Osterode district in East Prussia

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District area around 1910
Location in East Prussia

The Osterode district in East Prussia was a Prussian district in the southwest of the province of East Prussia . It existed from 1818 to 1945 and initially belonged to the Königsberg administrative district , later to the Allenstein administrative district . The seat of the district administration was Osterode , other cities were Gilgenburg , Hohenstein and Liebemühl .

geography

The landscape of the Osterode district was shaped by the Eylauer Seenplatte in the north and the southern part of the Prussian Oberland , which had its highest elevation in the district with the Kernsdorfer Höhe at 313 meters. Large parts of the region are forested. The largest lakes included the Drewenz and Schilling lakes near the district town of Osterode and the Damerausee near Gilgenburg. The Passarge river formed a large part of the eastern border of the district, and the Drewenz with its three arms was added as a further river . The Oberland Canal , which leads to Elbing , begins near the town of Osterode .

The Reichsstrasse 127 ( Graudenz - Allenstein ) and 130 ( Danzig - Allenstein ) led through the district . Railway traffic ran on the routes Deutsch Eylau – Osterode – Allenstein, Elbing – Osterode and Allenstein – Hohenstein – Neidenburg . Up until the end of the 19th century, the Oberland Canal was also an important traffic route. Economic life was predominantly determined by agriculture and forestry . Industry was only marginally represented in the cities with mechanical engineering, wood processing and weaving mills.

The district area also included Tannenberg , which went down in history through the battles between the Teutonic Order and Poland (1410) and between Germany and Russia (1914 ).

history

prehistory

The area of ​​the Osterode district was largely in the area of ​​the historical Sassen landscape . While the northern Prussian landscape of Pomesania was conquered and settled by the Teutonic Order as early as the first quarter of the 13th century , the Crusaders did not build the first castles in the almost uninhabited, primeval forest-covered Sassenland until a hundred years later, from which the settlement with immigrants was predominant was promoted from central Germany. After the first cities with Gilgenburg (1326) and Osterode (1329) were founded, the order set up the Osterode Commandery to administer the region .

After the secularization of the order state and conversion into the Duchy of Prussia in 1525 , the commanderies were converted into main offices and subordinated to larger circles. The now main office in Osterode was incorporated into the Oberland district .

After an administrative reform in 1752, this district was divided into smaller areas and the main office in Osterode was assigned to the Mohrungen district .

The district was founded in 1818

With the "Ordinance for Improved Establishment of the Provincial Authorities" of April 30, 1815, the Prussian state again changed the district division and on February 1, 1818, among other things, the new Osterode district in East Prussia was created. Wilhelm Leopold Köhn von Jaski was appointed the first district administrator. The new circle included the parishes :

On November 1, 1905, the Osterode district became part of the newly formed Allenstein district .

Weimar Republic

The Versailles Treaty of 1919 imposed a referendum on the residents of the district on whether they belonged to the German Empire or Poland . On July 11, 1920, the district decided with 46,385 votes (97.8 percent of the votes cast) to remain in East Prussia, 1,043 eligible voters (2.19 percent) voted to join Poland.

Due to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty, large parts of West Prussia, including the immediate neighboring districts of Rosenberg and Löbau, had to be ceded to Poland for the purpose of establishing the Polish Corridor . As a result, the Osterode district became the border district to the Polish Corridor from 1920. On August 15, 1920 the rural communities Groschken, Groß Lehwalde (partially), Klein Lobenstein (partially), Klein Nappern and the manor districts Groß Grieben (partially) and Klein Nappern (partially), in which the referendum had resulted in a majority for Poland, assigned to Poland.

On September 30, 1929, a territorial reform took place in the Osterode district in East Prussia, in line with developments in the rest of the Free State of Prussia , in which, with the exception of two forest districts, all previous manor districts were dissolved and assigned to the neighboring rural communities.

Development until after the end of the Second World War

On July 16, 1938, place names were extensively renamed in the Osterode district under the National Socialist government. These were phonetic adjustments, translations or free inventions:

  • Alt Jablonken: Altfinken
  • Bogunschöwen: Ilgenhöh
  • Dlusken: Seebude
  • Dombrowken: Eichdamm (East Prussia)
  • Jankowitz: Sassendorf (East Prussia)
  • Januschkau: Easter show
  • Kalwa: Kleintal
  • Ostrowitt: Osterwitt
  • Sawadden: Jungingen (East Prussia)
  • Sellwa: Sallewen
  • Thurowken: Turauken
  • Waschetta: Waschette

At the end of January 1945, the entire district was occupied by the Red Army . In the summer of 1945, the district was placed under Polish administration by the Soviet occupying power in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement . In the period that followed, the German population, unless they had fled, was expelled from the district by the local Polish administrative authorities .

Communities

As of January 1, 1939, the Osterode district included four towns and 169 rural communities. The following places had more than 1000 inhabitants in 1939:

In 1939 the district had 75,879 inhabitants and an area of ​​1551 km². It was the second largest in terms of population and the third largest in terms of area in East Prussia.

District administrators

literature

  • Gustav Neumann : Geography of the Prussian State. 2nd edition, Volume 2, Berlin 1874, pp. 22-23, item 18.
  • Prussian Ministry of Finance: The results of the property and building tax assessment in the Königsberg administrative district : Berlin 1966, Osterode district, pp. 1–43.
  • Adolf Schlott: Topographical-statistical overview of the government district of Königsberg, according to official sources . Hartung, Königsberg 1861, pp. 191-202.
  • Contributions to the customer of Prussia . Volume 2, Koenigsberg 1819, pp. 496-497.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas Kossert: Prussia, Germans or Poles? The Masurians in the field of tension of ethnic nationalism 1870–1956 . Ed .: German Historical Institute Warsaw . Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-447-04415-2 , p. 157 .
  2. ↑ Merits of Adametz