| Kwitajny | |
|---|---|
| Village | |
Quittainen manor house (19th-century view) | |
  Kwitajny | |
| Coordinates: 54°1′5″N19°48′13″E / 54.01806°N 19.80361°E | |
| Country |  |
| Voivodeship | Warmian-Masurian |
| County | Elbląg County |
| Gmina | Pasłęk |
| Population | 253 |
Kwitajny [kfiˈtai̯nɨ] (German : Quittainen) is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Pasłęk, within Elbląg County, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. [1] It lies approximately 10 kilometres (6 mi) east of Pasłęk, 28 km (17 mi) east of Elbląg, and 53 km (33 mi) north-west of the regional capital Olsztyn.
German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol (Italy), the German-speaking Community of Belgium, and Liechtenstein. It is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg and a co-official language in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland. The languages which are most similar to German are the other members of the West Germanic language branch: Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German/Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish. There are also strong similarities in vocabulary with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although those belong to the North Germanic group. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English.
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town, with a population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Though villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages can occur. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement.
Gmina Pasłęk is an urban-rural gmina in Elbląg County, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. Its seat is the town of Pasłęk, which lies approximately 18 kilometres (11 mi) east of Elbląg and 63 km (39 mi) north-west of the regional capital Olsztyn.
The village of Quittainen was a part of East Prussia. The estate of the same name was held by the East Prussian noble family Dönhoff until 1945, when its last overseer, Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, fled from the advancing Red Army on horseback. Ms. Dönhoff, who had been active in the conspiracy against Hitler, eventually became publisher of the liberal weekly Die Zeit.
East Prussia was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 ; following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's Free State of Prussia, until 1945. Its capital city was Königsberg. East Prussia was the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast.
Die Zeit is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in north Germany.
The village, like the rest of southern East Prussia, was awarded by the winning coalition in World War II to Poland and taken from Germany following the Potsdam Conference, and its name was Polonized as Kwitajny. The village has a population of 253.
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 17 July to 2 August 1945. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, represented respectively by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman.
