Klaipėda Region

Historical map of Memelland and the northern part of East Prussia

The Klaipėda Region (Lithuanian: Klaipėdos kraštas) or Memel Territory ([Memelland or Memelgebiet] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help); French: Territoire de Memel) was defined by the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 when it was put under the administration of the Council of Ambassadors.

The originally Old Prussian territory was conquered ca. 1252 by the Teutonic Knights, who constructed Memelburg ("Memel Castle") and the city of Memel (now Klaipėda). The Treaty of Melno introduced die Memel (the lower Neman River) as the long-standing border between Prussia and Lithuania in 1422.

The Memel Territory, situated between the river and the town of that name, was seized by Lithuania in the "Klaipeda Revolt" of 1923, returned to Germany in 1939, and made a part of the Lithuanian SSR in 1944. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it has been part of the Republic of Lithuania and contained within Klaipėda and Tauragė Counties. The Versailles border along the river remains in effect.

Timeline

Timeline with changes of control over the territory
pre–1252	Curonian and Scalovian tribes
1252–1525	Livonian Order and Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights
1525–1657	Duchy of Prussia, a fief of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
1657–1701	Brandenburg-Prussia
1701–1871	Kingdom of Prussia
1871–1918	German Empire
1918–1920	Weimar Republic
1920–1923	Council of Ambassadors
1923–1939	Republic of Lithuania
1939–1944	Nazi Germany
1944–1991	Lithuanian SSR, part of the Soviet Union
1991–present	Republic of Lithuania

Treaty of Versailles

Banknote of emergency money from 1922 issued and used in Memel (www.GermanNotes.com)

The eastern boundaries of Prussia (from 1871, part of the German Empire), having remained unchanged since the Treaty of Melno in 1422, became a matter of discussion following World War I, as the newly independent states of Poland and Lithuania emerged. The separatist Act of Tilsit was signed by Lietuvininks in 1918, demanding the unification of Prussian Lithuania (as Lithuania Minor claimed to be one of five historical cultural regions of Lithuania) with Lithuania proper.

The division of Prussia was also promoted by Poland's Roman Dmowski in Versailles who acted by orders of Józef Piłsudski: the purpose was to give the lower part of Neman River and its delta, which was located in Germany and called Memel River, to Lithuania as this would provide her access to the Baltic Sea, while Lithuania itself should be part of Poland. These ideas were supported by the French prime minister Georges Clemenceau.

In 1920, according to the Treaty of Versailles, the German area north of Memel river was put as Territoire de Memel under the administration of the Council of Ambassadors, and French troops were send for protection. During the times of French administration, the idea of an independent State of Memelland prevailed among local inhabitants. The organisation "Deutsch-Litauischer Heimatbund" (German-Lithuanian homeland federation) promoted the idea of an Freistaat Memelland, which later should return back to Germany, with its 30 000 members, both ethnic German and/or Lithuanian, about 21% of the total population.

Revolt

Main article: Klaipėda Revolt

On January 19, 1923, three years after Versailles, Lithuania occupied territory during so called Klaipėda Revolt. by militia that had entered from Lithuania. Leading rebels asked for formal admission into Lithuania as an autonomous territory. The French administration did not take any significant counteractive measures against the rebels because tensions between Germany and France were high at the time during the Ruhr Crisis. Subsequently, the territory was annexed by Lithuania, and the fait accompli was eventually confirmed by the Council of Ambassadors in 1924 which was regarded as another humiliation for the Weimar Republic.

Autonomous region within Lithuania

The area was subsequently annexed by Lithuania and the Memel Territory was granted a separate parliament, two official languages, capacity to raise its own taxes, charge custom duties, manage its cultural and religious affairs, allowed a separate judicial system, internal control of agriculture and forestry, as well as a separate social security system. The Council of Ambassadors accepted the resulting arrangement and confirmed the autonomy of the region within the Republic of Lithuania. On May 8 1924, a further Convention on the Klaipėda region confirmed the annexation, and a resulting autonomy agreement was signed in Paris. Memel Territory was recognized as an integral part of the Republic of Lithuania also by Germany on January 29, 1928, where the 2 countries signed the Lithuanian–German Border Treaty.

Importantly, the annexation gave Lithuania control of a year-round ice-free Baltic port. Lithuania fully used the makings of Klaipėda port, modernizing and adapting largely for its agricultural exports. The port reconstruction was certainly one of the larger long-term investment projects ennacted by the government of Lithuania in the interwar period.

The inhabitants of the area were not given a choice on the ballot whether they wanted to be part of the Lithuanian state or part of Germany. Since the pro-German political parties had an overall majority of more than 80% in all elections to the local parliament (see election statistics below) in the interwar period, there can be little doubt that such a referendum would have been in favour of Germany. In fact, the area had always been part of East Prussia since the Middle Ages and even many Lithuanian-speakers regarded themselves as East Prussians declaring themselves as "Klaipėdians" in the official census (see below for demographic information) and did not want to belong to a Lithuanian national state. There was also a strong confessional difference since about 95% of inhabitants of the region were Lutherans while more than 90% of Lithuanians were Catholics. And thus the government of Lithuania faced considerable opposition from the region's autonomous institutions. As years passed, claims were becoming more and more vocal about a re-integration into a resurgent Germany. It was only during the latter period that Lithuania then instituted a policy of 'Lithuanization'. This was met by even more opposition, as religious and regional differences slowly became unsurmountable. At the start of the 1930s, certain leaders of pro-Nazi organizations in the region were put on trial by Lithuania. The 1934-5 proceedings of Neumann and Sass in Kaunas can be presented as the 1st anti-Nazi trial in Europe. A significant difference however, was that its leaders were not indicted for their pro-Nazi ideology, but rather for their undesirable relations with Nazi Germany. On account of later political and economical pressure from Germany, most of these leaders were released.

Election results for the local parliament

The local parliament had 29 seats, one for every 5000 inhabitants. Men and women from age 23 had the right to vote. [2] [3]

See also the results [4] of the January 1919 elections to the Nationalversammlung.

Year	Memelländische Landwirtschaftspartei ("Agricultural Party")	Memelländische Volkspartei ("People's Party")	Sozialdemokratische Partei ("Social Democratic Party")	Arbeiterpartei (Worker's Party)	Communist Party	Others	Lithuanian People's Party
1925	38.1% - 11 seats	36.9% - 11 seats	16.0% - 5 seats			Others 9.0% - 2 seats
1927	33.6% - 10 seats	32.7% - 10 seats	10.1% - 3 seats		7.2% - 2 seats		13.6% - 4 seats
1930	31.8% - 10 seats	27.6% - 8 seats	13.8% - 4 seats	4.2% - 2 seats			22.7% - 5 seats
1932	37.1% - 11 seats	27.2% - 8 seats	7.8% - 2 seats	8.2% - 3 seats			19.7% - 5 seats
	Unified German Election List					Greater Lithuania Parties
1935	81.2% - 24 seats					18,8% - 5 seats
1938	87.2% - 25 seats					12,8% - 4 seats

Demograpic data

Population	German	Memellandish	Lithuanian	other	Religion	Source
141645	41.9%	27.1%	26.6%	4.4%	95% Evangelical Christians	[5]
141,645 (1930)	45.2%	24.2% (1925)	26.5%	-	Evangelical Lutheran 95%, Roman Catholic (1925)	[6]

A 1925 censusby subdivisions:

Area	Inhabitants	Local Lithuanians and "Klaipėdians"**	Local Germans	Other locals	Foreign citizens
Klaipėdos apskritis (Memel Kreis)	30,409	73.4%	23.7%	0.8%	2.1%
Šilutės apskritis (Kreis Heydekrug)	36,404	55.6%	41.8%	0.1%	2.5%
Pagėgių apskritis (Kreis Pogegen)	38,987	47.5%	49.2%	0.2%	3.1%
All apskritys excluding Klaipėda city	105,804	57.8%	39.3%	0.3%	2.6%
City of Klaipėda (Memel Stadt)	35,854	30.3%	57.2%	5.5%	7.0%
All regions*	141,640	50.8%	43.8%	1.6%	3.8%

*these percentages exclude foreign citizens living in Klaipėda; including foreign citizens would slightly lower the percentages

**It has to be pointed out that according to this census, people who declared themselves as locals rather than Germans or Lithuanians were designated "Klaipėdians" and counted as Lithuanians, while the 1925 (and later) election results strongly suggest that these people voted for the Memellandish parties, and later the Unified German list.

Overall, Lithuanians were more rural than Germans; the part of Lithuanians in the city of Klaipėda itself increased over time due to urbanization and migration from villages into cities and later also from remaining Lithuania (in the city of Klaipėda, Lithuanian-speaking people made up 21.5% in 1912, 32.6% in 1925 and 38.7% in 1932*). Foreign citizens might include some Germans, who opted for German citizenship instead of Lithuanian (although at the time German government pressured local Germans to take Lithuanian citizenship, so that German presence would remain). There were more Lithuanians in the north of region (Klaipėdos apskritis and Šilutės apskritis) than in south (Pagėgių apskritis). Other locals included people of other nationalities who had citizenship of Lithuania, such as Jews.

In the 1930s, a novel by local authoress Ieva Simonaitytė [7] based on family history illustrated the centuries-old German-Lithuanian relations in the region.

Heim ins Reich

By late 1938, Lithuania had lost control over the situation in Territory. In the early hours of 23 March 1939, after a political ultimatum hade made a Lithuanian delegation travel to Berlin, the Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Juozas Urbšys and his German counterpart Joachim von Ribbentrop signed the Treaty of the Cession of the Memel Territory to Germany in exchange for a Lithuanian Free Zone in the port of Memel, using the facilities erected in previous years.

Hitler had anticipated this aboard a Kriegsmarine naval ship, and at dawn [8] sailed into Memel to celebrate the return heim ins Reich of the Memelland. This proved to be the last of a series of bloodless recoveries of territories separated from the German or Austrian Empire by the Versailles treaty which had been perceived as humilitation. Yet, the staunch Allies and neighboring countries which had not shown resilience towards the democratic German governments which had struggled for over a decade in the Weimar Republic, but watched until a hardliner like Hitler was in charge, and then granted the series of triumphs to Nazi Germany.

German forces seized the territory even before the official Lithuanian ratification. England and France, as after the revolt of 1923, did not actively protect the autonomy of the territory. It was under these conditions that the Seimas was forced to approve the treaty, hoping that Germany would not press any other territorial demands upon Lithuania.

After World War II

When the area was returned to German control in 1939 under Nazi Germany, many Lithuanians and their respective organizations began leaving Memel and the surrounding area. Memel was then quickly turned into a fortified naval base for disposal by the Germans. After the failure of the German invasion of the USSR (Operation Barbarossa), the fate of East Prussia, and Memel, was sealed . By 1944–45, all of the inhabitants of the area, without ethnic distinction, had to make a decision whether to stay or leave. Germanized Lithuanians from the Memel countryside, as well as ethnic German inhabitants of Memel City, fled quickly from the approaching Red Army, most by boat or on foot. The resulting decisions of the Potsdam Conference decreed that the former Memel Territory again become a part of the Lithuanian SSR. The majority of the areas inhabitants fled to the West at the end of the war to settle in Germany and today the formerly 95% Lutheran area is entirely inhabited by Catholic Lithuanians. The few remaining ethnic Germans were then forcibly expelled (expulsion of Germans after World War II), with most opting to flee to what would be West Germany. Memel Territory, or as it is now official called today, Klaipeda Region, is of continuing vital importance to Lithuania, acting as an important harbour, as well as an industrial and agrarian region.

External links

• Template:De icon Map of languages in Prussia and Memelland, as of 1900 large
• Template:De icon Translation of Vygantas Vareikis' Die Rolle des Schützenbundes Litauens bei der Besetzung des Memelgebietes 1923
• Template:De icon Online heritage book Memelland
• Template:Fr icon STATUT DU TERRITOIRE DE MEMEL
• Klaipeda County Head Administration
• Euroregion Baltic, Members