East Prussia Research Articles

Геополитическая трансформация Калининградской области

After the World War II the part of East Prussia taken by the Soviet Union was transformed into a gigantic Soviet military base. It performed the functions of the outpost in the West on the one hand; and on the other hand, of the barrier which helped the USSR to ensure the dependence of the Eastern Baltics and domination in Poland. After the Cold War, Kaliningrad Oblast, a territory of 15000 square metres with a population of nearly one million people, owned by the Russian Federation and located the farthest to the West, although on the Baltic Sea, ashore became isolated from the motherland and turned into an exclave. Gradually the exclave found itself first at the crossroads of different security structures and later surrounded by one of them. Changes in the situation gave rise to the so-called Kaliningrad discourse, i. e. political decisions, academic discussions and research, influenced by the internal transformation in the USSR and the Russian Federation (RF) as well as slips in the international policies of Central and Eastern Europe.

К вопросу о периодизации битвы за Восточную Пруссию в 1944—1945 гг.

This article considers the problematic issues of the prehistory of the Kaliningrad region. The author analyses different approaches to the periodisation of the East Prussian Offensive, fixes the periods of its stages and determines the date of the termination of the operation.

James M. Brophy . Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800–1850.(New Studies in European History.)New York : Cambridge University Press . 2007 . Pp. xvi, 365. $99.00.

The Rhineland holds a special place in German history as the region in which its national political culture received early liberal and democratic impulses. From the influence of the French Revolution in the 1790s through the democratic tumult of the Hambach Festival of 1832, the Rhineland and the neighboring Palatinate evidenced a degree of politicization and radicalism in stark contrast to the Prussian east and the Bavarian south. The forms of political organization that took shape in Rhenish cities and villages throughout the 1840s were a harbinger of both the 1848 Revolution and the further development of Germany's national party-political landscape. James M. Brophy's new book explores what he calls the “prehistory” of the 1840s by analyzing the role played by non-bourgeois and non-elite actors in the formation of political communities and politicized subjectivities during the first fifty years of the nineteenth century. When looking at the making of the public sphere, he asks, how did “peasant proprietors, tenant farmers, day laborers, artisans or the urban underclasses participate in this transformative process” (p. 19)?

Das Opfern des Schweins in der baltischen Tradition<br>Žrtvovanje svinje v baltskem izročilu</br>

/Pig Sacrifice in Baltic Traditions/The article analyzes pig sacrifice and the use of pork as a ritual dish in customs connected with sowing and practiced by descendants of the Prussians. The author explores the custom, which has been described by various sources and practiced in East Prussia in the second half of 17th – century, in relation to the data collected by Lithuanian ethnographers of the 20th century that link the pig to various agrarian processes.Performed during the sewing period and often employing pig parts such as the head, legs, or the tail, the practice may be explained as an echo of sacrificing a pig to the earth and to Žemyna, the goddess of wheat who personifies the earth. It may be presumed that Žemyna had the same function as Demeter had for the Greeks and Ceres and Tellus for the Romans.

A Commemorative Plate for Wilhelm Killing and Karl Weierstraß

Please send all submissions to Mathematical Tourist Editor, Dirk Huylebrouck, Aartshertogstraat 42, 8400 Oostende, Belgium e-mail: dirk.huylebrouck@gmail.com A search for ‘‘The Greatest Mathematical Paper of All Time’’ on Google, MathSciNet, or ‘‘Zentralblatt fur Mathematik’’ unvaryingly leads to the work of Wilhelm Killing (1847–1923). His classification of simple Lie algebras over the complex numbers is a favorite keyword as well. Killing discovered them while a professor at the Lyceum Hosianum in Braniewo, Poland. In the 19th century, Braunsberg or Braniewo belonged to East Prussia, in Germany, but it became a Polish city after the Second World War, and thus its name changed.

To Go To or Through Prussia? Litvak Migratory Decisions in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and Their Consequences

When the first railway between Russia and Germany opened in East Prussia (1859) it started a significant Litvak emigration particularly to the United States but also to South Africa, Germany and the first wave of emigration to Palestine. Very often families took different migration decisions. This essay investigates inventories of practice and knowledge which were significant for the migration process of Litvaks who went from their Stetl in the Kovno Government to different places and states, exploring the reasons for their varying decisions. In spite of the geographical variation, the migratory processes of the Jews crossing over the border in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries all exhibit common features.

Nation and Empire: Dilemmas of Legitimacy during Stalinism in Poland (1941–1956)

IntroductionIn 1944 Poland was re-established for the second time in the twentieth century. Between the Lublin manifesto of 22 July 1944 and the Potsdam conference of summer 1945 a communist-dominated regime had formed, which was had little in common with the Second Republic that had been founded between the declaration of independence on 9 November 1918 and the peace of Riga with Bolshevik Russia signed in March 1921. Post-war Poland was significantly smaller, geographically further to the west, and ethnically more homogeneous. The Holocaust had destroyed Europe's most sizeable Jewish population, the loss of thekresy(eastern borderlands) to the USSR had reduced the size of eastern-Slavic minorities and the expulsion of the Germans from East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia further helped to create an ethnically homogeneous country. For the first time in her history, Poland had the structure of a nation-state. Through the destruction and catastrophe of Nazi occupation and genocide the goal of firebrand Polish nationalists such as Roman Dmowski had been achieved: a Poland inhabited by ethnic Poles. Still, the new Poland was less independent than its predecessor; from 1944 onwards it was part of the emerging post-war Soviet Empire. Polish sovereignty had fallen victim to Stalin's “revolutionary-imperial paradigm.” Expansion of Moscow's power was as much a priority of the Soviet leadership as the export of Bolshevik revolution.

“A Belgium of Our Own”: The Sack of Russian Kalisz, August 1914

“A Belgium of Our Own”The Sack of Russian Kalisz, August 1914 Laura Engelstein (bio) The Geneva Convention of 1864 and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 defined international standards for the just conduct of war and the proper treatment of civilians. From the first days of fighting in 1914, the belligerent powers accused one another of ignoring them.1 Press campaigns against “enemy atrocities” were designed to stir patriotic emotion; governments employed commissions and experts to document the enemy’s misdeeds.2 Their findings justified war crimes charges presented at Versailles in 1919. The political motivation behind such claims and the lurid terms in which they were often couched led skeptics at the time and in retrospect to question their foundation.3 Indeed, some of the stories assumed the fantastic proportions of myth, but many documented actual abuses.4 [End Page 441] The pattern began with the German invasion of Belgium on 4 August 1914, followed by the destruction of monuments and cities in Belgium and France, inspiring outrage across Europe. The Germans in return justified their conduct as a response to civilian aggression.5 On the Eastern and Southeastern fronts, the Germans and Austrians faced an opponent with a reputation for what Europeans deemed uncivilized behavior, the anti-Jewish pogroms often cited as prime example. 6 By mid-August 1914, the Germans were already condemning as “Russian atrocities” (Russische Greueltaten) the murder and arson perpetrated by Cossack troops in East Prussia.7 In early October, a group of distinguished German scientists and scholars published an “Appeal to the Civilized World,” denying their nation had disregarded the laws of war, while protesting the “blood of women and children slaughtered by the Russian hordes” in the east.8 One incident at the very start of the war gave Russians the opportunity to position themselves as the moral equivalent of the suffering Belgians and offset their image as the eastern analogue to Germanic barbarity. This incident involved the modest textile town of Kalisz, located on the Prosna River, at the outermost limit of the Kingdom of Poland, not far from the Prussian border. Like all Polish towns and cities, Kalisz contained a mix of cultures. Half of the almost 25,000 residents were Roman Catholic, a third Jewish. These proportions had remained stable for 50 years, despite continuous expansion culminating in a spurt of prosperity after the opening in 1902 of a railway connecting Russia and Prussia through Kalisz and the industrial powerhouse of Łódź.9 In 1897, three-quarters of city residents considered Polish their native tongue (reflecting the degree of Jewish cultural adaptation). About 10 percent were either Russian-speaking Eastern Orthodox or German-speaking Protestants and Catholics. Manufacture was dominated [End Page 442] by Poles, commerce by Jews. The wealthiest residents were mostly Polish, the military and bureaucracy mostly Russian.10 The German sack of Kalisz during the first two weeks of August 1914 became a cause célèbre in the Russian press. The attack was a textbook case of wartime atrocity in two senses. First, in terms of what occurred, German behavior anticipated the excesses soon to follow in Belgium. Second, in terms of how it was represented, the accounts of all interested parties—Russians, Germans, and Poles—used the evidence to convey a political message, shaping the Kalisz story with an eye to public opinion, both at home and abroad. Despite their different perspectives, the versions offered by the victims, both Russians and Poles, share two striking features: on the one hand, the inability of those who experienced the events to determine how exactly the violence began; on the other, the absence, under circumstances in which opportunities for mutual hatred abounded, of the ethnic stereotypes that otherwise pervaded wartime opinion. This omission is all the more noteworthy, as anti-Jewish feeling was hardly confined to the Slavic Eastern front; nor was it necessarily blunted by horror at German aggression. Take, for example, the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916). In a widely read tract, available also in Russian, he bemoaned the damage inflicted on his country by the once-noble German nation, reduced to the level of medieval barbarism, he explained, by the baleful...

The Intelligentsia Meets the Enemy: Educated Soviet Officers in Defeated Germany, 1945

She Is, Accursed Germany! Major Lev Kopelev entered East Prussia on a Ford truck. There were no markers, so he had to distinguish border himself: had already been agreed upon earlier: as soon as we crossed border, we would mark it in an appropriate fashion. Having stopped precisely on line according to map, I commanded, 'Here is Germany, get out and relieve yourselves!' It seemed witty to us, standing right next to cuvette, to mark initial entry into enemy territory in precisely way. (1) Germany welcomed Vladimir Gel'fand, commander of a mortar platoon, in an ungracious manner, a snow storm, ferocious wind, and empty, almost extinct villages. (2) war correspondent Vasilii Grossman entered German territory toward evening. It was foggy and rainy, and scent of forest rot was in air. Dark pine trees, fields, farms, service buildings, houses with sharp edged stretched out along highway. was great charm in scenery, Grossman wrote, the small but very thick woods were nice, with bluish-gray asphalt and brick roads running through them. His notes might seem like those of a tourist if not for reference to huge sign on shoulder of road: Soldier, here it is--the lair of fascist beast. (3) commander of a cannon platoon, Lieutenant Boris Itenberg, crossed border of East Prussia in region of Gumbinnen on an armored train. He saw Germany, this accursed country, for first rime on 25 March 1945. (4) Three weeks later, Lance-Corporal David Kaufman crossed German border: From Birnbaum to Landsberg runs a narrow highway with trees planted accurately alongside Approaching Schwerin, a wide placard across road read: 'Here was border of was Germany. I involuntarily felt anxious crossing unseen border. Tiled roofs of settlements reddened welcomingly amid clear winter crops on brilliant and green backdrop of a spring morning. serenity of morning smoothed over emptiness of villages and ugliness of ruins. It introduced a certain simplicity to regular and tidy landscape, small pine groves, rolling hills, even, cultivated fields. (5) Lieutenant Elena Kogan entered Germany along same highway: Outside Birnbaum there was a control-admission point (KPP). A large arch read, 'Here was border of Germany.' Everyone who in those days traveled on Berlin highway read yet another inscription, made with tar by some soldier on a half-destroyed house closest to arch, in huge curved letters: Here she is, accursed Germany! (6) Major Boris Slutskii ended war not in Germany but in Austria. For men in his unit, however, there was no difference between Germans and Austrians: The army could sense a German. We didn't know German well enough to distinguish between Prussian and Styrian dialects. We knew too little about world history to assess autonomy of Austria within Great German system.... soldiers listened attentively to admonitions about difference between Germany and Austria and didn't believe a word of it. (7) This article was written on basis of letters, diaries, and memoirs of Soviet servicemen who ended war in territory of Third Reich. youngest of them, Evgenii Plimak, a sergeant-major and translator for army intelligence, turned 20 in 1945; oldest, already well-known writer Vasilii Grossman, was 40. majority were between ages of 22 and 34, with ranks from junior lieutenant to major. (8) They were not typical representatives of Soviet officer corps. First, majority came from Moscow; second, they had either completed or interrupted their studies in institutions of higher education, and third, many of them could communicate in German--some haltingly, some excellently. For several of them, work with enemy became a military profession: they were either translators or propagandists. …

International Law and Human Plurality in the Shadow of Totalitarianism: Hannah Arendt and Raphael Lemkin

Hannah Arendt and Raphael Lemkin were witnesses to the twentieth-century. They both experienced the dislocating transformations on the European continent as a consequence of two world wars, lost their states as well as their homes in this process, narrowly escaped the clutches of the Nazi extermination machine, and made it to the New World through sheer luck and fortuitous circumstance. Their thought is marked by the cataclysms of the last century, and they have in turn emerged as indispensable interlocutors for all of us in understanding this past. Arendt and Lemkin were contemporaries and there are astonishing parallels in their early biographies. She was born in Hannover in 1906 (d. 1975) and grew up in Koenigsberg in East Prussia. After WWI, the Polish Corridor was created and cut East Prussia and Koengisberg off from the rest of Weimar. In 1945, Koenigsberg was occupied by the Soviets and renamed “Kaliningrad.” Lemkin was born in Bezwodene in 1900, then part of Tsarist Russia. Between the two World Wars (1918–1939) Bezwodene became part of Poland, and today is Bezvodna in Belarus. When Arendt was arrested by the Gestapo in the Spring of 1933 and was forced to flee to Paris via Prague with her mother, she had been carrying out research in the Prussian State Library at the request of Kurt Blumenfeld on anti-Semitic measures undertaken by Nazi nongovernmental organizations, business associations and professional clubs to exclude Jewish members. Her Zionist friend, Kurt Blumenfeld in turn, was preparing to present this material at the 18th Zionist Congress. During those very same years, Ralph Lemkin was a young clerk in the Polish State Prosecutor’s office who had been collecting documents on Nazi war legislation, particularly those affecting cultural, linguistic, religious activities and artifacts of cultural and religious groups. In 1933, he had sent a paper to a League of Nations conference in Madrid, in which he proposed that “the crimes of barbarity and vandalism be considered as new offences against the law of nations.”1 In 1939, he fled from Poland and reached Stockholm, where he continued to do extensive research on Nazi occupation laws throughout Europe. On April 18, 1941, he arrived in the United States via Japan. That very same year, Arendt and her second husband, Heinrich Bluecher, arrived in New York via Portugal. Yet in contrast to Arendt, who acquired world-wide fame after her arrival in the USA with her many works and university appointments, Lemkin, after the general acclaim he received with the passage of the Genocide Convention by the United Nations in 1948, fell into obscurity and died a lonely death, destitute and neglected in New York in 1959. It is certainly fascinating to speculate whether these Jewish refugees, who were caught up in the great dislocations of their time, ever met one another in some location or association in the United States. We just don’t know. What is even more astonishing is the lack of any discussion in Hannah Arendt’s work of Lemkin’s great book on the concept of genocide,2 nor any evidence that Lemkin knew Arendt’s work on totalitarianism, which certainly was the most powerful historical documentation and philosophical analysis in the early 1950s of the unprecedentedly murderous character of the Nazi regime. Arendt and Lemkin appear to

Photography and the Prussian Expedition to Japan, 1860–61

This essay examines the use of photography by the Prussian East Asian Expedition during its two visits to Japan in 1860–61 . Among the expeditions sent to Japan in the two decades following the opening of the country to foreign trade in 1854, that dispatched by the Kingdom of Prussia and headed by Count Friedrich zu Eulenburg was arguably best equipped to create a comprehensive photographic record, having at its disposal an impressive range of up-to-date photographic equipment and employing at one time no fewer than three photographers who operated in association with two official artists working in more traditional media. Nevertheless, there were problems. The employment of three photographers was a belated response to the discovery that the official photographer, Carl Bismarck, was lacking the experience and skill required to fulfill his task, and, even though this and other difficulties were overcome, the resulting portfolio had a limited circulation. Drawing on contemporary Prussian sources, including a recently discovered group of these images, this essay attempts to reconstruct the photographic work of the Eulenburg mission and explain its disappearance.

Польское национальное меньшинство в Восточной Пруссии в контексте германо-польских отношений (1918—1939)

The influence of German-Polish relations on the status of the Polish national minority in East Prussia in 1918-1939 is considered in the article.

Klaus Guenter Heymann

Klaus Guenter Heymann was born in East Prussia. His family escaped to New Zealand as Hitler’s influence spread. He left school at the age of 15 to become a pharmacist’s...

Морские курорты Восточной Пруссии в объективе фотографов с конца XIX века до начала Второй мировой войны

The article analyses the development of photography in the 19-20th centuries, the themes of East Prussian resort photos, as well as the professional activity and biographical facts about German photographers.

Development and characterization of lambs’ coats of East Prussian Skudden and Rough-coated Pomeranian Landrace sheep

Abstract. East-Prussian Skudden (Skudden) and Rough-coated Pomeranian Landrace (RPL) sheep are old endangered mixed-wool breeds. The fleece structure is unique for each breed compared with other characteristics in related breeds. Therefore, an essential factor in breed conservation is preservation of the typical fleece. As some RPL sheep show a tendency towards uniform fleeces, emphasis is placed on fleece evaluation in selection of flockbook ewes and especially in licensing rams. Currently, rams can only be presented at a minimum age of 1 ½ years when regrowth has sufficiently taken place. As these rare breeds are primarily kept in small flocks and not by shepherds, an earlier, preliminary selection for typical fleeces would aid in flock management. Fleece samples were taken from five body regions at intervals of 30–35 days beginning at an age of one month to 8 months, prior to shearing and after regrowth. Adult samples were graded and those of RPL evaluated for type and colour. Fibre types were sorted and counted according to presumed adult type as well as lamb fibre type. An attempt was made to find a point in development suitable for concluding the final fibre type composition, taking into account the final grade, type and fleece colour. In Skudden a preliminary selection is preferable at an age of 10–12 months. As RPL showed considerable changes in all fleece parameters between shearing and the adult sample, preliminary selection is not advisable.

From the Editor

He stood a little over five feet five. He had black hair, blue eyes and impressive mutton chop sideburns. A thirty-one-year-old Jewish immigrant from Guttentag, East Prussia, Abraham Cohn had joined the 6th New Hampshire volunteer regiment as a private in early 1864. It was now May 6, 1864 and Sergeant Major Cohn was just north of the Orange Plank Road, in a place they called “the Wilderness,” fighting for his life. Cohn's regiment was part of General Ambrose Burnside's IX Corps, attached to General George Meade's Army of the Potomac, then under the effective command of General Ulysses S. Grant. The Wilderness was the first of several battles that comprised Grant's costly Overland Campaign in Virginia that led eventually to General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse the following spring. It is unlikely that you know of Abraham Cohn. Like thousands of rank-and-file soldiers, he would have...

Where Science Builds Bridges

AbstractExcavation site Wiskiauten: A team of Russian and German archaeologists dig near Kaliningrad in former East Prussia

Evgeny Marchelli’s Key to Chekhov: Rejecting Chekhovianism in the Provinces

Evgeny Marchelli’s Key to Chekhov: Rejecting Chekhovianism in the Provinces Jeffrey Stephens (bio) Many is the director who searches in vain for the key to a successful staging of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. At the risk of entering the performance studies debate from the perspective of what Tracy Davis pejoratively labels the “opening night paradigm” (38) of theatre historiography, I assert that director Evgeny Marchelli’s stupefying production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, like Masha when Vershinin abandons her, cries out for commentary. A moving production of Three Sisters—one that is not what Eric Bentley calls a “triumph of euthanasia” (290)—is a rarity. I admit that I never saw Yuri Lyubimov’s production at the Taganka in 1981, considered to be one of the most important productions of Chekhov in a generation. Neither did I see Robert Sturua’s production featuring three Redgraves (Vanessa, Lynn, and Jemma) in 1991 in London, nor Lithuanian director Eimuntas Nekrosius’s production of the play as part of the Second Chekhov International Theatre Festival in Moscow in 1996.1 Having seen many productions of the play in English translation and in the original Russian by such great Soviet directors as Georgi Tovstonogov, nothing could have prepared me for Evgeny Marchelli’s revelatory production at the Til’zit Theatre in Sovetsk, Russia. The production defied the unspoken “laws” of directing Chekhov by circumventing audience expectations, ignoring certain textual givens, and allowing the drama the sense of play and open-endedness it desperately needs to engage contemporary audiences. I am interested in a full accounting of this production so that those who are approaching Chekhov as directors, designers, or dramaturges might find inspiration to make his drama continue to breathe in our time. Marchelli and the Til’zit The Til’zit Theatre (Til’zit was the German name of today’s Sovetsk, Russia) is a stone’s throw from the Lithuanian border (fig. 1). You can almost see the lovely Queen Louise Bridge from the theatre’s front steps.2 The majestic Neman River serves as the barrier between Lithuania and what was East Prussia before the British bombed its capital, Konigsberg, in 1945. Decisions made at the Potsdam Conference led to its Soviet annexation by the end of World War II. Closed to Westerners until 1991, Sovetsk is completely separated from Russia proper by the Baltic Sea and by the EU countries, Lithuania and Poland. It is at times barren and forbidding and isolated. This sense of isolation supports the thematic foundation upon which Marchelli’s production of Three Sisters rests.3 The implications and consequences of a life in the provinces seem to motivate many of his design and directing choices. The original Til’zit Theatre was built in 1893 and opened with a production of Goethe’s Egmont. Rebuilt on the same site in 1933 as the Til’zit Grenzland Theatre, it was closed during the war and its troupe dispersed. Today, the theatre holds about 250 people and is badly in need of refurbishing, with its cracked mortar, peeling paint, and fading rose-colored exterior. The interior foyer is dark and somewhat musty, with creaky floors and threadbare carpets. The theatre building sits by itself on the edge of a large tree-filled park. Inside, a low-hanging balcony that extends from both sides of the proscenium is oppressive on first sight, particularly for Three Sisters. Marchelli has extended the playing area over several rows of seats, thus making the stage floor, if it were tilted upward from upstage, resemble the top of a giant grand piano. [End Page 13] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. The Til’zit Theatre in Sovetsk, Russia. (Photograph by the author, 2007.) The managing director of the theatre, Nina Lemesh, informed me that the theatre re-opened on the same site in November 1956 with a production of a play by Leonid Zorin, the popular post-Stalin Soviet writer.4 Led for several years by Alexander Brodetsky and for many more by Boris Kadakolavich, under whom the theatre developed a reputation for nurturing actors, a significant new direction began in 1989 when the theatre was given the official status of...

Environmental Chauvinism in the Prussian East: Forestry as a Civilizing Mission on the Ethnic Frontier, 1871–1914

The Tuchel Heath (Tucheler Heide, Bóry Tucholskie) and Kashubia (Kassubei, Kaszuby), the two regions comprising the geographical region known as Pomerelia (roughly the area of the “Polish Corridor”), came into Prussian possession with annexations from Poland in 1772, when Friedrich II seized most of what would become the provinces of Poznania and West Prussia from the ailing Polish Republic. These territories, some liked to imagine, resembled the North American frontier. Friedrich II apparently compared it to Canada and “jokingly named the inhabitants his Iroquois.” Gustav Freytag immortalized Friedrich's arrival on the frontier in his work Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit, characterizing the place as “an abandoned land, without law, without authority; it was a wasteland.” Certainly, the harsh climate, the sprawling pine forests and barrens, and the impoverished populace suggested a certain affinity. In one description of the region from 1879, the author depicted the Slavic game poacher “as a red Indian on the warpath.”

The formation of protective dune ridge along the Southeast Baltic Sea coast: historical and social aspects

This paper is based on literature-based studies, as well as material collected by the author over more than 30 years on the shores of the Southeast Baltic Sea. In order to protect roads running along the shoreline from East Prussia to Konigsberg, local shore reinforcement works commenced in the fifteenth century, although some individual attempts had been made before. In 1684, M. Ch. Hartknoch theoretically substantiated the necessity for, and methods of, shore reinforcement. The state of the shores deteriorated considerably during the Seven Years War (1756–1763), when woodlands growing along the shores were completely destroyed; hence, nearly 100 km length of the coast of the Kursių Nerija (Curonian) sand spit was left without any vegetation. Aeolian sand buried as many as fourteen settlements. This situation forced the authorities to organise maintenance of the coast and the dunes at the governmental level, and to start the formation of an uninterrupted dune ridge. The second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century are notable for the extensive construction of new ports. Along the shores running from the Sambian Peninsula to the Gulf of Riga, eight port engineering structures had been constructed with the intervals of approximately 26 km between the ports of Klaipėda and Liepaja, and every 13 km between Palanga and Pape. Shore management measures were being implemented simultaneously, thus ensuring the functioning of the above-mentioned coastal protection structures and the reduction of impacts upon the shores. In the second half of the twentieth century, ports were dredged and developed significantly. Their entrance channels reduced the long-shore sediment transport. Moreover, total sand reserves in the shore zone also diminished. The processes of erosion of the beaches and the dune ridge made it necessary to actively reinforce the shore. A number of countries passed legal acts governing the protection and use of the shore zone. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the incompatibility of such priorities in human activities as sea transport and recreation with nature protection has become evident. The conflict of interests in the Kursių Nerija National Park, the port of Klaipėda, and the resort of Palanga serve as good examples of such incompatibility. The conclusion that can be drawn that in twenty-first century is that the priorities in general coastal management should be as follows: harmonisation of interests among the states and individual fields of activities, as well as measures aimed at neutralisation of negative natural trends (higher frequency of storms, global rise of water level, etc.). The protective beach dune ridge will further play the role of efficient means for reducing shore erosion.