Tauragė

Tauragė (pronunciation (help·info), is an industrial city, in Lithuania, and the capital of Tauragė County (Lithuanian: apskritis). In 2005, its population was 28,504. Tauragė is situated on the Jūra River, close to the Russian border of the Kaliningrad Oblast, and not far from the Baltic Sea coast. Tauragė received its city charter in 1932, and its coat of arms (a silver hunting horn in a red field), in 1997. Notable buildings in the city, include the neo-Gothic Radziwiłł palace - "the castle" (currently housing a school, and the "Santaka" regional museum) and several churches: the Lutheran (built in 1843), the Orthodox (1853), and the Catholic church (1904). A ceramics manufacturing plant operates in the city.

[edit] History

One of the major residences of the Radziwiłł family since 1655, the city has been a center of Lutheranism in Lithuania. The Russian Tsar Alexander I, signed an armistice with Napoleon I in Tauragė on June 21, 1807, that was soon to be followed with the Treaties of Tilsit. On December 30, 1812, the Prussian General Johann David Ludwig Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, signed the Convention of Tauroggen, declaring his troops neutral, that effectively ended the fragile Franco-Prussian alliance during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1836, much of the city was destroyed by a fire. In 1915, a significant part of the city's infrastructure was destroyed again, this time by German troops. On September 9, 1927, elements in the town rebelled against the rule of Antanas Smetona, but the revolt was quickly extinguished.

After the Soviet annexation of Lithuania in 1940, the Tauragė castle was a place of imprisonment for Lithuanian political dissidents, and Polish POWs. On June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa commenced, the Soviets retreated, and Tauragė was captured by the Nazis on the same day. About four thousand Jews were murdered in Tauragė and nearby villages during the Second World War. The Nazis were replaced by the Soviets in the autumn of 1944.

[edit] Trivia

Tauragė in Lithuanian is a conjunction of two words: "Tauras" which means 'aurochs' and "ragas" which means horn, hence its coat of arms.
Located close to the former Memel Territory, the city is known as Tauroggen in German
The city is known in Poland as Taurogi, mostly for being prominently mentioned [1] in "The Deluge", a classic historical novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Honoré de Balzac stayed in Tauragė in 1843
Sister cities of Tauragė are Kutno and Bełchatów (2001)
The family of the business oligarch Roman Abramovich was extradited from Taurage to Siberia during the Soviet occupation in 1940. This saved the family from The Holocaust.