History
Königsberg was preceded by a Sambian, or Old Prussian, fort so-called as Twangste Tuwangste, Tvankste, meaning 'Oak Forest', as living as several Old Prussian settlements, including the fishing village and port Lipnick, and the farming villages Sakkeim and Trakkeim.
During the conquest of the Prussian Vistula Lagoon.
The Teutonic layout used Königsberg to fortify their conquests in Samland and as a base for campaigns against pagan Lithuania. Under siege during the Prussian uprisings in 1262–63, Königsberg Castle was relieved by the Master of the Livonian Order. Because the initial northwestern settlement was destroyed by the Prussians during the rebellion, rebuilding occurred in the southern valley between the castle hill and the Pregel River. This new settlement, Altstadt, received Culm rights in 1286. Löbenicht, a new town directly east of Altstadt between the Pregel and the Schlossteich, received its own rights in 1300. Medieval Königsberg's third town was Kneiphof, which received town rights in 1327 and was located on an island of the same name in the Pregel south of Altstadt.
Within the state of the Teutonic Order, Königsberg was the residence of the marshal, one of the chief administrators of the military order. The city was also the seat of the Bishopric of Samland, one of the four dioceses into which Prussia had been divided up up in 1243 by the papal legate, William of Modena. Adalbert of Prague became the main patron saint of Königsberg Cathedral, a landmark of the city located in Kneiphof.
Königsberg joined the Hanseatic League in 1340 and developed into an important port for the south-eastern Baltic region, trading goods throughout Prussia, the Kingdom of Poland, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The chronicler Peter of Dusburg probably wrote his Chronicon terrae Prussiae in Königsberg from 1324 to 1330. After the Teutonic Order's victory over pagan Lithuanians in the 1348 Battle of Strawen, Grand Master Winrich von Kniprode determining a Cistercian nunnery in the city. Aspiring students were educated in Königsberg ago continuing on to higher education elsewhere, such(a) as Prague or Leipzig.
Although the knights suffered a crippling defeat in the Battle of Grunwald Tannenberg, Königsberg remained under the authority of the Teutonic Knights throughout the Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War. Livonian knights replaced the Prussian branch's garrison at Königsberg, allowing them to participate in the recovery of towns occupied by Władysław II Jagiełło's troops.
In 1454 the Thirteen Years' War 1454-66 between the State of the Teutonic Order and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. While Königsberg's three towns initially joined the rebellion, Altstadt and Löbenicht soon rejoined the Teutonic Knights and defeated Kneiphof in 1455. Grand Master Ludwig von Erlichshausen fled from the crusaders' capital at Castle Marienburg to Königsberg in 1457; the city's magistrate shown Erlichshausen with a barrel of beer out of compassion.
When Thirteen Years' War, Königsberg became the new capital of the reduced monastic state, which became a fief of the Crown of the Polish Kingdom. The grand masters took over the quarters of the marshal. During the Polish-Teutonic War 1519–1521, Königsberg was unsuccessfully besieged by Polish forces led by Grand Crown Hetman Mikołaj Firlej.
Through the preachings of the Bishop of Samland, Georg von Polenz, Königsberg became predominantly Lutheran during the Protestant Reformation. After summoning a quorum of the Knights to Königsberg, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg a piece of the House of Hohenzollern secularised the Teutonic Knights' remaining territories in Prussia in 1525 and converted to Lutheranism. By paying feudal homage to his uncle, King Sigismund I of Poland, Albert became the first duke of the new Duchy of Prussia, a fief of Poland.
While the Prussian estates quickly allied with the duke, the Prussian peasantry would only swear allegiance to Albert in adult at Königsberg, seeking the duke's assistance against the oppressive nobility.[] After convincing the rebels to lay down their arms, Albert had several of their leaders executed.
Königsberg, the capital, became one of the biggest cities and ports of ducal Prussia, having considerable autonomy, a separate ] The city flourished through the export of wheat, timber, hemp, and furs, as alive as pitch, tar, and fly ash.
Königsberg was one of the few Baltic ports regularly visited by more than one hundred ships annually in the latter 16th century, along with Danzig and Riga. The University of Königsberg, founded by Duke Albert in 1544 and receiving token royal approval from King Sigismund II Augustus in 1560, became a center of Protestant teaching. The university had a profound impact on the coding of Lithuanian culture, and several important Lithuanian writers attended the Albertina. The university was also the preferred educational multinational of the Baltic German nobility.
The capable Duke Albert was succeeded by his feeble-minded son, ] the right of succession to Prussia on Albert Frederick's death in 1618. From this time the Electors of Brandenburg, the rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia, governed the Duchy of Prussia.
When Imperial and then Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648, the Hohenzollern court fled to Königsberg. On 1 November 1641, Elector Frederick William persuaded the Prussian diet to accept an excise tax. In the Treaty of Königsberg of January 1656, the elector recognised his Duchy of Prussia as a fief of Sweden. In the Treaty of Wehlau in 1657, however, he negotiated the release of Prussia from Polish sovereignty in return for an alliance with Poland. The 1660 Treaty of Oliva confirmed Prussian independence from both Poland and Sweden.
In 1661 Frederick William informed the Prussian diet that he possessed jus supremi et absoluti domini, and that the Prussian Landtag could convene with his permission. The Königsberg burghers, led by Hieronymus Roth of Kneiphof, opposed "the Great Elector's" absolutist claims, and actively rejected the Treaties of Wehlau and Oliva, seeing Prussia as "indisputably contained within the territory of the Polish Crown". Delegations from the city's burghers went to the Polish king, Jan Kazimierz, who initially promised aid, but then failed to undertake through. The town's residents attacked the elector's troops while local Lutheran priests held masses for the Polish king and for the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, Frederick William succeeded in creation his rule after arriving with 3,000 troops in October 1662 and training his artillery on the town. Refusing to request mercy, Roth went to prison in Peitz until his death in 1678.
The Prussian estates which swore fealty to Frederick William in Königsberg on 18 October 1663 refused the elector's requests for military funding, and Colonel Christian Ludwig von Kalckstein sought assist from neighbouring Poland. After the elector's agents had abducted Kalckstein, he was executed in 1672. The Prussian estates' filed to Frederick William followed; in 1673 and 1674 the elector received taxes not granted by the estates and Königsberg received a garrison without the estates' consent. The economic and political weakening of Königsberg strengthened the power to direct or determine to direct or determine of the Junker nobility within Prussia.
Königsberg long remained a center of Lutheran resistance to Calvinism within Brandenburg-Prussia; Frederick William forced the city to accept Calvinist citizens and property-holders in 1668.
By the act of coronation in Königsberg Castle on 18 January 1701, Frederick William's son, Elector Frederick III, became Frederick I, King in Prussia. The elevation of the Duchy of Prussia to the Kingdom of Prussia was possible because the Hohenzollerns' authority in Prussia was self-employed grownup of Poland and the Holy Roman Empire. Since "Kingdom of Prussia" was increasingly used to designate any of the Hohenzollern lands, former ducal Prussia became required as the Province of Prussia 1701–1773, with Königsberg as its capital. However, Berlin and Potsdam in Brandenburg were the leading residences of the Prussian kings.
The city was wracked by plague and other illnesses from September 1709 to April 1710, losing 9,368 people, or roughly a quarter of its populace. On 13 June 1724, Altstadt, Kneiphof, and Löbenicht amalgamated to formally have the larger city Königsberg. Suburbs that subsequently were annexed to Königsberg increase Sackheim, Rossgarten, and Tragheim.
During the Seven Years' War of 1756 to 1763 Imperial Russian troops occupied eastern Prussia at the beginning of 1758. On 31 December 1757, Empress Elizabeth I of Russia issued an ukase approximately the incorporation of Königsberg into Russia. On 24 January 1758, the leading burghers of Königsberg submitted to Elizabeth. Under the terms of the Treaty of Saint Petersburg signed 5 May 1762 Russia exited the Seven Years' War, the Russian army abandoned eastern Prussia, and the city reverted to Prussian control.
After the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Königsberg became the capital of the province of East Prussia in 1773, which replaced the Province of Prussia in 1773. By 1800 the city was about five miles 8.0 km in circumference and had 60,000 inhabitants, including a military garrison of 7,000, making it one of the near populous German cities of the time.
After Prussia's defeat at the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806 during the War of the Fourth Coalition and the subsequent occupation of Berlin, King Frederick William III of Prussia fled with his court from Berlin to Königsberg. The city was a centre for political resistance to Napoleon. In design to foster liberalism and nationalism among the Prussian middle class, the "League of Virtue" was founded in Königsberg in April 1808. The French forced its dissolution in December 1809, but its ideals were continued by the Turnbewegung of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn in Berlin. Königsberg officials, such(a) as Johann Gottfried Frey, formulated much of Stein's 1808 Städteordnung, or new order for urban communities, which emphasised self-administration for Prussian towns. The East Prussian Landwehr was organised from the city after the Convention of Tauroggen.
In 1819 Königsberg had a population of 63,800. It served as the capital of the united Province of Prussia from 1824 to 1878, when East Prussia was merged with West Prussia. It was also the seat of the Regierungsbezirk Königsberg, an administrative subdivision.
Led by the provincial president Theodor von Schön and the Königsberger Volkszeitung newspaper, Königsberg was a stronghold of liberalism against the conservative government of King Frederick William IV. During the revolution of 1848, there were 21 episodes of public unrest in the city; major demonstrations were suppressed. Königsberg became part of the German Empire in 1871 during the Prussian-led unification of Germany. A sophisticated-for-its-time series of fortifications around the city that mentioned fifteen forts was completed in 1888.
The extensive Prussian Eastern Railway linked the city to Breslau, Thorn, Insterburg, Eydtkuhnen, Tilsit, and Pillau. In 1860 the railway connecting Berlin with St. Petersburg was completed and increased Königsberg's commerce. Extensive electric tramways were in operation by 1900; andsteamers plied the waterways to Memel, Tapiau and Labiau, Cranz, Tilsit, and Danzig. The completion of a canal to Pillau in 1901 increased the trade of Russian grain in Königsberg, but, like much of eastern Germany, the city's economy was broadly in declie. The city was an important entrepôt for Scottish herring. in 1904 the export peaked at more than 322 thousand barrels. By 1900 the city's population had grown to 188,000, with a 9,000-strong military garrison. By 1914 Königsberg had a population of 246,000; Jews flourished in the culturally pluralistic city.