Konigsberg

Konigsberg was a German city established in 1255 by the Teutonic Knights on the Baltic Sea coast, on the site of an older Old Prussian settlement, and named for King Ottokar II of Bohemia. It became the capital of the Teutonic Order's domains, the Duchy of Prussia and later the Kingdom of Prussia, the coronation site of Prussian monarchs from 1701, and an important German intellectual center that was home to figures such as Immanuel Kant and David Hilbert; heavily damaged by Allied bombing in 1944 and the Battle of Konigsberg in 1945, it was occupied by Soviet forces, its German population expelled, its historic center demolished, and the city renamed Kaliningrad in 1946, as which it remains part of Russia today.