East Prussia's landscape was characterised by a great variety of natural habitats and areas used for agriculture and forestry. Many indelible memories are of the Baltic Sea coast, extensive, dark forests, more than a thousand small and large, deep and shallow lakes as well as great skies with impressive clouds.
With increasing settlement in the 13th century, forest areas made way for extensive agricultural land. Natural vegetation was particularly scarce on the nutrient-rich soils and in river valleys. Nevertheless, numerous large animal species such as aurochs, wisents, wild horses (tarpans), brown bears and moose survived much longer in the sparsely populated landscape than in more westerly regions. East Prussia's climate was characterised by short hot summers and long severe winters. Along the Baltic Sea coast temperatures always remained a little milder; precipitation was also more frequent than in the continental climate of the eastern part of the province, where the lowest winter temperatures were recorded in Germany until 1945.