Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia
Max Egremont
Language: English
Pages: 384
ISBN: 0374158088
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Until the end of World War II, East Prussia was the German empire's farthest eastern redoubt, a thriving and beautiful land on the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea. Now it lives only in history and in myth. Since 1945, the territory has been divided between Poland and Russia, stretching from the border between Russia and Lithuania in the east and south, and through Poland in the west. In Forgotten Land, Max Egremont offers a vivid account of this region and its people through the stories of individuals who were intimately involved in and transformed by its tumultuous history, as well as accounts of his own travels and interviews he conducted along the way.
Forgotten Land is a story of historical identity and character, told through intimate portraits of people and places. It is a unique examination of the layers of history, of the changing perceptions and myths of homeland, of virtue and of wickedness, and of how a place can still overwhelm those who left it years before.
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style, the thick moustache curling up at its corners as if in defiance, the small, steady eyes, the solidity – comforted many anxious hearts. After Tannenberg, the Germans hoped for another quick victory, this time against Rennenkampf’s First Army – but a stalemate in September at the battle of the Masurian Lakes let Rennenkampf retreat over the frontier. Later that month the Russians counter-attacked, pushing the Germans back to their defensive positions on the River Angerap and the wide,
in a house as large as Schlobitten the imperial generosity tested the limits of the storage space, for the Dohnas had kept almost everything, accumulating a mass of clothes and costumes (used in performances in the house’s small theatre), kitchenware, the papers and books and keepsakes and gifts from over four centuries – an astonishingly complete record. Some of this mass of possessions was destroyed in the looting and fires after 1945; some was sent west early enough and can be seen in the
The Russians came to Poland because there was more money, sometimes waiting for days to get across the frontier. Frank Dombrowski was speaking in 1992, and now it’s better or at least different. I’ve crossed the border by train and by bus and had no trouble, as a rich tourist from the west – and what Dombrowski said has happened: tourism is still the hope. Farming and forestry don’t employ enough people because the farming companies that have moved in are highly mechanized, using seasonal rather
night, windows were blocked by sprouting vegetation, water cascaded from primitive cisterns while Prussian royal portraits or the mangy heads of long-dead elks looked down from damp walls hung with faded Gobelins tapestries. Carol Lehndorff, Hans’s bachelor cousin and Steinort’s owner, welcomed guests from a first-floor balcony, holding a billiard cue, offering a glass of port and matches for the bedroom lamps. One guest who changed the tune of a clock that played melodies on the hour was thrown
Weimar Republic. Königsberg students, according to Conwell-Evans, respected the new Poland. At youth camps, young German Nazis joined young Poles from the nationalistic Piłsudski Youth, each singing each other’s national songs, and at the university, many were learning Polish. The students felt that East Prussia should be repopulated with people brought in from western Germany. They denied any wish to assimilate other countries, except, of course, Austria. Conwell-Evans emphasized the fear in