Warmia-Masuria historical timeline

The history here is not continuous, and the break in 1945 is absolute.

The Old Prussians

The original inhabitants were the Old Prussians, a Baltic people related to Lithuanians and Latvians and speaking a language now extinct. They were pagan, and in the thirteenth century the Teutonic Knights were invited in to convert them by force. The conquest took over fifty years, the population was subjugated and eventually assimilated, and the Knights built the brick castles that still dominate the towns.

Teutonic state and Prussia

The Order ruled until its defeat by Poland and Lithuania at Grunwald in 1410 — fought in this region and one of the largest battles of medieval Europe — and its slow decline afterwards. The eastern part became the Duchy of Prussia and then part of the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire, while Warmia in the west stayed under Polish crown protection and remained Catholic.

Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus spent most of his adult life in Warmia as a cathedral canon at Frombork and administrator at Olsztyn, and it was here that he worked out and finally published the heliocentric model in 1543.

The world wars

The Battle of Tannenberg in 1914 was fought here, and in the Second World War the region held Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s headquarters for the eastern front from 1941 to 1944 and the site of the failed 20 July plot.

1945

The Red Army took the region with great destruction, the German population fled or was expelled, and the area was resettled with Poles from the east and Ukrainians deported from the south-east. Almost the entire population changed within five years.