Klaipėdos universitetas

for a long time to Lithuanian researchers. Therefore, German historiographic and local traditions became the knowledge transferor about the first churches in the Prussian lands to the north of the right bank of the Nemunas. The thinking constructs formed by German historiographic and local traditions were accepted without critical evaluation of Lithuanian historiography. The age of particular buildings was directly linked to the first mention of parishes or believers’ community, artefacts, local traditions and etc. However, such uncritical access is not always good. This is evidenced by the case of Rusnė (Russ) church and the story of the “aging” of Viešvilė (Wischwill) church which has been discussed more widely in the article.

The article presents the Lithuanian fishing glossary in the text of 1792 Curonian lagoon fishing rules. It discusses the problems of creation of this source, authorship, the historical context. It is analysed ethnographic content in glossary of Lithuanian fishing terms. The Baltic linguists haven’t noticed it earlier. New publication of this source could encourage scientists to broader analyze of 1792 fishing rules. It is intended to draw attention to Lithuanistic material in Prussian law documents in German language.

The article investigates the society, economy, demographics of The Nothern Curonian Spit in the sixteenth century. It is considered hypothetical genealogic relationships and origin of population of the northern Curonian Spit. After statistical analysis of the collected tax data, it is analyzed population, welfare, social structure, dynamics of lifestyle’s lows and highs, extent and causes. Personal names, place names, processed statistics presented in this article could be material for further researches of comparative or economic, historical sociology, anthropology and filology subjects.

The results of the Thirteen Years’ War (1454–1466) did not remove the tensions between Poland and the Teutonic Order. A new conflict emerged at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, as the Teutonic Order sought to get rid of the Polish king’s protection of the Order’s dominions in Prussia, established under the terms of the Peace of Thorn (Toruń), some of which were not met at all. The article examines several historical sources prepared for the eventual war in Prussia and published a long ago. These are the Military Regulations (Kriegsordnung) of 1507, and two lists of property owners of the Memel (Klaipėda) Command (Komturei) who were to perform their military obligations, dated by previous research to around 1500 or 1510–1520. The connection between these documents has not so far been examined, although the author of the article assumed the existence of a connection a dozen years ago. The author examines this connection in detail, by discussing the emergence of these documents and the efforts of their initiators to adapt innovations in the organisation of defence borrowed from the Holy Roman Empire to the practices of the Teutonic Order. By examining the content of the sources and the statistical information they provide, the article raises a separate question: to what extent do the statistics generated by these sources make it possible to get details about land ownership in Prussia in the early 16th century.

The paper analyses the relationship between the growth of the transit infrastructure and the developments in Tilsit in the period 1514 to 1552. The place of Tilsit in the competition between the merchants of Gdansk, Königsberg and Kaunas for the transit of goods by the River Neman is discussed. The paper reveals how, due to the geo-political circumstances, Königsberg managed to establish itself and to subordinate Tilsit to its trading system. It examines how and why Tilsit turned from being an outer castle settlement (Flecken) to the first town established in the Duchy of Prussia. The dynamics of the growth of the number of inns in Tilsit, their ownership, and the official and family relationships of the owners are examined, as is the weight and the role of innkeepers in the process of Tilsit turning into a town.