History
Neringa belonged to the former south-curonian landscapes Pilsaten and Lamotina.
Since 1252 the region was under the rule of various German governments, starting with the Teutonic Knights and later Prussia and Germany. Already in 1569 a "confusion of languages" was noticed: German, Lithuanian, Latvian-Curonian (Nehrungs-Kurisch) and Prussian. Nehrungs-kurisch was the language of the fishers.
The colours of the typical houses are handed down from the pagan religion and symbolize Divinities: Earth (brown), Sky and Water (blue), Clouds and Spray (white). At the top two crossed "zirgs" (horse heads).
The plebiscite of 1897 showed that about 60% used the Curonian language, on sea even 65%. In 1923, when sovereignty over the spit came to Lithuania, the inhabitants had problems with their nationality. Only few optated for Lithuania, many emigrated to Germany and others stayed as German "resident foreigners" in their villages. The result of the plebiscite of 1956: 59% Lithuanians, 21% Russians and only 15% (22 families) of the autochtone inhabitants.
Read more about this topic: Neringa Municipality
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)