 The area comprising today's Panemunė used to be the northern trans-Memel (Neman) suburb of Tilsit, then a Prussian and later also German town (as of 1871).Then Tilsit sat close to the border between Germany and Russia.After Germany's defeat in World War I, the trans-Memel suburb was disentangled from Tilsit (with the rest of the Memelland/Klaipėda Region detached from the Province of East Prussia) in 1920.