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 & 3rd German Empires (2. und 3. Deutsches Reichs), was located in extreme Northeast Germany (existed prior to 1945; it was dissolved in 1945).

Historically, East Prussia was at the center of the development of historical Prussia. Up to the 16th century this region was inhabited by pagan tribes of Baltic (Prussian and Lithuanian) ethnic backgrounds.

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. A considerable minority speaking Polish (the Masurian dialect) lived in the southernmost districts and the northeastern portions were partially inhabited by Lithuanians.

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). Königsberg was the capital. East Prussia bordered on Poland and Lithuania in the south and east and stretched to Memel and the Baltic Sea in the north and northeast. At the same time, the northernmost region of Memel (Lithuanian: Klaipeda) was incorporated into a newly created independent Lithuania. The southernmost portion of East Prussia along with the town Soldau (Polish: Dzialdowo) became part of Poland. East Prussia was in turn extended by the eastern districts of the former Province of West Prussia which remained German after 1920 until 1945. 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 Potsdam Conference (1945), East Prussia was divided by two land transfers and the authorized expulsion of ethnic Germans. Much of the area was given by the Allied Forces to the Soviet Union because Stalin (Soviet Dictator) wanted a year-round ice-free harbor and lands on an ice-free sea. The city of Königsberg was renamed to Kaliningrad after Mikhail Kalinin. 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 regions bombed-out remains were repopulated with people forcibly relocated from all over the Soviet Union. The East Prussian land and population transfers were finally made permanent by treaties between West Germany and Poland and the USSR which were signed and ratified between 1970 and 1972.

The northern part of East Prussia was assigned at Potsdam to the USSR; it includes the cities of Königsberg (Russian: Kaliningrad), Tilsit (Russian: Sovetsk), Insterburg (Russian: Chernyakhovsk), Gumbinnen (Russian: Gusev), and Pilau (Russian: Baltiysk). The remainder of East Prussia was incorporated into Poland as Olsztyn province; this part includes the cities of Allenstein (Polish: Olsztyn), Marienburg (Polish: Malbork), and Elbing (Polish: Elbląg).

Websites

 * Websites
 * 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