As a literary genre, the flâneur novel reached its peak just over 100 years ago. A common theme was that the flâneur, while wandering around the city, observed how the world was developing. Sometimes, as in The Nobel Prize Winner (2014), Modiano's modern treatment of the theme (in The Grass of the Nights), the present is contrasted with the past world, which was seen as a better world. A walk in today's Kaliningrad provides a similar experience.
The most famous walks in Königsberg, as the city was formerly called, were those that crossed the Pregel and back via two islands in the river. Whether they are depicted in fiction I do not know, but the walk over the “Seven Bridges of Königsberg” is the theme of a well-known mathematical problem. The city’s most famous son, Immanuel Kant, was famous for his walks and would have surely tried every conceivable combination of bridge crossings as he strolled through the city.
Kant is not only a fitting symbol for Königsberg, he is also a fitting symbol for the Europe shaped by Renaissance humanism and the ideals of the Enlightenment. In this way, he stands in stark contrast to Mikhail Kalinin, who gave Königsberg its current name and who signed the decree on the Katyn massacre.
In the fall of 2006, I spent two weeks as a visiting professor at the Immanuel Kant University in Kaliningrad. The students quickly divided into two camps, those who appreciated my perhaps typically Western appearances, and those who almost hated me. I spent as much time with the former as I could in my free time. I not only “admired” the traditional T-34, which was parked in the middle of the student housing. But I also saw how in the suburbs of Kaliningrad there were still almost intact pre-war buildings that looked just like in Göttingen or, for example, Marburg. The students affectionately called their hometown “Kenix”. At the same time, the Kaliningrad Oblast had its first civilian governor. That is, no longer a grim admiral with pilot sunglasses and a visor cap the size of an umbrella. The new governor could also have turned to the West and tried to attract large Dutch companies such as Philips and others.
While I was still digesting all the experiences, two colleagues invited me to a farewell dinner. We drove out for maybe an hour and ended up somewhere on the Baltic coast in a village that looked like the West German spa towns of Timmendorfer Strand or Travemünde. Or even like Pärnu. Only much smaller and more old-fashioned, i.e. just like before World War II. The restaurant I was taken to also showed clear traces of pre-war Germany, or rather East Prussia. This coastal village had been seized by a group of Soviet officers at the end of the war, who had used force to prevent party members from entering. Consequently, they had managed to keep everything in its original form, cleanliness and efficiency. Therefore, the food, as expected, was delicious, and the service was like at the best officers' mess ever. Even the vodka was clearly acceptable…
Towards the end of the evening, when we had all become fraternal and the return journey was approaching, I politely thanked him and dared to ask: "Gentlemen, everything is very nice here with you, monkey, monkey… How is it really? How will the future be shaped for your Kaliningrad? – For my part, I see three alternatives. You can, with the support of Germany, the Netherlands and the European Union, restore your old Western heritage. Or you can – like your neighbors Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – become a normal Baltic state. Or – you can remain under Moscow’s derzhava, iron fist?”.
The colleagues did not answer at first, but looked at each other in silence. Then the older one said: “Dear Mr. Colleague"You should know that here in Kaliningrad, 25% of our students study English. And 15% study German. The remaining 65% study – Kalashnikov."
That was the situation when I was there 17 years ago. But now? What might the attitude be today, in 2023?
After the astonishing Russian losses in Ukraine, and the corresponding decline in prestige for Moscow, one wonders what possible independent executive power the Kaliningrad admiral and/or governor and perhaps even the old well-known university could have? What would they be capable of? With what support? And what influence could the West (Germany, the European Union and NATO) possibly exert?
The neighbors, Poland and Lithuania, have reinstated their old names for the city, Króleswiec respectively Kareliaucius. Latvia and Estonia could do the same, i.e. Konigsberg. Sweden could do that too. Why not?
In the warm pre-war summer of 1939, my father (born 1916) traveled as a journalist through the old East Prussian city of orders and universities. Before my visit in 2006, he remembered nostalgically: “Ahh, Königsberg, what music, what beautiful music, from every open garden”… Yes, Königsberg itself, today still a center of environmental destruction and strategic aggression, named after the old ballerina-chasing political tycoon Kalinin!
The commanding admiral of Kaliningrad should be very worried today, completely trapped in a NATO inland sea, as he seems to be. He also knows, if only through NATO General Shirreff's book War with Russia (2016), that his Kaliningrad, in the event of a major conflict, will naturally become a strategic first-choice target for NATO. Against this general background, do we have reason to expect anything other than rockets, violence and pain from the Kaliningrad region? And – still – colossal amounts of untreated waste, right out into the Baltic Sea?
Or – and it would be a grace to quietly pray for – Kaliningrad could gradually experience fundamental changes, possibly in the direction of svoboda (freedom) and maybe even democracy? – As long as the now ruling dictator remains at the long table in the Kremlin, unfortunately all indicators point to continued conflict.