History of Klaipėda

In the fateful years of 1938 – 1940 the Lithuanian Government failed to resort to armed resistance. It is still being argued whether Lithuania had any chances and was prepared, on its own, for the armed defence of its sovereignty. There is no answer as yet to what extent Lithuania was prepared to offer armed resistance and whether the plans developed for such eventuality by the army headquarters would have proved effective. The historiography dedicated to the armed forces of the First Lithuanian Republic insufficiently dealt with the issues related to the headquarters’ activities and strategic plans. The defence plans in case of war between Germany and Klaipėda region (Memel Territory) or entire Lithuania had not been investigated. The article, therefore, aims to investigate the strategic plan developed by the Lithuanian army headquarters for the eventual war with Germany.
Until the changes in the military authorities of 1934, Lithuania was not actually ready for effective defence. In 1935 the army headquarters developed two strategic plans, “L” (Poland) and “V” (Germany), and continually improved them. Mobilization schemes No. 11, 12 and 14 were drawn up for mobilization needs. The mobilized army at
the beginning of 1939 was intended to include 5 infantry divisions, 1 infantry brigade, 3 cavalry regiments, 12 border guard battalions, air force, technical corps, 6 reserve battalions with artillery and military services.
The headquarters foresaw a possible attack by Germany aimed at the occupation of Klaipėda region or entire Lithuania. The border guard battalions composed of border police and riflemen units in concert with covering forces were supposed to stage defence by retreating, thus securing the mobilization of the main forces. The intended main line of defence was to be located on the Dubysa – Nemunas – Kaunas line using rivers and the obsolete military fortress of Kaunas. Germany could have blocked up the port of Klaipėda and launch an assault, while Lithuania, without naval forces and coastal artillery supply roads at its disposal, would have been incapable to prevent such scenario. Due to the animosity of Klaipėda region to the government of Lithuania, the military authorities planned covering actions in the territory of Greater
Lithuania only. From 1939 onwards, the headquarters did not plan to announce mobilization in Klaipėda region in the event of war.
The main lines of advance by German forces were supposed to be: the Kybartai – Kaunas, Tilsit – Tauragė –Šiauliai lines, since it would have taken 5–7 days for the Germans to reach the Kaunas – Dubysa – Šiauliai line.

Straipsnių rinkinys MAŽOJI LIETUVA. LIETUVININKŲ KOVOS. Vilnius 2010 m. 152 p. ISBN 978-9986-1.

Algirdo Antano Gliožaičio straipsni RYTPRŪSIŲ LIETUVIŲ 1919 METŲ KREIPIMASIS Į SĄJUNGININKŲ VALDŽIAS. Straipsnio autorius skaitmeninį variantą 2021 m. papildė.

For English please see below.

Santrauka lietuviškai

Po Pirmojo pasaulinio karo prasidėjo naujoviškesnės Europos kūrimas. Daugelis Europos tautų pasinaudojo tarptautinės teisės nuostata apie tautų apsisprendimo teisę ir, griūvant imperijoms, tapo nepriklausomomis valstybėmis. Galutiniai sprendimai buvo priimami Paryžiaus (Versalio) taikos konferencijoje, kuri baigėsi prieš šimtą metų - 1920 metais.
Paryžiaus taikos konferencijos sprendimai yra vertinami nevienareikšmiškai. Dalis istorikų ir politologų teigė ir teigia, kad jie nebuvo optimalūs. Yra manančių, kad ne tik nebuvo išspręstos po karo kilusios problemos, bet sukelta naujų. Teigiama, kad sutartimis liko patenkintos tik valstybės konferencijos organizatorės. Kitas karo paliestas valstybes ir tautas priimti sprendimai tenkino tik dalinai. Deja, vertinant iš dabartinio laikmečio, kai kurioms tautoms jie buvo net pražūtingi. Viena iš jų Mažosios (Prūsų) Lietuvos lietuviai arba lietuvininkai. Glaustai susipažinkime su jų veikla, siekiais ir likimu. Minint Paryžiaus taikos konferencijos 100 metų sukaktį įvertinkime jų dokumentą Nuolankus prašymas Lietuvių Prūsijoje gyvenančių į Sąjungininkų valdžias bei į poną Prezidentą Vilsoną.

Summary in English

After the First World War, the creation of a more innovative Europe began. Many European nations have taken advantage of the provision of international law on the right of self-determination of peoples and have become independent states as empires collapse. Final decisions were taken at the Paris Peace Conference, which ended a hundred years ago - in 1920.
The decisions taken at the Paris Peace Conference have been and are critical. Historians and political scientists have argued and argue that they were not optimal. Not only have the post-war problems not been solved, but new ones have been created. It is stated that only the organizers of the state conference remained satisfied with the agreement. Other war-affected states and nations were only partially satisfied with the decisions taken. Unfortunately, from the present time, they were even disastrous for some nations. One of them is Prussian Lithuanians. To mark the 100th anniversary of the Paris Peace Conference, let's evaluate their document A HUMBLE REQUEST OF PRUSSIAN LITHUANIAN RESIDENTS TO THE ALLIED AUTHORITIES AND MR. PRESIDENT WILSON.

The history of formation of the Klaipėda Region territory started with the establishment of the city and castle of Klaipėda. On 29 July 1252, a special agreement was concluded between the Curonian Bishop Heinrich and the Teutonic Order which provided for Klaipėda Castle being built on the joint funds of the Curonian Bishop
and the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order.

The object of survey of the article is the settlement of people in the region during a period when good lordship (Herrschaft) rather than ethnic origin was the main preoccupation of politics and officials on both the Žemaitijan and Prussian sides of the border were involved in encouraging migratory settlement.

This study is a presentation and an overview of glassware finds discovered during archaeological excavations at the castle site of Klaipėda between the years 1976 and 2014. More specifically, this article considers drinking glasses, which up until now have not received much attention from archaeologists. There were only 20 units of mouth–blown glass artefacts identified from the archaeological reports and from the archives of the History Museum of Lithuania Minor. These were glass vessels used for drinking (mostly beer or wine). Remaining fragments of drinking glasses from the site of Klaipėda castle were either very poorly preserved or discovered in chronologically unreliable layers.

The year 1923 was a critical moment in the history of Weimar Republic. Due tu Germany's delay in paying war reparations, French and Belgian forces occupied the Ruhr region ii Treaty of n then January. Shortly afterwards the Lithuanians seized Memel (now Klaipeda), which in the Treaty of Versailles had been declared a Free City with a French Governor and garrison. This article is devoted to publish the results of research on the military potential of Reichswehr in East Prussia in January 1923. The hypothesis concerning the military Reichswehr impossibility to influence the Klaipeda events has to be examined in this article.

This is a presentation about 6 years work in collecting Baltic (Old Prussian, Lithuanian, Curonian) language origin toponyms in Kaliningrad (Königsberg) district area.
In Lithuanian:
Dirbdamas su Europos vietovardžiais Europos Komisijoje, Jungtiniame tyrimų centre, pastebėjau, kad GIS (Geografinės informacinės sistemos) duomenų bazėse nėra jokių baltiškų vietovardžių, esančių už Lietuvos ir Latvijos ribų. Taip yra todėl, kad niekas nėra suskaitmeninęs baltiškų pavadinimų už šių šalių ribų. Oficialiame lygmenyje yra tik Valstybinės lietuvių kalbos komisijos 1997 m. išleistas „Tradicinių lietuviškų vietovardžių“ sąrašas, kuris apima tik apie 500 pavadinimų už Lietuvos ribų, bet jis taip ir liko tik ant popieriaus. Todėl nusprendžiau pats tokį duomenų rinkinį sukurti.
Dėl didelės pavadinimų gausos nusprendžiau apsiriboti tik Karaliaučiaus sritimi. Kiekvienam vietovardžiui priskyriau geografines koordinates. Pasirinkau CartoDB platformą ir sukūriau web puslapį http://vietovardziai.lt. Dabar duomenų bazėje yra daugiau nei 4600 gyvenviečių ir 700 upių pavadinimų. Džiaugiuosi, kad didžiulį darbą yra atlikę vokiečiai, Rytų Prūsijos senųjų vaizdų entuziastai. Jie portale https://www.bildarchiv-ostpreussen.de/ yra surašę beveik visus istorinius Rytų Prūsijos vietovardžius, kada nors paliudytus istoriniuose šaltiniuose. Taip pat daug senųjų vietovardžių radau įvairiuose senoviniuose žemėlapiuose bei leidiniuose. Jų autoriai yra Merkatorius, Neselmanas, Gerulis ir kt. Stengiausi atrinkti seniausius, baltiškiausiai skambančius pavadinimus. Tai yra medžiaga ne tik baltų kalbų tyrinėtojams, bet ir istorikams. Naudojantis tokiais GIS programų įrankiais, kaip Query Builder ir SQL where clause, galima aptikti, kur Karaliaučiaus srityje yra paplitę pavadinimai su baigmeniu -čiai arba su kuria vietove yra susijęs vardas Gediminas ar kiti karalių vardai.

Wenige Städte haben ein Schicksal erlitten wie das ostpreußische Memel/Klaipeda im 20. Jahrhundert. Die Stadt an der Memel gehörte in den vergangenen 100 Jahren zum Deutschen Reich (bis 1920, 1939–1945), zur Republik Litauen (1923–1939), zur Sowjetunion (1945–1990) und schließlich wieder zu Litauen. Die wechselvolle Geschichte führte dazu, dass verschiedene Staaten, Nationen und politische Systeme ihren Anspruch auf die Stadt auch ideologisch zu untermauern suchten. Hieraus entstanden differente, ja meist konträre Identitätskonstrukte, die immer darauf abzielten, die Zugehörigkeit Memels/Klaipedas zur eigenen Kultur, Nation oder Weltanschauung zu dokumentieren.
Vasilijus Safronovas ist in seiner mehrfach ausgezeichneten litauischsprachigen Untersuchung eine beeindruckende plastische Darstellung dieser Identitätsideologien gelungen. Das vorliegende Buch leistet nicht nur einen wichtigen Neuansatz für die Geschichte der Stadt Memel/Klaipeda, sondern darüber hinaus wird deutlich, wie sehr die Suche nach und die Konstruktion von Identitäten historische Entwicklungen (mit)bestimmt. Safronovas arbeitet die von deutschen, litauischen und sowjetischen Intellektuellen und nationalen Dogmatikern entwickelten Aneignungsstrategien heraus, analysiert sie und ordnet sie in eine fast 100-jährige historische Entwicklung ein. Seine Untersuchung bietet einen methodologischen Ansatz, der für weitere Städte an der Ostsee nutzbringend Anwendung finden kann.
Für die deutsche Fassung wurde das litauische Original vom Autor überarbeitet und aktualisiert.

The article reviews the results of the archaeological, anthropological, and stable isotope analysis of the Smeltė 4 th cemetery of Klaipėda, Lithuania (dat-ing to the 19 th to early 20 th centuries) performed in 2014. The findings of the research were supplemented with the data derived from other historic cemeteries of the Klaipėda Region (former East Prussia, Germany) and the information published in the newspapers of that period. During the archaeological excavations 1 /6 of the former cemetery was examined and 40 graves were uncovered. The dead were buried in accordance with the prevailing East Prussian burial traditions of that time: their heads were orientated westwards; they were buried in wooden coffins, dressed in modest burial clothing; in one case, a book with probably a religious content was found. The anthropologi-cal examination revealed that the individuals buried in the Smeltė cemetery had not yet been affected by industrialisation processes. This was illustrated by the death rates which were still high among the youngest members of the community, namely, infants and non-adults. Another decisive argument was the type of diseases: the industrial communities featured a higher number of cholera and typhus victims, whereas the residents of Smeltė mostly featured age-related physical problems and some rather untypical traumatas. The stable isotope analysis was employed to determine the ratio of freshwater and marine resources in their diet as well as to explain the high mortality of infants due to malnutrition. The results acquired were compared with the contemporary nutrition information acquired from different written sources. Zusammenfassung Während der Bauarbeiten zur Erweiterung des Seehafens in Klaipėda, Li-tauen, bei der eine Bahntrasse gebaut wurde, fanden 2012 (Leitung Darius Balsas) und 2014 (Leitung Ernestas Vasiliauskas, Universität Klaipėda, Litauen) archäologische Ausgrabungen auf dem Areal des ehemaligen Friedhof Schmelz (lit. Smeltė) (Minijos Str. 180) statt. Während der Ausgrabungen wurde an der Stelle der neu entstehenden Bahntrasse eine Fläche von 5 × 50,5 m untersucht (insgesamt 252,5 m²). In verschiedener Tiefe von 2,93-3,5 m (die geringste Tiefe befand sich im westlichen Teil) wurden 40 Gräber aus der Zeit des 19. bis 20. Jahrhunderts geöffnet und untersucht. Folgende Fund-stücke wurden geborgen: Metall-, Glas-und Porzellanknöpfe im Brust-und Taillenbereich, Reste eines ledernen Buchumschlags (Grab einer Frau Nr. 24), Textilien (in den Männergräbern Nr. 25 und 39, Alter vermutlich zwischen 40-50 Jahren,) und im Halsbereich Halstücher und Glaskügelchen (im Grab eines Neugeborenen Nr. 23 im Kniebereich). Die Untersuchungen dieses sog. 4. Friedhofs Schmelz erbrachten wertvolle Informationen für weitere inter-disziplinäre historische und anthropologische (stabile Isotopenanalysen) Forschungen. Dadurch können Resultate zu Bestattungsbräuchen, demo-Zitation:/cite as: Ernestas Vasiliauskas, Silva Pocytė, Justina Kozakaitė, Raminta Skipitytė, The 4 th Cemetery of the Smeltè suburb of Klaipèda, Historische

The article presents artefacts related to ships collected during recent archaeological excavations at the site of Klaipėda Castle. It focuses mainly on iron clamps collected in 2014 and 2016. The archaeological contexts of their discovery are presented, and the information provided by these artefacts in the context of the Medieval historiography of Klaipėda is assessed. Iron clamps collected in stratigraphic archaeological contexts confirm the dating of the structures and layers, which is mainly based on data from the analysis of ceramic artefacts. Iron clamps and their typology are thus another reliable tool for dating Medieval archaeological objects.