Klaipėda Region


The Klaipėda Region or Memel Territory was defined by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles in 1920 and refers to the northernmost part of the German province of East Prussia, when, as Memelland, it was put under the administration of the Entente's Council of Ambassadors. The Memel Territory, together with other areas severed from Germany, was to remain under the control of the League of Nations until a future date, when the people of those regions would be allowed to vote on whether or not the land would return to Germany. Today, the former Memel Territory is controlled by Lithuania as part of Klaipėda and Tauragė counties.

Historical overview

In 1226, Duke Konrad I of Masovia requested assistance against the Prussians and other Baltic tribes, including the Skalvians who lived along the Neman River. In March 1226, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II issued the Golden Bull of Rimini, which provided that the Teutonic Knights would possess lands taken beyond the Masovian border in exchange for securing Masovia. After uprisings of the Baltic Prussian tribes in 1242 to 1274 failed, the Order conquered many remaining western Balts in Lithuania Minor, including the Skalvians, Nadruvians and Yotvingians. In 1252, the Order constructed Memel Castle where the Dangė river flows into the Neman, at the north end of the Curonian Spit. In 1422, after centuries of conflict, the Order and the Polish–Lithuanian union signed the Treaty of Melno which defined a border between Prussia and Lithuania. Although Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania wanted the border to be coextensive with the Neman River, the treaty border started north of Memelberg and ran southeasterly to the Neman. This border remained until 1918. After the Treaty of Melno was signed, many Lithuanians returned to northeastern Prussia, which became known as Lithuania Minor in the 16th century.
After World War I ended in 1918, the Klaipėda Region was defined as a roughly-triangular wedge, with the northern border being the Treaty of Melno border, the southern border following the Neman River, and on the west abutting the Baltic Sea. In 1923, fearing that the western powers would create a free state, Lithuanians took control of the region and, as part of larger regional negotiations, incorporated the region into the State of Lithuania. In March 1939, Lithuania acquiesced to Nazi demands and transferred the Klaipėda Region to Germany. As World War II came to an end in 1945, the Soviet Union incorporated the region into the Lithuanian SSR. Since 1990, the area of the Klaipėda Region has formed part of the independent Republic of Lithuania, as part of Klaipėda and Tauragė counties. The southern border established by the Treaty of Versailles defines the current international boundary between Lithuania and the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Federation.

Timeline

pre-1252Curonian and Scalovian tribes
1252–1525Livonian Order and Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights
1525–1657Duchy of Prussia, a fief of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
1657–1701Duchy of Prussia, a sovereign state in personal union with Brandenburg, a fief of the Holy Roman Empire
1701–1871Kingdom of Prussia
1871–1918Kingdom of Prussia, part of the German Empire
1918–1920Free State of Prussia, part of Weimar Republic
1920–1923Council of Ambassadors
1923–1939Republic of Lithuania
1939–1945Germany
1945–1990Lithuanian SSR, part of the Soviet Union
1990–presentRepublic of Lithuania

Treaty of Versailles

The eastern boundaries of Prussia, having remained unchanged since the Treaty of Melno in 1422, became a matter of discussion following World War I as the newly-independent states of Poland and Lithuania emerged. The separatist Act of Tilsit was signed by a few pro-Lithuanian-oriented Prussian Lithuanians in 1918 and demanded the unification of Prussian Lithuania with Lithuania proper. It is traditionally viewed by Lithuanians as expressing the desire of Lithuania Minor to unite with Lithuania, but the majority of Prussian Lithuanians did not want to join with Lithuania, and the Prussian Lithuanians, at 26.6% of the population, did not make up a majority of the region.
The division of Prussia was also promoted by Poland's Roman Dmowski in Versailles who acted on the orders of Józef Piłsudski. The purpose was to give the lower part of the Neman River and its delta, which was located in Germany and called the Memel River, to Lithuania, as that would provide her access to the Baltic Sea, and Lithuania itself should be part of Poland. Those ideas were supported by French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau.
In 1920, according to the Treaty of Versailles, the German area north of the Memel River was given the status of Territoire de Memel under the administration of the Council of Ambassadors, and French troops were sent for protection. The German delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, under the leadership of Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau immediately protested that decision and stated on 9 May 1919:
including those whose mother-tongue is Lithuanian, have never desired a separation from Germany;...they have always proved themselves a loyal constituent part of the German community...moreover, Memel is an entirely German town...which has never in its whole history belonged to Lithuania or to Poland.

To that claim, the Allied Powers responded the following:
The Allied and associated Powers reject the suggestion that the cession of the district of Memel conflicts with the principles of nationality. The district in question has always been Lithuanian; the majority of the populace is Lithuanian in origin and in speech and the fact that the city of Memel itself is in large parts German is no justification for maintaining the district under German sovereignty, particularly from the view of the fact that the port of Memel is the only sea outlet for Lithuania.

Following the evacuation of German troops from Memel, the French took over the temporary military administration of the region on 15 February 1920 under the leadership of General Dominique Odry. This was supplemented by a civilian one headed by Gabriel Jean Petisné in 1921. The French administration proved problematic, as it was accused by the Lithuanian population of siding too closely with the pro-German Landes Directorium and subsequently of siding with Polish civilian and military representatives. As a result of that backlash, Odry left his post shortly after coming to Memel and handed the responsibility of the administration over to High Commissioner Gabriel Jean Petisné. During the French administration, the idea of an independent state of Memelland grew in popularity among local inhabitants. The organisation Deutsch-Litauischer Heimatbund promoted the idea of a Freistaat Memelland, which later should return to Germany. It had 30,000 members, both ethnic Germans and Lithuanians, or about 21% of the total population.

Lithuanian takeover

On 9 January 1923, three years after the Versailles Treaty had become effective, Lithuania occupied the territory during the Klaipėda Revolt, mainly by militias that had entered the region from Lithuania. At the same time, France had started the Occupation of the Ruhr in Germany, and the French administration in Memel did not take any significant counteractive measures against the rebels. On 19 January, the territory was annexed by Lithuania, and the fait accompli was eventually confirmed by the Council of Ambassadors in 1924.

Autonomous region within Lithuania

At the Klaipėda Convention, signed by the Council of Ambassadors and Lithuania, the area was granted a separate parliament, two official languages, the capacity to raise its own taxes, charge custom duties, and manage its cultural and religious affairs, and was allowed a separate judicial system, separate citizenship, internal control of agriculture and forestry, as well as a separate social security system. The Council of Ambassadors accepted the resulting arrangement and confirmed the autonomy of the region within the Republic of Lithuania. On 8 May 1924, a further Convention on the Klaipėda region confirmed the annexation, and a resulting autonomy agreement was signed in Paris. In the Lithuanian-German Arbitration and Settlement Agreement of 29 January 1928, the Republic of Lithuania and the Weimar Republic agreed "as a sign of the friendly nature of their relations" to conclude, among other items, a border settlement agreement that included the status of the Memel Territory.
Importantly, the annexation gave Lithuania control of a year-round, ice-free Baltic port. Lithuania made full use of Klaipėda's port by modernising and adapting it largely for its agricultural exports. The port reconstruction was certainly one of the larger long-term investment projects enacted by the government of Lithuania in the interwar period.
The inhabitants of the area were not given a choice on the ballot as to whether they wanted to be part of the Lithuanian state or part of Germany. Since the pro-German political parties had an overall majority of more than 80% in all elections to the local parliament in the interwar period, there can be little doubt that such a referendum would have been in favour of Germany. In fact, the area had been annexed from Kingdom of Lithuania to the monastic state in the 13th century, and even many Lithuanian-speakers, regarding themselves as East Prussians, declared themselves "Memellanders/Klaipėdiškiai" in the official census and did not want to belong to a Lithuanian national state because of the strong Germanisation in the late 1800s. According to the Lithuanian point of view, Memellanders were viewed as Germanized Lithuanians who should be re-Lithuanised.
There was also a strong denominational difference since about 95% of the inhabitants of Lithuania Minor were Lutherans, and more than 90% of Greater Lithuanians were Catholics. Following the Agreement concerning the Evangelical Church of the Klaipėda Region of 23 July 1925, concluded between the Directorate of the Klaipėda Region and the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, a church of united administration of Lutheran and Reformed congregations, the mostly-Lutheran congregations in the Klaipėda Region were disentangled from the Old Prussian Ecclesiastical Province of East Prussia and formed the Regional Synodal Federation of the Memel Territory since it ranked an Old Prussian ecclesiastical province of its own. An own consistory in Klaipėda was established in 1927, led by a general superintendent. The Catholic parishes in the Klaipėda Region belonged to the Bishopric of Ermland until 1926 and were then disentangled to form the new Territorial Prelature of Klaipėda under Prelate Justinas Staugaitis.
The government of Lithuania faced considerable opposition from the region's autonomous institutions such as the Parliament of the Klaipėda Region. As the years passed, claims were becoming more and more vocal for the reintegration into a resurgent Germany. It was only during the latter period that Lithuania instituted a policy of Lithuanisation. That was met by even more opposition, as religious and regional differences slowly became insurmountable.
After the December 1926 coup d'état, Antanas Smetona came to power. As the status of the Memel Territory was regulated by international treaties, the Memel Territory became an oasis of democracy in Lithuania. Lithuanian intelligentsia often held marriages in Memel/Klaipėda since Memel Territory was the only place in Lithuania that had civil marriage; in the rest of Lithuania, only church marriages were allowed. Thus, Lithuanian opposition to Smetona's regime was also based in Memel Territory.
At the start of the 1930s, leaders and members of pro-Nazi organizations in the region were put on trial by Lithuania "for crimes of terrorism". The 1934–1935 trial of Neumann and Sass in Kaunas can be presented as the first anti-Nazi trial in Europe. Three members of the organizations were sentenced to death, and their leaders imprisoned. After political and economic pressure from Germany, most of them were later released.