Former East Prussia Architecture and Landscapes

[pofoka]

Awesome pictures, thank you for posting them.
One question: Why is there a photo of a B-29?

Hi EPAZ1! Thank you for your visit and your comments!
Is this not an B17? I not sure that. You may well be right. But I do not really know the American bombers. USAAF pilots collaborate with the RAF on a bombing mission targeting German cities. The B-17 was primarily employed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the daylight precision strategic bombing campaign of World War II against German industrial and military targets. The bombing strategy, shifting away from military targets and towards the main residential and industrial centers in Germany.
To achieve this, they agree upon a combined bomber offensive: the British will strike at night, while the Americans will bomb by daylight.
Here according to the picture one B17 bombing Marienburg. Marienburg not to far Königsberg.
This photo is just an example.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... enburg.jpg

Best greetings
pofoka

[pofoka]

In memoriam city of Königsberg

Inferno On Earth: East Prussia And Koenigsberg In 1945

East Prussia. January 1945. The place the Russians entered Germany. What followed was brutal war and an endless nightmare for Germans who had live there for centuries as the vengeful Soviet soldiers let loose retribution for what the Germans had done in Russia for the last few years.....
Konigsberg itself was badly damaged by two British air raids at the end of August 1944, and the main offensive against the city by the Red Army began in January 1945. Almost 80% of the city was destroyed;

Königsberg was one of several towns in the east designated a fortress -Festung- and now Hitler ordered that it must not surrender. The city was attacked by thousands of artillery weapons. War ravaged Koenigsburg in April 1945 after the encircled Germans finally surrendered after months of brutal fighting. A sad end to a once thriving German Königsberg.

“750 years ago, Königsberg was founded, and 68 years ago, it disappeared from the map.”

Source: http://uncensoredhistory.blogspot.hu/
https://www.facebook.com/myownkonigsberg

August 1944. The Red Army reached the east Prussian border. The sign board says, "That's it, damn Germany."

[pofoka]

In memoriam city of Königsberg

Inferno On Earth: East Prussia And Koenigsberg In 1945

Street fighting in Königsberg april 1945.

Source: http://uncensoredhistory.blogspot.hu/
https://www.facebook.com/myownkonigsberg

[pofoka]

In memoriam city of Königsberg

Inferno On Earth: East Prussia And Koenigsberg In 1945

Street fighting in Königsberg april 1945.

Source: http://uncensoredhistory.blogspot.hu/
https://www.facebook.com/myownkonigsberg

[pofoka]

In memoriam city of Königsberg

After the battle 1945 - 1946

Source: http://uncensoredhistory.blogspot.hu/
https://www.facebook.com/myownkonigsberg
https://www.facebook.com/museumkoenigsberg
Wikipedia

During the last day of the battle, the besieged German defenders were overwhelmed and the defence coordination fell apart. Having been comprehensively defeated, and in the realisation that further resistance was futile, Otto Lasch (Commander of Königsberg) decided on his own initiative to send emissaries to negotiate the surrender. At 18:00, the emissaries arrived at the Soviet lines, and a delegation was sent to Lasch's bunker. Shortly before midnight, the surrender was acknowledged.

Almost 80% of the city was destroyed; first by the Royal Air Force in August 1944, and then by Soviet shelling in April 1945. Unprecedented destruction of the existing built environment .The city fell in ruins and burned.
On the streets were strewn fragments of masonry, shot-up vehicle sand the bodies of horses and human beings Almost all German residents who remained at the end of the war, an estimated 200,000 out of the city's prewar population of 316,000, were expelled from the city.

[Karelia]

Thanks a lot again! Do you have a special connection to Königsberg?

[pofoka]

In memoriam city of Königsberg

After the battle 1945 - 1946

Source: http://uncensoredhistory.blogspot.hu/
https://www.facebook.com/myownkonigsberg
https://www.facebook.com/museumkoenigsberg
Wikipedia

[pofoka]

Thanks a lot again! Do you have a special connection to Königsberg?

Maybe reincarnation
Next year I'd like to visit Lithuania, Kaliningrad and Kurland, and maybe Finnland.

[Karelia]

Thanks a lot again! Do you have a special connection to Königsberg?

Maybe reincarnation
Next year I'd like to visit Lithuania, Kaliningrad and Kurland, and maybe Finnland.

OK. Welcome!

[pofoka]

In memoriam city of Königsberg

The soviet era

Source: http://uncensoredhistory.blogspot.hu/
https://www.facebook.com/myownkonigsberg
https://www.facebook.com/museumkoenigsberg
Wikipedia

In July 1946 northern East Prussia and Königsberg, an area about half the size of Belgium, officially became part of the Soviet Union after the signing of an agreement at the inter-Allied Potsdam Conference, which met in July and August 1945. The rest of East Prussia would go to Poland; Memel and the surrounding countryside became part of Lithuania.
Königsberg and its environs were collectively renamed the Kaliningrad Oblast (region) in July 1946 (after Mikhail Kalinin, one of Stalin's cronies who had just died) and it was declared a military zone.

The first Soviet settlers arrived that summer from many parts of Russia, and East Prussia started to become Russian.

[pofoka]

Thanks a lot again! Do you have a special connection to Königsberg?

Maybe reincarnation
Next year I'd like to visit Lithuania, Kaliningrad and Kurland, and maybe Finnland.

OK. Welcome!

Thank you for your kind remarks Karlia!
Best Regards from Hungary

[pofoka]

In memoriam city of Königsberg

The soviet era

http://canitz.org/

Source: http://uncensoredhistory.blogspot.hu/
https://www.facebook.com/myownkonigsberg
https://www.facebook.com/museumkoenigsberg

Wikipedia

A SAD END TO A ONCE THRIVING GERMAN KOENIGSBERG
This is the story of the rise and fall of a city. Under Soviet occupation, the entire German population was forcibly expelled from the city in 1948.
History cannot be erased.

While many other German cities suffered similar fates in WWII, by being nearly bombed into oblivion and thousands of its citizens killed - Dresden and Hamburg come to mind -the situation at Königsberg deserves special mention. Over the years much of Hamburg and Dresden has been rebuilt, with many of the destroyed significant landmarks being restored to their prewar condition.

But when the Allied Forces gave the essentially destroyed City of Königsberg to the Soviets in 1945 they took a different approach. They simply bulldozed the remains of most bombed-out structures away after going through the rubble for still-usable building materials which were shipped back to Mother Russia. Thus, the possibility of their eventual restoration was essentially eliminated, while some buildings were left standing in their bombed-out condition until as recent as today. Given that all of the areas original German inhabitants had been expelled, there was no local opposition to this as Stalin had repopulated the city with people from all over the Soviet Union, including from as far away as Siberia. As well, the city was now Soviet territory and - behind the Iron Curtain - essentially closed to all foreign eyes because Stalin was turning it in to a naval base, taking advantage of a newly acquired year-round ice free harbour with access to the Baltic sea.(http://canitz.org/)

[pofoka]

In memoriam city of Königsberg

Königsberg as Kaliningrad

Königsberg Castle and many less-notable buildings sustained some damage from the bombings and could have been restored, but instead were demolished by the Soviets in the 1960s.
In 1968 did Soviet party leader Leonid Brezhnev decide to demolish the remains of the ‘hornet’s nest of militarism and fascism’.
In its place came the twenty-story ‘House of the Soviets’, built as the party headquarters for the Kaliningrad Oblast.

The pre-war city center (Altstadt and Kneiphof) currently consists of parks, broad avenues, a square on the site of the former Königsberg Castle, and only two buildings: the House of Soviets ("Dom Sovyetov"), roughly on the site of the former castle, and the restored Königsberg Cathedral on the Kneiphof island (now "Kant island"). Immanuel Kant's grave is situated next to the cathedral. The new city center is concentrated around Victory Square. The Cathedral of Christ the Savior, consecrated in 2005, is located on that square.
Königsberg is dead. Kaliningrad is like Königsberg gravestone, nothing more...

Königsberg / Kaliningrad today

Photo source: Wikipedia /Benutzer:Mehlauge
http://wberdnikov.narod.ru/photoalbum2.html

[pofoka]

In memoriam city of Königsberg

A fantastic idea to rebuild city centre:

[pofoka]

In memoriam city of Königsberg

At the present time

A very interesting history book. The author: Max Popov. The title of the work: Parallel Memory
150 Years of Königsberg and Kaliningrad History in Photographs. Superb!!!

Source: https://www.facebook.com/parallelmemory
http://www.arndtbeck.com/wordpress/2012 ... el-memory/