Vištytis
| Vištytis | |||
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| State : |
 Lithuania
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| District : | Marijampolė | ||
| Rajong municipality : | Vilkaviškis | ||
| Coordinates : | 54 ° 27 ' N , 22 ° 43' E | ||
| Inhabitants (place) : | 436 (2011) | ||
| Time zone : | EET (UTC + 2) | ||
| Postal code : | 70346 | ||
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Vištytis (German Wystiten or Wyschtyten ) is a small town (miestelis) on the northeast bank of the Wystiter See in Lithuania . The place is the seat of the eponymous land office of the district community Vilkaviškis . In 2011 it had only 436 inhabitants.
history
Vištytis is first mentioned - as Vystyčiai - in sources from the 16th century. As a border town, Lithuanians, Germans, Poles and Russians lived together in it. Several times in the course of history the affiliation to Lithuania and Russia changed.
The heyday in the 19th century
In the mid-19th century, the city flourished thanks to border trade. Many craftsmen specialized in the manufacture of brushes. The place grew to almost 3400 inhabitants during this time. Also in the middle of the 19th century, the Evangelical Lutheran parish built a new church on the old market square. Up to 2500 Lithuanian Germans were members of this community in the founding years. To this day, a service in German is celebrated once a month in Vištytis.
The 20th century
The city burned down around the turn of the 20th century and was rebuilt. It burned down a second time in 1915 when Russian troops , who retreated from German troops after the winter battle in Masuria in World War I , set Vištytis on fire. In 1918 Vištytis became part of independent Lithuania.
The population sank to around 1,300 people by the 1930s, including 200 people of Jewish faith. 1940 Vištytis was - as all of Lithuania - by the Soviet Union occupied . On the first day of the Wehrmacht's attack on the Soviet Union , June 22, 1941, German troops captured Vištytis. They were followed by some German families who had previously been expelled from there and are now returning. Immediately, Germans and Lithuanian nationalists began harassing the Jewish residents. The Jewish men were separated. They had to dig their own grave in a field outside the village near the old mill. The men were murdered there on July 14, 1941. The Jewish women and children were initially locked in a building and also murdered on September 9, 1941. After the war, a memorial was erected by the Soviet side. According to its inscription, 220 people were murdered and buried in the mass grave.
Lithuanian-Russian border town
The Lithuanian-Russian border runs across the Dariaus ir Gireno road in the western part of Vištytis. On February 1, 2004, after 14 years of negotiations between Russia and Lithuania, a treaty came into force that moved the border to the west by approx. 100 meters. This gave Lithuania an area of around 2 hectares. Three Lithuanian families on two farms, which were previously on Russian territory west of the previous border, returned to Lithuanian territory as a result of the new demarcation. Another farm with a Lithuanian family is located in the Russian part of the city even after the new border was drawn. In return, Russia received an equally large but uninhabited piece of land as compensation from Lithuania. After the entry into force of the new border treaty, the border crossing was closed for the small border traffic of the citizens of the city, so that the farmers on the Lithuanian side lost access to their fields in the western (Russian) part of the city. The newspaper Новый Калининград ( New Kaliningrad ) reported on April 30, 2012 that there were plans for a border crossing for cyclists and pedestrians.
In addition, around 525 hectares of water from Lake Wystiter were leased from Russia to the Lithuanian state for at least 49 years, which means that here too the border was de facto shifted to the west for at least 49 years.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bertelsmann Hausatlas, Gütersloh 1960, p. 317
- ↑ 2011 census. Statistics Departamentas (Lithuania), accessed on August 2, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Josef Rosin: Pinkas ha-kehilot Lita ( Memory book of the communities in Lithuania ) (English translation from Yiddish ), accessed on July 9, 2015.
- ^ Blog of the parish
- ↑ Vera Bendt (Red.): Judaica catalog . Berlin-Museum, Jewish Museum Department, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-925653-02-3 , p. 77.
- ↑ Правительство хочет открыть на Виштынце пешеходный погранпереход с Литвой , accessed on July 9, 2015.
- ↑ Treaty between the Foreign Ministries of the Russian Federation and Lithuania of October 24, 1997
