One of the most beautiful cities in modern Russia, Kaliningrad has a glorious and ancient history. Over the centuries of its existence, it has changed several names, so the question of how it was called earlier is not as simple as it seems.
The names of the area where one of the most remote Russian cities is now located changed depending on who owned it.
Prussian roots of the Russian city of Kaliningrad
Until January 1255, on the Baltic lands, in the eastern lands of the Prussian kingdom, there was an ancient pagan settlement called Tuangste (Twangste). But in January, on the day of the solar eclipse, by order of the Pope, expanding his dominions, knights of the glorious Teutonic order landed on the banks of the river washing Tuangste. They liked this place so much that they decided to establish a fortress with a castle on it. They named their castle "King's Mountain" - Königsberg - in honor of their friend and ally, the Czech king Ottokar Přemysl II, who made a significant financial contribution to the construction.
Less than thirty years later, a settlement, called by the inhabitants of Königsberg, was spread near the walls of the castle. And so the city arose.
In the countries closest to the city, however, his name was pronounced in its own way: in Poland it sounded like Królewiec, in Lithuania - Karaliaučius, in Latvia - Mons Regius, in the Czech Republic - Královec). And the local population is used to calling him petting-diminutive - just Koenig.
Mysticism of the city
Laying the castle on the banks of the Pregolya River, which flows into the southern part of the Baltic Sea, the Teutonic knights did not even suspect that they were not so much subjugating the Prussians and strengthening their borders as drawing a line that would always separate the two worlds - western and eastern.
It is noteworthy that it was in this city, also on the verge of two cultural eras - "Enlightenment" and "Romanticism" - that the founder of German classical philosophy, Immanuel Kant, was born and lived all his life.
Konigsberg, the former capital of East Prussia, became Soviet and then Russian Kaliningrad in the twentieth century. The city was named in honor of Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, the "All-Union headman" of the USSR, after his death. Renaming date - July 4, 1946. To this day, Kaliningrad is the most remote - the western border of Russia, separating the countries of the West from the East.
The mysticism of the city is generated precisely by its inevitable borderline existence - always between eras, between cultures, at the break of history and modernity. But the creators of this mysticism were people: those who founded this beautiful city, who conquered it at different times, leaving their mark both in the destruction and in the buildings.
