East Prussia (Ostpreußen), Prussia, German Empire Genealogy

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Guide to East Prussia - Ostpreußen ancestry, family history, and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records.

Background
East Prussia (Ostpreußen), a former province of Prussia and the 2nd and 3rd German Empires was located in extreme Northeast Germany. It was dissolved in 1945).

Historically, East Prussia was at the center of the development of historical Prussia.

From 1824–1878, East Prussia was combined with West Prussia to form the Province of Prussia, after which they were reestablished as separate provinces. Along with the rest of the Kingdom of Prussia, East Prussia became part of the German Empire during the unification of Germany in 1871. By the end of the 19th century, most of the inhabitants of East Prussia spoke German.

From 1919 to 1939 East Prussia was separated from the rest of Germany by the Polish Corridor and the Free City of Danzig (Polish: Gdańsk). In 1939, East Prussia had 2.49 million inhabitants, 85% of them ethnic Germans.

In 1945, at the end of World War II, East Prussia was overrun by Soviet troops, and about 600,000 of its civilian inhabitants were killed. Much of the region was incinerated by the RAF in 1944, and finally overrun by the Soviet Red Army in early 1945.

At the end of World War II, East Prussia was divided by two land transfers and the authorized expulsion of ethnic Germans. Much of the area was given by to the Soviet Union. 99% of the remaining German population, those who had not left by the end of the war, were expelled by the Polish and Soviet governments between 1945 and the 1950s. The region's bombed-out remains were repopulated with people forcibly relocated from all over the Soviet Union.

Websites

 * East Prussia Research Websites
 * Free Tools, Techniques & Guides to Help conduct Prussian/German Research
 * East Prussia: history with maps for East Prussia
 * Finding Genealogy Data in Central & Eastern Europe
 * So you think your ancestor was Prussian…
 * Researching “Lost” Eastern German Provinces
 * Finding Former Eastern German Place Names
 * Might your family be descended from Prussian Mennonites?
 * Prussian Mennonite Research Materials