page_title: East Prussia
section_title: Nazi Germany
hierarchical_section_title: East Prussia / History as a province / Nazi Germany
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Königsberg, Adolf Hitler Der Führer in Königsberg. Auch auf der vierten Wahlkundgebung im Schlaeterhaus in Königsberg zeigte sich wieder erneut die einmütige Geschlossenheit, mit der das deutsche Volk hinter seinem Führer steht. U.Bz.: den Führer nach der Rede beim Deutschlandlied, links von ihm Oberpräsident Koch, der Gauleiter von Ostpreussen. Scherl Bilderdienst, Berlin, 19.3.1936 Abgebildete Personen: Hitler, Adolf: Reichskanzler, Deutschland Koch, Erich: Reichskommissar für die Ukraine, Gauleiter von Ostpreußen, Deutschland
context_page_description: East Prussia was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878; following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's Free State of Prussia, until 1945. Its capital city was Königsberg. East Prussia was the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast.
  The bulk of the ancestral lands of the Baltic Old Prussians were enclosed within East Prussia. During the 13th century, the native Prussians were conquered by the crusading Teutonic Knights. After the conquest the indigenous Balts were gradually converted to Christianity. Because of Germanization and colonisation over the following centuries, Germans became the dominant ethnic group, while Masurians and Lithuanians formed minorities. From the 13th century, East Prussia was part of the monastic state of the Teutonic Knights. After the Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 it became a fief of the Kingdom of Poland. In 1525, with the Prussian Homage, the province became the Duchy of Prussia. The Old Prussian language had become extinct by the 17th or early 18th century.
context_section_description: Erich Koch headed the East Prussian Nazi party from 1928. He led the district from 1932. This period was characterized by efforts to collectivize the local agriculture and ruthlessness in dealing with his critics inside and outside the Party. He also had long-term plans for mass-scale industrialization of the largely agricultural province. These actions made him unpopular among the local peasants. In 1932 the local paramilitary SA had already started to terrorise their political opponents. On the night of 31 July 1932 there was a bomb attack on the headquarters of the Social Democrats in Königsberg, the Otto-Braun-House. The Communist politician Gustav Sauf was killed; the executive editor of the Social Democratic newspaper "Königsberger Volkszeitung", Otto Wyrgatsch; and the German People's Party politician Max von Bahrfeldt were all severely injured. Members of the Reichsbanner were assaulted while the local Reichsbanner Chairman of Lötzen, Kurt Kotzan, was murdered on 6 August 1932.
  Through publicly funded emergency relief programs concentrating on agricultural land-improvement projects and road construction, the "Erich Koch Plan" for East Prussia allegedly made the province free of unemployment: on 16 August 1933 Koch reported to Hitler that unemployment had been banished entirely from the province, a feat that gained admiration throughout the Reich. Koch's industrialization plans provoked conflict with R. Walther Darré, who held the office of the Reich Peasant Leader (Reichsbauernführer) and Minister of Agriculture. Darré, a neopaganist rural romantic, wanted to enforce his vision of an agricultural East Prussia.  When his "Land" representatives challenged Koch's plans, Koch arrested them.
  After the Nazis took power in Germany, opposition politicians were persecuted and newspapers banned. The Otto-Braun-House was requisitioned to become the headquarters of the SA, which used the house to imprison and torture its opponents. Walter Schütz, a communist member of the Reichstag, was murdered here. In 1938 the Nazis altered about one-third of the toponyms of the area, eliminating, Germanizing, or simplifying a number of Old Prussian, as well as those Polish or Lithuanian names originating from colonists and refugees to Prussia during and after the Protestant Reformation. More than 1,500 places were ordered to be renamed by 16 July 1938 following a decree issued by Gauleiter and Oberpräsident Erich Koch and initiated by Adolf Hitler. Many who would not cooperate with the rulers of Nazi Germany were sent to concentration camps and held prisoner there until their death or liberation.
caption: Adolf Hitler and Erich Koch in Königsberg, 1936
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