A national discovery and loss of a landscape – photographic images of the Curonian Spit

The Curonian Spit, formerly part of East Prussia and divided today between Lithuania and the Kaliningrad Oblast (Russian Federation), is one of the iconic landscapes in the German collective memory of the territories lost after the Second World War. Using examples from the popular genre of photographic books (Bildbände) from the 1930s to the 1960s, this article discusses to what extent previous representations (textual and visual) informed the photographic reservoir of images of the Curonian Spit as the ‘most famous landscape of East Prussia’ and explores how in the environment of the homeland societies the Curonian Spit finally transformed from an image of a national discovery into an icon of loss.