Prostki

Prostki
	Prostki
Basic data
State :	Poland
Voivodeship :	Warmia-Masuria
Powiat :	Ełcki
Gmina :	Prostki
Geographic location :	53 ° 42 '  N , 22 ° 26'  E Coordinates: 53 ° 41 '53 "  N , 22 ° 25' 48"  E
Residents :	3000 (2016)
Postal code :	19-335
Telephone code :	(+48) 87
License plate :	NEL
Economy and Transport
Street :	DK65 Gołdap - Ełk - Grajewo
	Kożuchy Małe –Prostki
	Sokółki –Prostki Kopijki –Prostki
Rail route :	Białystok – Ełk – Korsze
Next international airport :	Danzig

Prostki ( German  Prostken ) is a village in the powiat Ełcki of the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in Poland . It is the seat of the rural community of the same name with 7263 inhabitants (as of June 30, 2019).

Geographical location

Prostki on the river Ełk (Lyck) is located in the south-east of the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in the immediate vicinity of the border with the Podlaskie Voivodeship . The county town of Elk (Lyck) is 15 kilometers away to the northwest.

Place name

The name Prostkens resp. Prostkis is derived from the fact that the Ełk River flows through the border here “prosta”, which means “straight ahead”.

history

Prostkens was founded as a hand-held festival in 1482. A settlement should have been there before that. At Prostken, a Brandenburg-Radziwillsche troop suffered a defeat against a Polish-Tatar force on October 8, 1656, which led to Prince Bogusław Radziwiłł being captured and, until the next year, plundering Masurian villages and towns by the Tatars and entering them Were set on fire.

In 1874 Prostken was incorporated into the newly established Ostrokollen district (1938 to 1945 Scharfenrade , in Polish Ostrykoł ). He belonged to the circle elk in Administrative district Gumbinnen (1905: Administrative district Allenstein ) in the Prussian province of East Prussia . On October 1, 1939, the new district Prostken, consisting only of the municipality of Prostken, was created. It existed unchanged until 1945.

In 1910 Prostken had 2680 inhabitants. Their number decreased to 2392 by 1933 and totaled 2302 in 1939.

On the basis of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty , the population in the Allenstein voting area , to which Prostken belonged, voted on July 11, 1920 whether it would continue to belong to East Prussia (and thus Germany) or join Poland. In Prostken, 1240 people voted to remain with East Prussia, Poland did not vote.

To the south of the East Prussian border, many small towns were dominated by a majority or strong minority of Jews . After the Wehrmacht marched in there, they surrendered this area to the USSR on the basis of the 1939 German-Soviet Border and Friendship Treaty and withdrew across the German border. Before the withdrawal, parts of the Jewish population were deported to Germany. Prostken served here as a transit camp u. a. for deported Jews. There was a large prison camp nearby. A son of Stalin should also have been accommodated here before he was transported on.

As a result of the war, Prostken came to Poland in 1945 and received the Polish form of the name “Prostki”. Today the place is the seat of a Schulzenamt ( Polish Sołectwo ) and thus a place in the network of the rural community Prostki, whose official seat it is at the same time.

Prostken border town

The former inn “Zur Grenz” (owner: Karl Krüger) in Prostki

The border column from 1545 near Bogusze

Prostken has always been a passport and customs station with relatively heavy traffic across the Prussian border to the south. It was a border town on the road from Lyck to Grajewo to continue to Białystok and Warsaw . Before the village was founded in 1482, the legendary Dorfkrug probably already existed. From 1871/1873 Prostken was also a border town on the railway line from Königsberg (Prussia) to Brest, which existed until 1945 .

In 1545 Albrecht of Brandenburg-Prussia had a brick border column built with a Latin poem by Georg Sabinus near the village of Prostken . In German translation it reads: Once, when Sigismund August and Margrave Albecht I exercised the rights in the paternal border region and the former ruled the old cities of Jagiello and the latter ruled the power of the Prussians in peace, this pillar was erected, which precisely defined the borders and separates the lands of the two dukes. August 1545.

At the time the monument was erected there was the triangle between Prussia, Lithuania and Mazovia , which had been annexed by Poland shortly before. In addition to the inscription plaque, the border column contains the coats of arms of the Duchy of Prussia and Greater Lithuania. These are replicas of the originals that were in Königsberg Castle until 1945 .

The border line had existed since the Treaty of Kalisch in 1343. The border was, next to the Spanish-Portuguese border, the most permanent border line in Europe and lasted for more than 600 years until 1945.

Today the small village runs along the route of the former border, now including Bogusze (Bogusche) the dividing line between the provinces of Warmia-Mazury and Podlasie .

Religions

Evangelical

Prostken was parish until 1945 in the parish of the Protestant church Ostrokollen (1938 to 1945 Scharfenrade , Polish Ostrykół ), which belonged to the church district of Lyck in the church province of East Prussia of the Church of the Old Prussian Union . In Prostken itself there was a chapel as a branch church . In 1910 the parish and parish was moved from Ostrokollen to Prostken. The place thus became the official seat of a parish with almost 6,000 parishioners.

Flight and expulsion of the local population as a result of the war brought the Protestant church work in Prostken to a standstill. The few Protestant residents living here today stick to the parish in the district town of Ełk (Lyck) , a branch parish of the Pisz (Johannisburg) parish in the Masurian diocese of the Evangelical Augsburg Church in Poland .

Roman Catholic

The Roman Catholic inhabitants in Prostken experienced exactly the opposite development . Before 1945 there were only a few Catholics - their parish church belonged to the one in the city of Lyck and the Diocese of Warmia - after 1945 numerous new Polish citizens, almost without exception, of the Catholic denomination, settled in Prostki. Prostky became a parish, officially built in 1962. In 1987, the construction of a church began, which was consecrated on April 14, 1999 and dedicated to Anthony of Padua . In addition to the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross in Ostrykół , a chapel in Sokółki ( German  Sokolken , 1938 to 1945 Stahnken ) as a branch church is also supplied from Prostki.

The parish of Prostki is incorporated into the deanery Ełk - Matki Bożej Fatimskiej in the diocese of Ełk of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland .

local community

The rural community (gmina wiejska) Prostki with an area of ​​230.5 km² includes the village itself and 40 other villages with school authorities (sołectwa).

→ Main article : Gmina Prostki

traffic

The Prostken border station was on a road (later German Reichsstrasse 132 ) that once ran east-east Prussia in a north-south direction from Memel (now Lithuanian Klaipėda , Lithuanian road 141 ) via Tilsit (now Russian Sowetsk , Russian trunk road A 198 ) and Gumbinnen (today Russian Gussew , Russian regional road 27A-011 ), Goldap (today Polish Gołdap , Polish state road DK65 ), Marggrabowa (Oletzko) / Treuburg (Olecko) and Lyck (Ełk) passed through and continued into the Russian Empire and Poland. Today the road runs as the Polish state road 65 to Bobrowniki on the Polish-Belarusian border. The elimination of the border situation reduced the importance of Prostkis' location on this street for traffic. The towns in the Prostken municipal area are well networked with one another and with the center through numerous side roads, some of which are rural roads.

Old Prostkens station sign in the Ełk Railway Museum

On November 1, 1871, the East Prussian Southern Railway opened the Lyck – Prostken section of a railway line from Königsberg (Prussia) (Kaliningrad) , which was extended in 1873 to include the Prostken – Białystok section, and later even to what is now Belorussian Brest . With the construction of the railway, life in the small border town changed abruptly and the number of inhabitants increased tenfold in a very short time. Extensive railway systems, a customs office, a post office and many new residential buildings for the incoming officials, ramp workers, merchants and craftsmen were built.

The former railway line is now interrupted due to the division of East Prussia into a Russian and a Polish part and is only used regularly and no longer everywhere as the Kaliningrad – Bagrationowsk and Głomno – Białystok railway . The Prostki municipality is connected to this railway line with the Prostki and Lipińskie Małe railway stations (Lipinsken, Ksp. Ostrokollen , Lindenfließ 1938-1945 ) .

The nearest international airport in Gdansk is relatively far away, and the airport in Warsaw is similarly far away .

Personalities

Native of the place

• Ernst Meyer (born July 10, 1887 in Prostken), politician (KPD) († February 2, 1930)
• Walter Marg (born July 13, 1910 in Prostken), classical philologist († November 11, 1983)
• Grzegorz Jabłoński (born March 10, 1966 in Prostki), Polish boxer, Olympic participant
• Marcin Miller (born May 27, 1970 in Prostki), Polish disco polo musician

Connected to the place

• Julius Schoeps (1864–1942), doctor, headed the field hospital in Prostken between 1914 and 1920
• Hans Pfundtner (1881–1945), administrative lawyer, State Secretary, served in the main customs office in Prostken between 1907 and 1910
• Heinz Appel (1884–1962), businessman, factory owner ("Appel-Feinkost"), maintained a production facility in Prostken until the Second World War
• Herwart Fischer (1885–1938), forensic doctor, university professor, district assistant doctor and chief doctor of the quarantine station in Prostken between 1920 and 1921.

Web links

Commons : Prostki  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Polish Postal Code Directory 2013, p. 1033
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} history of Prostken - Prostki
3. ^ Dietrich Lange, Geographical Location Register East Prussia (2005): Prostken
4. ↑ The Battle of Prostken and the Tartar invasion of East Prussia in 1656
5. ↑ Rolf Jehke, District Scharfenrade
6. ^ Rolf Jehke, District Prostken
7. ^ Uli Schubert, community directory, district of Lyck
8. ↑ Michael Rademacher: German administrative history from the unification of the empire in 1871 to the reunification in 1990. District of Lyck (Lyk, Polish Elk). (Online material for the dissertation, Osnabrück 2006). 
9. ↑ Herbert Marzian , Csaba Kenez : self-determination for East Germany. Documentation on the 50th anniversary of the East and West Prussian referendum on July 11, 1920. Editor: Göttinger Arbeitskreis , 1970, p. 86
10. ↑ One example is a letter written in July 1945 by Chaye Soika-Golding , despite the typographical error “Frostken”
11. ↑ Gmina Prostki / Wrota Marmii i Mazur ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
12. ↑ ^{a b} The Ostrokollnische Grenzsäule
13. ↑ Walther Hubatsch : History of the Protestant Church in East Prussia. Volume 3: Documents. Göttingen 1968, p. 494
14. ^ Parafia Prostki, Diocese of Ełk