![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
This article begins by briefly exploring issues of conflict and control in relation to the 750th anniversary of the city of Kaliningrad/Königsberg. An analysis of the tensions between Russian regional (Kaliningrad) and national (federal) identity discourses on the political symbolism of the 750th anniversary commemoration is offered, using Russian media reports and interviews conducted in Kaliningrad. German narratives on the political symbolism of the anniversary events and their implications for German national identity discourses are investigated via interviews conducted in Kaliningrad and Germany, German media reports, books, films and a theater production about Königsberg. Particular attention is given to the impact of the German expellee organizations on framing the discourse about Königsberg in contemporary Germany. The article will conclude by comparing and contrasting the various discourses and interpretations of the anniversary in the Kaliningrad region, Russia and Germany.
Acknowledgements
This article was made possible by the generous financial support of the British Academy (research grant SG39196). The authors would also like to thank their interviewees in Kaliningrad (Russia) and Germany, who have given them special insights into the workings of identity politics in Kaliningrad during the anniversary years. Many thanks are also due to Jörg Hackmann, Christina Hahn, Sebastian Husen, Olaf Ihlau, Corinna Jentzsch, Jürgen Kocka, Jürgen Manthey, Ingmar Oldberg, Cornelius Sommer, Viktor Tschernyschov, Christian Welscher and Peter Wunsch, who have read draft versions of this article and provided valuable comments. Finally, the authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. The remaining shortcomings are, of course, entirely our own.
Notes
Notes
1 Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii (No. 1353), ‘O prazdnovanii 60-letiya obrazovaniya Kaliningradskoi oblasti i 750-letiya osnovaniya g. Kaliningrada’. Moscow, 13 November 2003.
2 In 1993, Magdalene Hoff, in her capacity as chairperson of the European Parliament's Delegation for the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and scholar Heinz Timmermann went on a fact-finding mission to Kaliningrad. They presented their findings and recommendations in a report on Kaliningrad to the European Parliament on the 8 February 1994 (European Parliament Citation1994a; see also Hoff & Timmerman Citation1993). Two German MEPs questioned the report's suggestion that Kaliningrad's status as Russian territory should remain settled, going so far as to suggest that EU finances should be used to return the territory to Germany (European Parliament Citation1994b, p. 61).
3 On the concept of lieux de mémoire compare Nora (Citation1984 ff.). The idea of sites of memory and their significance for national identity formation have recently been explored in relation to several European nations.
4 Interview with Aleksandr Popadin (30 June 2005). Popadin already proposed the commemoration of the 750th anniversary of Königsberg in his column in Komsomolskaya pravda v Kaliningrade on 21 July 2001.
5 Interviews with Yurii Kostyashov (14 September 2006), Aleksandr Popadin (30 June 2005), Viktor Ryabinin (12 September 2006) and representatives of: Kaliningrad Regional Archive (27 June 2005), Kaliningrad Historic and Art Museum (28 June 2005) and the Russian State University of Immanuel Kant in Kaliningrad (28 June 2005).
6 However, an issue of Kaliningrad this Week has Kasyanov calling for the whole country to celebrate the 750th anniversary of Königsberg–Kaliningrad in March 2002 (Kaliningrad this Week, 11–24 March 2002, p. 1).
7 This opinion was expressed in interviews with journalists from Kaliningrad this Week (2 July 2005), Kaliningradskaya pravda (29 June 2005) and Komsomolskaya pravda v Kaliningrade (29 June 2005), as well as in national press articles. One can understand the reasoning behind the equating of years being commemorated with federal funds received, when one takes into consideration that Karelia received 600,000 rubles from the federal budget for its 85th anniversary celebrations in 2005, Petrozavodsk received 200 million rubles for its 300th anniversary in 2003 while Kazan received 7.7 billion rubles for its 1,000th anniversary celebrations in 2005. St Petersburg's tercentenary was supported with more than 40 billion rubles worth of federal assistance (Rossiya, 30 June 2005).
8 Interview with journalist from Kaliningradskaya pravda (29 June 2005).
9 Interview with city administration official (27 June 2005).
10 The veterans’ organizations were also strongly against the establishment of a German war cemetery close to the Aleksandr Nevskii Prospekt and only dropped their opposition after their representatives had been invited to Germany to discuss these plans with German representatives from the VdK. The incident clearly showed how difficult Russian–German reconciliation can be, but also how much can be achieved through personal contacts. We are grateful to Dr. Peter Wunsch, the director of the German–Russian House in Kaliningrad, for this information.
11 For a discussion of the Kaliningrad transit affair see Holtom (Citation2005).
12 ‘Press conference given by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin’, 20 June 2003, available at: http://www.kremlin.ru, accessed 6 February 2004.
13 ‘O prazdnovanii 60-letiya obrazovaniya Kaliningradskoi oblasti i 750-letiya osnovaniya g. Kaliningrada’, Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 1353, Moscow, 13 November 2003.
14 Interview with journalist from Mayak (28 June 2005). Other journalists interviewed concurred with this assessment.
15 This opinion was expressed in interviews with journalists from Kaliningradskaya pravda (29 June 2005) and Komsomolskaya pravda v Kaliningrade (29 June 2005). Interviewees from Kaliningrad's international community expressed similar sentiments. A good example of this focus can be seen in the Kaliningrad regional newspaper Kaskad, which featured articles throughout the week beginning 24 June 2005 on the progress made with the construction or reconstruction of a number of so-called ‘anniversary objects’, such as the Royal Gate, the quay and mooring system, Victory Square, the Church of Christ the Saviour, the regional drama theater and the reconstruction of Aleksandr Nevskii Prospekt.
16 Kaliningrad city administration reportedly received 1,135 billion rubles from the federal budget for constructing, reconstructing and renovating ‘jubilee objects’. Taken from an interview with a city administration official (27 June 2005) and an interview with Savenko (Rossiya, 30 June 2005).
17 Interview with representative of the Kaliningrad regional administration's budgetary working group for anniversary celebrations in 2005 (24 June 2005).
18 Interview with journalist from Kaliningrad this Week (2 July 2005).
19 Interview with representative of honorary consul of EU state in Kaliningrad (22 June 2005). This was an almost universal response in interviews with representatives of Kaliningrad's cultural, media and international communities in relation to the question: ‘Why is it considered important that the 750th anniversary is not just a city or regional event?’ Only one journalist replied that most people were looking forward to the holiday spirit, the shows and events (interview with journalist from Kaliningradskaya pravda, 29 June 2005).
20 Interview with journalist from Kaliningrad this Week (2 July 2005).
21 This opinion was expressed in interviews with journalists from Kaliningrad this Week (2 July 2005), Kaliningradskyia pravda (29 June 2005) and Komsomolskaya pravda v Kaliningrade (29 June 2005).
22 Königsberg cathedral was the first choice of the organizers, but there were reportedly problems acquiring permission to use its image (Kommersant, 14 February 2005).
23 Interview with Aleksandr Popadin (30 June 2005). More background information on the ‘Fishing Village’ project can be found in Sezneva and Vasyutin (Citation2005).
24 A similar project took place in 2000, in which photographs charting the city's life in the twentieth century were collated in a temporary exhibition supported by one of the region's vice-governors. The photographs were collected into an album: Kenigsberg–Kaliningrad XX veka v fotografyakh (2000) (a project initiated by the Moskovskii Dom Fotografii Soyuz Fotokhudozhnikov Rossii, Kaliningradskii filial).
25 Interview with Yuri Kostyashov, prominent historian at the university (14 September 2006).
26 Interview with official from Kaliningrad State University (28 June 2005).
27 The Royal Gate was officially opened by President Putin on 2 July 2005.
28 The Great Embassy was a Russian diplomatic mission that Peter the Great sent to Western Europe in 1697–1698.
29 These views were expressed in a number of interviews with representatives of Kaliningrad's international community.
30 Interview with a city administration official (27 June 2007).
31 Some speculated that the lack of invitations were simply a response to the fact that the Lithuanian and Polish presidents had declined to attend VE day celebrations in Moscow in May 2005. See, for example: Kaliningradskaya pravda (23 June 2005); Vremya novostei (4 July 2005).
32 Interview with a city administration official (27 June 2005).
33 Interviews with journalists from Kaliningrad this Week (2 July 2005), Kaliningradskaya pravda (29 June 2005) and Komsomolskaya pravda v Kaliningrade (29 June 2005).
34 ‘Germany in Secret Talks with Russia to Take Back Königsberg’, Daily Telegraph (21 January 2001). See also Financial Times (25 July 1990), for an early attack in a British newspaper on German involvement in Kaliningrad.
35 On the organized expellees, see Ahonen (Citation2003); their charta can be found under http://www.bund-der-vertriebenen.de/derbdv/charta-dt.php3, last accessed 16 March 2007.
36 For further recent studies of these organizations and their activities, see Cordell (Citation2006, pp.22–47); Spohr-Readman (Citation2007, pp. 153–78).
37 C. Jentzsch, ‘750 Jahre Kaliningrad: Das Jubiläum in der deutschen, russischen, polnischen und litauischen Presse’, unpublished paper. That the plan originated with the Landsmannschaft Ostpreussen was confirmed by its Bundesgeschäftsführer, Sebastian Husen (author's interview 31 October 2006).
38 For the Aktion Deutsches Königsberg, one of the right-wing groupings, see Anton Maegerle, http://www.idgr.de/texte/organisationen/adk/adk-dossier.php, accessed 26 June 2007. The left-wing media pay close attention to such right-wing groups; see, for example, Neues Deutschland (21 July 2006).
39 http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/wort-des-tages/2005/07/04/Kaliningrad.html, accessed 4 December 2005.
40 This reading of Kaliningrad's international media coverage was expressed in interviews with Alexei Ignatiev from the East–West Institute in Kaliningrad (24 June 2005); the editors of Königsberger Express (KE) (14 September 2006); and Guido Herz, German general consul in Kaliningrad (14 September 2006). The best example among many is Der Spiegel (27 June 2005). On the negative framing of Kaliningrad see also Tikkala (Citation2006).
41 Dirk Sager, ‘Königsberg – ferne, fremde Heimat’, shown on ZDF, 26 April 2005.
42 Max and Gilbert, ‘Königsberg is Dead’, absolut medien, Tabula Raza DVD, 2004.
43 ‘Eine Liebe in Königsberg’, directed by Peter Kahane, ZDF, April 2006; Polar Film DVD, 2006.
44 Interview with Lorenz Grimoni (26 October 2006).
45 On the notion of ‘diasporic space’, see Brah (Citation1996).
46 For a comparison of borderlands and their experience with dominant nationalisms see Berger (Citation2007).
47 Interview with Guido Herz (14 September 2006).