East Prussia

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[[de:Ostpreu�en]] [[no:�stpreussen]]

East Prussia (German: Ostpreu�en; Polish: Prusy Wschodnie; Russian: Восточная Пруссия - Vostochnaya Prussiya) was a province of Kingdom of Prussia, situated on the territory of former Ducal Prussia. In 1772, after the First Partition of Poland, Warmia (a part of former province of Royal Prussia) was included into East Prussia. On January 31, 1773 King Friedrich II announced that the newly annexed lands were to be known as "Westpreu�en" (West Prussia) and the old Duchy of Prussia were to be known as "Ostpreu�en" (East Prussia).

Contents 1 German Empire 2 Weimar Republic 3 Nazi reign 4 WW2 5 Further reading 5.1 Publications in German 5.2 Publications in Polish 5.3 External links 5.3.1 References

German Empire

Along with the rest of Prussia, East Prussia, became part of the German Empire at its creation in 1871. After World War I until World War II, East Prussia became an exclave of Germany, created as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, when parts of the province of West Prussia (former Royal Prussia) were ceded to Poland creating the Pomeranian Voivodship or so called Polish Corridor.

East Prussia was located along the south-east corner of the Baltic Sea. Its capital was Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). The northern part of East Prussia corresponds today to Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast, the southern parts form Poland's Warminsko-Mazurskie Voivodship.

In 1875 the ethnic make up of East Prussia was 73.48% German, 18.39% Polish, and 8.11% Lithuanian (according to "Slownik geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego"). The population of the province in 1900 was 1,996,626 people, with a religious make up of 1,698,465 Protestants, 269,196 Roman Catholics, and 13,877 Jews.

Weimar Republic

The German Empire ended in 1918. During the inter-war years Prussia briefly attained a form of semi-autonomy as the autonomous region of "East Prussia" but was soon overrun by Nazis, as Hitler built up to the reinvasion of 'the Polish corridor' in order to reunite the region to Germany.

Nazi reign

Appealing to the spirit of ancient heritage in the area, "Baltic Germans" were sucked in by Hitler's speeches (as were Germans across Europe), and as the many other ethnicities (most notably Jews, Poles, and Lithuanians) in Prussia were not allowed to vote, Hitler apparently gained quite a few supporters winning a good majority of the "ethnic German" votes in this multi-ethnic and historically richly Yiddish region. Historically Jews had played an important role in the region; though the Jewish religious perspective on Christ was not popular, anti-Semitism has been said to have been non-existent there upto 1918. Not coincidentally Hitler formed his Gestapo there to counter this and any Communist revolutionaries.

The Nazis altered about 1/3 of the toponymy of the area before they were vanquished by Soviet forces. Russia had gained the eastern-most tip of Prussia by the 29th of August 1944. Many inhabitants of Prussia were sucked into evacuations through fear of the Stalinists (propaganda which did not need much exaggeration) who completed the conquest of the area by the end of autumn. Independent figures for Prussians are not recorded but some 350,000 "ethnic Germans" from across Eastern Europe had been evacuated in covered wagons to the Warthegau in Western Poland where they were settled, and granted German citizenship. They later fled from the Stalinists advance, to the interior of Germany.

WW2

During the World War II, the province was extended (see Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany). In 1939, East Prussia had 2.49 million inhabitants. Many were killed in the war. The German population of East Prussia – like the Germans of Gdansk, Pomerania and Silesia -- either fled or were expropriated and expelled in 1944-49 by the occupying Soviets. In the process, hundreds of thousands lost their lives. To replace the removed population, Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians were settled in the northern part and Sambia and Polish refugees from former eastern parts of Poland were settled in Warmia i Mazury.

Further reading

Publications in German

• B. Schumacher, Geschichte Ost- und Westpreussens, Wurzburg 1959

Publications in Polish

• K. Piwarski, Dzieje Prus Wschodnich w czasach nowożytnych, Gdańsk 1946
• Gerard Labuda (ed.), Historia Pomorza, vol. I-IV, Poznań 1969-2003 (also covers East Prussia)
• collective work, Szkice z dziej�w Pomorza, vol. 1-3, Warszawa 1958-61

External links

• Landsmannschaft Ostpreussen

References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "East_Prussia" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Prussia, used under the GNU Free Documentation License