Samland

The Baltic tribes

Prussian tribal areas circa 1250.

Samland is a fertile and partly wooded district, with several lakes, lying to the north of Königsberg (where there was a Samland railway station) in East Prussia, which has been occupied by Russia since May 1945. Until this time it was part of Prussia/Germany. There was a Bishop of Samland: the ancient Georgenburg Castle, outside Insterburg, was built as his residence.

History

The ancient inhabitants of Samland were the pagan Baltic tribe of that name, the Samlanders. According to the Teutonic Order's most knowledgeable writers, it was the most powerful of the Prussian tribes and could raise 4,000 cavalry and 40,000 infantry in the early 13th century. (These are doubtless exagerated figures.) In 1256 King Ottokar II of Bohemia, the most powerful single ruler in the Holy Roman Empire, led into Samland an army so powerful that the local natives realised resistance was futile. In 1269 the Samlanders allied with the Teutonic Order's Prussian Master, Conrad von Thierberg, in his campaign against the pagan Sudovian and Nadrovian tribes and ultimately against the Samogitians, sending the Advocate of Samland, Theodoric, with his native militia against pagan forts on the river Pregel, in which they were successful. Dusberg remarked: "The Samlanders loved him [Theodoric] and he brought them all together and won them away from the evil terror they had previously known." In 1280, the Lithuanians and Sudovians invaded Samland in such force that they raided freely for ten days, burning every settlement and farmhouse that lay outside fortified walls. But the Order fought back and cleared Samland of these invaders. The Samogitians nevertheless remained a major problem. Eventually they threw in their lot with Lithuania's warlord Duke Vytenis in the later 1290s and the united pagan armies again struck the Christianised natives in Samland. The Teutonic Order were forced to erect numerous brick castles to protect Samland including that of Labiau. Over 50 years of relative peace reigned in Samland until February 1370 when the Lithuanian leaders Algirdas and Kestutis brought their armies into Samland and began burning and pillaging. The Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Winrich von Kniprode, reacted swiftly marching his army into Samland. Kestutis fled as the crusader force approached with their banners unfurled, but Algirdas decided to fight. In this exceptionally bloody conflict the Teutonic Knights routed the last pagan resistance killing over one thousand, but at the cost of twenty-six knights and 100 soldiers. Algirdas, however, escaped, but it was the last time he sent troops into Prussia.

Baltic coast

Samland borders the Baltic Sea and was celebrated for more than a thousand years as the "Amber coast". In 1270 the Teutonic Order erected a timber castle (rebuilt in brick in the following decades) at Lochstadt, two miles west of Fischhausen, for the Bernsteinmeister, or Amber Master, who supervised the collection of the amber and forwarded it to Königsberg to be worked upon. Until the end of 1918 the right to collect amber was a Royal monopoly; visitors were therefore not allowed to collect fragments on the beach. Before 1945 the chief centre of the amber industry was at Palmnicken (where there was another castle) where it was mined on an extensive scale. Königsberg was the principal depot of this highly-prized antediluvian gum, which until 1945 was chiefly exported for pipe mouthpieces and ornaments. Two miles to the north of Lochstadt, at Tenkitten, was Adalbert's Cross, where the Bohemian missionary Saint Adalbert was martyred by the heathen Prussians in 997 AD. (He was buried in the cathedral in Gnesen.)

The most frequented watering-place on the Samland coast was Cranz which had up to 15000 visitors during the summer months before 1945. From near here extends northwards the famous Kurische Nehrung, a narrow strip of sand dunes separating the Kurische Haff from the Baltic extending some 60 miles to the port of Memel. These dunes sometimes attained heights of 250 feet and tended to constantly migrate from west to east. Because of this the Imperial government spent considerable sums of money planting trees to try and halt this.

The seaport of Pillau (with a fortress) lies at the bottom of Samland, south of Fischhausen.

Also in Samland was Schloss Friedrichstein, a magnificent palace, the largest in East Prussia, and a seat of the Dönhoff family. It was the birthplace of the journalist and publicist Marion, Countess Dönhoff (1909–2002). Her brother Dietrich, Graf [Count] von Dönhoff (d.1999) was the last owner of the estate from 1942 until they were obliged to flee. It was torched by the Red Army when they invaded in 1945.

Gallery

• 

  Samland to Memel map.

• 

  A homecoming herd being driven across the Kurische Nehrung in the 'valley of silence' late 1930s.

• 

  Nidden, on the Kurische Nehrung, late 1930s.

• 

  Advertisement for Cranz as a resort.

• 

  Cranz and the Kurische Nehrung today.

• 

  The Kurische Nehrung today.

• 

  A view of Pillau.

• 

  Schloss Friedrichstein in 1920s.

• 

  The little harbour at Fischhausen, Samland.

• 

  17th century church at Kumehnen, Samland, before 1945 and today.

• 

  The Teutonic Order castle at Labiau in 1912.

• 

  The Teutonic Order castle at Labiau before 1940.

• 

  Amber collectors in the 1930s.

• 

  The small Komturremter in the Teutonic Order's castle at Lochstedt, destroyed by the communists in the 1960s.

Sources

• Baedeker, Karl, Northern Germany, Fourteenth revised edition, Leipzig & London, 1904, p.177.