I think East Prussia, and particularly its capital city Königsberg, had special significance as Germany’s most eastern outpost, conquered for Christianity and “civilisation” by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, and a semi-colonial territory, with a mixed population of Poles, Lithuanians and Germans. What made you zero in on East Prussia as your subject? There are many lands in Europe that used to be part of one nation that have been shifted over to another. Egremont answered a few questions about his travels through what was once East Prussia. He does so with an ease with the mountains of information and a playfulness that makes him a charming tour guide. He takes us from a modern Poland and former communist cities trying to regain their status back through centuries of migration and domination. Novelist and historian Egremont marries personal travel writing and historical research in his Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia. What was once a vibrant land-maybe a little too vibrant, in its early embrace of Adolf Hitler-is now mostly forgotten for the good it has contributed to the world. Now East Prussia has once again seen its definitions change, as the USSR crumbled and post-war communist Poland turned democratic. The Balts living on the land in the 13th century were taken over by the Teutonic Knights (“snobbish and aristocratic virgins almost to a man” as described by Hywel Williams in his review of Max Egremont’s book in the Spectator), and then came the German dominance, and through the centuries various ethnic groups and leaders wandered in and out of the territory. The land was divided up between the Soviet Union and Poland, and thousands of Germans, some of whom had roots going back centuries and others who were settled during the rise of the Third Reich, found themselves displaced and homeless.īut East Prussia had always been a place of shifting boundaries and cycles of the conquerors and the conquered. Read the last Bookslut on Barbara Almond's take on motherhood in ' The Monster Within.' Prussia had for some time had the reputation of fueling Germany’s bloodthirstiness, from its aristocratic Junkers to its slightly scary looking soldiers. At the end of World War II, it seemed important to remove Prussia from the larger German nation.
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