part a delegation, including independists and proponents wishing to upkeep the connection with the old-Prussian church, in order to negotiate with the EOK in Berlin. After negotiations between April 18 to 23, and again July 16 to 18, 1925 the Agreement concerning the Evangelical Church of the Memel Territory () was concluded and signed on July 23. Both parties had stipulated that the Lutheran parishes and the single Reformed congregation in Memel should form the Regional Synodal Federation of the Memel Territory () with its own consistory led by an elected general superintendent. This regional synodal federation then formed an old-Prussian ecclesiastical province of its own, disentangled from that of East Prussia. The federation was independent from any government interference by the Lithuanian central government or the Klaipėda Directorate. In 1926 first elections were held for the regional synod, and the synodals elected Gregor the first general superintendent and church councillors for the executive body, the consistory in Memel, which constituted in 1927. When in 1933 Gregor retired Otto Obereigner, the former Superintendent of Pogegen deanery, succeeded him. German and Lithuanian were equally to be used in preaching and every pastor was to master both languages. Until 1 January 1932 also foreign pastors were allowed be employed. However, in 1923 the native language of 37 out of 40 pastors in the Klaipėda Region was German, and only three were native speakers of Lithuanian. In 1936 their number had shrunk to two, with the pastors being German native speakers mostly only able to passively understand and read Lithuanian. With the formation of the German Evangelical Church on 14 July 1933, uniting all German Protestant regional churches under Nazi government and German Christian movement pressure, members of the Memel consistory agreed to further collaborate with the Berlin-based EOK within the new federation, whereas the Lithuanian central government refused to allow the regional Protestant representatives to join conventions of the German Evangelical Church. The central government doubted the further validity of the concordat of 1925 since it considered the old-Prussian church to have changed its legal identity. However, on 26 August 1933 the EOK assured that the old-Prussian church persisted so that the central government refrained from cancelling the concordat. In 1934 the central government-appointed governor in the Klaipėda Region expelled nine pastors bearing German citizenship in 1934, causing Nazi Germany to protest. After 1935 Lithuania accounted for Hitler’s rising power and rather