1938 changing of place names in East Prussia

1938 changing of place names in East Prussia

A map of East Prussia in 1890 with many of the original place names
Native name	Umbenennung von Orten in Ostpreußen im Jahr 1938
Date	July 16, 1938 (1938-07-16)
Location	East Prussia
Type	Geographical renaming
Cause	Germanisation
Organised by	Prussian Ministry of Science, Education and People's Education (Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung)

On 16 July 1938, more than 1500 place names in East Prussia were changed, following a decree issued by Gauleiter and Oberpräsident Erich Koch and initiated by Adolf Hitler.^[1] Most of the names affected were of Old Prussian, Lithuanian and Polish origin; they were either eliminated, Germanized, or simplified. Similar geographical renaming also took place in other parts of Nazi Germany.

Place names in Masuria were occasionally changed prior to 1938, and even before the Nazi era.^[2] In the district of Lötzen 47 percent of all villages had already been renamed in the Weimar Republic and another 36 percent after 1933.^[3] A systematic renaming campaign was prepared after Koch issued the corresponding order on 25 August 1937.^{[4][nb 1]} Following this order, the Prussian Ministry of Science, Education and People's Education (Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung) set up an expert commission led by the ministerial adviser (Ministerialrat) Heinrich Harmjanz [de].^[4] Other members of the commission included Slavicist Karl Heinrich Meyer [de], Germanist Walther Ziesemer [de], Lithuanian and Old Prussian place name specialist Viktor Falkenhahn [de] and the director of the Prussian State Archive Königsberg and Teutonic Order state place name specialist Max Hein [de].^[4] Affected were names of villages, water bodies, forests and cadastral districts.^[4] In some counties up to 70% of the place names had been changed by 16 July 1938.^[4]

After World War II the local German populace fled or was expelled. In the part of East Prussia that was given to Poland and became the Warmian–Masurian Voivodeship the modern Polish place names were determined by the Commission for the Determination of Place Names, which generally restored the pre-1938 place names, in the case of German-origin place names without a Polish alternative simply translating them from German into Polish. In the northern part of East Prussia that was given to the Soviet Union and became Kaliningrad Oblast, no historical Russian place names could be found and the Soviet government was unwilling to restore the old Lithuanian or old Polish place names, therefore entirely new names were invented. In the case of major oblast towns, half of them were named after Russian and Soviet military leaders.^[5] The place names invented in 1938 by the government of Nazi Germany still remain in official use in Germany.^[3]

A similar replacement of place names was carried out in other regions of Nazi Germany, especially in Silesia. There, 1088 place names in the Oppeln region were changed in 1936, also 359 in the Breslau (Wroclaw) area and 178 in the Liegnitz (Legnica) area between 1937 and 1938.^[6] In the portion of Upper Silesia which after World War I had become part of the Second Polish Republic, most places had two locally used names, a German one and a Polish one, and after 1922, Polish authorities made the Polish variants the official names.^[6]

During World War II, renaming occurred primarily in occupied/annexed territories, because the Nazi government felt that "foreign language names for places constitute a national threat and may lead to mistaken world opinion in regard to their nationality". Areas affected included Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, e.g. Upper Silesia and the area near Poznań.^[6] and Alsace, as well as Czechoslovakia.

• German exonyms (Kaliningrad Oblast)
• List of cities and towns in East Prussia