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Neman ((ロシア語:Неман)), prior to 1946 known by its German name Ragnit ((リトアニア語:Ragainė); (ポーランド語:Ragneta)) is a town and the administrative center of Nemansky District in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, located in the historic East Prussia, on the steep southern bank of the Neman River, where it forms the Russian border with the Klaipėda Region in Lithuania, and northeast of Kaliningrad, the administrative center of the oblast. Population: ==History== ''Ragnita'' (from Old Prussian: ''ragas'', "spur"), founded in 1288, was a settlement of the Baltic (Old Prussian) tribe of Skalvians. It was contested by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since its creation in the 13th century, and on April 23, 1289 it was conquered by the Teutonic Knights, who built a Gothic castle there, which later became the seat of a ''Komtur''. The stronghold was called ''Landeshut'', but the name did not become popular and the name Ragnit, after a local river, a tributary of the Memel (outside of Prussia called Neman), continued to be used. Although the settlement had an important castle not only guarding the Prussian lands of the State of the Teutonic Order from the north but also serving as a military base for the Knights' campaigns into adjacent Samogitia, it was living in the shadow of the nearby city of Tilsit (present-day Sovetsk). After the dissolution of the Order's State under its last Grand Master Albrecht von Hohenzollern, Ragnit on April 10, 1525 became a part of the Duchy of Prussia, which was ruled by the House of Hohenzollern as a fief of the Polish Crown until 1657. The duchy was inherited by the Hohenzollern margraves of Brandenburg in 1618, becoming an integral part of Brandenburg-Prussia, whereby remote Ragnit retained its status as a regional capital. Ragnit was devastated by Tatars during the Second Northern War in 1656 and again by Swedish forces during the Scanian War in 1678, while the "Great Elector" Frederick William of Brandenburg had achieved full sovereignty over his Prussian lands by the 1657 Treaty of Wehlau. His son and successor Elector Frederick III elevated himself to a King ''in'' Prussia in 1701. He granted Ragnit town privileges on April 6, 1722. It was again destroyed during the Seven Years' War, this time by Russian forces in 1757. Incorporated into the Province of East Prussia from 1815, Ragnit became a part of the German Empire upon the Prussian-led unification of Germany in 1871. On November 1, 1892, a railroad line linking the town with Tilsit (now Sovetsk) was opened. It was built to develop the wood industry in the area, but the development did not actually start and the area's economy remained dominated by food production. When Germany had to cede the Klaipėda Region north of the Neman River to the Conference of Ambassadors according to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, Ragnit became a border town. In 1922, it lost its status as an administrative capital in favor of Tilsit. During World War II, on January 19, 1945, Ragnit was captured without a fight by the 3rd Belorussian Front of the Red Army in the course of the East Prussian Offensive. According to the 1945 Potsdam Agreement, the town became a part of Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian SFSR. It was renamed Neman in 1946.〔 Most of the local inhabitants who had not fled during the Soviet conquest of East Prussia were subsequently expelled to the western parts of Germany. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Neman, Russia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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