Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Oblast

Sovetsk (Сове́тск; Tilsit; Old Prussian: Tilzi; Tilžė; Tylża) is a town in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located on the south bank of the Neman River which forms the border with Lithuania. Sovetsk lies in the historic region of Lithuania Minor at the confluence of the Tylzha and Neman rivers. Panemunė in Lithuania was formerly a suburb of the town; after Germany's defeat in World War I, the trans-Neman suburb was detached from Tilsit (with the rest of the Klaipėda Region) in 1920. Tilsit, which received civic rights from Albert, Duke of Prussia in 1552, developed around a castle of the Teutonic Knights, known as the Schalauer Haus, founded in 1288. In 1454, King Casimir IV Jagiellon incorporated the region to the Kingdom of Poland upon the request of the anti-Teutonic Prussian Confederation. After the subsequent Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466), the settlement was a part of Poland as a fief held by the Teutonic Knights, and thus was located within the Polish–Lithuanian union, later elevated to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the winter of 1678–1679, during the Scanian War, the town was occupied by Sweden. From the 18th century, it was part of the Kingdom of Prussia. During the Seven Years' War, in 1757–1762, the town was under Russian control. Afterwards it fell back to Prussia, and from 1871 it was also part of Germany. The Treaties of Tilsit were signed here in July 1807, the preliminaries of which were settled by the emperors Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon I of France on a raft moored in the Neman River. This treaty, which created the Kingdom of Westphalia and the Duchy of Warsaw, completed Napoleon's humiliation of the Kingdom of Prussia, when it was deprived of one half of its dominions. Three days before its signing, the Prussian queen Louise (1776–1810) tried to persuade Napoleon in a private conversation to ease his hard conditions on Prussia; though unsuccessful, Louise's effort endeared her to the Prussian people. Until 1945, a marble tablet marked the house in which King Frederick William III of Prussia and Queen Louise resided.