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Rambynas
Rambynas is a hill on the right bank of the Neman River in Rambynas Regional Park, Pagėgiai Municipality, western Lithuania. The current hill, about above sea level and about above the Neman, is a remnant of the larger hill that was destroyed by erosion. The hill was known as sacred among locals and played a role in the ceremonies of pagan Lithuanians. It is featured in many local legends and is protected by the state as a mythological object. A large stone at the top of the hill, known as the altar stone, was destroyed by a miller in 1811. Rambynas became popular with Prussian Lithuanians at the end of the 19th century who organized various events, most notably celebrations of the Saint Jonas' Festivals or Rasos (summer solstice), on the hill. They rebuilt the altar in 1928. The hill is popular with Lithuanian neo-pagans and hosts the annual celebrations of the summer solstice on 23 June. Geography The hill is located between the villages of Bitėnai and Bardinai on the ...
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Rambynas Regional Park
Rambynas Regional Park is one of the Regional Parks in Lithuania, situated at Pagėgiai municipality (Tauragė County) on the right Nemunas river bend in Lithuanian Republic near the border of Kaliningrad Oblast. The park was founded in 1992 with its area of 4,786 ha. About Rambynas Regional Park The Rambynas Regional Park territory for its natural and cultural heritage has been divided into eight protection and conservation zones (83.6% of the total park area) which are: * Bitėnai Geomorphological Reserve * Šilėnai Botanical Reserve * Bitėnai Botanical and Zoological Reserve * Ragainė Inflection Hydro-logical Reserve * Šereitlaukis Architectural Reserve * Jūra River Ichtiological Reserve * Vilkyškių Geo-morphological Reserve * Vilkyškiai Urban Reserve Other areas include: recreation areas (3.2%), defense areas (7.2%), business areas (6, 0% of the total park area) and a park territory tangled in a relatively dense network of roads with about 5.4 km of ...
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Bitėnai
Bitėnai (german: Bittehnen) is a small village in the Pagėgiai Municipality, in western Lithuania. According to the 2011 census, it had population of 76, a decline from 119 in 2001. It is situated along the Neman River near the Rambynas hill and is known as the location of the Martynas Jankus printing press. Jankus Museum and the visitors' center of the Rambynas Regional Park are located in the village. History Bitėnai was a village of peasants and fishermen. In 1454, King Casimir IV Jagiellon incorporated the region to the Kingdom of Poland upon the request of the anti-Teutonic Prussian Confederation. After the subsequent Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466) the village was a part of Poland as a fief held by the Teutonic Knights,Górski, pp. 96–97, 214–215 and thus was located within the Polish–Lithuanian union, later elevated to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. From the 18th century, it was part of the Kingdom of Prussia, and from 1871 it was also part of Germany, w ...
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Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Oblast
Sovetsk (russian: Сове́тск; german: Tilsit; Old Prussian: ''Tilzi''; lt, Tilžė; pl, Tylża) is a town in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the south bank of the Neman River which forms the border with Lithuania. Geography Sovetsk lies in the historic region of Lithuania Minor at the confluence of the Tilse and Neman rivers. Panemunė in Lithuania was formerly a suburb of the town; after Germany's defeat in World War I, the trans-Neman suburb was detached from Tilsit (with the rest of the Klaipėda Region) in 1920. Climate Sovetsk has a borderline oceanic climate (''Cfb'' in the Köppen climate classification) using the boundary, or a humid continental climate (''Dfb'') using the boundary. History Tilsit, which received civic rights from Albert, Duke of Prussia in 1552,''Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Tom XII'', p. 703 developed around a castle of the Teutonic Knights, known as the Schalauer Haus, founded in 1 ...
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Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and ''de jure'' by an Allied decree in 1947. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, expanding its size with the Prussian Army. Prussia, with its capital at Königsberg and then, when it became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany. In 1871, Prussian Minister-President Otto von Bismarck united most German principalities into the German Empire under his leadership, although this was considered to be a "Lesser Germany" because Austria and Switzerland were not included. In November 1918, the monarchies were abolished and the nobility lost its political power during the Ger ...
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Treaty Of Melno
The Treaty of Melno ( lt, Melno taika; pl, Pokój melneński) or Treaty of Lake Melno (german: Friede von Melnosee) was a peace treaty ending the Gollub War. It was signed on 27 September 1422, between the Teutonic Knights and an alliance of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at Lake Melno (german: link=no, Melnosee, Meldensee; pl, links=no, Jezioro Mełno), east of Graudenz (Grudziądz). The treaty resolved territorial disputes between the Knights and Lithuania regarding Samogitia, which had dragged on since 1382, and determined the Prussian–Lithuanian border, which afterwards remained unchanged for about 500 years. A portion of the original border survives as a portion of the modern border between the Republic of Lithuania and Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, making it one of the oldest and most stable borders in Europe. Background The First Peace of Thorn of 1411 did not resolve long-standing territorial disputes between the Teutonic Knights and the Polish ...
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Grand Duchy Of Lithuania
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state that existed from the 13th century to 1795, when the territory was partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire of Austria. The state was founded by Lithuanians, who were at the time a polytheistic nation born from several united Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija. The Grand Duchy expanded to include large portions of the former Kievan Rus' and other neighbouring states, including what is now Lithuania, Belarus and parts of Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, Russia and Moldova. At its greatest extent, in the 15th century, it was the largest state in Europe. It was a multi-ethnic and multiconfessional state, with great diversity in languages, religion, and cultural heritage. The consolidation of the Lithuanian lands began in the late 13th century. Mindaugas, the first ruler of the Grand Duchy, was crowned as Catholic King of Lithuania in 1253. The pagan state was targeted in a religious crusade by ...
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Die Littauischen Wegeberichte
''Die Littauischen Wegeberichte'' (German for ''Lithuanian route report'') is a compilation of 100 routes into the western Grand Duchy of Lithuania prepared by the Teutonic Knights in 1384–1402. The Knights waged the Lithuanian Crusade to convert pagan Lithuanians into Christianity since the 1280s. The crusade was characterized with frequent raids into the enemy territory to loot and pillage. Since Lithuania lacked a developed road network, local Lithuanian and Prussian scouts would describe and document the best and most effective routes for the military raids into Lithuania. The reports contained brief directions using both natural (rivers, lakes, swamps, forests) and man-made (villages, nobility estates, roads, formerly inhabited places) landmarks for navigation. It also described obstacles and provided locations of good places for rest camps, where to obtain drinking water or fodder for horses. The place names were recorded in old German, therefore some of them are quite dist ...
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Sambia
Sambia (russian: Самбийский полуостров, lit=Sambian Peninsula, translit=Sambiysky poluostrov) or Samland (russian: Земландский полуостров, lit=Zemlandic Peninsula, translit=Zemlandsky poluostrov) or Kaliningrad Peninsula (official name, russian: Калининградский полуостров, ''Kaliningradsky poluostrov'') is a peninsula in the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, on the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea. The peninsula is bounded by the Curonian Lagoon to the north-east, the Vistula Lagoon in the southwest, the Pregolya River in the south, and the Deyma River in the east. As Sambia is surrounded on all sides by water, it is technically an island. Historically it formed an important part of the historic region of Prussia. Names Sambia is named after the Sambians, an extinct tribe of Old Prussians. ''Samland'' is the name for peninsula in the Germanic languages. Polish and Latin speakers call the area ''Sambia'', while the ...
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Vogt
During the Middle Ages, an (sometimes given as modern English: advocate; German: ; French: ) was an office-holder who was legally delegated to perform some of the secular responsibilities of a major feudal lord, or for an institution such as an abbey. Many such positions developed, especially in the Holy Roman Empire. Typically, these evolved to include responsibility for aspects of the daily management of agricultural lands, villages and cities. In some regions, advocates were governors of large provinces, sometimes distinguished by terms such as (in German). While the term was eventually used to refer to many types of governorship and advocacy, one of the earliest and most important types of was the church advocate (). These were originally lay lords, who not only helped defend religious institutions in the secular world, but were also responsible for exercising lordly responsibilities within the church's lands, such as the handling of legal cases which might require the u ...
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Teutonic Order
The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, commonly known as the Teutonic Order, is a Catholic religious institution founded as a military society in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals. Its members have commonly been known as the Teutonic Knights, having a small voluntary and mercenary military membership, serving as a crusading military order for the protection of Christians in the Holy Land and the Baltics during the Middle Ages. Purely religious since 1810, the Teutonic Order still confers limited honorary knighthoods. The Bailiwick of Utrecht of the Teutonic Order, a Protestant chivalric order, is descended from the same medieval military order and also continues to award knighthoods and perform charitable work. Name The name of the Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem is in german: Orden der Brüder vom Deutschen Haus der He ...
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Baltic Tribes
The Balts or Baltic peoples ( lt, baltai, lv, balti) are an ethno-linguistic group of peoples who speak the Baltic languages of the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages. One of the features of Baltic languages is the number of conservative or archaic features retained. Among the Baltic peoples are modern-day Lithuanians and Latvians (including Latgalians) — all Eastern Balts — as well as the Old Prussians, Yotvingians and Galindians — the Western Balts — whose languages and cultures are now extinct. Etymology Medieval German chronicler Adam of Bremen in the latter part of the 11th century AD was the first writer to use the term "Baltic" in reference to the sea of that name.Bojtár page 9. Before him various ancient places names, such as Balcia, were used in reference to a supposed island in the Baltic Sea. Adam, a speaker of German, connected ''Balt-'' with ''belt'', a word with which he was familiar. In Germanic languages there was some form of t ...
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