Pagėgiai

Sister cities

• Bad Iburg

History

The settlement dates back to the Middle Ages. In 1454, King Casimir IV Jagiellon incorporated the region to the Kingdom of Poland upon the request of the anti-Teutonic Prussian Confederation. After the subsequent Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466) the village was a part of Poland as a fief held by the Teutonic Knights, and thus was located within the Polish–Lithuanian union, later elevated into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. From the 18th century, it was part of the Kingdom of Prussia, and from 1871 it was also part of Germany, within which it was administratively located in the province of East Prussia. In the late 19th century, the village had an almost exclusively Lithuanian population of 662, which was mostly employed in agriculture, cattle and horse breeding, butter production and fishing. When the Treaty of Versailles came in effect in January 1920, Memelland (Klaipėda Region) and the city, located north of the Niemen River were detached from East Prussia and placed under a League of Nations protectorate. In early 1921 attempts for a Customs Union between Memel and Lithuania were adjourned, mainly due to the de facto position of both State and government of Lithuania at that point in the eyes of the Western Allies. The northern trans-Niemen parts of the East Prussian Kreis Ragnit and both Landkreis and Stadtkreis Tilsit, which had been established in 1818, as well as Gutsbezirk Perwallkischken were combined on 27 January 1920 into a new Kreis Pogegen, with Pogenen as the county town. Achieving formal State recognition, Lithuania, on January 10, 1923, imitating the Polish seizure of Vilnius, made a surprise attack upon the Memel territory and city, still under League protection, forcing, with some street fighting, the League's French High Commissioner and his…