Sambia

Geographical location

The Sambia is a peninsula in the Baltic Sea.

Name

The popular name of Sambi may mean the Seinige or clan members. Also conceivable is a derivation from the Old Prussian word Semme = earth. Semba was the proper name of the local population; Semben they were known in the Old Norse language of the Danes. The Danish stock book called the Sambia 1268 Zambia. The living in Lapland Finno- Ugric Sami people probably has nothing to do with the name Sambia.

Location

The approximately 75 x 30 km wide peninsula is the rest of the tertiary Samland base and protrudes between Fresh Haff, Kurischem Lagoon and the spits in the Baltic Sea, the Deime and the Pregel. To the north and west it has predominantly cliffs, south dune coast.

In the inland south and east of the Pregel and the Deime apply as a border. The Deime runs from Gwardeisk ( Tapiau ) to Polessk ( Labiau ) and flows about 4 km in the Curonian Lagoon. The most important city of the Samland was Königsberg Altstadt ( Königsberg ), Kneiphof and Löbenicht. This part of the historic landscape Prussia is located since 1945 in the exclave of Russia.

History

Antiquity

The Sambia was first documented in the 5th century BC by Herodotus, who described it as the Land of Amber. The landscape was populated around the beginning of the era of Old Prussians. In his work " Germania " Tacitus wrote that the Ästier were in the Vistula Delta, the eastern neighbors of the Goths.

Middle Ages

The Sambia is one of the ancient Old Prussian provinces. In the 13th century William informed of Modena, the Papal Legate, Prussia into four bishoprics: Warmia (Latin: Varmia ) Pomesania, Sambia and Culmer country or Kulmerland. The Sambia was conquered by Balga by the order of knighthood: 1255 Königsberg was founded in 1255 was the Battle of Rudau; 1258 were Labiau and Wehlau, 1265 Tapiau was founded. For a long time the Sambia one of the last settlements of the Old Prussians, later it became a central part of the country of East Prussia.

The Bishopric of Sambia played a major role in the history of Prussia.

Modern Times

Approximately in the middle of Samland is Khkabrovo ( Powunden ), where is the Kaliningrad airport. There are also important in the coastal Jantarny ( Palvininkai ) existing amber deposits, which are extracted in open. An important role of the day-trippers on the Baltic coast for the Kaliningrad Oblast. Since the 19th century, the seaside resorts tourism developed mainly in Cranz and noise. This broke in 1945 to take after Perestroika since the 1990s, a new boom.

From 1939 to 1945, the Samland circles Fischhausen and Konigsberg (Pr) were summarized to the district Sambia. The Sambia plan called for the establishment of a new university city in Fritzener forest north of Königsberg. He stood in relation to the published in March 1941 in the Reich Law Gazette Regulation on the redesign of Königsberg.

After the flight and expulsion of the original resident German population today live mainly Russians and Belarusians in the region.

Prominent Samlanders are Beate Uhse and Volker Lechtenbrink.

Legend

According to legend, Samo was the second son of King Widowuto, who received the land from Crono and Hailibo up to the Skara ( Pregel ). He built on a partially heaped powerful Sandberg Fixed Gailgarwo ( Galt sheaves ). Samo had with his followers a " sonderliche life, because they were devout as the other Brutener ". They chose a special Eichwald as a place of worship and held there " a bunch of snakes in honor of their gods." Samo had fewer children than his eleven brothers, because his wife Pregolla drowned in Skara, so the river was named Pregel.