The Sad Tale of the City of Königsberg
This site is about a conveniently forgotten part of relatively recent European history which bears repeating every so often lest we forget how stupid, cruel and inhumane we can be to our fellow human beings. While researching the appalling act of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin – and aided and abetted by Harry Truman and Winston Churchill at the end of WWII - I came across the tragic fate of the historic and once thriving German city of Königsberg. Overrun by the Soviet Red Army in early 1945 and essentially given to the Soviet Union by the Allied forces because Stalin wanted a year-round ice-free harbour – and renamed to Kaliningrad in 1945 - it is located within a small section of Russian territory known as the Oblast or region of Kaliningrad, lying on the coast of the Baltic Sea. It is disconnected from the main bulk of the Russian land mass by Poland in the south, and by Lithuania to its North and East.
Prior to 1945 Königsberg was the cultural and economic centre in the German province of East Prussia, a region that was then cut off from the main part of Germany by a narrow strip of Polish territory and the city state of Danzig (now the Polish port of Gdansk). It was the dispute over this narrow piece of Polish land that gave Hitler the excuse to invade Poland in 1939, sparking off WWII.
The origins of Königsberg date back to a massive castle by the same name built in 1255 by the knights of the Teutonic order in the course of their expansion in the Baltic region. During the 1286-1327 period the three settlements which had formed round the castle of Konigsberg (Altstadt, Lobenicht and Kneiphof) were granted the status of towns. In 1724, they officially merged into the city of Königsberg.
The historical center of the city with an architecture characteristic of the period was formed in the late Middle Ages. Its symbols were the King’s Castle (mid-13th century), and the Cathedral Church (14th century). Altogether, there are some 730 historical and cultural monuments in the city which up to 1939 had a population of around 350,000. For centuries, Königsberg was the metropolis of eastern Germany. The city played an important role in Europe’s international relations and became a meeting point of diverse historical and cultural traditions, as well as the home for people of various nationalities and religious beliefs.
Königsberg Castle
Thus, the Huguenot settlers (French Protestants) set up many enterprises and whole industries there. Poles, Lithuanians, English and Dutch; merchants from every European country; artisans and learned men of every nationality not only coexisted peacefully: they also respected each other and together they built up their city. They helped form the world’s first Protestant state (1525) named the Duchy of Prussia with Königsberg as its capital.
On several occasions Königsberg found itself in the epicentre of major European conflicts: the Seven-Year War (1756-1763), the Napoleonic wars (1805-1807 and 1812-1814), the First World War (1914-1918) and the Second World War (1939-1945) Founded in 1544, the University of Königsberg became the center of attraction for men of science and culture from Poland and Lithuania. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the great philosopher, lived and worked here. It was in that city that the first-ever books were printed in Lithuanian.
Kneiphof Island with Dom, Synagogue at Left - 1937
Arts and commerce flourished here. Grand merchant houses, banking offices, palaces and opera houses were erected in the city center, around the reddish Gothic Cathedral on Kneiphof Island.
Königsberg City Centre around 1938
View from Castle Tower
Dom, with Synagogue in the Distance
Altstad Fishmarket
Government Buildings
Financial District
Technology House
South Station
New Louisen Drama Theatre
Alhambra Theater
Albertina University
Inner Harbour
Pregel Harbour Scene
Warehouse District
Gesekus Square
Rosengarten Square
City Square
Konigsgarten Park with Friedrich Wilhelm III Statue
City Scape
City View
Paradeplatz (Parade Square)
City Hall
Castlepond Bridge
Stock Exchange
Steindamm
City View
City View
Residential Street
City View
Newmarket
Zoo Pavilion
"Ostmesse" Exhibition Grounds
Castle Pond View
Wrangle Tower
Arthur "Bomber" Harris
However, as a result of WWII, neither Königsberg nor East Prussia exist anymore. The city’s historic centre had been fire-bombed into near oblivion by Arthur “Bomber” Harris and the RAF in August of 1944. Occasionally bombed by the Soviet Air Forces, No. 5 Group of the Royal Air Force first attacked the city on the night of 26/27 August 1944. The raid was in the extreme range for the 174 Avro Lancasters that flew 950 miles from their bases to bomb the city.
Three nights later on the 29/30 August, a further 189 Lancasters of No. 5 Group tried the target again dropping 480 tons of bombs on the centre of the city. Bomber Command estimated that 20% of all the industry and 41% of all the housing in Königsberg was destroyed in the attack. Further destruction was brought about during the 3 month siege of Königsberg by the Soviet Red Army in early 1945 and which ended on April 9 with the surrender of the local German army.
Konigsberg - 1944
The historic city center, consisting of the quarters Altstadt, Löbenicht and Kneiphof was in fact completely destroyed, among it the Dom cathedral, the castle, all churches of the city, the old and the new university.
City Centre and Dom - 1949
Out of Königsberg’s prewar population of approximately 350,000 Germans 42,000 died during the war while many had fled elsewhere to escape the fighting. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but perhaps as many as 100,000 survived the aerial onslaught of 1944, only to be held as virtual prisoners within their own city by the Red Army while enduring tremendous suffering until they were expelled 500 km westward across Poland to Germany between 1949 and 1950 as part of Stalin’s ethnic cleansing project to remove every German from former Nazi territory that was now part of the Soviet communist empire.
While many other German cities suffered similar fates in WWII, being nearly bombed into oblivion, thousands of its citizens killed (Dresden and Hamburg come to mind) the situation at Königsberg deserves special mention.
Kneiphof Island with Dom Church in 1940
Königsberg with Kneiphof Island and Dom at Centre - 2006
Over the years much of Hamburg and Dresden has been rebuilt, with many of the destroyed significant landmarks being restored to their prewar condition. As recently as 2005 the historically significant Frauenkirche in Dresden was re-consecrated in its restored state after having been essentially destroyed in the war.
Konigsberg Castle - 1949
Demolished in 1968
When the Soviets took possession of the devastated city in 1945, they took a different approach. They simply bulldozed the remains of most of the bombed out buildings and trucked away the rubble – shipping still usable building materials back to mother Russia, thus eliminating all possibility of their eventual restoration, while leaving some standing in their bombed-out condition until as recent as 2005.
Kreuz Apotheke Building around 2002
Given that all of the areas original German inhabitants had been expelled, there was no local opposition to this as Stalin had repopulated the city with people from all over the Soviet union, including from as far away as Siberia. As well, the city was now Soviet territory and – behind the Iron Curtain – essentially closed to all foreign eyes because Stalin was turning it in to a naval base, taking advantage of a newly acquired year-round ice free harbor with access to the Baltic sea.
Street Car along Soviet Prospect - Kaliningrad 1950
It was not until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that the region has come out from behind the iron curtain to fend for itself and make a better life for its citizens. In the process, some of the remains of the old city of Königsberg have been restored to a semblance of their original state, adding a bit more interest to the local post-war Soviet architecture which – in typical Stalin fashion – consists of the usual rows of dreadfully drab apartment blocks meant for the communist worker bee with only the bottle of vodka to look forward to at the end of yet another dreary day in their worker’s paradise.
In particular, the iconic Dom church on Kneiphof Island, which was still a ruin in 1990 has been largely restored with the help of German money and now looks very close to its original. Also, Kaliningrad acknowledged its link with the past by celebrating the 750 year anniversary of Königsberg / Kaliningrad in 2005. Towards this occasion, other bombed-out buildings have been restored to some degree, and more are slated for restoration based on the availability of funds.
Kaliningrad City Day Gathering before Restored Dom - 1999
The City of Königsberg is part of history now, and its tragic fate already largely forgotten if not ignored. Yet today, and every year, many German expellees originally from that ill-fated city and surrounding area undertake a trek back to their former homeland to look for that which was forever taken from them: their place of birth and the neighbourhoods and communities they grew up in. These are the things by which most of us are able to define ourselves, at least initially – and from which we build ourselves as individuals as we grow up, regardless of where we eventually end up, geographically, socially, economically or culturally. Often referred to as “homesickness-tourism”, it finds now mostly aging people looking for their cultural and ancestral roots so brutally ripped out from underneath them after hundreds of years of settlement in East Prussia. Here, the worst kind nostalgia reigns: they find themselves in a present with little or no continuity with the past to latch on to, and putting into question the very memories they have of it and themselves being nurtured by it. No doubt some will say that this is the price you pay for having been part of a warring nation – at least you were able to escape with your lives! To this I would say: well, yes, but they only got away with part of their lives, as one part of it was violently amputated when their city was incinerated by the RAF and the charred remains handed to the Soviet Union for ethnic cleansing and final disposal by the demonic Joseph Stalin.
This is truly a sad story and one I have encountered many times in my studies. Thank you for the photographs of a once magnificent city.
Thank you for these lovely photographs. It is tragic to have to be part of history during “interesting” times. Let us keep in mind that “ethnic cleansing,” although praticed “unofficially” throughout Germany, Eastern Europe and Russia on a regular basis long prior to 1933, reached unheard of heights during WWII, instituted by the Nazi Regime and the Final Solution. Had Germany not had the collective dream of Aryan world domination, the precious city of Konigsberg might have remained untouched. It is called Karma. What goes around, comes around.
Yes, it’s a shame that so many German cultural buildings were destroyed and so many civilians killed…but how many irreplaceable cultural artifacts and how many beautiful cities were destroyed by the Germans? And how many civilians (especially Slavs, who were seen as untermenschen) displaced/shot/bombed/gassed/starved? A thousandfold more.
So, one bad deed deserves another? I guess that is how Bomber Harris looked at it. With relish, I may add. But if it was bad for Jerry to fly over to to England and try and bomb women and children in their beds at night, it is bad everywhere and for for all times, and hence equally bad for Harris and the RAF to to the same thing elsewhere in reprisal. Targeting civilian populations for destruction is a despicable and barbaric act – and nowadays the trade of card-carrying Taliban and other religious idiots and political fanatics around the world.
I think it is a mistake, though, to identify a regime such as the NAZI scum with the local German population, and treat them as if they were the same entity. And while it is true that the severely deranged and maniacal Hitler had a lot of support at home, the true extent of the opposition at home will never been known because – between the brown-shirted bullies marching through the streets in their hobnail boots and that sinister gang of killers know as the Gestapo – it was made damned sure no one would ever dare to speak out in public against him.
Thank you for telling our story.
I was one of those ‘war children’ caught up in ‘Die Flucht aus Konigsberg’. I cannot remember the city before the bombs very much but I can never forget the summer of 1944 and the terrible months afterwards. I saw my family and friends killed one by one. It is too terrible to describe. I was just 6 years old.
The Russians pushed us ever westwards. If they caught us it would mean certain death. When we reached Berlin we thought we were safe. But then it happened all over again. I was alone on the streets. My family was dead. After the fighting stopped the soldiers gave us some bread and told us to leave. Our people were not welcome to stay in Berlin – that is something you do not mention. No one was allowed to give us shelter – even kids like me. Us Baltic Prussians were driven out by the Germans from Berlin – I can never forget this.
I became a refugee and finished up in England. There I was beaten in the streets and my face was pushed in the gutter because I was German. The other children would urinate on me. I can never forget this either.
Today I have no blood family, no homeland, no culture. My childhood was a nightmare. I have my memories – but I wish I hadn’t.
What did I do to deserve this?
And there are tens of thousands of us left like this. But no one cares.
More Germans died as a result of WW2 than any other people. Although ‘only’ 6-8 million died during the war, around double that number were killed afterwards by deliberate allied policies.
Infant mortality in 1946 was about 650/1000 and the food ration for each person was about 1100 calories per day.
Here in England they do not tell us these things at school. If the Germans are supposed to be ashamed of their conduct in WW2, the allies should be too.
For those who read German I can rcommend Hans-Burkhard Sumowski, “Jetzt war ich ganz allein auf der Welt”, Erinnerungen an eine Kindheit in Königsberg 1944-1947 (München 2009 – ISBN 978-3-442-73955-4). I just bought it and it covers the atrocities that Helmuth von Lust refers to (and suffered himself as well), except that the writer of the book at least finds his father back after the war. It’s almost Christmas 2009 – the feast of peace. But almost 65 years after the fall of Königsberg we, human beings, still haven’t learned and things like this still happen. Every day. On our world.
The war crimes of Bomber Harris are not only justified but celebrated by the British people and Queen Elizabeth II (note her dedication of a statue to Bomber Harris). Granted, we all condemn the evils of Naziism. But the deliberate destruction of German cultural history and cities like Konigsberg by Harris is not only shameful it is evil, motiviated by hatred of German culture that had nothing whatever to do with Naziism. And particularly the Prussian cultural ethos was hated, sterotyped into the “Junker”. despite the fact that East Prussians led the opposition to Hitler. That is why Brezhnev razed the restorable remains of the Konigsberg Castle in the 1960s. to extirpate all remains of Prussian history.
Bomber Harris was an evil, malicious soul, not looking for industrial targets to cripple German industry but to destroy all vestiges of German culture. Churchill acquiesed in all of this. And the wily Stalin turned out to be the rapacious winner, along with Poland.
I’m sure in Hell, Hitler, Stalin and Bomber Harris must all comfort one another by justifying their evil deeds. Evil is not extinguished by more evil, it is fostered and energized. That is the legacy of Bomber Harris.
Yes, Arthur “Bomber” Harris was a nasty character – no argument from me! – for taking all too much pleasure in the deliberate destruction of cultural and civilian targets. The first deliberate mass bombing of a historic city was the Royal Air Force attack which incinerated over 80 per cent of the timberbuilt Hanseatic old town of Lubeck on Palm Sunday, 28 March 1942. This attack was launched purely as an experiment, to test whether bombing timberframed buildings could start an inferno large enough to be used as an easy aiming point for later waves of bombers. Harris is on record to have said: “I wanted my crews to be well blooded, as they say in fox hunting, to have a taste of success for a change”.
Subsequently, in May 1942, in Operation Millennium, over 1,000 bombers rained incendiaries on Cologne, predictably using the Cathedral and the Old Town as their aiming point, and destroyed over 13,000 houses. In July 1943, in ‘Operation Gomorrah’ – the name itself says a lot – the week-long fire raid on Hamburg, over one-third of all buildings in the city were destroyed, including most of the historic centre and its churches, and the university library with its 800,000 volumes.
But – please! – do not make the mistake of tarring all the British people with the same brush – that would be just as unfair as tarring all the German people with the evil Nazi brush. There was plenty of opposition by those who knew what Harris was doing over Germany. After the war, Harris was the sole commander-in-chief not made a peer in 1946. Bomber Command’s crews were denied a separate campaign medal (despite being eligible for the Air Crew Europe Star and France and Germany Star) and, in protest at this establishment snub to his men, Harris refused a peerage. Disappointed by the criticisms of his methods, Harris moved to South Africa in 1948 and didn’t return until 1953 when he was offered and accepted a baronetcy. And here is one several examples of public opposition to the bombing of of civilian targets during WW II:
In any war the imperative priority is to ‘win’. Bomber Harris was doing what he was ordered to do by Churchill and the other political leaders in Britain during the Second World War. Harris’s brief was to carry the war to the civilian populations of Germany, to destroy its physical infrastructure, its industrial capacity and its ability to wage war effectively. Public opinion in Britain supported this for obvious reasons – don’t forget that Britain was under constant air attack by the Luftwaffe for virtually the entire period of the War and tens of thousands of innocent people were killed.
Koinigsberg was a key German strategic position on the Eastern Front in 1944. It had to be captured to ensure defeat of the Reich, and in the event of course this is what the Red Army was able to do. But didn’t it make sense for the RAF to lend a helping hand with their bombers? Was not their constant pressure from Stalin, and from public opinion in Britain and elsewhere who saw the Red Army – ‘our gallant Soveit allies’ – as their saviour from the odious and appalling tyranny of Naziism, to assist this process, and what politician could resist their pleas?
In hindsight, the allied bomber offensive against Germany in the War was a grotesque example of ‘overkill’. It did not significantly impact German war production until very late in the War. But hindsight is a luxury that was not available to allied strategists at the time – they simply had to do everything possible to defeat Germany because the consequences of an allied defeat wouild have involved unimaginable suffering for the people of Europe.
I have been moved by many of the postings I have read and the sheer scale of the suffering inflicted by the RAF on the civilian populations of German cities, including Konigsberg, is abhorrent and evil. But war itself is evil and, as I have said, the overriding priority of any war is to ‘win’ it, especially if the foe is as repulsive as the one that wrought havoc on so many peoples’s lives after 1939?
Thank you for putting all this together, fantastic insight in to what happened. My mother lived in Königsberg during this period and has just been telling me how she survived the horrors. She eventually escaped with her parents and sister on the 31 Jan 1945, they were one of the last ones to get a ship out of there.
For a rare glimps of pre WWII Konigsberg, see this YouTube link:
Konigsberg Video
Our mother and family escaped from the ruins of Konigsberg and was persuaded by her mother not to board the Wilhelm Gustloff ship. The ship was sunk by a Russian sub; they passed the wreckage 2 days later.
(Admin added: The Wilhelm Gustloff’s final voyage was during Operation Hannibal in January 1945, when it was sunk while participating in the evacuation of civilians and personnel who were surrounded by the Red Army in East Prussia. The Gustloff was hit by three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea on the night of 30 January 1945 and sank in less than 45 minutes. An estimated 9,400 people were killed in the sinking.If accurate, this would be the largest known loss of life occurring during a single ship sinking in recorded maritime history. – More at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Wilhelm_Gustloff )
@Alan W
Canitz, thank you, this is a priceless site.
Alan, Ronnie W., (or any others who wish to make contact), my mother also grew up in Konigsberg and was forced to flee from the russians….write to me at shakeahand@yahoo.com
title (Konigsberg)
Bernhard
PS Helmuth Von Lust, I too grew up in England and experienced a similar fate.
Thank you for this story. I came across it because I am researching my fiances family tree. His whole family lived in Konigsberg, Germany. He knows nothing about them other than names and trying to find information on them seems impossible. With all the destruction during the war its no wonder no records are available today. What a shame. It was a beautiful city.
Thank you for this wonderful site. My family is about equally divided of English and German descent and I can understand the sentiments of both sides regarding the bombing and destruction. It’s only of late that I’ve become more aware of and interested in the beautiful city of Konigsberg and the region of East Prussia. As someone mentioned, YouTube has many videos of the old city, but also try Flickr for many beautiful old pictures.
Again, thank you.
My wife (at the tim was 8yrs old) and her mother, grandmother and brother (age 5 at the time) escaped the Russians during operation Hannibal in Jan 1945. They were abe to make it to Okesboel Dennmark refugee camp until the end of the war.
Helga (Wershun) Nolden seeks other refugees from Konigsberg and from Oksboel Denmark and like to share experiences. You can reach Helga at the email above. She has also published her story and a photo review of the book can be found at the URS link above.
Thank you for presenting this forum. We really do enjoy it
HARLEY & HELGS (WERSCHUN) NOLDEN
REFUGEE FROM KONIGSBERG JAN 1945
http://www.amlegion8d.com/index.html
THIS IS A PHOTO PREVIEW OF HER BOOK
ESCAPE FROM HELLFIRE TO FREEDOM
HELGA (WERSCHUN) NOLDEN
grandpa2ha@aol.com
912-267-9572 United States