Culture in Nazi Germany 1934 Reel 2 - Danzig, Marienburg & Teutonic Order, Tannenberg, Königsberg

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Episode 133

This is reel 2 of 6 from a collection of over an hour of footage taken in 1934 documenting a visit to the major German cultural sites by a group of British intellectuals. In this reel the group visits these important locations . . .

MARIENBURG (Malbork)
The Castle of the Teutonic Order in Ordensburg Marienburg (Polish Malbork) is a 13th-century Teutonic castle and fortress located near the town of Malbork, Poland. It is the largest castle in the world measured by land area and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It was originally constructed by the Teutonic Knights, a German Catholic religious order of crusaders, in a form of an Ordensburg fortress. The Order named it Marienburg in honour of Mary, mother of Jesus. In 1457, during the Thirteen Years’ War, it was sold by Bohemian mercenaries to King Casimir IV of Poland in lieu of indemnities and it then served as one of several Polish royal residences and the seat of Polish offices and institutions, interrupted by several years of Swedish occupation, fulfilling this function until the First Partition of Poland in 1772. From then on the castle was under German rule for over 170 years until 1945.

DANZIG (Gdańsk)
The city's history is complex, with periods of Polish, Prussian and German rule, and periods of autonomy as a free city-state. An important shipbuilding port and trade point since the Middle Ages, in 1361 it became a member of the Hanseatic League which defined its economic, demographic and urban landscape for several centuries. From 1918 to 1939, Gdańsk lay in the disputed Polish Corridor between Poland and Germany; its ambiguous political status created tensions that culminated in the Invasion of Poland and the first clash of the Second World War at nearby Westerplatte.

KÖNIGSBERG (Kaliningrad)
Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement Twangste by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was named in honour of King Ottokar II of Bohemia.[1] A Baltic port city, it successively became the capital of their monastic state, the Duchy of Prussia (1525–1701) and East Prussia. Königsberg remained the coronation city of the Prussian monarchy, though the capital was moved to Berlin in 1701.

Between the thirteenth and the twentieth centuries, the inhabitants spoke predominantly German, but the multicultural city also had a profound influence upon the Lithuanian and Polish cultures.[2] The city was a publishing center of Lutheran literature, including the first Polish translation of the New Testament, printed in the city in 1551, the first book in Lithuanian and the first Lutheran catechism, both printed in Königsberg in 1547. A university city, home of the Albertina University (founded in 1544), Königsberg developed into an important German intellectual and cultural center, being the residence of Simon Dach, Immanuel Kant, Käthe Kollwitz, E. T. A. Hoffmann, David Hilbert, Agnes Miegel, Hannah Arendt, Michael Wieck and others.

Königsberg was the easternmost large city in Germany until World War II. Between the wars it was in the exclave of East Prussia, separated from Germany by Poland. The city was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in 1944 and during the Battle of Königsberg in 1945, when it was occupied by the Soviet Union. The Potsdam Agreement of 1945 placed it provisionally under Soviet administration, and it was annexed on 9 April 1945.