Curonian Lagoon

Lagoon and Spit

The Curonian Lagoon ( Nehrungskurisch courses mare , Lithuanian Kuršių marios, Russian Куршский залив, Kurschski saliw ) is a lagoon in the Baltic Sea , which belongs to Lithuania in the north and Kaliningrad Oblast in the south . The lagoon is separated from the Baltic Sea by the Curonian Spit .

location

See also : Memel  and Klaipėda

The total area of ​​the lagoon is 1,584 km²; 415 km² of this belong to Lithuania, the rest to Russia . The greatest depth is 5.8 m, the average depth 3.8 m (although the northern part is rather shallow). The salinity reaches a maximum of 8 ‰.

The Dange and the Minija , the mouths of the Memel (the soot stream branching into a delta at Rusnė and the Gilge ), the Nemonien and the Deime flow into the lagoon . The lagoon can only flow off at the northern end of the spit, at the Memeler Tief .

In the southeast the Friedrichsgraben bypasses the lagoon; in the northeast of the König-Wilhelm-Kanal with the inclusion of the Minija, especially the Windenburger Eck .

Shipping

Seaport at Memeler Tief with lagoon and spit (view to the south)

Seagoing ships reach the port of Klaipėda , Lithuania's only seaport , on the Memel Deep . At a depth of 6 m, it has a 250–600 m wide driveway for freight and ferry traffic.

See also : Cranz – Memel – Line , Kurenkahn and Wittine

history

The locations on the Curonian Lagoon on a map from 1910 (see also connection map at the bottom right in the picture).

Haff, Nehrung and Elchwald belonged to East Prussia . Memel was the northernmost city of the German Empire . The Red Army captured the area in 1945 in the East Prussian Operation . Several months before the Potsdam Conference , it was integrated into the Soviet Union through a constitutional amendment .

literature

• Fritz Kudnig : The song of the Kurische Nehrung (poems). Dresden 1924.
• Johann Christian Wutzke : Remarks about the origin and the current state of the Curonian Lagoon and the Spit, and about the port of Memel . In: Prussian provincial sheets . Volume 5, Königsberg 1831, pp. 122-138 , pp. 226-234 , pp. 293-301 and pp. 443-464.
• Karl Friedrich Vollrath Hoffmann : Germany and its inhabitants. A patriotic handbook for all estates . Stuttgart 1834, pp. 441-445.

Web links

Commons : Curonian Lagoon  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Kurisches Lagoon in the catalog of the German National Library
• Curonian Lagoon (GenWiki)
• WorldCat

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} zeno.org
2. ↑ Dange (GenWiki)
3. ↑ Nemonien (GenWiki)
4. ↑ Soot (GenWiki)

Coordinates: 55 ° 7 ′ 22 ″  N , 21 ° 0 ′ 38 ″  E