Кіші Литва: Тарих және географиялық аймақтар

Lithuanian ethnographic region in former Prussia

The area of Lithuania Minor embraced the land between the lower reaches of the river Dangė to the north and the major headstreams of the river Pregolya to the south. The southwestern line ran from the Curonian Lagoon along the Deimena River to its south, continued along the Prieglius River to the Łyna river, up to the town of Alna and hence southward along the Ašvinė river to Lake Ašvinis and from there eastward to the border of Lithuania Major. The region embraced about 11 400 km2. The broader understanding of Lithuania Minor includes the area west from the Łyna and south form the lower reaches of the Prieglius and the Sambian Peninsula, making up 17–18 thousand km2 in total. The former ethnic region of Lithuania Minor belongs to different states today. The part of Kaliningrad Oblast (excluding the city of Kaliningrad and its surroundings), a few territories in Poland's Warmian Masurian Voivodeship, as well as the following territories in modern day Lithuania: the Klaipėda district municipality, the Šilutė district municipality, Klaipėda city, Pagėgiai municipality, and Neringa municipality had once ethnically, linguistically and culturally been the latter Lithuanian region. Although now divided among countries, Lithuania Minor had been intact formerly, all these areas were once part of Prussia and thus politically separated from Lithuania Major. From 1773 to 1918, all of Lithuania Minor was part of the Kingdom of Prussia's province of East Prussia, the core of medieval Prussia. It was a region outside of the former Lithuanian state, inhabited by a large number of Prussian Lithuanians. Ethnic Prussian Lithuanians were mostly Protestants, in contrast to the inhabitants of Lithuania Major, who predominantly were Roman Catholics. Giving the Prussian Lithuanian name first and followed by the German name, major cities in former Lithuania Minor were Klaipėda (Memel) and Tilžė (Tilsit). Other towns include Ragainė (Ragnit), Šilokarčema (Heydekrug), renamed to Šilutė, Gumbinė (Gumbinnen), Įsrutis (Insterburg), Stalupėnai (Stallupönen).

The territory, which was given the denomination Lithuania Minor in the 16th century, was not alien to Lithuanians ethnically as well as politically in earlier times. It had once been partly subject to Mindaugas' Lithuania in the 13th century. Later, captured (1275–76) and ruled by the Teutonic Knights, the land was reckoned, what is recorded in the historical sources, to be their patrimony by Algirdas (officially said) and Vytautas (recorded to be said unofficially).

The territory of western Lithuania began to be threatened by the Livonian order from the north and Teutonic Knights from the south in the 13th century. The Orders were seizing the lands of Baltic tribes, one of which – Lithuanians – had its state and was also expanding its power among neighbouring Baltic and Ruthenian people. The Order was granted the right over the pagan lands by popes and emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. It was conqueror's right – awarded them as much lands as they would conquer. After the Battle of Saule the Livonian order was crushed and incorporated to the Teutonic Order as part of it. Mindaugas, in critical political circumstances for his rule, undertook to grant Samogitia to the Order in exchange for baptism and the crown from the pope. After Mindaugas became a king, a direct subject of the Pope, in 1253, the acts of grants of the lands for Livonian Order were written:
1253 July, the act granting Nadruvia and Karšuva to the Order, written in Lithuanian curia by Mindaugas. 1259 the act granting Dainava and Scalovia to the Order, written by Mindaugas. In the historiography this act is considered to be falsified by the Order. All Baltic tribes rose against the Order after the Battle of Durbe (1260). Mindaugas officially canceled his relations with the Livonian Order in 1261 and the acts of grants became invalid. Mindaugas's royal dynasty discontinued when he and two sons were assassinated in 1263. Lithuanian dukes did not join the Prussians in their uprising due to inside instability of the Lithuanian throne. Nadruvia and Scalovia (which comprised much of later Lithuania Minor) had been taken by the Teutonic Knights in 1275–1276 after the Prussian uprising and they reached Neman from the south in 1282. Lithuania also did not manage to retain Semigallian castles lying north from Lithuania and the Semigallians fell under the Order finally during Gediminas's rule. Samogitians, whose land lay between the Livonian Order and the Teutonic Order, had been many times granted to the Order juridically by Lithuanian dukes, popes, emperors of Holy Roman Empire, but either the Order did not managed to take it, or the Lithuanian dukes departed from their treaty and grant. Klaipėda was passed to Teutonic Order from its Livonian branch in 1328. The patrimony for Nadruvia and Scalovia was remembered by post Mindaugas grand dukes of Lithuania: Algirdas, during the negotiation on Lithuania's Christianization, postulated (1358) for the emperor of Holy Roman Empire, Charles IV, that he would accept Christianity when the Order was transferred to Russia's border to fight Tatars and Lithuania would be given back the lands to Łyna, Pregolya rivers and Baltic sea. Lithuanian grand dukes probably considered the Order to be illegitimate state, propagandizing the mission of Christianization as the fundamental aim and factually seeking political authority at one time. Additionally, after the Order had become Protestant state, the conquered Baltic lands were not acknowledged as its possession by the popes. After the Battle of Grunwald the dispute between Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Order on Samogitia started. Vytautas wanted the border to be the Neman River, while the Order wanted to have Veliuona and Klaipėda in the right side of the river. We find that the Memel castle is built in the land of Samogitians. Neither Master, nor the Order was able to prove anything opposing. The Order did not accept the solution. Later Vytautas agreed the solution to be made by Emperor Sigismund. He acknowledged Samogitians for the Order (1420). Vytautas did not accept the solution. Polish and Lithuanian military, not capturing the castles, devastated Prussia then and the Treaty of Melno was made. Klaipėda was left for the Order. Since the Melno treaty the land later become Lithuania Minor had been officially separated from Lithuania. It became part of the state of the Teutonic Order. In 1454, King Casimir IV Jagiellon incorporated the region to the Kingdom of Poland upon the request of the anti Teutonic Prussian Confederation. After the subsequent Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466), the longest of all Polish Teutonic wars, the region was a part of Poland (and thus the Polish–Lithuanian union) as a fief held by the Teutonic Knights.

In 1525, per the Treaty of Kraków, the state of the Teutonic Order was secularized and transformed into Ducal Prussia, a vassal duchy of Poland within the Polish–Lithuanian union Several local resistance members and smugglers were arrested by the Prussians. The Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland from 1892 named Tilsit as the capital of Lithuania Minor.

Lithuania declared its independence from Russia in 1918 during World War I. Some Prussian Lithuanian activists signed the Act of Tilsit, demanding unification of Lithuania Minor and Lithuania Major into a single Lithuanian state, thus detaching the areas of East Prussia from Germany which were inhabited by Prussian Lithuanians. This claim was supported by the Lithuanian government. The part north of the Neman River up to Memel was separated from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles in 1920, and was called the Memel Territory. It was made a protectorate of the Entente States, in order to guarantee port rights to Lithuania and Poland. In January 1923, the Klaipėda Revolt took place and Klaipėda region was annexed to Lithuania in 1923 under violation of the Treaty of Versailles. The subsequent incorporation of the territory brought economic prosperity to Lithuania, with the region accounting for 30 percent of the country's economy. However, the region's economic significance declined after economic sanctions were imposed by Nazi Germany in 1933. Nazi Germany persecuted the Lithuanian population of the region. In 1938 a massive campaign of renaming of placenames was carried out in the German held part of Lithuania Minor in attempt to erase traces of Lithuanian origin. In 1940, the last Lithuanian newspaper published in Tilsit was closed by the Nazis. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop delivered an ultimatum to the Lithuanian Foreign Minister on 20 March 1939, demanding the surrender of the Klaipėda region to German control. Ribbentrop vowed that if Klaipėda was not ceded to Germany peacefully, it "will be taken by other means if necessary". Lithuania submitted to the ultimatum and, in exchange for the right to use the new harbour facilities as a Free Port, ceded the disputed region to Germany in the late evening of 22 March 1939. Reunion of the Memel Territory with Germany was met with joy by a majority of Prussian Lithuanians. It was Nazi Germany's last territorial gain prior to World War II. The remainder of Lithuania came under occupation by the Soviet Union, then briefly became independent again in 1941 before being occupied entirely by Nazi Germany. During World War II, the Germans operated the KZ Hohenbruch in the region, as well as several prisoner of war camps for Allied POWs of various nationalities, incl. the Stalag 331 C/I C and Stalag I D camps for regular soldiers, the Stalag Luft VI camp and Dulag Luft transit camp for air force personnel, Oflags 52, 53, 60 for officers, and forced labour subcamps of Stalag I A. Groups of Poles expelled from German occupied Poland were deported by the Germans to forced labour in the region (in the vicinity of Klaipėda and Tilsit).

At the end of the war, the local German and Lithuanian population of the former East Prussia either fled or was expelled to the western parts of Germany. The Soviet Union recaptured Lithuania in 1944 and the Memel region was incorporated into the newly formed Lithuanian SSR in 1945 while the remainder of Lithuania Minor was divided between Poland (small parts now forming the Warmian Masurian Voivodeship) and the Soviet Union (eastern part of the Kaliningrad Oblast). After the death of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev offered the Kaliningrad Oblast to the Lithuanian SSR. Secretary Antanas Sniečkus refused this offer. In 2010, a secret document was found which indicated that in 1990, the Soviet leadership was prepared to negotiate the return of Kaliningrad to Germany against payment. The proposal was declined by German diplomats. Lithuanian historian K. Jablonskis etc., archaeologist P. Kulikauskas etc. denied the idea of desolate land, uninhabited forests (Old German wildnis, wiltnis) and mass Lithuanian migration. The idea of Lithuanian immigration was accepted by Antanas Salys, Zenonas Ivinskis. J. Jurginis had studied the descriptions of the war roads into Lithuania and found where the word wildnis was used in the political sense. He deduced that wildnis was that part of Lithuania which belonged to the Order juridically, by the grants of the popes and emperors of Holy Roman Empire, but was not subordinate to it due to the resistance of the residents. The theory of desolate land was also criticized by Z. Zinkevičius, who has thought that old Baltic toponymy could be only preserved by the remaining local people. H. Łowmiański thought that Nadruvian and Scalovian tribes had changed ethnically due to Lithuanian colonization as early as times of tribal social order. Linguist Z. Zinkevičius has presumed that Nadruvians and Skalovians were transitive tribes between Lithuanians and Prussians since much earlier times than German invasion had occurred.

The two main lands later became Lithuania Minor, Nadruvia and Scalovia, had Prussian ethnic substratum. Lithuanian elements prevailed in the toponymy of the territory, though. It is possible that Nadruvia and Skalovia had changed ethnically in the process of Lithuanian penetration to and consolidation of the Baltic lands in the pre state times. The contacts between Nadruvian and Scalovian populations with those to the north and west, where the grand dukes of Lithuania were ruling from the 13th or the 12th century, were probably close. Nadruvia had bordered on Sudovia and Samogitia, Skalovia – on Samogitia and Nadruvia. The inside Baltic migration, trading and ethnic consolidation presumably had happened since the earlier times than the German military invasion occurred. The land probably depopulated during the war and the source of the regeneration of the population was internal as well as presumably mainly external from neighbouring areas. The land was resettled by returning refugees and newcomers from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After the permanent war had ended finally with the Treaty of Melno in 1422, the population continued to grow. The newcomers were Lithuanians from Trakai, Vilnius voideships and Samogitia. Lithuanian farmers used to flee to the Sudovian forest, which lain in the Trakai Voivodeship, and live here without dues, what was possible until the agrarian reform of Lithuania, performed during the second half of the 16th century. The tribal areas such as Nadruvia, Scalovia, Sudovia had to some extent later coincided with the political administrative and the ethnic areas. Nadruvia and Scalovia became Lithuanian Province in Prussia and the Yotvingian population persisted in their lands more commonly as western Lithuanians in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Prussia.

As a distinctive ethno cultural region, Lithuania Minor emerged during the 15th or the 16th century. The substratum of the Prussian Lithuanian population comprised mostly ethnic Baltic tribes – either local (Old Prussians – Sambians, north Bartians, Natangians; either probably formerly Lithuanized or Prussian Scalovians and Nadruvians; Sudovians, some Curonians) or from neighbouring areas (newcomers from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: Lithuanians from the right side of the middle reaches of the Neman or Suvalkija, Samogitians, Sudovians, Prussians etc.). Colonists from the Holy Roman Empire also contributed to the Lithuanian population to some extent. Prussians and Yotvingians tended to be assimilated by Lithuanians in Lithuania Minor. Lithuanian percentage decreased to about half of population in about half of the area eastwards from Łyna river and northwards from the lower reaches of Pregolya during the 18th century. Lithuanian percentage of the area was continually decreasing during the ages since the plague of 1709–1711. In 1724, King Frederick William I of Prussia prohibited Poles, Samogitians and Jews from settling in Lithuania Minor, and initiated German colonization to change the region's ethnic composition. Lithuanians constituted the majority only in about half of the Memelland area and by Tilžė and Ragainė from the last quarter of the 19th century upwards to 1914. Lithuanian percentage was marginal in the southern half of the region of Lithuania Minor at that time. There resided about 170 thousands of Lietuvininks in East Prussia till 1914.