Peace from Lake Melno

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Document of the peace treaty

The treaty of melno or Meldensee is on 27. September 1422 closed peace treaty between the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania on one side and the Teutonic Knights on the other side. It was named after the Melnosee near Melno in the Prussian (Hockerland) Oberland, now in Polish Powiat Grudziądzki (Graudenz).

Contracting parties

The peace treaty was signed between

and

He ended the acts of war that had arisen several times after 1410, despite the First Peace of Thorne in 1411. The Teutonic Order had to accept assignments of territory, such as the area of Nieszawa to the King of Poland and Lower Lithuania to the Grand Duke of Lithuania, while the King of Poland waived the claims to Pomeranian , Kulmer Land and Michelauer Land .

In this contract, which defined the demarcation more precisely, an alternative name for the city of Memel or Klaipėda was documented: et castrum Memel in Samogitico Cleupeda appellatum (in German: ... and the Memelburg , called Cleupeda in Samogitia ). In particular, the border was established north of the Memel River to the city of Memel, which was to last until after the First World War.

With regard to Prussian domestic politics, the participation of representatives of the estates in the peace negotiations proved to be important, as the Prussian estates also claimed a kind of right of control over compliance with the peace treaty, which was only finally sealed in 1426.

Stable borders

For more than 500 years, the borders established on Lake Melno separated East Prussia in the north, east and south from its neighbors. This demarcation was one of the oldest and most stable in Europe. This is also noteworthy because this limit was not essentially determined by natural geographical conditions (e.g. rivers or mountains). The ethnic conditions crossed borders. The coastal region and the middle of East Prussia had been populated by Germans since the conquest of the Prussian region by the Teutonic Order (the original Prussian population gradually became part of the German majority population). The northeast and south initially remained largely uninhabited wilderness with only a few German settlements. Many Protestant Lithuanians later immigrated to the northeast (“ Prussian Lithuania ”) . The south ( Masuria ) was settled by Protestants who had left the Duchy of Mazovia because of the Counter-Reformation . Until the 20th century, significant parts of the population in these areas spoke Lithuanian or Polish (Masurian), but emotionally, due to the centuries-long historical connection to Prussia and its Protestant denomination, most of them had become Germans.

In 1923, with reference to the Lithuanian minority , Lithuania occupied Memelland , which had been separated from Germany under the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. After the Second World War, East Prussia was divided between the Soviet Union and Poland. The border established in the Melno Treaty now only exists in an approximately 50 km long border section between Lithuania and the Kaliningrad Oblast from the Memel to the Polish border, with the unusual situation here that one country, namely Russia, is within 100 years from one side (east, today's Lithuania) the border, unchanged in its course, has changed to the other side (west, today's Kaliningrad Oblast).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried Schindelmeiser: The Albertina and its students 1544 to WS 1850/51 and The history of the Corps Baltia II zu Königsberg i.Pr. 1851-1934. Vol. 2, new edition, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-028704-6 , p. 196.


Coordinates: 53 ° 26 ′ 15 ″  N , 19 ° 0 ′ 15 ″  E