East Prussia
East Prussia (German: OstpreuÃÂÃÂen; Polish: Prusy Wschodnie; Russian: Восточная Пруссия — Vostochnaya Prussiya) was a province of Kingdom of Prussia, situated on the territory of former Ducal Prussia. The northern part of East Prussia corresponds today to Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast (KÃÂönigsberg), the southern parts form Poland's Warminsko-Mazurskie Voivodship. East Prussia enclosed the bulk of the ancient ancestral lands of the Baltic Prussians.
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 "WestpreuÃÂÃÂen" (West Prussia) and the old Duchy of Prussia were to be known as "OstpreuÃÂÃÂen" (East Prussia).
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2 Weimar Republic 3 Nazi reign 4 WW2 5 Further reading |
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).
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.German Empire
| Inhabitants | non-German citizens* | |
|---|---|---|
| East Prussia | 1,958,663 | 2,189 |
- The numbers for "non-German citizens" represent only people, who did not speak German language.
Following Counties had large Polish populations, according to German census from 1900:
Johannisburg (Provinz OstpreuÃÂÃÂen) 70,2 %
Ortelsburg (Provinz OstpreuÃÂÃÂen) 74,5 %
Lyck (Provinz OstpreuÃÂÃÂen) 53,2 %
Neidenburg (Provinz OstpreuÃÂÃÂen) 69,3 %
Sensburg (Provinz OstpreuÃÂÃÂen) 50,5 %
LÃÂötzen (Provinz OstpreuÃÂÃÂen) 38,1 %
Oletzko County Oletzko (Provinz OstpreuÃÂÃÂen) 33,5 %
Osterode (Provinz OstpreuÃÂÃÂen) 43,9 %
Allenstein (Provinz OstpreuÃÂÃÂen) 47,1 %
RÃÂössel (Provinz OstpreuÃÂÃÂen) 14,0 %
The German Empire ended in 1918. According to the Versailles Treaty, a plebiscite was held in the southern parts of East Prussia in 1920 to decide whether these areas should belong to the re-established state of Poland or remain German. 96.7 % of the people voted for remaining within Germany.
(Note: the choice on the ballot was in fact between "East Prussia" and "Poland")
The Nazis altered about 1/3 of the toponymy of the area, to clean up all names of Polish or Lithuanian origin.
Also, members of minorities with Polish roots (see Mazurs) who did not co-operate were brutally suppressed, with activists being sent to concentration camps. Parents stopped sharing their thoughts with their children, since children were encoraged to spy on their parents.
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, most of them young people conscripted to the German army and killed in action.
The Red Army had entered the eastern-most tip of Prussia by August 29 1944. The brutal massacres and rapes of civilians committed by the Soviet troops spread panic in the province and caused many to flee in long trecks, also via the baltic sea more than 2 million people were evacuated. The remaining population of East Prussia was during the years after the war expulsed by the communist Soviet and Polish regimes. Many people were also deported as slave labourers to Eastern parts of the Soviet Union and lost their lives there. After the expulsion of the German population, Russians Belorussians and Ukrainians were settled in the northern part and Sambia and Polish expatriates from eastern parts of Poland taken over by the Soviet Union were settled in the southern part of East Prussia, now Polish "Warmia i Mazury".
Weimar Republic
Nazi reign
WW2
Further reading
Publications in German
Publications in Polish
External links
See also