Königsberg

The city’s destiny shifted permanently in the sixteenth century under the influence of the Protestant Reformation. Through the preaching of Georg von Polenz, the Bishop of Samland, Königsberg embraced Lutheranism. In 1525, the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert of Hohenzollern, secularized the monastic lands, transformed them into the Duchy of Prussia, and paid homage to the Polish king. Albert’s most enduring legacy was the founding of the Collegium Albertinum, or Albertina University, in 1544. Established as a "purely Lutheran" institution, the university transformed this remote northern port into a vibrant center of early modern printing and humanism. Königsberg became a vital laboratory for the vernacular languages of the eastern Baltic. It was here that the first book in Lithuanian and the first Lutheran catechism were printed in 1547, followed by the first Polish translation of the New Testament in 1551. Over the centuries, German, Old Prussian, Polish, Lithuanian, and French Huguenot communities mingled in its narrow streets, creating a highly literate, multicultural mercantile society.

Even as political power shifted toward Berlin—particularly after the Electors of Brandenburg inherited the Duchy of Prussia in 1618—Königsberg remained the spiritual heart of the Prussian state. It was here, in the chapel of the Gothic Schloss, that Elector Frederick I crowned himself King in Prussia in 1701, a ritual repeated by William I in 1861. Though Berlin became the political capital, Königsberg retained its status as the official coronation city. In 1724, King Frederick William I finally unified Altstadt, Löbenicht, and Kneiphof into a single administration. The eighteenth century also brought the city its greatest intellectual epoch, dominated by the figure of Immanuel Kant. Born in Königsberg in 1724, Kant spent his entire life within its limits, teaching at the Albertina and taking his famous, precisely timed daily walks through its streets. From this isolated corner of the Baltic, Kant’s "critical philosophy" revolutionized Western thought. The city became a magnet for other intellectual giants, including the writer and philosopher Johann Georg Hamann and, briefly, Johann Gottfried von Herder, cementing its reputation as a crucible of the German Enlightenment.

The nineteenth century forced Königsberg to adapt to the demands of modern industrialization and militarism. The city suffered under French occupation in 1807, but by 1813 it became the focal point for the Prussian mobilization that helped overthrow Napoleon. As the industrial era took hold, the city’s trade surged, fueled by the expansion of the East Prussian and Russian railway networks. It became the primary western outlet for Russian agricultural staples: grain, hemp, flax, and timber. To overcome the constant silting of the Frische Haff, a new deep-water shipping channel was dredged to the port of Pillau on the open Baltic, allowing large ocean-going vessels to reach the city’s quays. Elegant public parks like the Luisenwahl and the Hufen zoological gardens were laid out, and a grand new university building was completed in 1865. Yet, Königsberg remained fundamentally a frontier outpost. Recognizing its vulnerable position near the border of the Russian Empire, the Prussian state transformed it into a fortress of the first rank. Beginning in 1843, a massive ring of fortifications was constructed, consisting of twelve detached forts, an inner wall, and two great interior strongholds: the Friedrichsburg fort on an island in the Pregolya and the Kaserne Kronprinz on the city's eastern flank.

This double identity as a cultural capital and a military stronghold persisted into the twentieth century. The redrawing of borders after World War I, which created the Polish Corridor, left the province of East Prussia geographically severed from the rest of Weimar Germany, with Königsberg as its isolated regional capital. Yet, even as an exclave, the city remained an intellectual home to figures such as the artist Käthe Kollwitz, the mathematician David Hilbert, and the political theorist Hannah Arendt. This long history of intellectual and commercial vitality came to an abrupt end during World War II. In 1944, British air raids devastated the old medieval quarters, and the subsequent winter siege by the Red Army reduced the remaining urban fabric to ash and rubble.

Following the Potsdam Agreement of 1945, the northern half of East Prussia was annexed by the Soviet Union, and the city’s German past was methodically dismantled. Under the Final Settlement Treaty of 1990, a reunified Germany officially renounced all claims to the territory. Today, the geographical space that was Königsberg exists as the Russian oblast of Kaliningrad, a highly militarized exclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania. Though the old street plans have been erased and the medieval heart replaced by Soviet-era apartment blocks and administrative plazas, the ghost of the old city lingers in the restored Gothic cathedral on Kneiphof island, where the tomb of Immanuel Kant remains—a solitary monument to the European metropolis that once was.