Kaliningrad

The old center:

The former densely populated city center of Konigsberg for WW2 now consists of parks and wide streets. On the site of the former Slot van Koningsbergen is now House of the Soviets built in the sixties.

Although the massively built Stadtschloss was technically still suitable for repair, the building was burnt out and had no roof but the massive walls were still standing intact; these walls were blown up in 1957 as a symbol of Prussian power with dynamite. There are plans to rebuilt the old castle. A little further is the old stock exchange building of the city. 

On the Kneiphof stands the red brick Dom van Koningsbergen, the only building of the old town buildings that left the Russian authorities as a ruin, and which was restored after 1990 with German money. The church dating from the year 1333 is currently used as a cultural center. In the museum (200R entrance) you can view the wooden "Wallenrodt" library and, among other things, the death mask of philosopher Immanuel Kant. Inside there are two small prayer rooms and behind the Cathedral is the grave of Kant. 

You can walk to the almost Disney-like Fischdorf via the honey bridge, the oldest in town. Efforts have been made to revive the Prussian legacy on both sides of the river. Wooden brightly colored buildings, an old white lighthouse and the Jubilee footbridge remind you of old times. There are two neighborhoods where you can still view the Prussian style houses in their former glory.

In Maraunenhof many buildings have been refurbished and renovated, while in the district Amalienau (Kutuzova street) you can also still find something of authenticity.

The new center e.s .:

The present city center is located in the northwest of the old city at Ploshchad Pobedy. On the square is a theater, the Station Kaliningrad Severny, the city administration, many companies and the Russian Orthodox Christ the Savior Cathedral.

A little further up is the wide, busy Mira boulevard. Here you can shop and there are numerous restaurants and hotels. The zoo is also located here. Other interesting buildings include the World Ocean museum and the bunker museum (see museums). The Amber Museum is located in the attractive Dohna tower, an old bastion that is part of the city's old defensive ring.

Kaliningrad has a variety of still-present city gates and other defensive forts and walls. The King's Gate is the most famous gate in the city, but others include the Wrangel Tower, Brandenburg Gate, Sackheim Gate, Friedrichsburg Gate, Rossgärtner Gate and the Friedländ Gate. There are 13 citygates in total. 

There are no fewer than 15 forts built around the city as the outer defensive ring. All were built between 1872 and 1892 and all were put to the test in the defense of the city during the last months of WW2 when it was known as Konigsberg fortress. Fort V Friedrich Wilhelm III was defended by a two hundred-man German garrison during the Battle of Königsberg.

The garrison capitulated on April 8, 1945, after 16 hours of heavy resistance. Fifteen Soviet soldiers were awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for this action, there is now a permanent exhibition of Wo2 related warfare to the fortress, and there is a memorial for the Russian soldiers heroes who took the fort. The fort itself is a ruin nowadays with a wide canal, a stone and earthen wall and can not be entered. You can see some intact trenches and artillery fireplaces.

Svetlogorsk

The city of Svetlogorsk, located on the Samlandse peninsula, was first mentioned in 1258 and conquered by the German Order. In the early 19th century Rauschen when the city was then named became a fashionable seaside resort for German holidaymakers. On 24 June 1820 it was officially recognized as a spa-town.

During his visit to Rauschen in 1840 King William IV of Prussia ordered to decorate the sea quay. The arrival of a railway connection with Koningsbergen (now Kaliningrad) in 1900 gave tourism a big boost. In 1945 Rauschen was conquered by the Soviet Union while almost unaffected by the war. It became part of the Kaliningrad Oblast and was renamed Svetlogorsk in 1946.

Today it is a summer resort with a beach, many spa’s, clubs and attractions. But perhaps the big highlight of the town are some beautiful specimens of old Prussian buildings. Another attraction is the "Jugendstil" water tower.

The beginning:

The original inhabitants of the region were Baltic tribes like the Pruzzen (Prussia), who were ethnically associated with for example the Lithuanians. Prussia, divided into West and East Prussia, became the land of the German Order since about 1220.

In a number of campaigns, the Pruzzen were forcibly subjected by the knights, who then steered the country administratively in a way that was very modern for the time. They founded a dense network of dozens of castles, constructed fortified towns and populated them with immigrants from the west of the German Empire, including the Netherlands. In the 17th century, both population groups had become so mixed up that a new spoken language had come into general use: Nederpruisisch.

Koningsbergen was founded as a fortress of the Knights of the Teutonic Order on the site of the Old Prussian village of Twangste in January 1255. In 1368 the city joined the Hanseatic League. After the secularisation of the German Order in the early days of the Reformation, the city became the residence of the Duchy of Prussia in 1525, the first Protestant European state. In January 1701, Frederick I was crowned the first king in Prussia in the Koningsberger cathedral, which for a number of decades was Koningsberg's status as the capital of the new Kingdom. Prussia granted. 

Between 1740 and 1763 Königsberg became a geographical center in various wars between Prussia, Poland and Russia and from 1758 to 1763 it was occupied by Russian troops. In 1772, under King Frederick II the Great, also former West Prussia came under Prussian authority. These new acquisitions were officially named West Prussia in 1773, which they had already possessed in the Middle Ages when this area was still part of the German Order. East and West Prussia were united in personal union from 1824 to 1829 and from 1829 to 1878 as the province of Prussia. Since 1871, the province was part of the German Empire that was founded in that year. 

The Fall of Prussia

In 1806 the Kingdom of Prussia was defeated by Napoleon. In line with this, his army entered East Prussia in 1807 and two battles occured at Preußisch Eylau and Friedland. In these battles the land was burnt and on both sides together about one hundred thousand soldiers died. Shortly afterwards Napoleon made peace in the city of Tilsit with the king of Prussia and the tsar of Russia, the so-called Peace of Tilsit. On that occasion, Queen Louise of Prussia tried to move the French Emperor into milder peace conditions in an interview, without result.

East Prussia was used as the gathering place of hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the Grande Armée who wanted to invade Russia. Like a century before, famines and epidemics broke out again, and again a considerable part of the population was sacrificed. From then on, Prussia would become an important power in Europe which after 1815 would control virtually the entire North European Plain of Russia up to the Dutch border.

In the first half of the 19th century, the liberal capital Königsberg became the second city of Prussia, after Berlin. Its economic base lay in the transit trade from Russia and Poland.

WWI and after:

WW1 brought war again in the country. Russian armies invaded in August 1914 and conquered the entire east and south. Repeatedly, during the war years, the population had suffered from lack of food and after the German defeat in the capital Königsberg communist workers' councils were established. After WW1, the defeated Germany had to relinquish a large part of its eastern territories to the re-established Poland, such as the whole of West Prussia.

East Prussia, whose capital was Koningsbergen, remained German, but was now separated from the rest of the country by the Polish Corridor. The economy of East Prussia suffered more during the crisis years than in the rest of Germany. For this reason, the inhabitants of East Prussia voted in favor of Hitler's party at a very early stage and made their province one of the first strongholds of the Nazis.  

During most of WW2, the city was too far from the front lines to be reached by Allied bombers, but in August 1944 the historic city center was ultimately largely destroyed by British-American bombardments. In the last months of the war, Adolf Hitler proclaimed the city as a fortified city that had to be defended by the inhabitants at all costs. But most of the 370,000 inhabitants remained in the city, because the Nazis had prohibited any pre-evacuation.. Most citizens of Koningsbergen fled in the last months of the winter of 1944-1945, when the Nazis had virtually lost their iron grip on the population, the city in a westerly direction to the coast or the nearby port city of Pillau, where many were displaced by the German marine over the Baltic Sea have been evacuated..

Several ships loaded with tens of thousands of refugees were also torpedoed by Russian submarines on the Baltic Sea. On 6 April 1945, the Red Army launched the final offensive against the city, followed by the capitulation on 9 April. At the conquest by the Soviets, there were still 150,000 German residents in the city. In the years 1945-1947, the vast majority of the remaining population, about 130,000 people, suffered from hunger, disease and Russian revenge. The northern part of East Prussia with Koningsbergen was annexed by the Soviet Union just after conquest. The remaining German population was deported to present-day Germany in the post-war period. The last Germans left, with a few exceptions, in the fifties of the 20th century.