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Concept
Prussian Lithuanians
Summary
The Prussian Lithuanians, or Lietuvininkai (singular: Lietuvininkas, plural: Lietuvininkai), are Lithuanians, originally Lithuanian language speakers, who formerly inhabited a territory in northeastern East Prussia called Prussian Lithuania, or Lithuania Minor (Prūsų Lietuva, Mažoji Lietuva, Preußisch-Litauen, Kleinlitauen), instead of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and, later, the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuania Major, or Lithuania proper). Prussian Lithuanians contributed greatly to the development of written Lithuanian, which for a long time was considerably more widespread and in more literary use in Lithuania Minor than in Lithuania proper.
Unlike most Lithuanians, who remained Roman Catholic after the Protestant Reformation, most Lietuvininkai became Lutheran-Protestants (Evangelical-Lutheran).
There were 121,345 speakers of Lithuanian in the Prussian census of 1890. Almost all Prussian Lithuanians were executed or expelled after World War II, when East Prussia was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union. The northern part became the Kaliningrad Oblast, while the southern part was attached to Poland. Only the small Klaipėda Region (Memelland) was attached to Lithuania.
The term Preußische Litauer (Prussian Lithuanians in German) appeared in German texts of the 16th century. The term Kleinlitaw (Lithuania Minor in German) was first used by Simon Grunau between 1517 and 1527. Prussian Lithuanians used various names for themselves: Prussians (Lithuanian: Prūsai, German: Preusch), Prussian Lithuanians (Lithuanian: Prusû Lietuwiai, Prusû Lietuvininkai, Prusißki Lietuvininkai, German: Preußische Litauer), or simply Lithuanians (Lithuanian: Lietuw(i)ni(n)kai, German: Litauer). Local self-designating terms found in literature, such as Sziszionißkiai ("people from here"), Burai (German: Bauern), were neither politonyms nor ethnonyms. Another similar term appeared in the Klaipėda Region (Memelland) during the interwar years – Memellanders (Lithuanian: Klaipėdiškiai, German: Memelländer).
Official source
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