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Kaliningrad ( Russian: Калининград), seaport city, capital and main city of the Kaliningrad Oblast, a small Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania with access to the Baltic Sea. As Königsberg (Polish Królewiec, Lithuanian Karaliaucius, Latin Regiomontium) it was the capital of the German province of East Prussia, the earlier Ducal Prussia and before that the Teutonic Order State of Prussia.
Königsberg ("King's Mountain") was founded in 1255 by the Bohemian King Ottokar II, who came to help Teutonic Knights during their conquest of Prussia disguised as the ChristianizationThe historical phenomenon of Christianization a term for the conversion of individuals to Christianity and for the conversion of entire peoples at once (a political shift as much as a spontaneous mass shift in individual consciences), also covers the prac effort called the Northern CrusadesThe Northern Crusades or Baltic Crusades were undertaken by Western Europeans against the "still heathen" people of North Eastern Europe around the Baltic Sea. The official starting point for the Northern Crusades was Pope Celestine III's call in 1193, bu. This event started the genocideGenocide has been defined as the deliberate killing of people based on their ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, or (sometimes) politics, as well as other deliberate actions leading to the physical elimination of any of the above categories. There is of local Baltic Prussians and German colonisation of the area. The small remaining population of local Baltic Prussians eventually became germanized. However, the Baltic-Prussian languageOld Prussian is an extinct Baltic language spoken by the inhabitants of the area that later became East Prussia (now in north-eastern Poland, Lithuania and the Kaliningrad oblast of Russia) prior to Polish and German colonization of the area beginning in did not become extinct until 18th century.
Königsberg was the capital of Sambia, one of the four dioceses into which Prussia had been divided in 1243 by papal legate William of Modena. Saint Adalbert of Prague became the main patron saint of the Königsberger Dom (cathedral). Königsberg became a member of the Hanse and an important port for Prussia, Province of Prussia and Lithuania.
As a result of the Thirteen Years' War between the Order and the Polish Crown, the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights was reduced by the 1466 Second Treaty of Thorn to the area of later Ducal Prussia, under the overlordship of the Polish crown.
