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How to be Russian with a Difference?Kaliningrad and its German PastStefan Berger aa School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University ofManchester, UK

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To cite this article: Stefan Berger (2010): How to be Russian with a Difference? Kaliningrad and itsGerman Past , Geopolitics, 15:2, 345-366

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Geopolitics, 15:345–366, 2010Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1465-0045 print / 1557-3028 onlineDOI: 10.1080/14650040903486967

How to be Russian with a Difference?Kaliningrad and its German Past1

STEFAN BERGERSchool of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK

Kaliningrad’s history started with the expulsion of the remaining ethnicGermans after the Red Army had conquered the city and surrounding ter-ritory and after the Soviet Union had decided to re-settle the area withethnic Russians and to rebuild the old German city of Königsberg as amodel city of the new Soviet man (and woman). What we witnessed sub-sequently was a radical attempt to replace one constitutive narrative ofsocio-territorial identity, that of Königsberg, with a counter-narrative, thatof Kaliningrad. The existing literature on Kaliningrad, which we will brieflyreview below, is by and large in agreement that this attempt was a failure.The German Königsberg always had its defenders in the Russian Kaliningradand by the late 1980s Kenig was the name that many young Russians calledtheir city, indicating high levels of emotional identification with the oldKönigsberg. With the independence of the Baltic republics in 1992 andtheir accession to the EU in 2003, Kaliningrad became a Russian exclaveand an enclave surrounded by the EU member states Poland and Lithuania.Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, there were lively debates about the futureof Kaliningrad. Journalists, politicians and academics speculated about whatmight become of this land, which was one of the last remaining war bootiesof the old Soviet Union. And what about its people, the overwhelmingmajority of which were ethnic Russians – how would their identities as aborderland people develop over time? These are debates which have lostnothing of their topicality, and indeed, the commemorations of ‘750 yearsof Kaliningrad’ in 2005 and of ‘60 years of the region of Kaliningrad’ in2006 have highlighted the importance of narrative constructions of collectiveidentity in the city and its surroundings

What is at stake then is to see how the Soviet/Russian national(ist)discourse in and on Kaliningrad has impacted on the constructions of a

Address correspondence to Stefan Berger, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures,University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. E-mail: stefan.berger@manchester.ac.uk

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German national past for Kaliningrad. We wish to examine how the mean-ings of Kaliningrad’s boundaries have been discursively constructed and askthe question if and how they were remade through the anniversaries of 2005and 2006.2 Social memory had a particularly important role to play in thoseanniversaries, which rested on diverse and often conflicting constructions ofan identitarian past for Kaliningrad/Königsberg. Social memory is stronglyconnected to narrativity: mnemonic practices seek to establish workable nar-ratives giving continuity and meaning. The evocation of Kaliningrad’s pastwas to give meaning to the present. Traditions are remembered throughcommemorative practices and the repetition of these practices heightensthe awareness of objects and places endowed with identitarian meaning.However, in cases of traumatic memory, such continuity and meaning is farmore difficult to achieve. And in the case of Kaliningrad, the memory ofthe past, for Russians and Germans alike, is certainly very traumatic, divisiveand discontinuous. The question in this case is whether mnemonic bridgescan be built between the pre- and post-traumatic worlds to come to a work-able memory of territorial space. How can one avoid the Russian symbolicappropriation of Königsberg becoming a thorn in the side of German coun-termemories? Is social memory not suited to identity construction, as it is toocontested, conflict-ridden and endowed with unequal power relationships?What we are dealing with when we analyse commemorations, like the onesin Kaliningrad in 2005 and 2006, are not unified memories, but a set ofmnemonic practices which operate in a given mnemonic field, where nar-ratives are in an ongoing dialogue with other narratives.3 Commemorationslike the one that we examine here can be understood as ‘constitutive nar-ratives’, which are crucial to the functioning of social memory. As GeoffreyCubitt has argued: ‘commemorative occasions and ceremonies do indeedcontribute distinctively, and in many social settings vitally, to making the pastan active rather than a merely passive element in people’s social awareness. . . they are instrumental in constituting the past that is to be remembered,and the collectivity that is expected to do the remembering. . . . They offeroccasions for communities to take stock of, to debate, and perhaps to adjustthe meanings they find in their own history and the shapes they give to theircollective identity . . .’4

Commemorative occasions in the oblast of Kaliningrad underwent avariety of permutations since the late 1980s, and this article will shed lighton most attempts to reconstruct a usable past that are associated with thedouble anniversary that the city celebrated in 2005 and 2006. The work ofOlga Sezneva has reminded us that since the second half of the 1980s manyKaliningraders have rediscovered the German past of their city as an appeal-ing alternative to the grey drabness of Soviet Communism.5 Ever since theend of the Cold War and the independence of the three Baltic republics,the enclave status of Kaliningrad has led to wild discussion, sometimes

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bordering on speculation, about what future there would be for Kaliningradin a post–Cold War and post-Soviet political situation. Time and again iden-tity questions were to the fore of those discussions. In 2002, Pami Aaltoargued that Russia was willing to experiment with new forms of geopoliticalordering. According to Aalto the problem was that the EU did not speakwith one voice when it came to Kaliningrad: whereas the Northern coun-tries were ready to rethink the spatial order in the North-West of Europe, theMediterranean countries were far less interested and in fact often opposedScandinavian policies vis-à-vis Russia.6 When it comes to geopolitics theEU continues to speak with several voices and such cacophony makes themuch-talked about EU-Russia partnership a difficult thing to develop. Thereis no doubt that the EU depends on Russia for gas and oil supplies andinversely, there is also little doubt that Russia is far more interested in trad-ing and economic links with the EU than with the other potential ‘strategicpartner’ – China. Can Kaliningrad help bring about and develop a rapproche-ment between the EU and Russia? In what way is a specifically Europeanidentity of Kaliningrad important in this respect?

In 2004 Christopher S. Browning and Pertti Joenniemi argued that thevery marginality of Kaliningrad amounted to an opportunity to influence EU-Russia relations. They perceived that the discourse of marginality was usedfunctionally in the exclave of Kaliningrad precisely to gain greater economicand political advantages and to move Kaliningrad into a more powerfulposition vis-à-vis both the EU and Russia. The margin was sometimes con-structed as a bridge, and sometimes as a bulwark, but whichever way it waspositioned, it was functionally employed to Kaliningrad’s advantage.7

Against the background of these and other writings on Kaliningrad,this article will recall, first, how the Soviet authorities attempted to erasethe memory of Königsberg in Kaliningrad, and how such erasures werealways met with opposition. The second part of this article will trace therediscovery of Königsberg in Kaliningrad from the 1980s onwards culmi-nating in the 2005 celebrations of 750 years of the city. The third part ofthe article then discusses in what way this rediscovery poses a threat to theRussian identity of the city. In the fourth part we invert the perspective andlook at the diverse ways in which Kaliningrad is received in contemporaryGermany. Finally, the article concludes by asking about the likely role of theGerman past of the city in the development of collective identity discoursesin Kaliningrad.

BUILDING THE SOVIET CITY OF KALININGRAD

After 1945 Soviet city planners were confronted with a city totally devastatedby the bombing raids of August 1944 and the siege of the city in April 1945.

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Under instructions from Stalin, they opted for the construction of a newSoviet city which was to be home to Soviet citizens recruited from manydifferent regions of the Soviet Union in the years following the end of theSecond World War.8 Until January 1950 more than 400,000 Soviet citizenshad settled in the area, among them tens of thousands of peasant families.The Soviet authorities had promised them homes, food and a better lifeand future for their children. Despite the often blatant propaganda, manyof those who came were among the weakest and poorest – e.g., a highpercentage of single mothers. They tended to be deeply disappointed bywhat they found: a severe shortage of housing, scarcity of even basic food,lack of medical supplies in hospitals and no running water or electricityeven in schools. An occasional break-down of law and order and rampantcorruption added to their woes and many of them were keen to go backalmost as soon as they had arrived.

Under these conditions, the Soviet authorities faced an uphill struggleto make Kaliningrad home for its new occupants. They started by throwingout the remaining old occupants – about 100,000 Germans were forciblymoved to Germany between October 1947 and October 1948. In officialstatements, Königsberg was invariably described as a bulwark of Germanmilitarism and fascism. The German architecture of the city, it was argued,reflected the colonialist attitude of the Germans who had conquered theSlav territory of Eastern Prussia. Hence the German city was condemned,its name was erased, many of its monuments were destroyed (with theexception of those classed as ‘world culture’, such as the monuments toImmanuel Kant and Friedrich Schiller), and the whole cityscape was plannedin a way which bore no resemblance to the city’s past. The government-controlled newspapers, such as Kaliningradskaja Pravda time and againdescribed the future utopia: no ruins, light new buildings containing modernflats and offices, large boulevards, hotels, public libraries, the theatre, newtramways, public boats on the Pregel, etc. The new Soviet city was to be theanti-thesis to the old Königsberg, and it was planned in line with Stalinistprescriptions of how Soviet cities should look.9 The model was Moscow,which also reflected a strong orientation of Kaliningrad to the centre ofSoviet power. The regional and city authorities developed a strong image ofthe area as being the westernmost outpost of the Soviet Union. As such, itwas particularly vulnerable in the Cold War and needed to be defended andfortified (both in military and ideological terms) particularly well. This self-perception went hand in hand with a strong Stalin cult, an emphasis on theRussianness of the territory and its people. The city was transformed into avast memorial site for the Soviet victory over fascist Germany, which becamethe central foundational myth of the city. Monuments to the Red Army weredotted around the cityscape, the museums of the city celebrated the victoryin heroic dioramas and there was a cult of the Soviet heroes fighting inthe Red Army. 1945 became the key foundational date for Kaliningrad, but

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taking intellectual possession of the area also involved an active rewriting ofthe past. Archaeology rather than history became the key discipline, as theauthorities wanted scientific proof that the area had Slav origins going backlong before the German conquest started. History also came in handy, as itcould emphasise the periods in which the area had already been in Russianhands, as during the Seven Years’ War or during the ‘Patriotic War’ when theRussian armies drove Napoleon back to France via Eastern Prussia.

However, turning Königsberg into Kaliningrad quickly ran into difficul-ties. Not only was the archaeological and historical evidence rather poor,more importantly, the rebuilding of the city was incredibly slow. Few invest-ments came into the region. There was a severe shortage of trained architectsand building materials. Budgets were always far too small for the ambitiousrebuilding programmes. And there was also a lack of detailed plans of theGerman city which hindered the rebuilding. This led to many complaintsfrom a population which found it difficult to feel at home in the ruined city.There was a widespread feeling that Moscow did nothing for the region. Themilitary significance of the Baltic port of Baltijsk brought many restrictions tothe freedom of movement even for Soviet citizens which increased their dis-satisfaction. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s trust in the promised goldenfuture of the Soviet city was severely undermined. And there were those,inside Kaliningrad, who began to rethink the attitude to the German pastof their city. By the mid-1950s architects began talking about Königsberg asa benchmark for the new Kaliningrad. Heritage lists in the region began toinclude German buildings and memorials. In 1957 there was even money forcarrying out urgent repairs to the Protestant dome. During the late 1950s andearly 1960s there was a major discussion around the future of the ruined citycastle. A number of architects and intellectuals tried to reverse the decisionto raze the castle remains. Their lobbying work not only mobilised publicopinion but was also successful in getting the support of the Soviet Ministryof Culture for the restoration of the castle. Yet in the end the local party lead-ership had their way. Their good connections to Moscow led to Brezhnev’ssupport for the destruction of the castle which was carried out in 1965/66,despite some local protests. By the late 1960s those who had wanted tomove to a more positive attitude to the German past of Kaliningrad had lostto those party apparatchiks who continued to emphasise that Königsbergwas the evil city which had to be overcome. In its infrastructure and econ-omy Kaliningrad was now integrated into the Soviet Union more than ever,and the media as well as the museums and all public representations ofthe city emphasised the socialist achievements of the new Russian city incontrast to the allegedly dark days of Königsberg.

If this became the official narrative until well into the 1980s, it wasnever a narrative which remained uncontested. After all, the most popularpostcards in Kaliningrad tended to depict German architectural landmarksas early as the 1950s. Suggestions to replace the Protestant dome with a

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massive memorial for the dead of the Red Army in 1967 were shelved afterit had become clear that there would be considerable local opposition tothese plans. The destruction of the Johanniskirche in the early 1970s was analmost clandestine affair, as the authorities clearly feared renewed protest.Hence, the official Soviet version of the city’s past and future were alwayscontested by parts of the city’s populace.

REDISCOVERING KÖNIGSBERG IN KALININGRAD

Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost made it easier for those individuals and groupswho wanted to save what was left of the German heritage of the cityand initiate a debate around that heritage.10 It was particularly intellectualsamong whom such a position was prominent. Writers such as Juri Iwanowor Aleksandr Popadin, artists such as Wiktor Ryabinin, and the photogra-pher Anatoly Bachtin tirelessly campaigned to save the cultural remnants ofa German past, which, under the Soviet Union, had been neglected to thepoint where it was about to vanish forever. The historian Yuri Kostyashovundertook a major oral history project in the late 1980s and early 1990s,which, for the first time, showed the difficulties of early Soviet settlers ofaccommodating to the situation in Eastern Prussia after 1945 and problema-tised the treatment of the remaining Germans in the area. His research wasbreaking two key Soviet taboos: the myth of the heroic re-building of theregion and the city, and the silence on the ethnic cleansing of Germans.At the university and in the city he met with major resistance, and it tookten years before his book could be published in Russian.11 The philosopher,Prof. Gilmanov, even called publicly on the Russian authorities to makean official apology to all German expellees and their descendants and toinvite them to return to the region.12 The university generally is a place,where many remember the German traditions of the old German university,the Albertina, with pride. They re-enforce the intellectual milieu, which isin favour of a more positive endorsement of the German traditions of thecity.13 Those who were young in the 1980s saw the German past of theircity also as a way of escaping the dreary Soviet present. It gave their city anaura of mystery and specialness, and they were among the first to identifywith ‘Konig’ or ‘Kenig’, as they affectionately called their city.14

All those in favour of a rediscovery of Königsberg in Kaliningrad saw agreat opportunity arise with the 750-year anniversary of the city in 2005.Already in 2001, the Kaliningrad Cultural Association called publicly onthe Russian authorities to mark the event, but their call was initially metwith a decisive ‘njet’ from the Kreml. Subsequently the Moscow-basedgroup ‘Zemlyachestvo – Kaliningrad’ and the Kaliningrad-based group ‘ProKönigsberg’ were set up to lobby for a change of this decision. The city andregional authorities, including the mayor of Kaliningrad, Yuri Savenko, soon

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supported attempts to celebrate the anniversary in the hope that moneywould come into the city, which might help to change the poor imageKaliningrad enjoyed in the wider world. Rumour has it that the wife ofPresident Vladimir Putin, Ludmilla, who was born in Kaliningrad, also had ahand in changing the initial decision. In 2003, during a visit to Kaliningrad,her husband announced that Moscow would support local wishes to markthe anniversary.

For those who had hoped to use the celebrations to emphasise thedifference between their city and Russia, actual events were a disappoint-ment (see next section). A small movement for greater autonomy of theregion, which sometimes seems to have separatist tendencies, does exist inKaliningrad. Its leading figures are Sergej Pasko, Igor Rudnikow and VytautasLopata. They have a difficult stance in a region which is politically domi-nated by those forces who support Putin.15 Pasko, a former president of theKaliningrad Association of Industrialists, has publicly called for the founda-tion of a separate fourth Baltic Republic. Russian officials, such as WassiliLichatschow, vice-president of the Committee of International Relations ofthe Russian Federation Council, have always denied the existence of sepa-ratism in Kaliningrad,16 and the central government in Moscow has alwaysreacted negatively to proposal to give the region some kind of special statusor more autonomy.17

However, the celebrations did undoubtedly legitimate the memory ofKönigsberg and helped to overcome the last remnants of the long-standingtaboo regarding the subject matter. So many of the central symbols con-nected with the anniversary, including the King’s Gate and the GermanProtestant dome, pointed to the German past of the city. One of the projects,associated with the anniversary, was the reconstruction of the Fischerdorf –a whole city quarter in the former centre of the city. In the end the projectwas not completed on time, but whilst it is progressing, there are alreadyinitiatives to rebuild the area around the Protestant dome, previously calledKneiphof.18 The university in Kaliningrad was renamed after Immanuel Kantin 2005. The excavations on the site of the old German castle and the restora-tion of the German Protestant dome (financed by the German news journalsSpiegel and Zeit) not only aroused interest in the legendary amber room, butalso led to the idea of rebuilding the castle, an idea which was given the go-ahead by Putin one year after the anniversary. The president announced thatRussia would support the rebuilding of the castle with 100 million Euros.19

The German past was very much present in the anniversary celebrations, andas those celebrations amounted to a genuine people’s party, it carried theidea of the German antecedents of the Russian city into broader segmentsof the population. When the regional government asked school children todepict those monuments and buildings which to them symbolised the cityin a special way, the overwhelming number of entries depicted monumentsand buildings belonging to the German past of the city.20 Locally, people

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also did not use the slogan ‘750 Years Kaliningrad’ very much and insteadpreferred to use ‘750 Years of our city’ – thereby avoiding all national iden-tification and stressing local allegiances. A Russian city guide, published inRussian in 2006 in a Russian publishing house, explicitly carried the title:‘Fachlexikon Königsberg/Kaliningrad’.21 A road map of the entire region ofKaliningrad, published again in Russian in Kaliningrad in 2006, carries theGerman name Königsberg for the biggest city in the region.22

Overall then, we can observe a range of different motivations behindthe rediscovery of Königsberg in Kaliningrad. First, there is the desire ofa small minority of Kaliningraders for sovereignty. Second, many moreKaliningraders would wish for greater autonomy of the region from Moscow.Third, local politicians also use the argument about the difference ofKaliningrad in order to enhance the resources allocated to Kaliningrad byMoscow and change the poor image of the region in the wider world. Themore important it becomes to strengthen the ties with Russia, the moreRussia will invest in Kaliningrad – thus the thinking behind such instru-mentalist concerns. Finally, there is the concern of intellectuals with theGerman heritage. This has been partly an aesthetic concern – improving thecityscape by restoring the beauty of the German city. But it also has beenpartly an argument about coming to terms with the past: acknowledgingthat it was morally reprehensible to cleanse the region of Germans and alltraces of German culture. There is more than a hint of notions of historicaljustice and the desire to work for reconciliation in the attempts of Russianintellectuals in Kaliningrad to highlight the German past of their city.

THREATS TO THE RUSSIAN IDENTITY OF THE CITY?

Those opposed to the rediscovery of Königsberg included the large andimportant group of war veterans. Their organisations were powerful withina city that had been ‘the Soviet fist in the Baltic’ – the only ice-free mili-tary harbour of the Soviet Union and a military no-go area for the entireperiod of the Soviet Union. They argued invariably that any such rediscov-ery would weaken the Russian character of the city and might lead to theentire region being Germanised again and eventually returned to Germany.For these reasons the veterans had also been impeccably opposed to thecelebration of the city’s anniversary in 2005. Committed to the Soviet past ofthe city, the veterans were opposed to removing the Lenin monument fromthe central city square, were pleased about the restoration of a Stalin bust atone of the central war memorials in the city and vociferously opposed theGerman writer Günter Grass, when he visited the city and questioned theexistence of a monument to Marinescu, the U-boat commandant responsiblefor the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945 – a ship packed with civilianrefugees, which Grass dealt with in his 2002 novella ‘Crab Walk’.23 One of

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the central memorial places of the veterans is the Bunker museum, the sitewhere the Wehrmacht general Otto Lasch directed his fanatical and sense-less defence of Königsberg against the Red Army. Its dioramas (also presentin the city’s historical museum) still depict the heroic narrative of Russiansoldiers bravely overcoming stubborn German resistance. Despite tentativesigns that the museum is integrating a more reconciliatory stance, e.g., thedocumentation of the German war cemetery in Kaliningrad, a project thatveterans also had been impeccably opposed to at first, the overwhelmingimpression is of continued adherence to the traditional Soviet narrative ofthe Great Patriotic War. Given the veterans’ position, it is not surprising thatthey should have opted for celebrating 60 years of Kaliningrad in July 2006rather than 750 years of Königsberg in 2005. For a long time it looked asthough they would have the ear of the president. But even when the deci-sion was eventually taken not just to celebrate in 2006, but also in 2005 (witha much larger budget for the 2005 celebrations), the authorities in Moscowkept the reigns firmly in their hands and oversaw the celebrations with awatchful eye.

The Commission for the Preparation for the Celebrations was headedby the Minister for Economic Development and Trade (MEDT), GermanGref. It kept a tight hold on the funding for Kaliningrad’s anniversarypreparations and played a key role in the selection of ‘jubilee objects’ tobe reconstructed and/or constructed and events for the anniversary cele-brations to take place in the first weekend of July 2005. The selection ofthe St. Petersburg–based Interregional Press Centre to prepare the anniver-sary programme was another example of federal control and an attempt tolimit potentially ‘separatist’ local input into the event. However, the city andregional administration drafted their own programmes, leading to confusingmulti-level organisation of the event, which left the actual celebrations sig-nalling mixed messages about Kaliningrad’s collective identity. The Russianmessage was unmistakeable: On the first day of the celebrations, on 1 June2005, it was an actor portraying Peter the Great who arrived in the cityby boat and opened proceedings. The logo of the celebrations, the ancientKing’s Gate, was depicted against the background of the Russian nationalflag and beneath it was written ‘750 Kaliningrad’ – an obvious anachronism.Each day of the three-day celebrations carried a different motto. Whilst thefirst day stressed the continuity of city development with ‘One City – OneHistory’, the other two stressed the Russian character of the city, albeit in away which highlighted the role of the city as Russia’s gateway to the West:‘A Russian City in the Heart of Europe’ and ‘Kaliningrad: Meeting Pointof Russia and Europe’. Two of the most important city monuments thatwere inaugurated in the anniversary years 2005 and 2006, also stressed theRussian character of the city: a brand-new Orthodox cathedral on the cen-tral city square and, at the same place, a Victory Column as memorial to theGreat Patriotic War. Inside the Victory Column a message to the descendants

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of contemporary Kaliningraders was placed which expressed the hope that‘the richness and beauty of Russian soil in the heart of Europe’ will prosperin the coming years.24 All 89 governors of the Russian regions were presentat the celebrations in 2005.

The central government in Russia undoubtedly was wary of an agendawhich would emphasise the difference of Kaliningrad vis-à-vis the Russianmainland. Hence they started a series of initiatives aimed at strengthen-ing the ties between Kaliningrad Russians and Russians in the mainland.Between the sixth and the ninth form, Kaliningrad schools teach ‘history ofthe region’, which tries hard to make East Prussia part and parcel of Russiannational history.25 The government has introduced a new obligatory subjectat schools, which is a mixture of military training and patriotic indoctrina-tion, and it is even sponsoring visits of school children to Russia in thehope to strengthen their ties to the motherland. They finance an extensivetravel and education programme ‘We Live in Russia’, which is popular in theexclave; Kaliningraders are the only Russians who can apply for a passportfree of charge.26 It is therefore perhaps not surprising that they used theanniversary celebrations in 2005 to emphasise the long ties of the city andthe region with Russia. The addition of the name of Immanuel Kant to theuniversity was paralleled by references to Russia, so that the official newname is: Immanuel Kant Russian State University of Kaliningrad. The newgovernor of Kaliningrad, Georgii Boos, who was appointed directly by Putinin 2006 (previous ones had been elected by Kaliningraders), also pursueda clear policy of Russification of the province. Unlike his predecessor, hewas not so keen on attracting European investments and tried harder to getRussian investments into the region; his dissolution of the department forforeign affairs at the city council was a clear sign that Kaliningrad was tolook eastwards rather than westwards. He was also not shy to whip up anti-German sentiments every now and again. In the spring of 2006, he publiclyvoiced his opinion that Germany was promoting the re-Germanisation ofKaliningrad.27 He compared the loss of Kaliningrad for Germans with theloss of St. Petersburg for Russians – either displaying phenomenal historicalignorance or shrewdly using anti-Germanism to foster a Russian agenda. Healso suggested publicly to rename the German-Russian house into Russian-German house to emphasise the Russianness of the territory.28 When hedid not get his way, the director of the German-Russian house did notreceive a visa for Russia for several months. And there was no invitationto the German-Russian House to participate in any way, shape or formin the anniversary celebrations of 2006. Boos continues a long traditionof whipping up anti-German sentiment to score political points, somethingthat can already be observed as early as the 1994 Duma elections.29 Inits diverse attempts to Russify Kaliningrad’s collective identity, the regionaland central authorities can also rely on the Orthodox church. When thebrand-new Cathedral was officially opened in 2006, the patriarch was not

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shy to emphasise that the Cathedral was a sign that ‘this is Russian land,Orthodox land’.30

The attempted Russification of Kaliningrad was not only directed againstGermany. In many respects, relations of Russia with Kaliningrad’s immedi-ate neighbours Poland and Lithuania were much worse than with Germany.Russia deliberately snubbed the presidents Aleksandr Kwasniewski ofPoland and Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania by not inviting them to the anniver-sary celebrations in 2005. Relations between the university in Kaliningradand in neighbouring Klaipeda, which once had been excellent, came to avirtual stand-still.31 The presents that Kaliningrad received from Lithuania,Byelorussia and Germany in 2005 and the Russian response amounted to abattle of the monuments, which is reminiscent of classical nineteenth-centurysymbolical politics.32 The Lithuanians funded a monument for the Lithuanianpoet Liudvikas Reza, in his time professor at the university in Königsberg.The Byelorussians did the same for the Byelorussian writer and translatorFranzisk Skaryna, a representative of the early national movement inByelorussia. The Germans placed a monument for Duke Albrecht, thefounder of the university, next to the dome. And the Russians responded byspending money on a monument for General Pjotr Bagration, who foughtagainst Napoleon.

From the sociological survey data compiled by the department of soci-ology at the University of Kaliningrad, one wonders what all the fuss is aboutand why Russia should be unduly concerned about the Russian identity ofits exclave. Only 2 percent of the population of Kaliningrad identified them-selves primarily as Europeans, whilst 44 percent viewed themselves first andforemost as Russians. This was only topped by a strong allegiance to thelocal – with 54 percent saying that they were, above all, Kaliningraders.33

True, previous surveys came to different conclusions. Thus, for example,a 2002 survey done by A. V. Chabanova came to the conclusion that only24.6 percent of Kaliningraders identified themselves primarily with Russia(in contrast to 49 percent in Russia proper), whereas 60.2 percent identifiedprimarily with the local or regional identity. Another survey of the sameyear though, found that 78 percent of the population expected Kaliningradto remain with Russia in some form. Between 1993 and 2002 the numberof those in favour of retaining and even strengthening the Russian militarypresence in the region increased, as they saw the military presence as guar-antee for the Russian future of the territory. Even the recent announcementof President Dmitrij Medwedjew to deploy Iskander rockets to Kaliningradas a response to the US plans to install a rocket defence system againstterrorist attacks in Poland met with cautious approval in the region.34 Butonly 21 percent expected no change of status, whereas 38 percent expectedmore autonomy (special status) and 19 percent even saw a Hong Kongsolution as realistic. Only 5 percent foresaw independence, and an even

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smaller number, 3 percent, thought that the territory would be returned toGermany.35

THE GERMAN PERCEPTION OF KALININGRAD

Until well into the 1960s the official German discourse on Kaliningrad wasextremely prominent, as was the discourse on the ‘lost German East’ moregenerally. In particular the German expellee and refugee associations, look-ing after the interests of millions of ethnically cleansed Germans in the FRG,enjoyed broad political support for their demands to be able to return totheir Heimat.36 From the 1960s onwards, these associations were increas-ingly identified with a particular brand of right-wing revisionism which didnot seem to fit into the new climate of détente and dialogue with CommunistEastern Europe. Hence the expellee organisations found themselves increas-ingly marginalised and with decreasing influence on the political process.When, in the wake of German reunification, Chancellor Helmut Kohl finallyagreed to accept as final the contemporary borders of Europe, the expelleeorganisations, many of which had excellent links to Kohl’s party, theCDU/CSU, were disappointed. Ever since, the official Germany and theGerman government in particular have been extremely hesitant to makepronouncements which might be seen as rekindling German desires on ter-ritories now belonging to neighbouring states in Eastern Europe. Hence,with regard to Kaliningrad, the official Germany has tried to Europeanisethe issue and has, by and large, operated within the framework of the EUresponse to the problem. Whilst the German expulsions from the CzechRepublic and, less so, from Poland still haunt German-Czech and German-Polish relations,37 it is remarkable how insignificant this issue has been inGerman-Russian relations.

True, there has been the occasional provocation. Thus, for example,in 2004 there were suggestions from within the parliamentary party ofthe CDU/CSU to create a Euro-region Kaliningrad under the joint admin-istration of Poland, Lithuania and Russia, carrying the ‘historical name’Prussia. The two members of parliament behind this initiative, JürgenKlimke and Erwin Marschewski, had coordinated it carefully with theLandsmannschaft Ostpreussen, the expellee organisation responsible forKaliningrad.38 Predictably it created an uproar in Russia, where the Germanambassador was called into the foreign ministry to explain the German posi-tion. There has also been some activity by small groups of extreme rightwingers, including neo-Nazis, who have tried to establish German settle-ments within the oblast of Kaliningrad in the mid-1990s. After the Germanmagazine Der Spiegel uncovered these activities, the Russian authorities soonput a stop to them.39

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It would be fair to say that German media interest in Kaliningrad after1990 was restricted to the occasional article highlighting the many problemsof the city – from AIDS to drugs to prostitution. It was by and large depictedin entirely negative terms and contrasted to the blossoming ‘garden city’that Königsberg had been before the Second World War. If German interestin Kaliningrad was a distinct minority interest, it still contributed to tens ofthousands of German tourists flocking to the Baltic coast every year to seethe town and the area that once was their or their parents’ home. VladimirMichailov, until 2006 a leading member of the department of foreign affairsat the city council, estimates their numbers to have been 80,000–90,000 inthe mid-1990s declining to 30,000–40,000 by the mid-2000s.40 Apart from thenostalgia tourists (and a considerable nostalgia literature, which has beenpresent on the German book market since the 1990s) a number of Germaninstitutions operate within the oblast of Kaliningrad trying to strengthen thelinks between Kaliningrad and Germany. The Protestant-Lutheran churchis organising 46 parishes with around 3,000 members (2006), many of themolder people who have moved to Kaliningrad from the post-Soviet republics.There are occasional tensions with the revived Orthodox church, but overall,the activities of the Protestant church are not very public outside the smallcircle of Germanophiles in Kaliningrad.41 The German-Russian House inKaliningrad seeks to give a home to the many Russian-German Associationsin the Oblast and to promote better understanding between Russia andGermany.42 The establishment of a German consulate soon ran into difficul-ties and it took five years before a permanent home for the consul could befound in 2008.43 Several of the Northern federal states in Germany, in partic-ular Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern andBrandenburg, have signed special cooperation agreements or are other-wise closely involved with Kaliningrad, some establishing representationsin the city and seeking to encourage various forms of contact betweenGermans and Russians from Kaliningrad.44 In particular a range of chari-table organisations were set up to provide food, clothing and other goodsto Kaliningrad. The Robert Bosch Foundation and the Möllgaard Foundationare also active in Kaliningrad, supporting a range of research and culturalinitiatives, especially the foundation of a European Institute in conjunctionwith the Technical University in Kaliningrad.45 Economic relations remainhaphazard with German investors wary of the many difficulties and prob-lems involved in investing in the oblast of Kaliningrad.46 There are too fewsuccess stories to attract many German investors to the region, and the morerecent policies of Boos have in any case concentrated on attracting Russianinvestments.

Interest in Germany more generally increased considerably with theanniversary celebrations in 2005. The media interest was considerable47 –with detailed reports on the planning process, speculation about what itwould be like, and extensive (and by and large positive) reports about the

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actual celebrations. On 4 July 2005 ‘Kaliningrad’ even became the ‘word ofthe day’ in Germany, i.e., the word most often used in the German media onthat day.48 In particular the efforts to restore the city and remind its citizensof the German past of Kaliningrad were highlighted and gave reason to lookback onto Königsberg, familiarising younger generations of Germans with acity that presumably many of them had no knowledge of. Many newspaperreports also emphasised the strong European orientation especially amongyoung Kaliningraders. There was some criticism of the national orientationof the celebrations and the use of the slogan ‘750 Years Kaliningrad’. Manyarticles also highlighted corruption, the mafia, bureaucracy, poverty and thefight against illnesses such as tuberculosis or AIDS. The notion of Kaliningradas a Russian hell-hole contrasted the reports about a flourishing and blos-soming Königsberg before 1933. However, a good deal of the media reportsalso concentrated on the fate of the Jews in Königsberg and the fate ofthe city under Nazism and in the Second World War more generally. Theconstant references to the German Königsberg thus put the benchmark forcontemporary Kaliningrad very high, but at the same time left no doubt thatit was German responsibility leading to the eventual loss of the city. Theportrait of the city by Jürgen Manthey again showed a very positive pictureof the German city – as a cosmopolitan bulwark of liberalism and Westernideas. But it dates the decline to the city succumbing to Nazism rather than to1945.49 The book became a bestseller in 2005, going through several reprintsand selling tens of thousands of copies, and it was by no means the onlybook to hit the bookshelves in that year. Manthey’s intention was clearly towrite an homage to a city which would not be a city of the political right,but of the centre left – with strong liberal traditions. It was thus a brave andsuccessful attempt to wrench the memory discourse about the city and EastPrussia out of the hands of the political right in contemporary Germany.

In Kaliningrad itself German institutions contributed to the anniversarycelebrations in a variety of ways. The German-Russian House organised anumber of exhibitions and events associated with the German past of thecity, and its dance group also took part in the official celebrations.50 TheGerman consulate organised the visit of several German music groups tothe city, both classical and popular.51 Even the German chancellor, GerhardSchröder, was invited to participate in the celebrations, albeit briefly andon the back of a Russian-German-French summit held nearby on the Balticcoast – which many observers saw as a simple pretext to invite Schröderand not the presidents of Lithuania and Poland. The return of Königsberginto the historical consciousness of Germans was also underlined by thepresence of the topic on German television. Several documentaries and amajor TV movie reminded millions of Germans of Eastern Prussia and thecity of Königsberg/Kaliningrad.52

A renewed interest in Kaliningrad and its German past in Germanyitself does not amount to a strengthening of German revisionism. Indeed,

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the dominant German narrative of Königsberg is one of irredeemable loss.The strong link between the fate of Königsberg and German responsibilityfor the Second World War, for the brutality of the war on the Eastern frontin particular, has been extremely present in the German reporting on theKaliningrad anniversary. Seeing Königsberg through the lens of Nazism andthe Second World War also means accepting German responsibility for thisloss. It has been part and parcel of the long process of coming to termswith the Nazi past, which set in belatedly in the 1960s and is still ongoing inGermany today. The German media might be unduly harsh in the portrayalof social and economic conditions in Kaliningrad, but at least within themainstream media, one does not find any questioning of the Russianness ofthe territory. This is also the main reason why German interest in Kaliningraddeclined sharply after 2005. It was almost as if the Russian celebrationsamounted to an opportunity to say goodbye to the city of Königsberg.

Even if we look at the reaction of the milieu of refugees and expelleesto the anniversary celebrations and their attitude towards their Heimat, wecan observe an increasing willingness to seek forms of cooperation with theRussian authorities in Kaliningrad. Their aim can increasingly be describedas reconciliation and working together with the Russian authorities for abetter future of ‘their’ city. The Stadtgemeinschaft Königsberg in Duisburg,which is maintaining an excellent museum on Königsberg in the Ruhr city,for example, has tried very hard to enter into a constructive dialogue withthe Russian authorities on how they might contribute to the anniversarycelebrations. In the end their efforts proved in vain, and they had to organ-ise their own separate celebrations with the help of the Protestant churchand the German-Russian House in Kaliningrad.53 Whilst the director of theDuisburg-based museum, Lorenz Grimoni, and other officials of the expelleeorganisations were disappointed by this result,54 outsiders have stressedthat it already was an amazing success that the expellee organisation wasallowed to hold its own anniversary celebrations inside the city.55 In thejournal of the German expellees, the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung (PAZ),and in the extreme right-wing media, such as the weekly Junge Freiheit,one could find wild attacks on the historical forgetfulness of the officialGermany and the need to remember ‘the lost German East’.56 But it is per-haps characteristic that even in this milieu the East was, by and large, seenas ‘lost’. One loved to remind fellow Germans how brutally the German cul-ture was extinguished in the former ‘German East’ – often forgetting aboutwho was ultimately responsible for this. One also occasionally nurtured thehope that the European Union might be the answer to the reconstitutionof Eastern Prussia.57 And yet, straightforward revisionism was rare even inthe expellee milieu. But the Russian authorities remained extremely mis-trustful. The chairman of the East Prussian expellees, Wilhelm von Gottberg,has not received a Russian visa since 2003, and there is a noticeable desireto keep the expellees at arm’s length. On a local level, however, relations

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between the expellees and local Russian groups, including official groups,are often much better.58 And in Kaliningrad one encounters, time and again,Russians, such as the writer Elena Emelinanova or the administrator of theSchleswig-Holstein Information Buero, Lilia Kraskowskaja, who emphasisehow positive their experience with German expellees has been. They seethem as Germans with strong emotions for their former home who want tohelp.59

On the basis of my discussion of the German reactions towardsKaliningrad, the verdict of the Daily Telegraph that ‘[Germany is keen] totake back Königsberg. . . . for Germans, Kaliningrad is still important froman emotional standpoint,’60 seems born out of British anxieties about a reuni-fied Germany more than it is grounded in any informed opinion about whatgoes on in either Germany or Kaliningrad. It is, of course, true that theGermans have, for some years now, discovered themselves as victims of theSecond World War,61 but the discourse of victimhood takes place against thebackground of a sustained and ongoing engagement with German respon-sibilities for the Second World War and its many horrors. As such it alsodoes not relativise this responsibility nor does it lead to revisionist positionsvis-à-vis the end results of the Second World War.

THE GERMAN PAST AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLLECTIVEIDENTITY DISCOURSES IN KALININGRAD

Against the background of the situation described above, how can one envis-age the future development of collective identity discourses in the enclaveof Kaliningrad. First of all, it is entirely predicable that Kaliningrad willremain a ‘discursive battlefield’ for some time to come.62 It is striking towhat extent those battles surrounding identity discourses continue to bestructured along national lines. The German narratives of Königsberg talkabout it as a ‘German’ city – for many centuries before a German nation-state came into being. Was Königsberg German for 700 years? In 1255 dida majority of people in the city think of themselves as German? And lateron: was it not foremost a Prussian, perhaps even an Eastern Prussian city?The construction of the German nation-state is in large measure an eventof the nineteenth century, and it has to remain questionable how powerfulthe national discourse was in previous centuries. But present-day historicalconsciousness remains strongly tied to those nineteenth-century backwardsprojections of national history. This is no different in Russia, even if Russiahas far greater difficulties in constructing such a national past for Kaliningradthan either Germany, or its immediate neighbours Poland and Lithuania.63

And yet, as we have seen, in school textbooks, in symbolic politics and intheir concrete political measures in the exclave, Russian politicians have pre-cisely emphasised the belonging of Kaliningrad to Russia. In the aftermath of

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Kaliningrad’s anniversaries and contrary to Aalto’s findings from 2002, thereis little appetite among Russian political elites to experiment with differentscenarios of geopolitical ordering in the Baltic.64

In geopolitical terms, the ongoing economic boom in Kaliningrad is vitalin lessening the tensions surrounding the enclave. A permanently impov-erished region of around 100,000 people living on roughly 13,000 squarekilometres in the middle of the EU (Kaliningrad became a Russian exclavein 1992, with the independence of the three Baltic republics) would be hardto imagine. Pressure would rise both from within Kaliningrad and from theEU to find territorial solutions which would allow Kaliningrad to prosper. Asit stands, there is little economic pressure for identity change. As we haveseen above, the vast majority of people living in Kaliningrad perceive them-selves as Russians, albeit Russians with a difference. If the economic up-turnis sustained, there is little prospect for this to change. To the contrary, theeconomic boom should help in overcoming very real fears in the exclavethat Russia will sell them out, that some deal will be on the cards wherebyKaliningrad’s links with Russia will be severed. Discussions that were veryprevalent in the 1990s, predicting the ‘Luxemburgisation’ of Kaliningrad, a‘Hong Kong solution’ to the exclave’s problems, a European Free Trade Zoneor a fourth Baltic republic now seem dated. Ideas of Kaliningrad as a con-dominium jointly administered by Russia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany ornotions of a return of the region to Germany seem even more unlikely.65

What then, one might ask, are the scenarios for Kaliningrad and forthe collective identity of its people? I think that three things are likely: first,within a re-assured Russian Kaliningrad, notions of the city and oblast asan ‘in-between place’ will flourish. Full-blown separatism, which has tradi-tionally been weak in the region, will fail to take root in the region, butKaliningraders will develop a strong regional consciousness which mightask for more autonomy from central government. There are many signsthat Kaliningraders are developing a strong regional consciousness, which isnot opposed to Russianness, but emphasises their identity as Russians witha difference – somehow more European and a transmission belt betweenRussia and Europe.66 Given its geographical location on the Baltic coast,Kaliningrad would be particularly well positioned to act as bridge betweenRussia and the Baltic republics. During the Soviet Union, these relationshad already been strong; in the aftermath of the independence of the Balticrepublics, tension with Russia meant that many of these connections weresevered. But in a more Europeanised Baltic, which sees itself less and lessas a European bulwark against Russia, Russia’s Baltic exclave might wellagain play a constructive role in mediating between Russia and the Baltic. Atpresent the Baltic states’ foreign policies seem awkwardly poised betweenposing as a beacon for Russia’s ‘near abroad’ and acting as an irritant forRussia in its desire to keep its ‘near abroad’ away from Europe.67 Kaliningrad

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might well have a role to play in lessening that tension which still charac-terises the relations between the Baltic states and Russia. Moscow need notperceive such regionalisation of historical consciousness as endangering theRussianness of the region. Instead such regionalisation should be welcomein line with the endorsement of regional forms of autonomy in other regionsof the Russian Federation.

Secondly, Kaliningrad could develop into a place of Russian-Germanreconciliation. There is no such place at present. This is striking whenone compares it with the many places of German-French or German-Polishreconciliation. True, there are individuals who have furthered the Russian-German process of reconciliation – one thinks immediately of Lew Kopelewand Heinrich Böll. And there is also the Petersburg Dialogue, initiated bySchröder and Putin in 2001.68 Surprisingly, Russian-German relations areless burdened by the Nazi past than say Polish-German or Czech-Germanrelations, despite the fact that 20 million Russians perished in the SecondWorld War, that no other ethnic group (with the exception of the Jews andthe Roma) were treated as harshly as the Russians and that the war on theEastern front was fought with often unimaginable brutality. Perhaps there isrelatively little anti-German feeling in Russia today, because the old Sovietdiscourse on the ‘Great Patriotic War’ always distinguished between Nazisand Germans. Perhaps the fact that both nations do not share a borderis important too. But does that mean that reconciliation is unnecessary?69

Hardly, for who could doubt that family memory in both Germany andRussia transmits the history of the war and of the post-war (coming toterms with totally devastated countries and with the inhuman treatment ofprisoners of war in both Germany and Russia) as a traumatic history, andtrauma can only be overcome in long processes of healing. As Alexanderand Margarete Mitscherlich as well as Theodor Adorno argued so convinc-ingly, any toxic past that has not been ‘worked-through’ carries the dangerof haunting those traumatised by it.70 ‘Regret’, writes Jeffrey Olick, ‘is theemblem of our times.’71 He sees in a responsible ‘politics of regret’ a wayof preventing future outbreaks of inhumanity. Commemorating Königsbergin today’s Kaliningrad could contribute to such a responsible politics ofregret. The preconditions on both sides for embarking on such a processof reconciliation seem to be good on both sides – with little revisionismstill present in Germany and with remarkably little reservation on either sideabout cooperation. Rediscovering the German past of Kaliningrad might bea way of starting a process of coming-to-terms with the unpalatable aspectsof the Great Patriotic War on the Russian side, and visiting the Russiancity of Kaliningrad could be a way of reminding young Germans of theconsequences of Germany’s past nationalist hubris.

One might even think of taking it one step further, and this would be athird option for the future: could Kaliningrad not become a European ‘lieude memoire’? After all, it is a place which has meaning for many different

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people: for Germans and Russians, but also for Lithuanians and Poles. Assuch it is representative of very many borderlands in Europe which werecontested between different nations and peoples and which attempted tonegotiate different claims of cultures, ethnicities, religions and classes. Butit was not only a contested borderland: it was also a place which experi-enced and suffered from the two catastrophes which befell Europe in thetwentieth century and which are of crucial importance to European histori-cal consciousness today: fascism and communism. And just a short distanceaway from the city of Kaliningrad, within the oblast of Kaliningrad, on thebeautiful shores of the Baltic Sea, at Jantarny, one of the death marchesof the Jewish inmates of a concentration camp ended, when the SS drovethem into the sea and shot them. Hence the location is also associatedwith the event, which has become a crucial marker of negative identityfor European historical consciousness: the holocaust. Overall, then, to speakwith Yael Zerubavel, the potential ‘commemorative density’ of Kaliningrad isvery high.72 True, at present the intensity with which different periods in thepast of the city and the region are publicly remembered and celebrated areextremely diverse and limited, with some of the most problematic aspectsreceiving still relatively little attention. But at least in theory, Kaliningrad is aplace with a lot of memory potential. In fact, one might well ask: What bet-ter place to remember European twentieth-century history and to rememberthe lessons that Europeans today want to draw from that history? In the longterm, one can imagine Kaliningrad as European lieu de mémoire, wheremanifold spatial and non-spatial European memories are interlinked – thiswould be a transnational perspective for Kaliningrad which could become acrucial test case for a post-national future of Europe.

NOTES

1. I am grateful to the British Academy for financing the research in Kaliningrad which madepossible the writing of the article. The British Academy also funded the workshop on enclaves at theUniversity of Manchester in December 2007, where I presented a version of this article as a paper.The actual writing of the article was done at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, where I had theprivilege of staying as Senior Research Fellow in 2008/2009. I am grateful to the Institute’s directors, JoernLeonhard and Ulrich Herbert, and my co-fellows for providing a wonderfully conducive atmosphere forscholarly endeavours.

2. We follow here Anssi Paasi, ‘Boundaries as Social Processes: Territoriality in the World of Flows’,Geopolitics 3 (1998) pp. 69–88, who has convincingly demonstrated the fluidity and continuous remakingof boundaries understood as social processes.

3. It should be obvious that my approach to memory has been heavily influenced by PierreBourdieu and Anatoly Bakhtin. See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production(New York: Columbia University Press 1993); and Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays(Austin: The University of Texas Press 1985).

4. Geoffrey Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2007)pp. 219–221.

5. O. Sezneva, ‘Historical Representation and the Politics of Memory in Kaliningrad, FormerKönigsberg’, Polish Sociological Review 131/3 (2000).

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6. P. Aalto, ‘A European Geopolitical Subject in the Making? EU, Russia and the KaliningradQuestion’, Geopolitics 7 (2002) pp. 142–174.

7. Christopher S. Browning and Pertti Joenniemi, ‘Contending Discourses of Marginality: The Caseof Kaliningrad’, Geopolitics 9 (2004) pp. 699–730.

8. On all aspects of city planning after 1945 see B. Hoppe, Auf den Trümmern von Königsberg.Kaliningrad 1946–1970 (Munich: Oldenbourg 2000); and P. Brodersen, Die Stadt im Westen. WieKönigsberg Kaliningrad wurde (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2008).

9. A. Day, Building Socialism. The Politics of Soviet Cityscape in the Stalin Era, PhD disserta-tion (New York 1997); also: Karl D. Qualls, ‘Imagining Sewastopol. History and Power – CommunityConstruction, 1942–1953’, National Identities 5/2 (2001) pp. 123–139; and several contributions inD. J. Raleigh (ed.), Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917–1953 (Pittsburgh:Pittsburgh University Press 2001).

10. On the debates surrounding the development of Kaliningrad in the 1990s see P. Joenniemiand J. Prawitz (eds.), Kaliningrad: The European Amber Region (Aldershot: Ashgate 1998); R. J. Krickus,The Kaliningrad Question. New International Relations of Europe (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books 2002);and P. Holtom, A Litmus Test for Europe? Constructing Kaliningrad’s Identity in Moscow, Brussels andKaliningrad, PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2002; H.-M. Birckenbach and C. Wellmann(eds.), The Kaliningrad Challenge: Options and Recommendations (Münster: Lit 2003).

11. The manuscript was finished in 1992 and its publication was delayed until 2002. Interview withYuri Kostyashov, 14 Sept. 2006; see also the German translation of his book: Als Russe in Ostpreussen.Sowjetische Umsiedler über ihren Neubeginn in Königsberg/Kaliningrad nach 1945 (Ostfildern: EditionTertium 1999).

12. Interview with Christian Welscher, Co-ordinator of the European Institute Klaus Mehnert,13 Sept. 2006.

13. V. Gil’manov, ‘Das Fortwirken der Albertina in der Universität Königsberg/Kaliningrad heute:im 450. Jahr der Albertina’, Nordost-Archiv 3 (1994) pp. 518–527.

14. O. Sezneva, ‘Converting History into “Cultural Treasure” in post-1991 Kaliningrad: SocialTransitions and the Meaning of the Past’, Working Paper no. 5 of the International Center for AdvancedStudies, New York University, May 2002. The debate surrounding the renaming of the city is ongoing.More and more Kaliningraders are doubtful whether one of Stalin’s henchmen, Kalinin, is an ideal patronof their city.

15. ‘Pasko bleibt zäh’, Königsberger Express (KE), March 2005, p. 7; ‘Oblast oder Republik’, KE,April 2005, p. 5; “‘Kants Ideen sind uns nah”’, KE, June 2005, p. 5; ‘Ein Herbst in Orange’, KE, Dec.2005, p. 4. On the issue of regionalism/separatism see also P. Holtom, ‘A “Baltic Republic in the RussianFederation” or the “Fourth Baltic Republic”? Kaliningrad’s Regional Programme in the 1990s’, Journal ofBaltic Studies 34 (2003) pp. 153–179.

16. ‘Das wichtigste Problem bleibt die Schaffung von Arbeitsplätzen’, Die Welt am Samstag, 2 July2005.

17. ‘Russlands Auslandsgebiet?’, KE, March 2005, p. 6.18. <http://www.altstadt.ru/>, accessed 12 Nov. 2008.19. ‘Putin für Wiederaufbau des Königsberger Schlosses’, RU-Aktuell, 13 Sept. 2006.20. Interview with Guido Herz, 13 Sept. 2006.21. ‘Königsberg – Kaliningrad: Persönlichkeiten, Fakten, Ereignisse’, KE, Nov. 2006, p. 17.22. ‘Wegweiser nach Königsberg’, KE, Feb. 2006, p. 2.23. ‘Stalin ist wieder da’, KE, June 2005, p. 13; Interview with Jürgen Manthey, 27 Oct. 2006; Günter

Grass, Im Krebsgang (Göttingen: Steidl 2002).24. ‘Was erzählen wir den Nachkommen?’, KE, May 2006, p. 5.25. Interview with Yuri Kostjashov, 14 Sept. 2006, and with Elena Emilianova, 12 Sept. 2006.26. Interview with the Swedish General Consul Erik Hammarskjöld, 12 Sept. 2006; see also

‘Nachhilfe in Heimatliebe’, KE, Feb. 2006, p. 10.27. ‘Deja-vu? – Boos befürchtet separatistische Tendenzen’, KE, May 2006, p. 4; Interview with

Christian Welscher, 13 Sept. 2006.28. ‘Nomen est omen? Streit um Umbenennung des Deutsch-Russischen Hauses’, KE, Feb.

2006, p. 12.29. G. Gnauck, ‘Wolken über Kaliningrad. Vier Jahre nach der Öffnung: eine Zwischenbilanz’, in F.

Kluge (ed.), ‘Ein schicklicher Platz’? Königsberg/Kaliningrad in der Sicht von Bewohnern und Nachbarn(Osnabrück: fibre 1994) p. 62 f.

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30. ‘Königsberg orthodox’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), 11 Sept. 2006.31. Interview with Yuri Kostyashov, 14 Sept. 2006.32. ‘Kaliningrad – 750: Nachbarländer schenken Denkmäler’, RU-Aktuell, 25 April 2005.33. ‘Nur zwei Prozent halten sich für Europäer’, KE, July 2005, p. 6.34. T. Plath, ‘Wir wehren uns nur – Kaliningrader zur Raketenfrage’, RU-Aktuell, 7 Nov. 2008.35. On all survey data see E. Vinokurow, A Theory of Enclaves (Lanham/MD: Lexington Books

2007) p. 102 f.36. P. Ahonen, After the Expulsion. West Germany and Eastern Europe, 1945 – 1990 (Oxford:

Oxford University Press 2003).37. Lynn M. Tesser, ‘European Integration and the Legacy of the post-World War II German

Expulsions in East-Central Europe’, Geopolitics 4 (1999) pp. 91–119.38. Interview with the Bundesgeschäftsführer of the Landsmannschaft, Sebastian Husen, Hamburg,

31 Oct. 2006.39. O. Ihlau, “‘Mich kriegt hier keiner weg”’, Der Spiegel, 15 Dec. 1997; Interview with Olaf Ihlau,

Berlin, 29 Oct. 2006.40. Interview with Vladimir Michailov, Kaliningrad, 12 Sept. 2006.41. Interview with Günter Bischof of the Protestant church in Kaliningrad, 14 Sept. 2006.42. <http://www.drh-k.ru/main-deu.htm>, accessed 4 Nov. 2008.43. Interview with Generalkonsul Guido Herz, Kaliningrad, 14 Sept. 2006.44. Viktor Major, Kaliningrad/ Königsberg: Auf dem schweren Weg zurück nach Europa.

Bestandsaufnahmen und Zukunftsvisionen aus einer europäischen Krisenregion (Münster: Lit 2001)p. 61.

45. <http://www.bosch-stiftung.de/content/language1/html/index.asp>;<http://www.stifterverband.org/site/php/stiftung.php?SID=&seite=StiftungDetail&stiftung=225&herkunft=0&detailansprechnr=457&detailexansprechnr=>, both accessed 7 Nov. 2008; on the KlausMehnert Institute of European Studies see Birgit Adolf, ‘750-Jahr-Geschenk mit Zukunft: Europa verstehenlernen’, KE, April 2006, p. 17; and the Institute’s website at <http://www.europastudien-kaliningrad.de/content/view/14/36/>, accessed 13 Nov. 2008.

46. Y. Zverev, ‘The Kaliningrad Region of Russia in a New Geopolitical Setting’, in M. Waller,B. Coppieters, and A. Malashenko (eds.), Conflicting Loyalties and the State in Post-Soviet Russia andEurasia (London: Frank Cass 1998) p. 86.

47. A selection of the major articles includes: ‘Moskaus ungeliebte Beute’, Der Spiegel, 27 June2005; Thoralf Plath, “‘Wir spürten nur Hass”’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 9 April 2005; ‘Sonderzug nachKaliningrad’, Die Welt, 15 April 2005; Thoralf Plath, ‘Wenn Kant das wüsste’, Die Zeit, 15 May 2003; ‘Ganznah am fernen Westen’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1 July 2005; ‘Europäischer Humanismus mit slawischerSeele’, FAZ, 2 July 2005; Manfred Quiring, ‘Moskau feiert 750 Jahre Kaliningrad’, Die Welt am Samstag,2 July 2005; ‘Kaliningrads verzwicktes Jubiläum’, Neues Deutschland, 2 July 2005; ‘Kaliningrad feiertseinen 750. Geburtstag’, Die Welt am Sonntag, 3 July 2005; Reinhard Wolff, ‘Geburtstagsparty ohne dieNachbarn’, Tageszeitung, 4 July 2005; Daniel Brössler, ‘Letzte Ausfahrt Kaliningrad’, Süddeutsche Zeitung,4 July 2005; Nils Schmidt, ‘Kaliningrad feiert Königsberg’, Der Stern, 5 July 2005; a detailed newspaperanalysis has also been performed by Corinna Jentzsch, ‘750 Jahre Kaliningrad: das Jubiläum in derdeutschen, russischen, polnischen und litauischen Presse’, unpublished manuscript. I am grateful to MsJentzsch for sending me a copy of the manuscript.

48. <http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/wort-des-tages/2005/07/04/Kaliningrad.html>, accessed 7Nov. 2008.

49. J. Manthey, Königsberg. Geschichte einer Weltbürgerrepublik (Munich: Carl Hanser 2005).50. Interview with the director of the German Russian House, Peter Wunsch, 14 Sept. 2006.51. Interview with Cornelius Sommer, general consul to Kaliningrad until 2005, Berlin, 30 Oct.

2006.52. Christoph-Michael Adam, ‘750 Jahre Königsberg – das heutige Kaliningrad sucht seine Zukunft’,

ARD, 9 Feb. 2005, 21.45 Uhr; ‘Mit dem Sehnsuchtsexpress von Berlin nach Kaliningrad’, ZDF , 21 March2005, 22.45 Uhr; Dirk Sager, ‘Königsberg – ferne, fremde Heimat’, ZDF , 26 April 2005; Klaus Bednarz,‘Reise durch Ostpreussen’, ARD, 6 March 2005; Max & Gilbert, ‘Königsberg is dead’, absolut medien DVD,2004; Peter Kahane, ‘Eine Liebe in Königsberg’, ZDF , 2006.

53. A detailed report about the expellees’ celebrations can be found in Königsberger Bürgerbrief66 (2005) pp. 18–36. A detailed programme in included in Königsberger Bürgerbrief 65 (2005) p. 7 f.

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366 Stefan Berger

54. <http://www.stadtgemeinschaft-koenigsberg.de>, accessed 7 Nov. 2008. On the disappoint-ment of representatives of the expellees see Königsberger Bürgerbrief 66 (2005) pp. 6, 8, 39 ff. Also theinterview with Christian Wagner, Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 Nov. 2005; L. Grimoni, ‘750 JahreKönigsberg – was bleibt? Ein Rückblick gegen die Resignation’, Königsberger Bürgerbrief 66 (2005) p. 87;and interview with Lorenz Grimoni, Duisburg, 26 Oct. 2006.

55. Interview with Erik Hammarskjöld, 12 Sept. 2006.56. R. Lass, ‘Aussterbende Erinnerung’, Junge Freiheit (JF), 18 Feb. 2005; H.-J. Mahlitz, ‘Kaliningrad?

– Königsberg!’, PAZ, 9 July 2005.57. B. Knapstein, ‘Münchhausen fliegt in Kaliningrad’, JF , 1 July 2005.58. Interview with Sebastian Husen, 31 Oct. 2006.59. Interview with Eliana Emilianova, 12 Sept. 2006; Interview with Lilia Krasnowskaja, 13 Sept.

2006.60. Daily Telegraph, 21 Jan. 2001.61. B. Niven (ed.), Germans as Victims. Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany

(Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan 2006).62. P. Joenniemi, ‘Kaliningrad as a Discursive Battlefield’, in P. Ganster (ed.), Co-operation,

Environment and Sustainability – Border Regions (San Diego: San Diego State University Press 2001)pp. 319–338.

63. Poland and Lithuania cannot be dealt with separately in a brief article like this. See, foran introduction: R. Janusauskas, Four Tales on the King’s Hill: The ‘Kaliningrad Puzzle’ in Lithuanian,Polish, Russian and Western Political Discourse (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych Polskiej AkademiiNauk 2001).

64. Aalto (note 6).65. W. Böhm and A. Graw (eds.), Königsberg morgen. Luxemburg an der Ostsee (Asendorf: Mut

1993); J. M. Swerev, Rußlands Gebiet Kaliningrad im neuen geopolitischen Koordinatenfeld (Cologne:Boehlau 1996); Friedemann Kluge (ed.), ‘Ein Schicklicher Platz?’ Königsberg Kaliningrad in der Sicht vonBewohnern und Nachbarn (Osnabrück: fis 1994) p. xvi f.

66. I. Oldberg, ‘The Emergence of a Regional Identity in the Kaliningrad Oblast’, Co-operation andConflict 35/3 (2000) pp. 269–288.

67. David J. Galbreath and Jeremy W. Lamoreaux, ‘Bastion, Beacon or Bridge? Conceptualising theBaltic Logic of the EU’s Neighbourhood’, Geopolitics 12 (2007) pp. 109–132.

68. <http://www.petersburger-dialog.de/>, accessed 6 Nov. 2008.69. Thus the view of Guido Herz, German general consul in Kaliningrad between 2005 and 2008.

Interview with Herz, 13 Sept. 2006; also interview with the editorial team of KE, 13 Sept. 2006.70. Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern: Grundlagen kollektiven

Verhaltens (Munich: Piper 1967); Theodor Adorno, ‘What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?’,in Geoffrey Hartman (ed.), Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress 1986) pp. 114–129.

71. Jeffrey K. Olick, The Politics of Regret. On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility(London: Routledge 2007) p. 14. See also, pp. 122 ff.

72. Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli NationalTradition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1995) pp. 7–10.

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