Kaliningrad question

Kaliningrad question, or Königsberg question, is a political question concerning the return of Kaliningrad oblast to Germany, from the Russian Federation. The question is mostly hypothetical, as the current German government has stated it has no claim to it.[1][2] Still some consider its status as a Russian territory to be erroneous.[2]

One of the main reasons for the desired return of Kaliningrad is due to its history. Inesis Feldmanis, head of the Faculty of History and Philosophy at the University of Latvia, has been quoted saying that the Soviet Union's annexation of Kaliningrad is "an error in history."[2] Kaliningrad, or Königsberg, had been a part of a German state (the Teutonic Order, Kingdom of Prussia, and the unified Germany) for several centuries before the Second World War, and the city was historically a rich German cultural centre, being the home of among others the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. The subject is still an emotional one for many Germans, due to the expulsion from the area in 1945. Various support groups for descendants of the expellees and refugees lobby for the return of the area to Germany, and many Germans pilgrimage to the city to examine their roots.[3]

Other than emotional, ethical and historical reasons, there are also strategic and economic interests in the return of Kaliningrad to Germany, as it would further strengthen Germany's Baltic economy. Among the strategic reasons include the elimination of Russia's nuclear warhead launch sites, and military activity in the exclave, and the expansion of the European Union, as well as its disconnection from Russia proper. The economical factor, such as the estimated cost of return, remains one of the main arguments against a return, as well as the potential price. Another issue would be its now predominantly Russian population, with only a 0.8% German minority[3] present after the flight and expulsion of its once German population, and subsequent history under the Soviet Union.

It was rumored in 2001 that Germany was in talks with Russia to arrange the return of Königsberg in exchange for the waiving of a £22 billion debt owed to Berlin.[3]

Background

The German city of Königsberg was founded at the site of a Sambian, or Old Prussian, fort known as Twangste (Tuwangste, Tvankste), meaning "Oak Forest",[4] as well as several Old Prussian settlements, including the fishing village and port Lipnick, and the farming villages Sakkeim and Trakkeim. During the conquest of the Prussian Sambians by the Teutonic Knights in 1255, Twangste was destroyed and replaced with a new fortress known as Conigsberg. This name meant "King’s Barrow" (Latin: castrum Koningsberg, Mons Regius, Regiomontium), honoring King Ottokar II of Bohemia, who paid for the erection of the first fortress there during the Prussian Crusade.[5][6] Northwest of this new Königsberg Castle arose an initial settlement, later known as Steindamm, roughly 4.5 miles (7 km) from the Vistula Lagoon.[7]

The Teutonic Order used Königsberg to fortify their conquests in Samland and as a base for campaigns against pagan Lithuania. Because the initial northwestern settlement was destroyed by the Prussians during the rebellion, rebuilding occurred in the southern valley between the castle hill and the Pregel River. This new settlement, Altstadt, received Culm rights in 1286. Löbenicht, a new town directly east of Altstadt between the Pregel and the Schlossteich, received its own rights in 1300. Medieval Königsberg's third town was Kneiphof, which received town rights in 1327 and was located on an island of the same name in the Pregel south of Altstadt.

Königsberg joined the Hanseatic League in 1340 and developed into an important port for the south-eastern Baltic region, trading goods throughout Prussia, the Kingdom of Poland, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The chronicler Peter of Dusburg probably wrote his Chronicon terrae Prussiae in Königsberg from 1324–1330.[8] After the Teutonic Order's victory over pagan Lithuanians in the 1348 Battle of Strawen, Grand Master Winrich von Kniprode established a Cistercian nunnery in the city.[9] Aspiring students were educated in Königsberg before continuing on to higher education elsewhere, such as Prague or Leipzig.[8]

Although the knights suffered a crippling defeat in the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg), Königsberg remained under the control of the Teutonic Knights throughout the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War. Livonian knights replaced the Prussian branch's garrison at Königsberg, allowing them to participate in the recovery of towns occupied by Władysław II Jagiełło's troops.[10] In 1454 the Prussian Confederation rebelled against the Teutonic Knights and formally asked the Polish King Casimir IV Jagiellon, to incorporate Prussia into the Kingdom of Poland as a fief. This marked the beginning of the Thirteen Years' War (1454-66) between the State of the Teutonic Order and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. When western Prussia was transferred to victorious Poland in the Second Peace of Thorn (1466), which ended the Thirteen Years' War, Königsberg became the new capital of the reduced monastic state, which became a fief of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom.[11]

By paying feudal homage to his uncle, King Sigismund I of Poland, Albert of Brandenburg became the first duke of the new secular Duchy of Prussia, a fief of Poland. Königsberg, the capital, became one of the biggest cities and ports of ducal Prussia, having considerable autonomy, a separate parliament and currency, and with German as its dominant language. The city flourished through the export of wheat, timber, hemp, and furs,[12] as well as pitch, tar, and ash.[13] Königsberg was one of the few Baltic ports regularly visited by more than one hundred ships annually in the latter 16th century, along with Danzig and Riga.[14]The University of Königsberg, founded by Albert in 1544, became a centre of Protestant teaching.

Anna, daughter of Albert Frederick, married Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg, who gained the right of succession to Prussia on Albert Frederick's death in 1618. From this time the Electors of Brandenburg, the rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia, governed the Duchy of Prussia and Königsberg. When Imperial and then Swedish armies overran Brandenburg during the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648, the Hohenzollern court fled to Königsberg. On 1 November 1641, Elector Frederick William persuaded the Prussian diet to accept an excise tax.[15] In the Treaty of Königsberg of January 1656, the elector recognized his Duchy of Prussia as a fief of Sweden. In the Treaty of Wehlau in 1657, however, he negotiated the release of Prussia from Polish sovereignty in return for an alliance with Poland. The 1660 Treaty of Oliva confirmed Prussian independence from both Poland and Sweden.

By the act of coronation in Königsberg Castle on January 18, 1701, Frederick William's son, Elector Frederick III, became Frederick I, King in Prussia.

After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Königsberg became the capital of the province of East Prussia in 1773, which replaced the Province of Prussia in 1773. By 1800 the city was approximately five miles (8.0 km) in circumference and had 60,000 inhabitants, including a military garrison of 7,000, making it one of the most populous German cities of the time.[16] After Prussia's defeat at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806 during the War of the Fourth Coalition, King Frederick William III of Prussia fled with his court from Berlin to Königsberg.[17] The city was a centre for political resistance to Napoleon. In order to foster liberalism and nationalism among the Prussian middle class, the "League of Virtue" was founded in Königsberg in April 1808. In 1819 Königsberg had a population of 63,800.[18] It served as the capital of the united Province of Prussia from 1824–1878, when East Prussia was merged with West Prussia. It was also the seat of the Regierungsbezirk Königsberg, an administrative subdivision.[19]

Königsberg became part of the German Empire in 1871 during the Prussian-led unification of Germany. By 1900 the city's population had grown to 188,000, with a 9,000-strong military garrison.[7] By 1914 Königsberg had a population of 246,000;[20] Jews flourished in the culturally pluralistic city.[21] Following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, Imperial Germany was replaced with the democratic Weimar Republic. The Kingdom of Prussia ended with the abdication of the Hohenzollern monarch, William, and the kingdom was succeeded by the Free State of Prussia. Königsberg and East Prussia, however, were separated from the rest of Weimar Germany by the creation of the Polish Corridor.

According to the census of May 1939, Königsberg had a population of 372,164.[22]

World War II, destruction, and ethnic cleansing

Refugees from Königsberg fleeing to West Germany before the advancing Red Army in 1945

In 1944, Königsberg suffered heavy damage from British bombing attacks and burned for several days. The historic city centre, especially the original quarters Altstadt, Löbenicht, and Kneiphof, was destroyed, including the cathedral, the castle, all churches of the old city, the old and the new universities, and the old shipping quarters.[23]

Many people fled from Königsberg ahead of the Red Army's advance after October 1944, particularly after word spread of the Soviet atrocities at Nemmersdorf.[24][25] In early 1945, Soviet forces, under the command of the Polish-born Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, besieged the city that Hitler had envisaged as the home for a museum holding all the Germans had 'found in Russia'.[26] In Operation Samland, General Baghramyan's 1st Baltic Front, now known as the Samland Group, captured Königsberg in April.[27] Although Hitler had declared Königsberg an "invincible bastion of German spirit", the Soviets captured the city after three-month-long siege. A temporary German breakout had allowed some of the remaining civilians to escape via train and naval evacuation from the nearby port of Pillau. Königsberg, which had been declared a "fortress" (Festung) by the Germans, was fanatically defended.[28]

On April 9 — one month before the end of the war in Europe — the German military commander of Königsberg, General Otto Lasch, surrendered the remnants of his forces, following the three-month-long siege by the Red Army.[29] At the time of the surrender, military and civilian dead in the city were estimated at 42,000, with the Red Army claiming over 90,000 prisoners.[30]

About 120,000 survivors remained in the ruins of the devastated city. These survivors, mainly women, children and the elderly, plus a few others who had returned immediately after the fighting ended, were held as slave labourers until 1949. The vast majority of the German civilians left in Königsberg after 1945, died from disease or deliberate starvation, or in revenge-driven ethnic cleansing.[31] The remaining 20,000 German residents were expelled in 1949–50.[32]

In 1945, at the end of World War II, the city was captured by the Soviet Union. As agreed by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference, northern Prussia, including Königsberg, was annexed by the USSR, which attached it to the Russian SFSR. In 1946, the city's name was changed to Kaliningrad. Northern Prussia remained part of the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991, and since then has been an exclave of the Russian Federation.

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ Krickus, Richard J. The Kaliningrad Question (New international relations of Europe). Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. ISBN 0742517055, 9780742517059. p. 83
  2. 1 2 3 Tétrault-Farber, Gabrielle. "If Russia Gets Crimea, Should Germany Get Kaliningrad?" (Archive). The Moscow Times. March 21, 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 ""Germany in secret talks with Russia to take back Konigsberg." The Daily Telegraph. January 21, 2001.
  4. ↑ The Monthly Review, p. 609, at Google Books
  5. ↑ Biskup
  6. ↑ Koch, Hannsjoachim Wolfgang (1978). A history of Prussia. Longman P4
  7. 1 2 Baedeker, p. 174
  8. 1 2 Christiansen, p. 224
  9. ↑ Christiansen, p. 222
  10. ↑ Urban, pp. 225–226
  11. ↑ Christiansen, p. 243
  12. ↑ Koch, p. 44
  13. ↑ Kirby, Northern Europe, p. 8
  14. ↑ Kirby, Northern Europe, p. 13
  15. ↑ Koch, p. 46
  16. ↑ For comparison: Berlin ca. 170,000, Cologne and Frankfurt ca. 50,000 each, and Munich ca. 30,000.
  17. ↑ Koch, p. 160
  18. ↑ Holborn, 1840–1945, p. 8
  19. ↑ Hauf, R (1980) The Prussian administration of the district of Königsberg, 1871-1920, Quelle & Meyer, Wiebelsheim P21
  20. ↑ Kirby, The Baltic World, p. 205
  21. ↑ Clark, p. 584
  22. ↑ GRC, p. 37
  23. ↑ Gilbert, M (1989) Second World War, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, P582-3
  24. ↑ Berlin , Antony Beevor
  25. ↑ A Writer at War Vasily Grossman, Edited & Translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinoradova, Pimlico, 2006
  26. ↑ Gilbert, M (1989) Second World War, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, P291
  27. ↑ Jukes.Stalin's Generals, p. 30
  28. ↑ Beevor, A (2002) Berlin: The Downfall 1945 Penguin Books. p. 91.
  29. ↑ Gilbert, M (1989) Second World War, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, P660
  30. ↑ Hastings, M (2005) 2nd ed Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45, Pan Macmillan, P291
  31. ↑ de Zayas, Alfred-Maurice: A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the Eastern European Germans 1944–1950, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994
  32. ↑ Michael Wieck: A Childhood Under Hitler and Stalin: Memoirs of a "Certified Jew," University of Wisconsin Press, 2003, ISBN 0-299-18544-3, Hans Lehndorff: East Prussian Diary, A Journal of Faith, 1945–1947 London 1963
Literature
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