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Seirijai | |
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Town | |
Coordinates: 54°13′50″N23°48′50″E / 54.23056°N 23.81389°E | |
Country | Lithuania |
Ethnographic region | Dzūkija |
County | Alytus County |
Population (2021) | |
• Total | 679 |
Time zone | UTC+2 (EET) |
• Summer (DST) | UTC+3 (EEST) |
Seirijai is a small town in Alytus County in southern Lithuania. In 2011 it had a population of 788. [1]
Seirijai toponym came from the lake Seirijis, which got its name from the creek Seira name of which is of Dainavian dielect of Lithuanian language (from Lithuanian word "sūrus" meaning either salty or soured). Derivative names in other languages are - Polish: Sereje, German: Serrey, English sometimes "Serey" [2]
The lands were inhabited by the Lithuanian tribe Dainavians. Due to the frequent raids and pillaging of the Teutonic Order, the Dainavians moved to other parts of Lithuania abandoning the lands and Seirijai became a wilderness. From 1383 to 1398 Seirijai was in the State of the Teutonic Order. After the defeat of the Teutonic Order in the Battle of Grunwald and the Treaty of Melno (1422), the land became populated again and started to grow economically. Since the 16th century Serijai was known as a proprietary land of a ruler. King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund I the Old donated Seirijai to Jerzy Radziwiłł, and later it became a possession of Radziwill family. [3] Jerzy Radziwill built a Catholic church in 1537. Already in 1564 the church was given to Calvinists, since many in the Radziwill family converted to Calvinism. The tensions between Catholics and Calvinists lasted up to 1655 and the Thirteen Years' War with Russia. Seirijai was devastated and the Calvinists retreated.
From 1691 until 1793 the district was a Prussian exclave within Poland-Lithuania (Preußisch Serrey). In 1793 it was ceded, along with Tauragė (Tauroggen), to Poland-Lithuania as "compensation" for the territories annexed in the Second Partition of Poland; it returned to Prussian control two years later in the Third Partition of Poland, this time as a fully contiguous part of Prussia within the New East Prussia province. In 1807 it passed by the Treaties of Tilsit to the Duchy of Warsaw, a Polish client state of the First French Empire. 1815 it became part of Congress Poland, a kingdom in a personal union with the Russian Empire; while formally separate from Russia, Congress Poland increasingly became de facto part of it, culminating in the 1867 establishment of the Vistula Land in its place. After World War I it became part of the newly independent Republic of Lithuania.
During the World War II almost all Seirijai was bombed by German army.
On September 11, 1941, 953 Jews from Seirijai were murdered in the Baraučiškės Forest, including 229 men, 384 women and 340 children. The mass execution was perpetrated by Rollkommando Hamann (Lithuanian : skrajojantis būrys, a small mobile unit that committed mass murders of Lithuanian Jews in the countryside across Lithuania in July–October 1941, [4] with a death toll of at least 60,000 Jews. [5] ) / 1st Battalion 3rd Unit led by Norkus and Obelenis; Lithuanian Activists Front members from Seirijai [6]
In 2018 a monument was built in Seirijai for Lithuanian partisans, who fought against Soviet occupants. Seirijai belonged to Dainava partisans military district.
Company Seirijų žirgai, which keeps and breeds Trakehner horses.
The history of Lithuania dates back to settlements founded about 10,000 years ago, but the first written record of the name for the country dates back to 1009 AD. Lithuanians, one of the Baltic peoples, later conquered neighboring lands and established the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy was a successful and lasting warrior state. It remained fiercely independent and was one of the last areas of Europe to adopt Christianity. A formidable power, it became the largest state in Europe in the 15th century spread from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, through the conquest of large groups of East Slavs who resided in Ruthenia.
The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years. The partitions were conducted by the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations.
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The Duchy of Prussia or Ducal Prussia was a duchy in the region of Prussia established as a result of secularization of the Monastic Prussia, the territory that remained under the control of the State of the Teutonic Order until the Protestant Reformation in 1525.
Prussia is a historical region in Central Europe on the south-eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, that ranges from the Vistula delta in the west to the end of the Curonian Spit in the east and extends inland as far as Masuria, divided between Poland, Russia and Lithuania. This region is often also referred to as Old Prussia.
Prussia was a German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. The Knights had to relocate their headquarters to Mergentheim, but still kept their land in Livonia until 1561; they lost all their land by the Napoleonic Wars.
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Lithuania Minor or Prussian Lithuania is a historical ethnographic region of Prussia, where Prussian Lithuanians lived, now located in Lithuania and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia. Lithuania Minor encompassed the northeastern part of the region and got its name from the territory's substantial Lithuanian-speaking population. Prior to the invasion of the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, the main part of the territory later known as Lithuania Minor was inhabited by the tribes of Skalvians and Nadruvians. The land depopulated during the incessant war between Lithuania and the Teutonic Order. The war ended with the Treaty of Melno and the land was repopulated by Lithuanian newcomers, returning refugees, and the remaining indigenous Baltic peoples; the term Lithuania Minor appeared for the first time between 1517 and 1526.
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Tauragė is an industrial city in Lithuania, and the capital of Tauragė County. In 2020, its population was 20,956. Tauragė is situated on the Jūra River, close to the border with the Kaliningrad Oblast, and not far from the Baltic Sea coast.
Prince Michał Hieronim Radziwiłł was a Polish nobleman, politician, diplomat and member of the Polish-Lithuanian Radziwiłł family. He was an ordynat of Kleck, Olyka and Niasvizh, Great Sword-bearer of Lithuania from 1771, castellan of Vilnius from 1775, voivode of Vilnius from 1790, starost grabowski, komorowski, kraszewicki, and miksztadzki. He also held a position of Marshal during the Partition Sejm, together with Adam Poniński.
Warmians were a Prussian tribe that lived in Warmia, a territory which now mostly forms part of the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in Poland, with a small northern portion located in neighbouring Russia. It was situated between the Vistula Lagoon, Łyna and Pasłęka Rivers.
Subdivisions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth evolved over for centuries of its existence from the signing of the Union of Lublin to the third partition.
Poland is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 sq mi), making it the 69th largest country in the world and the ninth largest in Europe.
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