The name Lithuania (as Litua) first appears in written sources in 1009 in the Quedlinburg Annals in connection with the monk Bruno of Querfurt, who wanted to convert the local people to Christianity.

In 1724, King Frederick William I of Prussia prohibited Samogitians, Poles and Jews from settling in Lithuania Minor, and initiated German colonization to change the region's ethnic composition.

[4] The continuing internal and external decline of the state led to Lithuania (and Poland) disappearing from the map in 1795 after several partitions - undertaken by Prussia along with Russia and Austria - with the bulk of Lithuania being annexed by the Russian Empire, and small portions by Prussia and Austria, which after 1815 also passed to Russia.

During World War I, the German Empire, as an adversary of Russia, occupied Lithuania and some neighbouring territories in 1915 and combined them into the administrative unit of Ober Ost.

Towards the end of the war, Germany wanted to recognize Lithuania as a sovereign state only if it entered into economic and military union with the Reich.

Apart from the problem of the Klaipėda Region, German–Lithuanian relations in the interwar period developed quite positively to some extent, the two states being bound together by their dislike of Poland, to which both had territorial claims.

[5] After the Nazi takeover in March 1933, tensions began to rise again, reaching a climax with the Trial of Neumann and Sass in 1934, when the Lithuanian government arrested dozens of German pro-Nazi activists.

During this period, Germans and Lithuanian collaborators committed crimes against humanity against opposition members and minorities, chiefly Jews and Poles.

In Lithuania, attempts were made to implement the so-called Kegelbahn project, i.e. the targeted settlement of certain conquered territories with German resettlers.

[5] Lithuania, alike East Germany, fell to the Soviets, although it has regained its main port city of Klaipėda.

In the following period, Germany's policy towards Lithuania oscillated between the willingness and obligation to integrate the Baltic States into the European structures and the fear of thereby angering Russia or disrupting its rapprochement with Europe.

Following the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, the NATO Enhanced Forward Presence was established in the Baltic States, with Germany assuming the responsibility to lead the multinational battle group in Lithuania.

[10] In 2023, the military cooperation between the states reached a new level when Germany agreed to deploy the 45th Panzer Brigade of Bundeswehr in Lithuania on a permanent basis.