Žemaičių Naumiestis

Town

Town centre

Seal

Žemaičių Naumiestis

Coordinates: 55°21′30″N 21°42′0″E / 55.35833°N 21.70000°E

Country

Lithuania

County

Klaipėda County

Population (2001)

• Total

1,716

Time zone

EET (UTC+2)

• Summer (DST)

EEST (UTC+3)

Žemaičių Naumiestis is a town in Klaipėda county, Šilutė district municipality. It is located in western Lithuania between Klaipėda and Kaliningrad Oblast. The rivers Šustis, Šelmuo and Lendra flow through the town.

The town was for centuries located at the border to Prussia and thus gained a specific multi-cultural population structure. Besides Lithuanian inhabitants, the Jewish and German population played a significant role and to some degree the Russian one. As a result of the multi-layered events at the eve of World War II, over the course of the war and in the first decade after the war, this multi-cultural population structure was destroyed. It is reflected exclusively in the architectural heritage of Žemaičių Naumiestis. There is the wooden Catholic St. Michael Church (built in 1782), a Protestant church made of stone (built in 1842) and a stone synagogue (built in 1816).

For a long time the town was called Naumiestis (Lithuanian) or Nowe Miasto (Polish). In Yiddish, the town was called Neishtot Sugint (referring to the closely located estate Sugint). Under tsarist rule, the town in 1884 was renamed Aleksandrovsk. This designation was officially valid until 1918. In the 1920s, the town was called Tauragės Naumiestis (Lithuanian) or Neishtot Tavrik (Yiddish) referring to the closely located town Tauragė (Tauroggen) as opposed to other Lithuanian towns by the name of Naumiestis. In the 1930s the designation Žemaičių Naumiestis was introduced and is valid until today.

The town was allegedly created by the Grand Master of the German Order, Winrich von Kniprode. In 1600 it was again mentioned as property of the crown. The town gained privileges for markets and trade fairs in 1750.

In 1779, King Stanisław August Poniatowski leased the town for 50 years to the nobleman Mykolas Rionikeris, who settled artisans in the town and had the Catholic Church St. Michael constructed. The king granted the town Magdeburg Rights and a coat-of-arms in 1792. With the third partition of Poland, the town fell to the Russian Empire, first belonging to Vilna governorate and then to Raseiniai district within the newly established Kovno governorate (1843).

...
Wikipedia