Picture Library East Prussia, a collection of planned 100,000 fotos, drawings, paitings, maps, photo postcards in east prussia mostly of times before the year 1945.

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translated from the original article I have not altered or augmented the original content of this article. Any credit, critique, or praise should be addressed to the original author via his site. I simply provide this document in English (via translation) as a study aid for those seeking more information on the topic. I used Deepl.com to assist in the creation of this translation. Copyright © 2004 Klaus-Peter Jurkat / As of December 22, 2004 The proportion of Prussians (Pruzzen) contributing to the newly formed “Prussian tribe” For some time I have been concerned with the question of how many immigrants from Lithuania and Mazovia were involved in the settlement of East[ern] Prussia through 1740. Dollinger states: “However, special reference must be made to his generous settlement work after the plague years in East Prussia, which was centrally directed by the state. The king allowed settlers from the Palatinate and Nassau, 2,000 Swiss and 17,000 Protestants expelled from Salzburg because of their faith to immigrate to East Prussia. As a result, the East Prussian population grew by 160,000 people to about 600,000 between 1713 and 1740. The population of East Prussia grew together into a state community from Germans of various tribes and foreigners, including Lithuanians, not least because of their personal ties to their princely patron.” Gause is of the opinion that the share of the Lithuanian and Mazovian element in the Prussian tribe cannot be determined numerically. In any case, it was not small. Lithuanian origin are the many names on -kat, kies, eit, at, is, us (Kukat, Budskies, Lenkeit, Szameitat, Jaguttis and Stantus are mentioned as examples). Masurian are the names on -ski, ek (Kowalski, Ziemek), ak (Nowak) and a (Kurella, Slomka, Skwarra, Warda). If one wants to calculate at least roughly the Lithuanian and Mazurian share in the Prussian tribe, it is advisable to deal with the Pruzes and then with the immigrant colonists, for whom estimates or literature values are available. In the 13th century the Pruzes lived in the densely populated districts of Pomesania, Pogesania, Warmia (Ermland), Barten, Natangen and Samland from the Vistula to the Curonian Lagoon, which were preceded by the large but less densely populated districts of Sassen, Galinden, Sudauen, Nadrauen and Schalauen in a wide arc from the southeast to the northeast. A disproportionately large part of the total Prussian population lived in the Samland Gau. The Prussians were forcibly Christianized by the Teutonic Order from 1231. When the subjugation of the last Pruz tribe of the Sudau in 1283 marked the end of a land-grabbing war lasting more than 50 years, the country was called Prussia, and a wilderness emerged on its eastern and southern borders. Gause states that in the course of the fighting the border dungeons Nadrauen, Schalauen and Sudauen became almost deserted. The remnants of the Schalauer were settled in villages near Tilsit and Ragnit. The surviving Sudau people were resettled by the Teutonic Order in Samland, if they had not left for Lithuania. The area was known as “Sudauerwinkel” for a long time. The great wave of immigration of German colonists died out already around 1320 (Gause). The settlement was then continued with the children of the immigrants as “internal colonization”. When the Teutonic Order suffered the defeat of Tannenberg in 1410, it had reached the edge of the wilderness. According to “Territorien-Ploetz”, settlers from across the border were brought in to populate the wilderness on the eastern and southern borders. Masurians (from Mazovia) immigrated in small numbers already since the 14th century , sporadically also Lithuanians and Ruthenians. After 1466 (the year of the 2nd Peace of Thor) the immigration of Masurians and Lithuanians becomes stronger and swells especially in the first half of the 16th century. Masurians are set not only as peasants , but also as landowners, penetrate also into the cities; Lithuanians are almost exclusively peasants. The south of the country speaks since the 16th century predominantly Masurian(“Masuria”), the northeast Lithuanian (“Prussian Lithuania”). The literature on the Prussians: Von Krockow speaks of “about 150,000 to 170,000 Prussians who existed between the Vistula and the Memel” around 1230. Boockmann refers to the latest estimate of the population figures at the time of the conquest of the country by the Teutonic Order and assumes 220,000 people for Prussia and the Kulm region. Higounet states that “the population of Prussia at the beginning of the 13th century was estimated at 170,000.” Boockmann also writes, “The population figures that are given are inevitably based on estimates. According to such estimates, the population of Prussia before the beginning of the conquest of the country by the Teutonic Order was 140,000 heads. Around 1400, the Prussian population in the Order’s state may have been as strong – it was joined by about 103,000 Germans and about 27,000 Poles, mainly in the Kulm region. This would mean for the Prußische population that the losses from the conquest time were again balanced”. According to Schumacher, the Order did not “exterminate” the native Prussian population of his country, nor did it “Germanize” them according to plan. Against the attempt of an extermination, even if it would have been intended, already the simplest considerations of the expediency would have spoken. Since the colonization of the country with German peasants began only at the end of the 13th century and was not completed even after 100 years, the Order would have lacked in the first half century completely, in the whole second century to a large extent the necessary manpower for the agriculture and thus him and his cities of the indispensable subsistence. A more striking proof, however, is the documented fact that from the 13th to the 15th century the Order repeatedly issued charters to the Prussians (Volumes I, II to III, 1 of the Prussian Document Book and the Document Books of the four Prussian bishoprics) and that a large part of the rural population still spoke the Old Prussian language during the entire 16th century. The main mass of the Prussian population experienced a considerable reduction in their legal and economic status. In the 15th century, with the gradual decline of the social and legal position of the German peasants, a certain rapprochement and merging between them and the Prussian peasants began. Nevertheless, the Old Prussian language was still very widespread in the 16th century among the great mass of the peasant population, especially in Samland. The German village settlement did not penetrate at all into the western Samland, because there sat a closed Prussian population. Also the eastern Samland (up to the Deime) could be penetrated only late and thinly with German village settlements. When the Reformation was introduced, the German preachers everywhere had to be assisted by special interpreters, the so-called “Tolken”, who translated the German sermon into Old Prussian, just as the translations of the Catechism into Old Prussian, which Duke Albrecht had made in 1545 and 1561, met an urgent need. Only in the course of the 17th century, after the fusion between the Prussians and the Germans had taken place more rapidly during the 16th century with further deterioration of the situation of the German peasants, did the Old Prussian language become extinct. In 1684 Hartknoch mentions that here and there there should still be isolated people who still understand the Old Prussian language (B. Ehrlich , Die alten Preußen , in: Der Ostdeutsche Volksboden, 1926 , p. 266). Wenzkus explains: “As recent investigations show, so much land had become desolate through the devastating wars of this period that the Prussian peasants were able to increase their land holdings to such an extent that they now reached the extent of the German peasant land. Since, on the other hand, the situation of the German peasants was now legally worsened by the enforcement of the Schollengebundenheit and greater Scharwerksleistungen, the situation of both population groups became much more similar. This was the prerequisite for the Germanization of the Prussian peasantry, which – already limited to small linguistic islands in the 16th century – had ceased to exist in the 17th century”. If you want to present the quantitative development of the ethnic group of the Prussians in the context of the forming new tribe of the Prussians until 1740, you cannot avoid extrapolating the growth of the Prussians in the same way as the growth of the various other population groups immigrated to East Prussia and statistically recorded, without taking into account the connubium across population boundaries! In a separate table, the growth of the Pruzes from 1400 to 1708, the year before the plague of 1709 – 1711, was calculated at an annual growth rate of 0.17%. According to this, the number of Pruzes in 1708 was 228,743 heads (see Appendix 1, Growth of Pruzes). This took into account 6,849 victims in 1656 due to the Tartar invasion. According to Grenz, 13 towns, 249 villages and 37 churches were burned and destroyed, 23,000 people were slain and 34,000 were dragged away. Most of these unfortunates died of hunger and cold. While Hermanowski reports that in 1656 Tartars invaded the south of the country, Grenz states that the Tartars invaded East Prussia and went as far as Tilsit. The enemy also raged terribly in the main district of Insterburg and infested the town of Gumbinnen. It seems certain that the events also hit the district area of Gumbinnen so hard that it could not recover in the next 50 years. The annual growth rate of the German colonizers was also estimated at 0.17% for the period from 1400 to 1708. This resulted in 166,312 Germans in 1708. Thereby in 1656 6.849 victims by the Tatar invasion were factored in… An annual growth rate of 0.17% was also assumed for the estimated 1,300 Dutch and Scots who immigrated from 1523 onward. The 8,000 Huguenots admitted to East Prussia in 1685 also grew at an annual rate of 0.17% according to this model calculation. The population of Germans, Dutch, Scots, Huguenots and, according to Schumacher, 500 immigrant Frenchmen thus amounted to 176,911 heads in 1708. The Mazurian/Polish element in the Prussian tribe can be estimated from several values given in the literature. According to Schumacher, out of a population of about 400,000 in Masuria in 1870, about 80% still spoke Masurian. Polish encyclopedias, on the other hand, under the keyword “Mazowsze pruskie” (Prussian Masovia) , emphasize that in 1870 “75% of the population was still of Polish nationality” and that their number had decreased only “under the pressure of Germanization” (Kossert). Schumacher informs that in 1739 the king decreed that the German language should also be taught in the Lithuanian and Masurian schools, thus preparing the Germanization of these foreign-speaking parts of the population of East Prussia in a significant way. Thus, it is permissible to increase the proportion of Polish-speaking Masurians around 1800 by a few percentage points compared to 1870. If it were 10 percentage points, one would arrive at 85% of the population with Polish language in Masuria around 1800. Kossert provides a check by publishing a list of the percentages of German and Polish speaking population in the Masurian districts of Johannisburg, Lötzen, Lyck, Oletzko, Sensburg, Ortelsburg, Neidenburg, Osterode in 1825 with an average of 86.2% Polish speaking population. Gause mentions that the East Prussian population grew to 1,823,000 heads by 1871. From a population table I prepared, the population for 1870 is 1,806,332. 75% of 400,000 inhabitants in Masuria in 1870 are 300,000 inhabitants, 85% leads to a figure of 340,000 heads. 340,000 out of 1,806,332 inhabitants are 18.8% of the East Prussian population. If this percentage is related to the total population of 1708 (= 675,836 inhabitants ), the number of 127,210 Polish speakers can be calculated. The population structure of Mazury in 1708: 85,0 % Masuria 127.210 7,5 % Germans (estimated)   11.225 7,5 % Prussia (estimated)   11.224 149.659 This leads to the population structure of East Prussia in 1708: 228.743 Prussia 33,8 % 166.312 Deutsche 24,6 %...