Talk:East Prussia
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[edit] Article's agenda
Since there seems to be some kind of anti-Polish or worse agenda on the Prussia pages bent on maintaining the idea of a Greater Prussia centered on Brandenburg to the exclusion of Prussia proper's historic limited Baltic identity, I wonder what anyone else thinks about combining the history of Baltic Prussia and Ducal Prussia either with this page or combining all these pages with the Kaliningrad Oblast and Warmia_i_Mazury pages.Zestauferov 15:26, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)
The name is the same but the people, their religion, political loyalty, language etc. are completely different, therefore I think we definitely need separate articles for Baltic Prussia, Monastic Prussia, Ducal Prussia, Royal Prussia, Brandenburg-Prussia, East Prussia, West Prussia, Kingdom of Prussia, Warmia, Masuria and the Oblast. Space Cadet 23:42, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Well there are 12,000+ Prussians now living in the Oblast and their organizational leaders calim they are the same people who have always been there. They consider themselves true Prussians distinct from the Brandenburg wannabe pretenders whose ancestors always wanted independence and simply adopted a german language for convenience sake. Only the officials call them ethnic Germans. The ideas of seperate articles is all well and good as long as the main page Prussia is a kind of disamniguation, but the Greater-Prussia advocates (re-named having taken your advice and edited our posts to avoid offence) are bent upon siezing that page only for Freistaat Prussia and its previous manifestations.Zestauferov 06:47, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Aren't those "Prussians" considered Lithuanians, don't they speak a dialect of Lithuanian and isn't that part of Oblast called "Mazoji Lietuva"?
Space Cadet 14:17, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)
This article needs certainly some editing...
"Appealing to the spirit of ancient heritage in the area, "Baltic Germans" were sucked in by Hitler's speeches (as were Germans across Europe), and as the many other ethnicities (most notably Jews, Poles, and Lithuanians) in Prussia were not allowed to vote, Hitler apparently gained quite a few supporters winning a good majority of the "ethnic German" votes in this multi-ethnic and historically richly Yiddish region. Historically Jews had played an important role in the region; although the Jewish religious perspective on Christ was not popular, anti-Semitism seems to have been non-existent there up to 1918. Not coincidentally Hitler formed his Gestapo there to counter Communist revolutionary propaganda. "
"Gradually, all men were conscripted to Wehrmacht, where they either were killed in action or taken prisoners of war."
Removed that parts and edited some stuff. Mainly stuff that claimed, the germans fled completely out of fear of the soviets, and empty lands were resettled by polish people etc... Just stuff that did intentionally not mention polish responsibility in the expulsion of the german population, but instead blamed the russians for it exclusively.
Concerning the ballot a polish explanation, though unfortunately here in German: http://www.geocities.com/jugendzeit_ostpr/volksabstimmung5.html
Chris
Would somebody please enlighten me, why a pro-polish bias was deemed necessary to be put into the article by user 217.185.194.246 ? Also, why he deleted the subsection WW II and put everything, e.g. expulsion of Germans, Annexing of East Prussia etc. etc. under "Nazi reign" ? Also why East Prussia was divided by the Potsdam Conference between Poland and Soviet Union, but ANNEXED only by the soviet union...? Did User 217.etc. not like the term "annexed" for something Poland was doing ? Why is the forceful expulsion of the german population so nicely called "transfer", why was the mentioning of civil casualties during that "transfer" deleted ? And what ist this crap about Hitler forming the Gestapo [in East Prussia] to counter communist revolutionary propaganda ? Further, why is a part i removed (for good reason) in which it is ridiculously claimed, that Jews, Poles and Lithuanians were not allowed to vote in Prussia, put back by User 217.etc. ?
CHris
PS: Thanks to the users correcting my, sometimes widespread, spelling errors... PPS: Reverted to the old version.
Feel the need to justify a bit more in detail my revert. I do not consider the version by 62.143.8.246 (and which was reverted back to by 167.83.10.23) appropriate, for this version has, first of all, rather bad grammar and spelling. So i wonder why 167etc. reverted back to this version - probably because of its content:
Several times mentioning of Germany's official policy of suppressing polish thoughts, culture and language, "bloody conquest by teuton knights", beating of polish kids who speak polish and the like. I see the point, but everything of this is sounding simply as "The Germans are bad, and therefore it was only right this once German lands came to Poland". The Reality is a bit more complex, and should be depicted as such in an encyclopia as Wikipedia.
CHris
Okay, i'm listening to your arguments...
CHris
[edit] Prusia Oriental
So, the English name is there because this is an Encyclopedia in English. The German, Lithuanian, Polish and Russian ones, because people speaking those languages lived, fought or died there historically. But why the Dutch and Spanish names? These nationalities aren't even mentioned in the article. --84.42.146.44 10:22, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
A few minor edits: - "news about [Red Army] massacres" is "rumors about massacres", otherwise give the facts, numbers and links to the corresponding wiki pages about the so-called massacres
- "Over 15,000 of these refugees, civilians as well as military, drowned" -- important to point out that half of those refugees were soldiers being transferred to the Western front to kill Americans and other Allies, or to defend Berlin, and thus were the primary reason for the attack, which otherwise would be perceived as a senseless act, which it certainly was not.
- "Russian submarines" to "Soviet submarines", USSR was much more than Russia, and was ruled single-handedly by a native of Georgia at the time
- removed _slave_ labourers of Gulag; save the slaves for ancient Egypt
- "expulsion of the German population ... from the Russian territory" -- removed Russian -- Germans were expelled from everywhere, including Poland. Why be so shy about mentioning that???
[edit] Killed in action ?
I'm a bit concerned about this statement in the World War II section: "most of the young people conscripted to the German army and killed in action". Was this indeed so that most of the young people were killed in action and if so is there any documentation or research to support this ? How many were killed in action ? --Lysy (talk) 18:44, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
- It wasn't saying that most (over 50%) of the young people were killed. It was saying that many of the 2.49 million inhabitants were killed; most of those that were killed were young people who had been conscripted into the military. It doesn't look like a typo to me, but I'll rephrase it a little bit. Olessi 19:07, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Their was no other way for the most Germans in East Prussia than to fight they where with the back to the water and the russians killed nearly everybody. I knew serveral people witch servived this tragety. Whomen and man where fighting dieing side by side never in history probably a group of people faught so brave like the last ones on the shores south of Königsberg abattle witch is forgotten and possible will never been talled Johann
[edit] Please check this
Please check this quote allegedly said by Churchill: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kaliningrad_Oblast&diff=26377985&oldid=26375207 , if it is real. One user, who does quite nationalist statements and reverts (and calling NPOV to be nationalism and russophobia), keeps adding it to Kaliningrad Oblast article. The only refferance I was able to found is in Russian and the one he gave; if it would be a real quote it would probably be available on more places online; as well, Churchill, unlike Roosevelt, seemed to be less supportive for partitioning of East Prussia...Knyaz 09:58, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Names?
Considering that this article is about a former German administrative division - a meaningless, arbitrary thing, not a mountain or a lake - why does it need so many names? Colonel Mustard 15:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Discussion moved from article to talk
The parts annexed by Poland are still heavily guarded by the central Polish government against reinstating any of the German heritage and history. Until 1990 Polish activists took measures to demolish churches, graveyards and road signs bearing indications to a German history or which were in German entirely. This Polish-Slavic nationalistic approach towards the "Recovered Territory" of southern East Prussia remains vivid even today, with old, German expellees trying to erect expulsion commemoration monuments. Except for the supported of the Roman Catholic Polish Archbishop of Warmia (Ermland), Dr. Edmund Piszcz, most Polish authorities are openly reluctant to recognise southern East Prussia's long German history and cultural heritage. Against this, the German past in the Castle of Malbork (Marienburg) is not disguised and tribute is paid to both German and Polish restorers of the heritage site over the last hundred years. This is similar to Gdansk (Danzig) where, since the fall of Communism, the visitor to the City Hall is impressed by a whole floor devoted to the (German-speaking) Free City of the inter-war years.
[edit] East Prussia as a symbol
I have moved this from the article to the talk page:
Because of its exposed position at the Imperial Russian border, its front-line position in World War I, its separation from Weimar Germany by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the violent excesses during the occupation by the Red Army in 1945, and the evacuation and expulsion of its German population, East Prussia has become a symbol for nationalists in all involved parties for the horror of war and war crimes against civilians in general. The history of East Prussia indicates the implications of systematically planned and executed ethnic cleansings on cultural heritage, as well as on long-term economic development.
The text above is unsourced and seemingly original research. Olessi 21:07, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
