Memel district

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Memel district

The Prussian district of Memel was the northernmost district of the German Empire and existed from 1818 to 1944. From 1920 to 1939, however, it belonged to the Memel area, which was separated from Germany . On October 1, 1944, it comprised 75 smaller communities in the vicinity of the city of Memel . The area is now part of Lithuania , where Memel is the administrative seat of the Memel District (Klaipėdos apskritis) .

nature

The district included the northernmost areas of Prussia and the German Empire. It consisted of a piece of mainland at the northern end of the Curonian Lagoon and its confluence with the Baltic Sea in the urban area of ​​Memel ( Memel Deep ) and the northernmost piece of the Curonian Spit , the long narrow headland that separates the lagoon and the Baltic Sea.

The largest river in the district was the Minge , which flows through Prökuls, among other things. The King Wilhelm Canal , built in 1863–1873, ran from the Minge near the village of Lankuppen to the Curonian Lagoon in the port of Memel .

traffic

A line operated by the Prussian State Railway ran through the district from Tilsit via Pogegen and Heydekrug to Memel. The Memel station was connected to the June 1, 1875 to the railway network. The line was extended in 1892 to the Russian (Lithuanian) border near Bajohren ( German Krottingen ).

The Memeler Kleinbahn AG operated the Memel tram with two lines from 1904 to 1934 and a small railway network opened in 1905 with three lines that led to Plicken , Laugallen and Pöszeiten , three small towns on the Russian border. During the Lithuanian occupation of Memelland in 1932 a railway line to Schaulen and thus into the Lithuanian hinterland was opened.

The Cranz – Memel line operated on the lagoon side of the Curonian Spit . The stations Nidden and Schwarzort were in the district area. Memel was the most important seaport on the German Baltic coast for Russia's exports .

The Reichsstraße 132 led from Tilsit via Heydekrug into the district and there via Prökuls and Memel to the northernmost village in Germany, to Nimmersatt - "there where the empire has an end" . There was a border crossing into the Lithuanian Polangen .

population

year number Remarks
1836 37,350
1890 59,410
1900 59,797
1905 61,018 Languages: 33,508 German, 26,328 Lithuanian; Religion: 56,975 Evangelicals, 2,384 Catholics, 981 Jews
1910 61,972

District boundaries

The Memel district bordered the Heydekrug district . On the Curonian Spit there was also a short land border with the Fischhausen district .

On the mainland, the southern border of the district was about 55 ° 30 'AD, south of the village of Lankuppen, between Prökuls and Heydekrug . On the spit, the district extended significantly further south, so that Nidden was still part of the district.

In the north and east, the district bordered the Russian Empire ( Kovno Gouvernement ) until 1918 , after which it was bordered by Lithuania , which had become independent and was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 and Nazi Germany in 1941. In the west, the district bordered the Baltic Sea.

The district of Memel belonged to the administrative district of Königsberg . The situation was comparatively isolated, because the closest districts Heydekrug and Niederung belonged to the Gumbinnen administrative district . Only the Curonian Spit connected the Memel district with the rest of the administrative district.

Administrative history

Kingdom of Prussia

With the Prussian administrative reforms after the Congress of Vienna , the district of Memel was established in the administrative district of Königsberg in the province of Prussia ( not : East Prussia) on February 1, 1818 .

This included the parishes:

The district office was in Memel. Since December 3, 1829 the district - after the merger of the previous provinces of Prussia ( not : East Prussia) and West Prussia - belonged to the new province of Prussia with the seat in Königsberg i. Pr. Since July 1, 1867, the district belonged to the North German Confederation and from January 1, 1871 to the German Empire . After the division of the province of Prussia into the new provinces of East Prussia and West Prussia, the Memel district became part of East Prussia on April 1, 1878. During the First World War , Russian troops occupied the city and the district of Memel on March 18, 1915, but they were recaptured by German troops on March 21, 1915. On April 1, 1918, the municipality of Memel - with the simultaneous incorporation of the rural communities of Bommelsvitte, Janischken and Schmelz - left the district and from then on formed its own urban district . Since then, the district of Memel has been known as the district . The Memel leprosy home existed from 1899 to 1944 , the only one in Germany.

Memel area

With the entry into force of the Versailles Treaty on January 10, 1920, the district of Memel fell to the newly established Memel area . On January 10, 1923, the Memel region was occupied by Lithuanian troops and on May 7, 1923, it was placed under Lithuanian sovereignty.

In 1925 the city of Memel (lit.Klaipéda) had 35,927 inhabitants. Besides her there were 14 municipalities with more than 500 inhabitants:

Port of Nidden
Glutton, the former northernmost village in Germany

In the following years, minor border corrections were made in favor of the Memel district, on:

  • May 24, 1922: incorporation of the Süderspitze estate district (partially),
  • October 1, 1922: incorporation of the Rumpischken estate,
  • April 30, 1931: incorporation of the Charlottenhof estate.

Since 1939

On March 22, 1939, the Memel area with the district of Memel was occupied by the German Reich and incorporated into the Gumbinnen district in the province of East Prussia.

In October 1944 the district was occupied by the Red Army and again part of the Soviet Union. It came to the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic . The former district area has been in Lithuania since the dissolution of the Soviet Union .

District administrators

Sand dunes on the Curonian Spit
  • 1818–1834: Ernst Flesche
  • 1834–1834: Tolcksdorff (provisional)
  • 1834–1850: Wilhelm Martin Waagen
  • 1850–1851: Frenzel-Beyme (provisional)
  • 1851–1862: Friedrich Wilhelm Theodor Dieckmann
  • 1862–1868: Hugo Schultz (1835–1905)
  • 1868–1870: by Röder
  • 1870–1883: Alfred von Gramatzki (1834–1888)
  • 1884–1918: Heinrich Cranz
  • 1918–1924: Hans Honig
  • 1939-1940:
  • 1940–1944: Georg Kohlhoff

Local constitution

The district was initially divided into the town of Memel, rural communities and independent manor districts . This communal structure remained largely in place during the Memelland era.

The development that had taken place in Prussia in the 1920s and 1930s was made up for on May 1, 1939 after the reorganization. At this point in time the German municipal code of January 30, 1935, which had been in force in the German Reich for a long time , provided for the enforcement of the Führer principle at the municipal level. On the same day, a regional reform took place in which almost all previously independent manor districts were dissolved and assigned to neighboring communities; furthermore, the number of municipalities was considerably reduced by amalgamation. The grouping of the municipalities into administrative districts also changed.

A new district constitution was no longer created; The district regulations for the provinces of East and West Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Silesia and Saxony from March 19, 1881 continued to apply .

Place names

A radical Germanization of the Memelland / Lithuanian / Kurian place names was prepared, but was not carried out until the end of the war.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Germany and its inhabitants. A handbook of patriotism for all classes, edited by K. Fr. Vollrath Hoffman (Stuttgart 1836), p. 349.
  2. ^ Community encyclopedia for the Kingdom of Prussia. Based on the materials from the census of December 1, 1905 and other official sources, edited by the Royal Prussian State Statistical Office. Book I. Province of East Prussia, pp. 310–311.


Coordinates: 55 ° 38 '  N , 21 ° 15'  E