites of ideological receptions of the region of Lithuania Minor in the discourse of Lithuanian memory culture. From the empirical viewpoint, the content of stereotypes, images, and plots that realise the concept of Lithuania Minor as a Lithuanian memory site is analysed.

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.