Evangelikų ištrėmimas iš Zalcburgo ir jų priėmimas bei apgyvendinimas Prūsijoje | Exile of Evangelicals from Salzburg and their Acceptance and Accomodation in Prussia

Abstract

As early as the 18th c., Archbishop Firmian of Salzburg sought to establish counter-Reformation in thearea of his influence. As he failed to get any support from peasants, in 1731, he forcefully made about20,000 of the local residents leave the Archdiocese of Salzburg. The Evangelical population of the Empirewere the first to protest against that. Then, King of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm I invited those displacedfrom home to come to his kingdom. About 16,000 of them accepted the invitation and, observed bythe public, via Berlin arrived in the land later called East Prussia. In the 18th c., due to the famine andespecially the Great Plague, the former Duchy of Prussia had lost about one third of its population, andthe eastern region of the country was struck especially hard. For King Friedrich Wilhelm I, who was implementingthe programme of repopulation of the deserted areas of his country, the opportunity to accomodatethe Salzburgers deprived of their homeland was like a gift from God. It was impossible any moreto accomodate them in individual villages, especially in the north-eastern part of the country, however,they still formed a colony (Colonie) which had for a long time cherished the sense of community, beforein the end of the 19th c. their descendants assimilated with the local population and adopted their dialect. KEY WORDS: accomodation, Archbishop Firmian of Salzburg, the Evangelical Church, Salzburgers, exile. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/ahuk.v26i0.509