Memel mit dem Leuchtthurme.

Title

Memel mit dem Leuchtthurme.

Description

View of the lighhouse at the river Memel in Lithuania.

ca. 1820

Artist

Anonymus

Historical Description

he beginning of Lithuania as a state lies in the 13th century. Prince Mindaugas, who even had himself crowned king in 1253 with the Pope's approval, brought the neighboring tribes under his sovereignty by military force. At his death in 1263, his principality/kingdom encompassed approximately the area of present-day Lithuania. Parallel to this, the expansion to the east already took place in the 14th century. From the disintegration of the old Kievan Rus after the Mongol storm until 1240 several successor principalities had developed. Lithuania was prevented from pursuing an expansive western policy by the Teutonic Order, while the eastern flank lay open due to the Tatar invasion. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania advanced into this power vacuum and, with the conquest of Kiev (after 1362), came into competition with the Grand Duchy of Moscow for supremacy among the constituent principalities of Rus. Lithuanian eastward expansion reached its peak in the first half of the 15th century. The close political union of Poland and Lithuania resulted in the Real Union of Lublin in 1569, which meant the end of independent Lithuania, after the Lithuanian nobility had already increasingly come under the influence of Polish culture and language in the preceding decades. Thus, during the Reformation, Lithuania went the Polish way and remained Catholic, while the northern, German-influenced Baltic became Protestant. Lithuania remained with the Polish state until the partitions of Poland and then came under Russian rule in 1795. In the wake of perestroika, which triggered the Singing Revolution in the Baltics, Lithuania became the first union republic of the Soviet Union to declare itself a sovereign state in 1990 and renamed the Supreme Soviet the Constituent Assembly.