Res Humanitariae

The creative heritage of Kristijonas Donelaitis makes us focus our attention on Prussian Lithuania as an ethnocultural region that provided the poet with significant creative impetuses; simultaneously, Donelaitis is associated with the Kingdom of Prussia as the space that formed his personality, the contours of his worldview, and his national self-awareness. To deeper understand the works of Kristijonas Donelaitis as a significant layer of Lithuanian cultural heritage, it is important to study in-depth the modern approaches to Prussian history and, in that context, the stereotypical interpretation of some aspects of the history of Prussian Lithuania in Lithuanian historiography of the 20th c., relevant to the present. The article analyzes the essential characteristic of Prussian history emphasized by its contemporary researchers, i.e. the spirit of contrast: the interchanging periods of modernity and regress have allegedly predetermined “the special way” of German history, Sonderweg, which preconditioned the dominance of nationalsocialism in 1933. Moreover, the issue of the contrast as the predominating motiff in the master narrative (Meistererzählung) which makes a strong impact on the collective memory is highlighted, as well as the reflection on the issue in the field of the studies of the history of Prussian Lithuania.