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

Stefan Berger
a a

School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK Available online: 13 May 2010

To cite this article: Stefan Berger (2010): How to be Russian with a Difference? Kaliningrad and its German Past , Geopolitics, 15:2, 345-366 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650040903486967

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Geopolitics, 15:345366, 2010 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1465-0045 print / 1557-3028 online DOI: 10.1080/14650040903486967

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

STEFAN BERGER
School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK

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Kaliningrads history started with the expulsion of the remaining ethnic Germans after the Red Army had conquered the city and surrounding territory and after the Soviet Union had decided to re-settle the area with ethnic Russians and to rebuild the old German city of Knigsberg as a model city of the new Soviet man (and woman). What we witnessed subsequently was a radical attempt to replace one constitutive narrative of socio-territorial identity, that of Knigsberg, with a counter-narrative, that of Kaliningrad. The existing literature on Kaliningrad, which we will briey review below, is by and large in agreement that this attempt was a failure. The German Knigsberg always had its defenders in the Russian Kaliningrad and by the late 1980s Kenig was the name that many young Russians called their city, indicating high levels of emotional identication with the old Knigsberg. With the independence of the Baltic republics in 1992 and their accession to the EU in 2003, Kaliningrad became a Russian exclave and an enclave surrounded by the EU member states Poland and Lithuania. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, there were lively debates about the future of Kaliningrad. Journalists, politicians and academics speculated about what might become of this land, which was one of the last remaining war booties of the old Soviet Union. And what about its people, the overwhelming majority of which were ethnic Russians how would their identities as a borderland people develop over time? These are debates which have lost nothing of their topicality, and indeed, the commemorations of 750 years of Kaliningrad in 2005 and of 60 years of the region of Kaliningrad in 2006 have highlighted the importance of narrative constructions of collective identity 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 345

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German national past for Kaliningrad. We wish to examine how the meanings of Kaliningrads boundaries have been discursively constructed and ask the question if and how they were remade through the anniversaries of 2005 and 2006.2 Social memory had a particularly important role to play in those anniversaries, which rested on diverse and often conicting constructions of an identitarian past for Kaliningrad/Knigsberg. Social memory is strongly connected to narrativity: mnemonic practices seek to establish workable narratives giving continuity and meaning. The evocation of Kaliningrads past was to give meaning to the present. Traditions are remembered through commemorative practices and the repetition of these practices heightens the awareness of objects and places endowed with identitarian meaning. However, in cases of traumatic memory, such continuity and meaning is far more difcult to achieve. And in the case of Kaliningrad, the memory of the past, for Russians and Germans alike, is certainly very traumatic, divisive and discontinuous. The question in this case is whether mnemonic bridges can be built between the pre- and post-traumatic worlds to come to a workable memory of territorial space. How can one avoid the Russian symbolic appropriation of Knigsberg becoming a thorn in the side of German countermemories? Is social memory not suited to identity construction, as it is too contested, conict-ridden and endowed with unequal power relationships? What we are dealing with when we analyse commemorations, like the ones in Kaliningrad in 2005 and 2006, are not unied memories, but a set of mnemonic practices which operate in a given mnemonic eld, where narratives are in an ongoing dialogue with other narratives.3 Commemorations like the one that we examine here can be understood as constitutive narratives, which are crucial to the functioning of social memory. As Geoffrey Cubitt has argued: commemorative occasions and ceremonies do indeed contribute distinctively, and in many social settings vitally, to making the past an active rather than a merely passive element in peoples 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 offer occasions for communities to take stock of, to debate, and perhaps to adjust the meanings they nd in their own history and the shapes they give to their collective identity . . .4 Commemorative occasions in the oblast of Kaliningrad underwent a variety of permutations since the late 1980s, and this article will shed light on most attempts to reconstruct a usable past that are associated with the double anniversary that the city celebrated in 2005 and 2006. The work of Olga Sezneva has reminded us that since the second half of the 1980s many Kaliningraders have rediscovered the German past of their city as an appealing alternative to the grey drabness of Soviet Communism.5 Ever since the end 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 Kaliningrad in a postCold War and post-Soviet political situation. Time and again identity questions were to the fore of those discussions. In 2002, Pami Aalto argued that Russia was willing to experiment with new forms of geopolitical ordering. According to Aalto the problem was that the EU did not speak with one voice when it came to Kaliningrad: whereas the Northern countries were ready to rethink the spatial order in the North-West of Europe, the Mediterranean countries were far less interested and in fact often opposed Scandinavian policies vis--vis Russia.6 When it comes to geopolitics the EU continues to speak with several voices and such cacophony makes the much-talked about EU-Russia partnership a difcult thing to develop. There is no doubt that the EU depends on Russia for gas and oil supplies and inversely, there is also little doubt that Russia is far more interested in trading and economic links with the EU than with the other potential strategic partner China. Can Kaliningrad help bring about and develop a rapprochement between the EU and Russia? In what way is a specically European identity of Kaliningrad important in this respect? In 2004 Christopher S. Browning and Pertti Joenniemi argued that the very marginality of Kaliningrad amounted to an opportunity to inuence EURussia relations. They perceived that the discourse of marginality was used functionally in the exclave of Kaliningrad precisely to gain greater economic and political advantages and to move Kaliningrad into a more powerful position vis--vis both the EU and Russia. The margin was sometimes constructed as a bridge, and sometimes as a bulwark, but whichever way it was positioned, it was functionally employed to Kaliningrads advantage.7 Against the background of these and other writings on Kaliningrad, this article will recall, rst, how the Soviet authorities attempted to erase the memory of Knigsberg in Kaliningrad, and how such erasures were always met with opposition. The second part of this article will trace the rediscovery of Knigsberg in Kaliningrad from the 1980s onwards culminating in the 2005 celebrations of 750 years of the city. The third part of the article then discusses in what way this rediscovery poses a threat to the Russian identity of the city. In the fourth part we invert the perspective and look at the diverse ways in which Kaliningrad is received in contemporary Germany. Finally, the article concludes by asking about the likely role of the German past of the city in the development of collective identity discourses in Kaliningrad.

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BUILDING THE SOVIET CITY OF KALININGRAD

After 1945 Soviet city planners were confronted with a city totally devastated by 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 new Soviet city which was to be home to Soviet citizens recruited from many different regions of the Soviet Union in the years following the end of the Second World War.8 Until January 1950 more than 400,000 Soviet citizens had settled in the area, among them tens of thousands of peasant families. The Soviet authorities had promised them homes, food and a better life and future for their children. Despite the often blatant propaganda, many of those who came were among the weakest and poorest e.g., a high percentage of single mothers. They tended to be deeply disappointed by what they found: a severe shortage of housing, scarcity of even basic food, lack of medical supplies in hospitals and no running water or electricity even in schools. An occasional break-down of law and order and rampant corruption added to their woes and many of them were keen to go back almost as soon as they had arrived. Under these conditions, the Soviet authorities faced an uphill struggle to make Kaliningrad home for its new occupants. They started by throwing out the remaining old occupants about 100,000 Germans were forcibly moved to Germany between October 1947 and October 1948. In ofcial statements, Knigsberg was invariably described as a bulwark of German militarism and fascism. The German architecture of the city, it was argued, reected the colonialist attitude of the Germans who had conquered the Slav territory of Eastern Prussia. Hence the German city was condemned, its name was erased, many of its monuments were destroyed (with the exception of those classed as world culture, such as the monuments to Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schiller), and the whole cityscape was planned in a way which bore no resemblance to the citys past. The governmentcontrolled newspapers, such as Kaliningradskaja Pravda time and again described the future utopia: no ruins, light new buildings containing modern ats and ofces, large boulevards, hotels, public libraries, the theatre, new tramways, public boats on the Pregel, etc. The new Soviet city was to be the anti-thesis to the old Knigsberg, and it was planned in line with Stalinist prescriptions of how Soviet cities should look.9 The model was Moscow, which also reected a strong orientation of Kaliningrad to the centre of Soviet power. The regional and city authorities developed a strong image of the area as being the westernmost outpost of the Soviet Union. As such, it was particularly vulnerable in the Cold War and needed to be defended and fortied (both in military and ideological terms) particularly well. This selfperception went hand in hand with a strong Stalin cult, an emphasis on the Russianness of the territory and its people. The city was transformed into a vast memorial site for the Soviet victory over fascist Germany, which became the central foundational myth of the city. Monuments to the Red Army were dotted around the cityscape, the museums of the city celebrated the victory in heroic dioramas and there was a cult of the Soviet heroes ghting in the 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 of the past. Archaeology rather than history became the key discipline, as the authorities wanted scientic proof that the area had Slav origins going back long before the German conquest started. History also came in handy, as it could emphasise the periods in which the area had already been in Russian hands, as during the Seven Years War or during the Patriotic War when the Russian armies drove Napoleon back to France via Eastern Prussia. However, turning Knigsberg into Kaliningrad quickly ran into difculties. Not only was the archaeological and historical evidence rather poor, more importantly, the rebuilding of the city was incredibly slow. Few investments came into the region. There was a severe shortage of trained architects and building materials. Budgets were always far too small for the ambitious rebuilding programmes. And there was also a lack of detailed plans of the German city which hindered the rebuilding. This led to many complaints from a population which found it difcult to feel at home in the ruined city. There was a widespread feeling that Moscow did nothing for the region. The military signicance of the Baltic port of Baltijsk brought many restrictions to the freedom of movement even for Soviet citizens which increased their dissatisfaction. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s trust in the promised golden future of the Soviet city was severely undermined. And there were those, inside Kaliningrad, who began to rethink the attitude to the German past of their city. By the mid-1950s architects began talking about Knigsberg as a benchmark for the new Kaliningrad. Heritage lists in the region began to include German buildings and memorials. In 1957 there was even money for carrying out urgent repairs to the Protestant dome. During the late 1950s and early 1960s there was a major discussion around the future of the ruined city castle. A number of architects and intellectuals tried to reverse the decision to raze the castle remains. Their lobbying work not only mobilised public opinion but was also successful in getting the support of the Soviet Ministry of Culture for the restoration of the castle. Yet in the end the local party leadership had their way. Their good connections to Moscow led to Brezhnevs support 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 to move to a more positive attitude to the German past of Kaliningrad had lost to those party apparatchiks who continued to emphasise that Knigsberg was the evil city which had to be overcome. In its infrastructure and economy Kaliningrad was now integrated into the Soviet Union more than ever, and the media as well as the museums and all public representations of the city emphasised the socialist achievements of the new Russian city in contrast to the allegedly dark days of Knigsberg. If this became the ofcial narrative until well into the 1980s, it was never a narrative which remained uncontested. After all, the most popular postcards in Kaliningrad tended to depict German architectural landmarks as 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 after it had become clear that there would be considerable local opposition to these plans. The destruction of the Johanniskirche in the early 1970s was an almost clandestine affair, as the authorities clearly feared renewed protest. Hence, the ofcial Soviet version of the citys past and future were always contested by parts of the citys populace.

REDISCOVERING KNIGSBERG IN KALININGRAD

Mikhail Gorbachevs glasnost made it easier for those individuals and groups who wanted to save what was left of the German heritage of the city and initiate a debate around that heritage.10 It was particularly intellectuals among whom such a position was prominent. Writers such as Juri Iwanow or Aleksandr Popadin, artists such as Wiktor Ryabinin, and the photographer Anatoly Bachtin tirelessly campaigned to save the cultural remnants of a German past, which, under the Soviet Union, had been neglected to the point where it was about to vanish forever. The historian Yuri Kostyashov undertook a major oral history project in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which, for the rst time, showed the difculties of early Soviet settlers of accommodating to the situation in Eastern Prussia after 1945 and problematised the treatment of the remaining Germans in the area. His research was breaking two key Soviet taboos: the myth of the heroic re-building of the region 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 took ten years before his book could be published in Russian.11 The philosopher, Prof. Gilmanov, even called publicly on the Russian authorities to make an ofcial apology to all German expellees and their descendants and to invite 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 is in favour of a more positive endorsement of the German traditions of the city.13 Those who were young in the 1980s saw the German past of their city also as a way of escaping the dreary Soviet present. It gave their city an aura of mystery and specialness, and they were among the rst to identify with Konig or Kenig, as they affectionately called their city.14 All those in favour of a rediscovery of Knigsberg in Kaliningrad saw a great opportunity arise with the 750-year anniversary of the city in 2005. Already in 2001, the Kaliningrad Cultural Association called publicly on the Russian authorities to mark the event, but their call was initially met with a decisive njet from the Kreml. Subsequently the Moscow-based group Zemlyachestvo Kaliningrad and the Kaliningrad-based group Pro Knigsberg were set up to lobby for a change of this decision. The city and regional authorities, including the mayor of Kaliningrad, Yuri Savenko, soon

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supported attempts to celebrate the anniversary in the hope that money would come into the city, which might help to change the poor image Kaliningrad enjoyed in the wider world. Rumour has it that the wife of President Vladimir Putin, Ludmilla, who was born in Kaliningrad, also had a hand in changing the initial decision. In 2003, during a visit to Kaliningrad, her husband announced that Moscow would support local wishes to mark the anniversary. For those who had hoped to use the celebrations to emphasise the difference between their city and Russia, actual events were a disappointment (see next section). A small movement for greater autonomy of the region, which sometimes seems to have separatist tendencies, does exist in Kaliningrad. Its leading gures are Sergej Pasko, Igor Rudnikow and Vytautas Lopata. They have a difcult stance in a region which is politically dominated by those forces who support Putin.15 Pasko, a former president of the Kaliningrad Association of Industrialists, has publicly called for the foundation of a separate fourth Baltic Republic. Russian ofcials, such as Wassili Lichatschow, vice-president of the Committee of International Relations of the Russian Federation Council, have always denied the existence of separatism in Kaliningrad,16 and the central government in Moscow has always reacted negatively to proposal to give the region some kind of special status or more autonomy.17 However, the celebrations did undoubtedly legitimate the memory of Knigsberg and helped to overcome the last remnants of the long-standing taboo regarding the subject matter. So many of the central symbols connected with the anniversary, including the Kings Gate and the German Protestant 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 project was not completed on time, but whilst it is progressing, there are already initiatives to rebuild the area around the Protestant dome, previously called Kneiphof.18 The university in Kaliningrad was renamed after Immanuel Kant in 2005. The excavations on the site of the old German castle and the restoration of the German Protestant dome (nanced by the German news journals Spiegel and Zeit) not only aroused interest in the legendary amber room, but also led to the idea of rebuilding the castle, an idea which was given the goahead by Putin one year after the anniversary. The president announced that Russia would support the rebuilding of the castle with 100 million Euros.19 The German past was very much present in the anniversary celebrations, and as those celebrations amounted to a genuine peoples party, it carried the idea of the German antecedents of the Russian city into broader segments of the population. When the regional government asked school children to depict those monuments and buildings which to them symbolised the city in a special way, the overwhelming number of entries depicted monuments and 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 instead preferred to use 750 Years of our city thereby avoiding all national identication and stressing local allegiances. A Russian city guide, published in Russian in 2006 in a Russian publishing house, explicitly carried the title: Fachlexikon Knigsberg/Kaliningrad.21 A road map of the entire region of Kaliningrad, published again in Russian in Kaliningrad in 2006, carries the German name Knigsberg for the biggest city in the region.22 Overall then, we can observe a range of different motivations behind the rediscovery of Knigsberg in Kaliningrad. First, there is the desire of a small minority of Kaliningraders for sovereignty. Second, many more Kaliningraders would wish for greater autonomy of the region from Moscow. Third, local politicians also use the argument about the difference of Kaliningrad in order to enhance the resources allocated to Kaliningrad by Moscow and change the poor image of the region in the wider world. The more important it becomes to strengthen the ties with Russia, the more Russia will invest in Kaliningrad thus the thinking behind such instrumentalist concerns. Finally, there is the concern of intellectuals with the German heritage. This has been partly an aesthetic concern improving the cityscape by restoring the beauty of the German city. But it also has been partly an argument about coming to terms with the past: acknowledging that it was morally reprehensible to cleanse the region of Germans and all traces of German culture. There is more than a hint of notions of historical justice and the desire to work for reconciliation in the attempts of Russian intellectuals in Kaliningrad to highlight the German past of their city.

THREATS TO THE RUSSIAN IDENTITY OF THE CITY?

Those opposed to the rediscovery of Knigsberg included the large and important group of war veterans. Their organisations were powerful within a city that had been the Soviet st in the Baltic the only ice-free military harbour of the Soviet Union and a military no-go area for the entire period of the Soviet Union. They argued invariably that any such rediscovery would weaken the Russian character of the city and might lead to the entire region being Germanised again and eventually returned to Germany. For these reasons the veterans had also been impeccably opposed to the celebration of the citys anniversary in 2005. Committed to the Soviet past of the city, the veterans were opposed to removing the Lenin monument from the central city square, were pleased about the restoration of a Stalin bust at one of the central war memorials in the city and vociferously opposed the German writer Gnter Grass, when he visited the city and questioned the existence of a monument to Marinescu, the U-boat commandant responsible for the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945 a ship packed with civilian refugees, 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 site where the Wehrmacht general Otto Lasch directed his fanatical and senseless defence of Knigsberg against the Red Army. Its dioramas (also present in the citys historical museum) still depict the heroic narrative of Russian soldiers bravely overcoming stubborn German resistance. Despite tentative signs that the museum is integrating a more reconciliatory stance, e.g., the documentation of the German war cemetery in Kaliningrad, a project that veterans also had been impeccably opposed to at rst, the overwhelming impression is of continued adherence to the traditional Soviet narrative of the Great Patriotic War. Given the veterans position, it is not surprising that they should have opted for celebrating 60 years of Kaliningrad in July 2006 rather than 750 years of Knigsberg in 2005. For a long time it looked as though they would have the ear of the president. But even when the decision was eventually taken not just to celebrate in 2006, but also in 2005 (with a much larger budget for the 2005 celebrations), the authorities in Moscow kept the reigns rmly in their hands and oversaw the celebrations with a watchful eye. The Commission for the Preparation for the Celebrations was headed by the Minister for Economic Development and Trade (MEDT), German Gref. It kept a tight hold on the funding for Kaliningrads anniversary preparations and played a key role in the selection of jubilee objects to be reconstructed and/or constructed and events for the anniversary celebrations to take place in the rst weekend of July 2005. The selection of the St. Petersburgbased Interregional Press Centre to prepare the anniversary programme was another example of federal control and an attempt to limit potentially separatist local input into the event. However, the city and regional administration drafted their own programmes, leading to confusing multi-level organisation of the event, which left the actual celebrations signalling mixed messages about Kaliningrads collective identity. The Russian message was unmistakeable: On the rst day of the celebrations, on 1 June 2005, it was an actor portraying Peter the Great who arrived in the city by boat and opened proceedings. The logo of the celebrations, the ancient Kings Gate, was depicted against the background of the Russian national ag and beneath it was written 750 Kaliningrad an obvious anachronism. Each day of the three-day celebrations carried a different motto. Whilst the rst day stressed the continuity of city development with One City One History, the other two stressed the Russian character of the city, albeit in a way which highlighted the role of the city as Russias gateway to the West: A Russian City in the Heart of Europe and Kaliningrad: Meeting Point of Russia and Europe. Two of the most important city monuments that were inaugurated in the anniversary years 2005 and 2006, also stressed the Russian character of the city: a brand-new Orthodox cathedral on the central city square and, at the same place, a Victory Column as memorial to the Great 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 prosper in the coming years.24 All 89 governors of the Russian regions were present at the celebrations in 2005. The central government in Russia undoubtedly was wary of an agenda which would emphasise the difference of Kaliningrad vis--vis the Russian mainland. Hence they started a series of initiatives aimed at strengthening the ties between Kaliningrad Russians and Russians in the mainland. Between the sixth and the ninth form, Kaliningrad schools teach history of the region, which tries hard to make East Prussia part and parcel of Russian national history.25 The government has introduced a new obligatory subject at schools, which is a mixture of military training and patriotic indoctrination, and it is even sponsoring visits of school children to Russia in the hope to strengthen their ties to the motherland. They nance an extensive travel and education programme We Live in Russia, which is popular in the exclave; Kaliningraders are the only Russians who can apply for a passport free of charge.26 It is therefore perhaps not surprising that they used the anniversary celebrations in 2005 to emphasise the long ties of the city and the region with Russia. The addition of the name of Immanuel Kant to the university was paralleled by references to Russia, so that the ofcial new name is: Immanuel Kant Russian State University of Kaliningrad. The new governor of Kaliningrad, Georgii Boos, who was appointed directly by Putin in 2006 (previous ones had been elected by Kaliningraders), also pursued a clear policy of Russication of the province. Unlike his predecessor, he was not so keen on attracting European investments and tried harder to get Russian investments into the region; his dissolution of the department for foreign affairs at the city council was a clear sign that Kaliningrad was to look eastwards rather than westwards. He was also not shy to whip up antiGerman sentiments every now and again. In the spring of 2006, he publicly voiced his opinion that Germany was promoting the re-Germanisation of Kaliningrad.27 He compared the loss of Kaliningrad for Germans with the loss of St. Petersburg for Russians either displaying phenomenal historical ignorance or shrewdly using anti-Germanism to foster a Russian agenda. He also suggested publicly to rename the German-Russian house into RussianGerman house to emphasise the Russianness of the territory.28 When he did not get his way, the director of the German-Russian house did not receive a visa for Russia for several months. And there was no invitation to the German-Russian House to participate in any way, shape or form in the anniversary celebrations of 2006. Boos continues a long tradition of whipping up anti-German sentiment to score political points, something that can already be observed as early as the 1994 Duma elections.29 In its diverse attempts to Russify Kaliningrads collective identity, the regional and central authorities can also rely on the Orthodox church. When the brand-new Cathedral was ofcially 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 Russication of Kaliningrad was not only directed against Germany. In many respects, relations of Russia with Kaliningrads immediate neighbours Poland and Lithuania were much worse than with Germany. Russia deliberately snubbed the presidents Aleksandr Kwaniewski of s Poland and Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania by not inviting them to the anniversary celebrations in 2005. Relations between the university in Kaliningrad and in neighbouring Klaipeda, which once had been excellent, came to a virtual stand-still.31 The presents that Kaliningrad received from Lithuania, Byelorussia and Germany in 2005 and the Russian response amounted to a battle of the monuments, which is reminiscent of classical nineteenth-century symbolical politics.32 The Lithuanians funded a monument for the Lithuanian poet Liudvikas Reza, in his time professor at the university in Knigsberg. The Byelorussians did the same for the Byelorussian writer and translator Franzisk Skaryna, a representative of the early national movement in Byelorussia. The Germans placed a monument for Duke Albrecht, the founder of the university, next to the dome. And the Russians responded by spending money on a monument for General Pjotr Bagration, who fought against Napoleon. From the sociological survey data compiled by the department of sociology at the University of Kaliningrad, one wonders what all the fuss is about and why Russia should be unduly concerned about the Russian identity of its exclave. Only 2 percent of the population of Kaliningrad identied themselves primarily as Europeans, whilst 44 percent viewed themselves rst and foremost as Russians. This was only topped by a strong allegiance to the local 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 only 24.6 percent of Kaliningraders identied themselves primarily with Russia (in contrast to 49 percent in Russia proper), whereas 60.2 percent identied primarily with the local or regional identity. Another survey of the same year though, found that 78 percent of the population expected Kaliningrad to remain with Russia in some form. Between 1993 and 2002 the number of those in favour of retaining and even strengthening the Russian military presence in the region increased, as they saw the military presence as guarantee for the Russian future of the territory. Even the recent announcement of President Dmitrij Medwedjew to deploy Iskander rockets to Kaliningrad as a response to the US plans to install a rocket defence system against terrorist attacks in Poland met with cautious approval in the region.34 But only 21 percent expected no change of status, whereas 38 percent expected more autonomy (special status) and 19 percent even saw a Hong Kong solution 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 to Germany.35

THE GERMAN PERCEPTION OF KALININGRAD

Until well into the 1960s the ofcial German discourse on Kaliningrad was extremely prominent, as was the discourse on the lost German East more generally. In particular the German expellee and refugee associations, looking after the interests of millions of ethnically cleansed Germans in the FRG, enjoyed broad political support for their demands to be able to return to their Heimat.36 From the 1960s onwards, these associations were increasingly identied with a particular brand of right-wing revisionism which did not seem to t into the new climate of dtente and dialogue with Communist Eastern Europe. Hence the expellee organisations found themselves increasingly marginalised and with decreasing inuence on the political process. When, in the wake of German reunication, Chancellor Helmut Kohl nally agreed to accept as nal the contemporary borders of Europe, the expellee organisations, many of which had excellent links to Kohls party, the CDU/CSU, were disappointed. Ever since, the ofcial Germany and the German government in particular have been extremely hesitant to make pronouncements which might be seen as rekindling German desires on territories now belonging to neighbouring states in Eastern Europe. Hence, with regard to Kaliningrad, the ofcial Germany has tried to Europeanise the issue and has, by and large, operated within the framework of the EU response to the problem. Whilst the German expulsions from the Czech Republic and, less so, from Poland still haunt German-Czech and GermanPolish relations,37 it is remarkable how insignicant this issue has been in German-Russian relations. True, there has been the occasional provocation. Thus, for example, in 2004 there were suggestions from within the parliamentary party of the CDU/CSU to create a Euro-region Kaliningrad under the joint administration of Poland, Lithuania and Russia, carrying the historical name Prussia. The two members of parliament behind this initiative, Jrgen Klimke and Erwin Marschewski, had coordinated it carefully with the Landsmannschaft Ostpreussen, the expellee organisation responsible for Kaliningrad.38 Predictably it created an uproar in Russia, where the German ambassador was called into the foreign ministry to explain the German position. There has also been some activity by small groups of extreme right wingers, including neo-Nazis, who have tried to establish German settlements within the oblast of Kaliningrad in the mid-1990s. After the German magazine Der Spiegel uncovered these activities, the Russian authorities soon put a stop to them.39

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It would be fair to say that German media interest in Kaliningrad after 1990 was restricted to the occasional article highlighting the many problems of the city from AIDS to drugs to prostitution. It was by and large depicted in entirely negative terms and contrasted to the blossoming garden city that Knigsberg had been before the Second World War. If German interest in Kaliningrad was a distinct minority interest, it still contributed to tens of thousands of German tourists ocking to the Baltic coast every year to see the town and the area that once was their or their parents home. Vladimir Michailov, until 2006 a leading member of the department of foreign affairs at the city council, estimates their numbers to have been 80,00090,000 in the mid-1990s declining to 30,00040,000 by the mid-2000s.40 Apart from the nostalgia tourists (and a considerable nostalgia literature, which has been present on the German book market since the 1990s) a number of German institutions operate within the oblast of Kaliningrad trying to strengthen the links between Kaliningrad and Germany. The Protestant-Lutheran church is organising 46 parishes with around 3,000 members (2006), many of them older 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 small circle of Germanophiles in Kaliningrad.41 The German-Russian House in Kaliningrad seeks to give a home to the many Russian-German Associations in the Oblast and to promote better understanding between Russia and Germany.42 The establishment of a German consulate soon ran into difculties and it took ve years before a permanent home for the consul could be found in 2008.43 Several of the Northern federal states in Germany, in particular Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg, have signed special cooperation agreements or are otherwise closely involved with Kaliningrad, some establishing representations in the city and seeking to encourage various forms of contact between Germans and Russians from Kaliningrad.44 In particular a range of charitable organisations were set up to provide food, clothing and other goods to Kaliningrad. The Robert Bosch Foundation and the Mllgaard Foundation are also active in Kaliningrad, supporting a range of research and cultural initiatives, especially the foundation of a European Institute in conjunction with the Technical University in Kaliningrad.45 Economic relations remain haphazard with German investors wary of the many difculties and problems involved in investing in the oblast of Kaliningrad.46 There are too few success stories to attract many German investors to the region, and the more recent policies of Boos have in any case concentrated on attracting Russian investments. Interest in Germany more generally increased considerably with the anniversary celebrations in 2005. The media interest was considerable47 with detailed reports on the planning process, speculation about what it would 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 of the day in Germany, i.e., the word most often used in the German media on that day.48 In particular the efforts to restore the city and remind its citizens of the German past of Kaliningrad were highlighted and gave reason to look back onto Knigsberg, familiarising younger generations of Germans with a city that presumably many of them had no knowledge of. Many newspaper reports also emphasised the strong European orientation especially among young Kaliningraders. There was some criticism of the national orientation of the celebrations and the use of the slogan 750 Years Kaliningrad. Many articles also highlighted corruption, the maa, bureaucracy, poverty and the ght against illnesses such as tuberculosis or AIDS. The notion of Kaliningrad as a Russian hell-hole contrasted the reports about a ourishing and blossoming Knigsberg before 1933. However, a good deal of the media reports also concentrated on the fate of the Jews in Knigsberg and the fate of the city under Nazism and in the Second World War more generally. The constant references to the German Knigsberg thus put the benchmark for contemporary Kaliningrad very high, but at the same time left no doubt that it was German responsibility leading to the eventual loss of the city. The portrait of the city by Jrgen Manthey again showed a very positive picture of the German city as a cosmopolitan bulwark of liberalism and Western ideas. But it dates the decline to the city succumbing to Nazism rather than to 1945.49 The book became a bestseller in 2005, going through several reprints and selling tens of thousands of copies, and it was by no means the only book to hit the bookshelves in that year. Mantheys intention was clearly to write 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 and successful attempt to wrench the memory discourse about the city and East Prussia out of the hands of the political right in contemporary Germany. In Kaliningrad itself German institutions contributed to the anniversary celebrations in a variety of ways. The German-Russian House organised a number of exhibitions and events associated with the German past of the city, and its dance group also took part in the ofcial celebrations.50 The German consulate organised the visit of several German music groups to the city, both classical and popular.51 Even the German chancellor, Gerhard Schrder, was invited to participate in the celebrations, albeit briey and on the back of a Russian-German-French summit held nearby on the Baltic coast which many observers saw as a simple pretext to invite Schrder and not the presidents of Lithuania and Poland. The return of Knigsberg into the historical consciousness of Germans was also underlined by the presence of the topic on German television. Several documentaries and a major TV movie reminded millions of Germans of Eastern Prussia and the city of Knigsberg/Kaliningrad.52 A renewed interest in Kaliningrad and its German past in Germany itself does not amount to a strengthening of German revisionism. Indeed,

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the dominant German narrative of Knigsberg is one of irredeemable loss. The strong link between the fate of Knigsberg and German responsibility for the Second World War, for the brutality of the war on the Eastern front in particular, has been extremely present in the German reporting on the Kaliningrad anniversary. Seeing Knigsberg through the lens of Nazism and the Second World War also means accepting German responsibility for this loss. It has been part and parcel of the long process of coming to terms with the Nazi past, which set in belatedly in the 1960s and is still ongoing in Germany today. The German media might be unduly harsh in the portrayal of social and economic conditions in Kaliningrad, but at least within the mainstream media, one does not nd any questioning of the Russianness of the territory. This is also the main reason why German interest in Kaliningrad declined sharply after 2005. It was almost as if the Russian celebrations amounted to an opportunity to say goodbye to the city of Knigsberg. Even if we look at the reaction of the milieu of refugees and expellees to the anniversary celebrations and their attitude towards their Heimat, we can observe an increasing willingness to seek forms of cooperation with the Russian authorities in Kaliningrad. Their aim can increasingly be described as reconciliation and working together with the Russian authorities for a better future of their city. The Stadtgemeinschaft Knigsberg in Duisburg, which is maintaining an excellent museum on Knigsberg in the Ruhr city, for example, has tried very hard to enter into a constructive dialogue with the Russian authorities on how they might contribute to the anniversary celebrations. In the end their efforts proved in vain, and they had to organise their own separate celebrations with the help of the Protestant church and the German-Russian House in Kaliningrad.53 Whilst the director of the Duisburg-based museum, Lorenz Grimoni, and other ofcials of the expellee organisations were disappointed by this result,54 outsiders have stressed that it already was an amazing success that the expellee organisation was allowed to hold its own anniversary celebrations inside the city.55 In the journal of the German expellees, the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung (PAZ), and in the extreme right-wing media, such as the weekly Junge Freiheit, one could nd wild attacks on the historical forgetfulness of the ofcial Germany and the need to remember the lost German East.56 But it is perhaps characteristic that even in this milieu the East was, by and large, seen as lost. One loved to remind fellow Germans how brutally the German culture was extinguished in the former German East often forgetting about who was ultimately responsible for this. One also occasionally nurtured the hope that the European Union might be the answer to the reconstitution of Eastern Prussia.57 And yet, straightforward revisionism was rare even in the expellee milieu. But the Russian authorities remained extremely mistrustful. The chairman of the East Prussian expellees, Wilhelm von Gottberg, has not received a Russian visa since 2003, and there is a noticeable desire to keep the expellees at arms length. On a local level, however, relations

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between the expellees and local Russian groups, including ofcial 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 the Schleswig-Holstein Information Buero, Lilia Kraskowskaja, who emphasise how positive their experience with German expellees has been. They see them as Germans with strong emotions for their former home who want to help.59 On the basis of my discussion of the German reactions towards Kaliningrad, the verdict of the Daily Telegraph that [Germany is keen] to take back Knigsberg. . . . for Germans, Kaliningrad is still important from an emotional standpoint,60 seems born out of British anxieties about a reunied Germany more than it is grounded in any informed opinion about what goes on in either Germany or Kaliningrad. It is, of course, true that the Germans have, for some years now, discovered themselves as victims of the Second World War,61 but the discourse of victimhood takes place against the background of a sustained and ongoing engagement with German responsibilities for the Second World War and its many horrors. As such it also does not relativise this responsibility nor does it lead to revisionist positions vis--vis the end results of the Second World War.

THE GERMAN PAST AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITY DISCOURSES IN KALININGRAD
Against the background of the situation described above, how can one envisage the future development of collective identity discourses in the enclave of Kaliningrad. First of all, it is entirely predicable that Kaliningrad will remain a discursive battleeld for some time to come.62 It is striking to what extent those battles surrounding identity discourses continue to be structured along national lines. The German narratives of Knigsberg talk about it as a German city for many centuries before a German nationstate came into being. Was Knigsberg German for 700 years? In 1255 did a majority of people in the city think of themselves as German? And later on: was it not foremost a Prussian, perhaps even an Eastern Prussian city? The construction of the German nation-state is in large measure an event of the nineteenth century, and it has to remain questionable how powerful the national discourse was in previous centuries. But present-day historical consciousness remains strongly tied to those nineteenth-century backwards projections of national history. This is no different in Russia, even if Russia has far greater difculties in constructing such a national past for Kaliningrad than either Germany, or its immediate neighbours Poland and Lithuania.63 And yet, as we have seen, in school textbooks, in symbolic politics and in their concrete political measures in the exclave, Russian politicians have precisely emphasised the belonging of Kaliningrad to Russia. In the aftermath of

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Kaliningrads anniversaries and contrary to Aaltos ndings from 2002, there is little appetite among Russian political elites to experiment with different scenarios of geopolitical ordering in the Baltic.64 In geopolitical terms, the ongoing economic boom in Kaliningrad is vital in lessening the tensions surrounding the enclave. A permanently impoverished region of around 100,000 people living on roughly 13,000 square kilometres in the middle of the EU (Kaliningrad became a Russian exclave in 1992, with the independence of the three Baltic republics) would be hard to imagine. Pressure would rise both from within Kaliningrad and from the EU to nd territorial solutions which would allow Kaliningrad to prosper. As it stands, there is little economic pressure for identity change. As we have seen above, the vast majority of people living in Kaliningrad perceive themselves as Russians, albeit Russians with a difference. If the economic up-turn is sustained, there is little prospect for this to change. To the contrary, the economic boom should help in overcoming very real fears in the exclave that Russia will sell them out, that some deal will be on the cards whereby Kaliningrads links with Russia will be severed. Discussions that were very prevalent in the 1990s, predicting the Luxemburgisation of Kaliningrad, a Hong Kong solution to the exclaves problems, a European Free Trade Zone or a fourth Baltic republic now seem dated. Ideas of Kaliningrad as a condominium jointly administered by Russia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany or notions of a return of the region to Germany seem even more unlikely.65 What then, one might ask, are the scenarios for Kaliningrad and for the collective identity of its people? I think that three things are likely: rst, within a re-assured Russian Kaliningrad, notions of the city and oblast as an in-between place will ourish. Full-blown separatism, which has traditionally been weak in the region, will fail to take root in the region, but Kaliningraders will develop a strong regional consciousness which might ask for more autonomy from central government. There are many signs that Kaliningraders are developing a strong regional consciousness, which is not opposed to Russianness, but emphasises their identity as Russians with a difference somehow more European and a transmission belt between Russia and Europe.66 Given its geographical location on the Baltic coast, Kaliningrad would be particularly well positioned to act as bridge between Russia and the Baltic republics. During the Soviet Union, these relations had already been strong; in the aftermath of the independence of the Baltic republics, tension with Russia meant that many of these connections were severed. But in a more Europeanised Baltic, which sees itself less and less as a European bulwark against Russia, Russias Baltic exclave might well again play a constructive role in mediating between Russia and the Baltic. At present the Baltic states foreign policies seem awkwardly poised between posing as a beacon for Russias near abroad and acting as an irritant for Russia 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 characterises the relations between the Baltic states and Russia. Moscow need not perceive such regionalisation of historical consciousness as endangering the Russianness of the region. Instead such regionalisation should be welcome in line with the endorsement of regional forms of autonomy in other regions of the Russian Federation. Secondly, Kaliningrad could develop into a place of Russian-German reconciliation. There is no such place at present. This is striking when one compares it with the many places of German-French or German-Polish reconciliation. True, there are individuals who have furthered the RussianGerman process of reconciliation one thinks immediately of Lew Kopelew and Heinrich Bll. And there is also the Petersburg Dialogue, initiated by Schrder and Putin in 2001.68 Surprisingly, Russian-German relations are less burdened by the Nazi past than say Polish-German or Czech-German relations, despite the fact that 20 million Russians perished in the Second World War, that no other ethnic group (with the exception of the Jews and the Roma) were treated as harshly as the Russians and that the war on the Eastern front was fought with often unimaginable brutality. Perhaps there is relatively little anti-German feeling in Russia today, because the old Soviet discourse on the Great Patriotic War always distinguished between Nazis and Germans. Perhaps the fact that both nations do not share a border is important too. But does that mean that reconciliation is unnecessary?69 Hardly, for who could doubt that family memory in both Germany and Russia transmits the history of the war and of the post-war (coming to terms with totally devastated countries and with the inhuman treatment of prisoners of war in both Germany and Russia) as a traumatic history, and trauma can only be overcome in long processes of healing. As Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich as well as Theodor Adorno argued so convincingly, any toxic past that has not been worked-through carries the danger of haunting those traumatised by it.70 Regret, writes Jeffrey Olick, is the emblem of our times.71 He sees in a responsible politics of regret a way of preventing future outbreaks of inhumanity. Commemorating Knigsberg in todays Kaliningrad could contribute to such a responsible politics of regret. The preconditions on both sides for embarking on such a process of reconciliation seem to be good on both sides with little revisionism still present in Germany and with remarkably little reservation on either side about cooperation. Rediscovering the German past of Kaliningrad might be a way of starting a process of coming-to-terms with the unpalatable aspects of the Great Patriotic War on the Russian side, and visiting the Russian city of Kaliningrad could be a way of reminding young Germans of the consequences of Germanys past nationalist hubris. One might even think of taking it one step further, and this would be a third option for the future: could Kaliningrad not become a European lieu de 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. As such it is representative of very many borderlands in Europe which were contested between different nations and peoples and which attempted to negotiate different claims of cultures, ethnicities, religions and classes. But it was not only a contested borderland: it was also a place which experienced and suffered from the two catastrophes which befell Europe in the twentieth century and which are of crucial importance to European historical consciousness today: fascism and communism. And just a short distance away from the city of Kaliningrad, within the oblast of Kaliningrad, on the beautiful shores of the Baltic Sea, at Jantarny, one of the death marches of the Jewish inmates of a concentration camp ended, when the SS drove them into the sea and shot them. Hence the location is also associated with the event, which has become a crucial marker of negative identity for European historical consciousness: the holocaust. Overall, then, to speak with Yael Zerubavel, the potential commemorative density of Kaliningrad is very high.72 True, at present the intensity with which different periods in the past of the city and the region are publicly remembered and celebrated are extremely diverse and limited, with some of the most problematic aspects receiving still relatively little attention. But at least in theory, Kaliningrad is a place with a lot of memory potential. In fact, one might well ask: What better place to remember European twentieth-century history and to remember the lessons that Europeans today want to draw from that history? In the long term, one can imagine Kaliningrad as European lieu de mmoire, where manifold spatial and non-spatial European memories are interlinked this would be a transnational perspective for Kaliningrad which could become a crucial test case for a post-national future of Europe.

NOTES
1. I am grateful to the British Academy for nancing the research in Kaliningrad which made possible the writing of the article. The British Academy also funded the workshop on enclaves at the University 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 the privilege of staying as Senior Research Fellow in 2008/2009. I am grateful to the Institutes directors, Joern Leonhard and Ulrich Herbert, and my co-fellows for providing a wonderfully conducive atmosphere for scholarly endeavours. 2. We follow here Anssi Paasi, Boundaries as Social Processes: Territoriality in the World of Flows, Geopolitics 3 (1998) pp. 6988, who has convincingly demonstrated the uidity and continuous remaking of boundaries understood as social processes. 3. It should be obvious that my approach to memory has been heavily inuenced by Pierre Bourdieu 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. 219221. 5. O. Sezneva, Historical Representation and the Politics of Memory in Kaliningrad, Former Knigsberg, Polish Sociological Review 131/3 (2000).

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6. P. Aalto, A European Geopolitical Subject in the Making? EU, Russia and the Kaliningrad Question, Geopolitics 7 (2002) pp. 142174. 7. Christopher S. Browning and Pertti Joenniemi, Contending Discourses of Marginality: The Case of Kaliningrad, Geopolitics 9 (2004) pp. 699730. 8. On all aspects of city planning after 1945 see B. Hoppe, Auf den Trmmern von Knigsberg. Kaliningrad 19461970 (Munich: Oldenbourg 2000); and P. Brodersen, Die Stadt im Westen. Wie Knigsberg Kaliningrad wurde (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2008). 9. A. Day, Building Socialism. The Politics of Soviet Cityscape in the Stalin Era, PhD dissertation (New York 1997); also: Karl D. Qualls, Imagining Sewastopol. History and Power Community Construction, 19421953, National Identities 5/2 (2001) pp. 123139; and several contributions in D. J. Raleigh (ed.), Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 19171953 (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press 2001). 10. On the debates surrounding the development of Kaliningrad in the 1990s see P. Joenniemi and 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 Kaliningrads Identity in Moscow, Brussels and Kaliningrad, PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2002; H.-M. Birckenbach and C. Wellmann (eds.), The Kaliningrad Challenge: Options and Recommendations (Mnster: Lit 2003). 11. The manuscript was nished in 1992 and its publication was delayed until 2002. Interview with Yuri Kostyashov, 14 Sept. 2006; see also the German translation of his book: Als Russe in Ostpreussen. Sowjetische Umsiedler ber ihren Neubeginn in Knigsberg/Kaliningrad nach 1945 (Ostldern: Edition Tertium 1999). 12. Interview with Christian Welscher, Co-ordinator of the European Institute Klaus Mehnert, 13 Sept. 2006. 13. V. Gilmanov, Das Fortwirken der Albertina in der Universitt Knigsberg/Kaliningrad heute: im 450. Jahr der Albertina, Nordost-Archiv 3 (1994) pp. 518527. 14. O. Sezneva, Converting History into Cultural Treasure in post-1991 Kaliningrad: Social Transitions and the Meaning of the Past, Working Paper no. 5 of the International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University, May 2002. The debate surrounding the renaming of the city is ongoing. More and more Kaliningraders are doubtful whether one of Stalins henchmen, Kalinin, is an ideal patron of their city. 15. Pasko bleibt zh, Knigsberger 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 Russian Federation or the Fourth Baltic Republic? Kaliningrads Regional Programme in the 1990s, Journal of Baltic Studies 34 (2003) pp. 153179. 16. Das wichtigste Problem bleibt die Schaffung von Arbeitspltzen, Die Welt am Samstag, 2 July 2005. 17. Russlands Auslandsgebiet?, KE, March 2005, p. 6. 18. <http://www.altstadt.ru/>, accessed 12 Nov. 2008. 19. Putin fr Wiederaufbau des Knigsberger Schlosses, RU-Aktuell, 13 Sept. 2006. 20. Interview with Guido Herz, 13 Sept. 2006. 21. Knigsberg Kaliningrad: Persnlichkeiten, Fakten, Ereignisse, KE, Nov. 2006, p. 17. 22. Wegweiser nach Knigsberg, KE, Feb. 2006, p. 2. 23. Stalin ist wieder da, KE, June 2005, p. 13; Interview with Jrgen Manthey, 27 Oct. 2006; Gnter Grass, Im Krebsgang (Gttingen: Steidl 2002). 24. Was erzhlen 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 Hammarskjld, 12 Sept. 2006; see also Nachhilfe in Heimatliebe, KE, Feb. 2006, p. 10. 27. Deja-vu? Boos befrchtet 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 ber Kaliningrad. Vier Jahre nach der ffnung: eine Zwischenbilanz, in F. Kluge (ed.), Ein schicklicher Platz? Knigsberg/Kaliningrad in der Sicht von Bewohnern und Nachbarn (Osnabrck: bre 1994) p. 62 f.

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30. Knigsberg orthodox, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), 11 Sept. 2006. 31. Interview with Yuri Kostyashov, 14 Sept. 2006. 32. Kaliningrad 750: Nachbarlnder schenken Denkmler, RU-Aktuell, 25 April 2005. 33. Nur zwei Prozent halten sich fr Europer, 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. 91119. 38. Interview with the Bundesgeschftsfhrer 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 Gnter 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/ Knigsberg: Auf dem schweren Weg zurck nach Europa. Bestandsaufnahmen und Zukunftsvisionen aus einer europischen Krisenregion (Mnster: 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 Klaus Mehnert Institute of European Studies see Birgit Adolf, 750-Jahr-Geschenk mit Zukunft: Europa verstehen lernen, KE, April 2006, p. 17; and the Institutes 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.), Conicting Loyalties and the State in Post-Soviet Russia and Eurasia (London: Frank Cass 1998) p. 86. 47. A selection of the major articles includes: Moskaus ungeliebte Beute, Der Spiegel, 27 June 2005; Thoralf Plath, Wir sprten nur Hass, Frankfurter Rundschau, 9 April 2005; Sonderzug nach Kaliningrad, Die Welt, 15 April 2005; Thoralf Plath, Wenn Kant das wsste, Die Zeit, 15 May 2003; Ganz nah am fernen Westen, Sddeutsche Zeitung, 1 July 2005; Europischer Humanismus mit slawischer Seele, FAZ, 2 July 2005; Manfred Quiring, Moskau feiert 750 Jahre Kaliningrad, Die Welt am Samstag, 2 July 2005; Kaliningrads verzwicktes Jubilum, Neues Deutschland, 2 July 2005; Kaliningrad feiert seinen 750. Geburtstag, Die Welt am Sonntag, 3 July 2005; Reinhard Wolff, Geburtstagsparty ohne die Nachbarn, Tageszeitung, 4 July 2005; Daniel Brssler, Letzte Ausfahrt Kaliningrad, Sddeutsche Zeitung, 4 July 2005; Nils Schmidt, Kaliningrad feiert Knigsberg, Der Stern, 5 July 2005; a detailed newspaper analysis has also been performed by Corinna Jentzsch, 750 Jahre Kaliningrad: das Jubilum in der deutschen, russischen, polnischen und litauischen Presse, unpublished manuscript. I am grateful to Ms Jentzsch for sending me a copy of the manuscript. 48. <http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/wort-des-tages/2005/07/04/Kaliningrad.html>, accessed 7 Nov. 2008. 49. J. Manthey, Knigsberg. Geschichte einer Weltbrgerrepublik (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 Knigsberg das heutige Kaliningrad sucht seine Zukunft, ARD, 9 Feb. 2005, 21.45 Uhr; Mit dem Sehnsuchtsexpress von Berlin nach Kaliningrad, ZDF, 21 March 2005, 22.45 Uhr; Dirk Sager, Knigsberg ferne, fremde Heimat, ZDF, 26 April 2005; Klaus Bednarz, Reise durch Ostpreussen, ARD, 6 March 2005; Max & Gilbert, Knigsberg is dead, absolut medien DVD, 2004; Peter Kahane, Eine Liebe in Knigsberg, ZDF, 2006. 53. A detailed report about the expellees celebrations can be found in Knigsberger Brgerbrief 66 (2005) pp. 1836. A detailed programme in included in Knigsberger Brgerbrief 65 (2005) p. 7 f.

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54. <http://www.stadtgemeinschaft-koenigsberg.de>, accessed 7 Nov. 2008. On the disappointment of representatives of the expellees see Knigsberger Brgerbrief 66 (2005) pp. 6, 8, 39 ff. Also the interview with Christian Wagner, Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 Nov. 2005; L. Grimoni, 750 Jahre Knigsberg was bleibt? Ein Rckblick gegen die Resignation, Knigsberger Brgerbrief 66 (2005) p. 87; and interview with Lorenz Grimoni, Duisburg, 26 Oct. 2006. 55. Interview with Erik Hammarskjld, 12 Sept. 2006. 56. R. Lass, Aussterbende Erinnerung, Junge Freiheit (JF), 18 Feb. 2005; H.-J. Mahlitz, Kaliningrad? Knigsberg!, PAZ, 9 July 2005. 57. B. Knapstein, Mnchhausen iegt 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 Battleeld, in P. Ganster (ed.), Co-operation, Environment and Sustainability Border Regions (San Diego: San Diego State University Press 2001) pp. 319338. 63. Poland and Lithuania cannot be dealt with separately in a brief article like this. See, for an introduction: R. Janu auskas, Four Tales on the Kings Hill: The Kaliningrad Puzzle in Lithuanian, s Polish, Russian and Western Political Discourse (Warsaw: Instytut Studiw Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk 2001). 64. Aalto (note 6). 65. W. Bhm and A. Graw (eds.), Knigsberg morgen. Luxemburg an der Ostsee (Asendorf: Mut 1993); J. M. Swerev, Rulands Gebiet Kaliningrad im neuen geopolitischen Koordinatenfeld (Cologne: Boehlau 1996); Friedemann Kluge (ed.), Ein Schicklicher Platz? Knigsberg Kaliningrad in der Sicht von Bewohnern und Nachbarn (Osnabrck: s 1994) p. xvi f. 66. I. Oldberg, The Emergence of a Regional Identity in the Kaliningrad Oblast, Co-operation and Conict 35/3 (2000) pp. 269288. 67. David J. Galbreath and Jeremy W. Lamoreaux, Bastion, Beacon or Bridge? Conceptualising the Baltic Logic of the EUs Neighbourhood, Geopolitics 12 (2007) pp. 109132. 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 Unfhigkeit 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 University Press 1986) pp. 114129. 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 National Tradition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1995) pp. 710.