Province of Prussia in the context of "Twangste"

Königsberg is the historic German and Prussian name of the city now called Kaliningrad, Russia. The city was founded in 1255 on the site of the small Old Prussian settlement Twangste by the Teutonic Knights during the Baltic Crusades. It was named in honour of King Ottokar II of Bohemia, who led a campaign against the pagan Old Prussians, a Baltic tribe.

A Baltic port city, it successively became the capital of the State of the Teutonic Order, the Duchy of Prussia and the provinces of East Prussia and Prussia. Königsberg remained the coronation city of the Prussian monarchy from 1701 onwards, though the capital was Berlin. From the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries on, the inhabitants spoke predominantly German, although the city also had a profound influence upon the Lithuanian and Polish cultures. It was a publishing center of Lutheran literature; this included the first Polish translation of the New Testament, printed in the city in 1551, as well as the first book in Lithuanian and the first Lutheran catechism, both printed in Königsberg in 1547.

Kaliningrad (known as Königsberg until 1946) is the largest city and administrative centre of Kaliningrad Oblast, an exclave of Russia between Lithuania and Poland (663 kilometres (412 mi) west of the bulk of Russia). Located on the Pregolya River at the head of the Vistula Lagoon, it is the only ice-free Russian port on the Baltic Sea. Its population in 2020 was 489,359. Kaliningrad is the second-largest city in the Northwestern Federal District, after Saint Petersburg and the seventh-largest city on the Baltic Sea.

The city had been founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement Twangste by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and named Königsberg ("king's mountain") in honor of King Ottokar II of Bohemia. A Baltic port city, it successively became the capital of the State of the Teutonic Order, the Duchy of Prussia and the provinces of East Prussia and Prussia. From 1454 to 1455, the city under the name of Królewiec belonged to the Kingdom of Poland, and from 1466 to 1657 it was a Polish fief. It was the coronation city of the Prussian monarchy, though the capital was moved to Berlin in 1701. Königsberg was the easternmost large city in Germany until World War II.

The Province of West Prussia (German: Provinz Westpreußen; Kashubian: Zôpadné Prësë; Polish: Prusy Zachodnie) was a province of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and from 1878 to 1919. West Prussia was established as a province of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1773, formed from Royal Prussia of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth annexed in the First Partition of Poland. West Prussia was dissolved in 1829 and merged with East Prussia to form the Province of Prussia, but was re-established in 1878 when the merger was reversed and became part of the German Empire. From 1918, West Prussia was a province of the Free State of Prussia within Weimar Germany, losing most of its territory to the Second Polish Republic and the Free City of Danzig in the Treaty of Versailles. West Prussia was dissolved in 1919, and its remaining western territory was merged with Posen to form Posen-West Prussia, and its eastern territory merged with East Prussia as the Region of West Prussia district.

West Prussia's provincial capital alternated between Marienwerder (present-day Kwidzyn, Poland) and Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland) during its early existence. West Prussia was notable for its ethnic and religious diversity due to immigration and cultural changes, with the population becoming mixed over the centuries. Since the early Middle Ages the bulk of the region was inhabited by West Slavic Lechitic tribes (Pomeranians in the Pomerelia region and Masovians in Kulmerland), while the actual Old Prussians (Pomesanians and Pogesanians) populated only the remaining part of the territory lying to the east of the Vistula River. The Teutonic Order's conquest of the region resulted in German colonization in the 14th century. As a result of Germanisation, Germans became in the middle of the 19th century the most numerous ethnic group in West Prussia as a whole, remaining as such until the dissolution of the province in 1920, though their distribution was uneven: their majority was concentrated in Danzig, the western lands of the province, along the Vistula river, and in the Pomesanian and Pogesanian portion of the province located east of the Vistula, with a small admixture of Poles (Gedanians and Powiślans). Meanwhile, Poles (Kociewians, Borowians and Chełminians) as well as Kashubians continued to predominate in parts of Pomerelian territories west of Vistula and in parts of the Chełmno Land, forming altogether around 36% of the population of the province as a whole. There were also sizeable minorities of Mennonites and Jews settling in the region.