Vilkaviškis
| Vilkaviškis | |||
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| State : |
 Lithuania
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| District : | Marijampolė | ||
| Rajong municipality : | Vilkaviškis | ||
| Founded : | 1660 | ||
| Coordinates : | 54 ° 39 ′ N , 23 ° 2 ′ E | ||
| Height : | 53 m | ||
| Area (place) : | 7.53 km² | ||
| Community area : | 1,259 km² | ||
| Inhabitants (place) : | 13,000 (2005) | ||
| Population density : | 1,726 inhabitants per km² | ||
| Inhabitant (municipality) : | 49,000 | ||
| Population density : | 39 inhabitants per km² | ||
| Time zone : | EET (UTC + 2) | ||
| Telephone code : | (+370) 342 | ||
| Postal code : | 70001 | ||
| Status: | Core city as city office, Rajongemeinde |
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Vilkaviškis (German Wilkowischken , Polish Wyłkowyszki ) is a city ( miesto ) of around 13,000 inhabitants as well as an urban part of the municipality ( miesto seniūnija ) and central place of the Rajongemeinde of the same name ( rajono savivaldybė ) with 48,370 inhabitants in the Suvalkija region of Lithuania in the Marijampolė district . The city is located on Lake Paežerių. The city is the seat of the Bishop of Vilkaviškis .
history
From 1795 to 1807 the city belonged to New East Prussia after the third division of Poland . The Prussian administration promoted the construction of stone houses instead of the wooden houses that had prevailed until then.
After the defeat of Prussia by Napoleon , he added the city to the newly founded Duchy of Warsaw . In the summer of 1812 the French Emperor marched through the city with his army on his way to Russia and made quarters here for four days. Numerous houses were damaged and the synagogue was misused as a horse stable. From 1815, after Napoleon's defeat, the city belonged to the Russian Empire. In 1857, 4,559 of the 5,503 inhabitants (83%) were Jews and the city was an important center of Jewish culture. Vilkaviškis was badly damaged in city fires in 1882, 1886 and 1895.
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During the First World War , the city was captured by the German Reich in 1915 and remained occupied until 1918 as part of the Upper East area .
From 1918 to 1940 the city was part of the now independent Lithuanian state. After the annexation of Lithuania by the USSR, it belonged to the Lithuanian Soviet Republic from August 1940 .
After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the city, only 19 km from the border at Eydtkuhnen / Eydtkau (today Chernyshevskoje ), was occupied by the Germans. It was bombed by the Luftwaffe on the morning of June 22, 1941, severely damaging the city center and destroying the important synagogue. Between July and September 1941, the city's Jewish population was murdered by the Germans and Lithuanian helpers, a total of 3,056 people. Due to the city's location near the border, the mass murder was not carried out by the so-called Einsatzgruppen , otherwise responsible for it in the Soviet Union , but by the Gestapo from Tilsit . A memorial for the murdered residents was only erected after 1990. In the years 1941 to 1944 the city was on the territory of the Reichskommissariat Ostland and was to be colonized by Germans in the long term and added to the German Reich.
In late July and early August 1944, fierce fighting raged in the immediate vicinity of the city. For the first time, the Red Army approached the German pre-war border directly here. In the first days of August, the Germans managed to retake the city again. On August 18, 1944, however, it was finally taken by the Red Army, with the front line still running in the immediate vicinity of the city for the following months.
From 1944 to 1991 the city belonged to the Lithuanian Soviet Republic, since then to the independent Republic of Lithuania.
Attractions
- For centuries, the most important building in the city was the synagogue, dating back to 1545, which was completely destroyed on June 22, 1941 by a German air raid.
- Remains of the Jewish cemetery
St. Mary's Cathedral
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St. Mary is the episcopal church of the Vilkaviškis diocese . The church was built from 1870 to 1881 as the parish church of the city and made a cathedral when the diocese was founded in 1926. The church was very badly destroyed in 1944 during the German retreat in World War II, from then on stood as a ruin and visibly fell into disrepair until the collapse of the Soviet Union . Reconstruction was only approved in 1989, the costs for which came largely from donations from the faithful themselves. The first mass could be read in 1997 in the still unfinished cathedral.
Self-governing community
Settlements
The district of Vilkaviškis includes besides the eponymous district town of Kybartai , and Virbalis , the five Miesteliai (about "town") Bartninkai, Gražiškiai, Keturvalakiai, Pilviškiai and Vištytis and 384 villages.
The largest settlements with population figures from 2001:
- Vilkaviškis - 13283 (town)
- Kybartai - 6556 (city)
- Pilviškiai - 1493 (town)
- Virbalis - 1351 (city)
- Pajevonys - 576 (village)
- Stotis - 571 (village)
- Paežeriai - 569 (village)
- Vištytis - 566 (town)
- Giedriai - 565 (village)
- Dvarnieji - 554 (village)
Administrative division
Administratively, the Rajon district consists of twelve Rajongemeinden ( seniūnijų ). The urban district community of Vilkaviškis is divided into six neighborhoods. The other cities and towns are located in the eleven rural Rajongeminden, whose official seats, with one exception, are in the named place:
- Bartninkai
- Gižai
- Gražiškiai
- Keturvalakiai
- Kybartai
- Klausučiai
- Pajevonys
- Pilviškiai
- Šeimenos seniūnija (Vilkaviškis official seat)
- Vilkaviškis town
- Virbalis
- Vištytis
people
- Aurelijus Gutauskas (* 1972), criminal lawyer and criminologist, professor, judge
- Marius Zibolis (* 1974), goalball player
- Edvinas Vaškelis (* 1996), volleyball player
