page_title: Demographic history of the Vilnius region
section_title: 1916 German census
hierarchical_section_title: Demographic history of the Vilnius region / Censuses / 1916 German census
caption_attribution_description: English: Public notice representing the "German Ober Ost" region in 1917. Français&#160;: Affiche allemande représentant l'Ober Ost en 1917. Deutsch: Offizielle Mitteilung über das deutsche Militärverwaltungsgebiet "Oberost" 1917
context_page_description: The city of Vilnius, now the capital of Lithuania, and its surrounding region have at various times come under Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, German, and Soviet rule. The population has been categorised by linguistic and sometimes also religious indicators. At the end of the 19th century the main languages spoken were Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian and Russian. Both Catholic and Orthodox Christianity were represented, while a large proportion of the city's inhabitants were Jews. The "Lithuanian" element was seen as declining, while the "Slavic" element was increasing.
  Census data are available from 1897 onward, although the territorial boundaries and ethnic categorisation have not been consistent. The Jewish population decreased greatly because of the Holocaust of 1941-44, and subsequently many Poles were removed from the city, but less so from the surrounding countryside. Consequently, recent Census figures show a predominance of Lithuanians in the city of Vilnius, but of Poles in the Vilnius district outside the city.
context_section_description: During World War I, all of modern-day Lithuania and Poland was occupied by the German Army. On 9 March 1916, the German military authorities organized a census to determine the ethnic composition of their newly conquered territories. Many Belarusian historians note that the Belarusian minority is not noted among the inhabitants of the city.
  A similar census was organized for all of the territories of German-occupied Lithuania and the northern border of the territory was more or less correspondent to that of present-day Lithuania; however, its southern border ended near Brest-Litovsk, and included the city of Białystok.
caption: Ober Ost, 1916
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