Pozostałości zbiorów archeologicznych dawnych muzeów kraju Kłajpedzkiego

ENAt present there are two public museums in the Klaipėda Region (now west Lithuania), which was once known as the Memel Territory (Memelland) of North-east Prussia. These two museums, the Šilutė Museum (formerly Heydekrug) and the Museum of the History of Lithuania Minor at Klaipėda (formerly Memel), preserve archaeological finds from collections which were made before World War Two. This paper's aim is to present a brief survey of those artefacts which are preserved in Šilutė and in the Klaipėda Museum (which in the period 1949-1989 was called the Klaipėda Regional Museum), and state, where possible, their condition and origin. Both museums which were founded after the War by decree of the Soviet central authorities can trace their history to a somewhat earlier date. The ethnological and archaeological antiquities collected by the owner of the Šilutė estate, Hugo Scheu (1845-1937), and his son Erich at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, along with their well-endowed library and archive were dispersed at the end of the War, but they were not plundered completely. A considerable part of Scheu's archive is held by the Library of the Academy of Sciences in Vilnius and the basis of the Šilutė Museum's holdings comprise the remnants of the Scheu Collection, which were rounded up and sorted by the Soviet accountant responsible for restructuring the former estate, J. Toleikis. The Klaipėda Museum was founded in 1924 as a result of the labours of the Klaipėda Regional Museum Association which was established for exactly that purpose.