Königsberg

Königsberg (, ), ; ; , or , ; , .}} was the historic German name of the city that is now modern-day Kaliningrad, Russia. The city was founded in 1255 on the site of the small Old Prussian settlement Twangste by the Teutonic Knights during the Baltic Crusades. It was named in honour of King Ottokar II of Bohemia, who led a campaign against the pagan Old Prussians, a Baltic tribe that was native to the area.

A Baltic port city, it successively became the capital of the Królewiec Voivodeship, State of the Teutonic Order, the Duchy of Prussia and the provinces of East Prussia and Prussia. Königsberg remained the coronation city of the Prussian monarchy from 1701 onwards, though the capital was Berlin. From the thirteenth century, it was inhabited by Germans and Old Prussians, then also by Poles, Lithuanians and French from the 14th, 15th and 17th centuries, respectively. Although a predominantly German-speaking city, it had a profound influence upon the Lithuanian and Polish cultures. It was a publishing center of Lutheran literature; this included the first Polish translation of the New Testament, printed in the city in 1551, as well as the first book in Lithuanian and the first Lutheran catechism, both printed in Königsberg in 1547.

A university city, home of the Albertina University (founded in 1544), Königsberg developed into an important German intellectual and cultural center, being the residence of Simon Dach, Immanuel Kant, Johann Georg Hamann, Käthe Kollwitz, E. T. A. Hoffmann, David Hilbert, Agnes Miegel, Hannah Arendt, Michael Wieck, and others. It was the easternmost large city in Germany until World War II. Between the wars, it was in the exclave of East Prussia, separated from Germany by the so-called Polish Corridor. The city was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in 1944 and during the Battle of Königsberg in early 1945, when it was occupied by the Red Army; it was annexed by the Soviet Union on 9 April 1945, and the Potsdam Agreement later that year placed it provisionally under Soviet administration. Its small Lithuanian population was allowed to remain, but the Germans were expelled.

After the war, it was largely repopulated with Russians and, to a lesser degree, Ukrainians and Belarusians from the Soviet Union. It was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946, in honour of Soviet Communist head of state Mikhail Kalinin. The city's historic centre was subsequently demolished by the Soviet government. Today, the geographical area is now the capital of Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast, an exclave bordered to the north by Lithuania and to the south by Poland. In the Final Settlement treaty of 1990, Germany renounced all claims to the city and in general any lands east of the Oder–Neisse line. Provided by Wikipedia