Königsberg (, , Polish: Królewiec, Lithuanian: Karaliaučius) was the historic German and Prussian name of the city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. It was founded in 1255 on the site of the small Old Prussian settlement Twangste by the Teutonic Knights during the Baltic Crusades. It was named in honour of King Ottokar II of Bohemia, who led a campaign against the pagan Old Prussians, a Baltic tribe.
A Baltic port city, it successively became the capital of the State of the Teutonic Order, the Duchy of Prussia and the provinces of East Prussia and Prussia. Königsberg remained the coronation city of the Prussian monarchy from 1701 onwards, though the capital was Berlin. From the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries on, the inhabitants spoke predominantly German, although the city also had a profound influence upon the Lithuanian and Polish cultures. It was a publishing center of Lutheran literature, including the first Polish translation of the New Testament, printed in the city in 1551, the first book in Lithuanian and the first Lutheran catechism, both printed in Königsberg in 1547.
A university city, home of the Albertina University (founded in 1544), Königsberg developed into an important German intellectual and cultural center, being the residence of Simon Dach, Immanuel Kant, Käthe Kollwitz, E. T. A. Hoffmann, David Hilbert, Agnes Miegel, Hannah Arendt, Michael Wieck, and others. It was the easternmost large city in Germany until World War II. Between the wars, it was in the exclave of East Prussia, separated from Germany by the Polish Corridor.
The city was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in 1944 and during the Battle of Königsberg in 1945, when it was occupied by the Red Army. The Potsdam Agreement of 1945 placed it provisionally under Soviet administration, and it was annexed by the Soviet Union on 9 April 1945. Its small Lithuanian population was allowed to remain, but Germans were expelled, the city being largely repopulated with Russians and, to a lesser degree, Ukrainians from the Soviet Union after the ethnic cleansing. It was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946, in honour of Soviet Communist functionary Mikhail Kalinin. The city's historic centre was subsequently demolished by the Soviet government.
It is now the capital of Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast, an exclave bordered in the north by Lithuania and in the south by Poland. In the Final Settlement treaty of 1990, Germany renounced all claims to the city.
Name
The first mention of the present-day location in chronicles indicates it as the place of a village of fishermen and hunters. When the Teutonic Order began the Baltic Crusades, they built a wooden fortress, and later a stone fortress, calling it "Conigsberg", which later morphed into "Königsberg". The literal meaning of this is 'King's mountain', in apparent honour of King Ottokar II of Bohemia, who led one of the Teutonic campaigns.
In Polish, it is called , in Lithuanian (calques of the original German name).
History
Sambians
Königsberg was preceded by a Sambian, or Old Prussian, fort known as Twangste (Prussian word tvinksta means a pond made by a dam). as well as several Old Prussian settlements, including the fishing village and port Lipnick, and the farming villages Sakkeim and Trakkeim.
Arrival of the Teutonic Order
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 Hill" (), honoring King Ottokar II of Bohemia, who paid for the erection of the first fortress there during the Prussian Crusade. Northwest of this new Königsberg Castle arose an initial settlement, later known as Steindamm, roughly from the Vistula Lagoon.
The Teutonic Order used Königsberg to fortify their conquests in Samland and as a base for campaigns against pagan Lithuania. Under siege during the Prussian uprisings in 1262–63, Königsberg Castle was relieved by the Master of the Livonian Order. 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 Pregolya River. This new settlement, Altstadt, received Culm rights in 1286. Löbenicht, a new town directly east of Altstadt between the Pregolya 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 Pregolya south of Altstadt.