Monthly Archives: October 2023

Sir Francis Drake an English Pub in Kaliningrad

Why Sir Francis Drake decided to move to Russia

Updated 23 October 2023 | published 6 April 2023 ~ Sir Francis Drake an English Pub in Kaliningrad

“Would you like to go to an English pub?” Asked in England, this would be a completely pointless question should it be directed at me; but asked in Russia’s Kaliningrad 22 years ago, when the city was little more than a one-bar town, I was waiting for the punchline.

In 2001, going out for a drink in Kaliningrad meant either calling in at the subterranean snooker bar at the front of the Kaliningrad Hotel (big hotel; the only one) or taking a table in one of two restaurants that were lingering on from Soviet times. So, it was hardly surprising when Olga asked me, would I like to go to an English pub, I thought the question a trick one.

It was the name of this English pub that put me to rights: in the UK we have King’s Arms (we don’t know which king); Richard III (found under a carpark in Asian Leicester); the Lord Nelson (not yet suffered the ignominy of having his statue tossed into the drink by loony leftist agitators); we even had Jack the Ripper once, until, at the behest of the feminist mafia, the original name Ten Bells was obsequiously reinstated. And yet, whilst a whole host of famous-named pubs spring readily to mind, such as the Black Rod in Basingstoke and the Big Black Cochrane in Shepherd’s Bush, sometimes referred to as the BBC, I cannot recall ever frequenting a Sir Francis Drake in England.

Sir Francis Drake in Kaliningrad

In the small, secluded outpost of Russia, the Sir Francis Drake established itself as the first of Kaliningrad’s English-themed pubs. It occupied, and still does occupy, a fairly non-descript building in a built-up area some distance removed both from the old town centre, the district once dominated by the Kaliningrad Hotel, and its more typical town-centre successor: the area in, around and containing Victory Square.

The Sir Francis Drake locale is an unlikely place for an English pub or any pub for that matter. It brings back memories of streets in London excluded from exploratory pub-crawls as possible places of ill repute ~ assumed publess, therefore pointless.

Mick Hart and Olga Hart in the Sir Francis Drake bar in Kaliningrad 2001 — **Mick and Olga Hart in the Sir Francis Drake English-theme pub, Kaliningrad 2001**

Thus, if on my maiden journey to the Sir Francis, I had expected to find something approximating to a typical English hostelry, which I didn’t, I would have been disappointed. Nevertheless, the owners of the Sir Francis Drake had shown good sense in singling out their establishment and attesting to its themed credentials by erecting by its courtyard gate a proper, hanging English pub sign complete with full-length portrait of the famous man himself, the eponymous Sir Francis in all his 16^th century glory. That sign, and what a tremendous sign it was, has long since gone, replaced by a less traditional but self-explanatory clipart-type image, depicting a foaming tankard of beer.

Mixed fortunes

The Sir Francis Drake, as might be expected, has passed through various hands since the days when my English brogues first pitter-pattered across its threshold, and its changing fortunes tend to reflect the grasp successive owners have had of what it is that makes an English pub successful and how best to replicate that success.

For example, shortly after my first visit to the Sir Francis Drake, the bar’s courtyard, a small, paved drinking area or hard-surfaced patio adjacent to the entrance, acquired chairs and tables at which, on days when the weather was clement, people would sit and drink. Fast forward two or three years, and all had gone to seed: half a dozen rusting metal chairs around a wonky table completely spattered with bird shit huddled under a ragged canopy, which was dirty and leaked profusely in more than several places but was good at dragging mosquitoes in during the height of summer, did little to boost the passing trade, which simply kept on passing.

Within the bar, the fairly formal atmosphere that once had dwelt there with noble intent, but which in itself was as like to anything lurking in an English pub as nothing is to something, had packed its bags and gone, fled, vamoosed, hurried away, leaving in its wake a tired and tawdry desolate feeling, a non-existent menu and a middle-aged lady behind the bar unarguably more accustomed to propping herself on her elbow and dragging on a fag than she was to serving customers. She pulled me a pint of beer (Good Heavens, it was Charlie Wells!) and rustled me up a bowl of soup: I drank my beer; ate the soup; and left.

It was to coin a phrase one of those “I am going outside and may be gone for some time,” moments, and thus it came to pass; until many years later fate decided to bring me back from Kaliningrad’s blizzard of bars.

The rediscovery of the Sir Francis Drake coincided with house hunting. We were looking for a property to buy and whilst engaged in this quest had set up camp in a rented flat nearby.

The nearest watering hole to our place of rest was a small craft-beer bar, a new concept to Kaliningrad that had just begun to be trialled. It was a superbly spartan venue but had more beers than a bootleggers’ lock-up. Serving food would have spoilt its image, but to entice my wife to remain in a bar until they kicked me out, I had to ensure that my usual pub diet, which was normally limited to crisps and peanuts, could cunningly be augmented by something approaching a proper meal. Women can be the strangest of creatures.

The closest bar to the foodless establishment was the Sir Francis Drake, and although our last encounter was enough to make us shy away, that the outside area was again presentable and since through its large arched windows a thriving clientele could be seen eating as well as drinking, we decided to bury the hatchet. (That’s an age-old expression, in case you’re wondering, not an ancient Königsberg ritual.)

The bar’s interior had not, and has not, hardly changed a jot since I first clapped eyes on it in May 2001, which is all to the good, since in the UK so many pubs, particularly village pubs, have suffered to have their original appearance, and with it original atmosphere, systematically destroyed by the boardroom boys in suits; those little-minded £-men, whose vandalism ironically demonstrates the feeble knowledge they have of how to sustain a pub and make it pay, an ignorance only equalled by their utter lack of consideration for conservation and history. One day it might just dawn on them that the two go hand in hand. The Philistinism by which they run, and by which they ruin their pubs, is only matched in idiocy by the quick-change con men masquerading as interior designers, whose cack-handed, ill-conceived and badly applied cosmetic surgery scars and robs each pub they touch of the richness of its unique character, charm and personality. The result for the pub is certain death, albeit sometimes a lingering one.

Kaliningrad’s Sir Francis Drake is not steeped in antiquity and thus has less to fear than those that are, but its continuity of almost three decades is something of a novelty, something to be proud of, especially in an age that boasts that the attention span of your average phone junkie is Dwarf from the North in stature and Liz Truss in longevity.

Limited by its size (referring now to the Sir Francis Drake, not the Midget Beyond the Midlands) as much if not more by the props at its disposable, nevertheless, with its heavy portcullis-type doors, panelled walls and dark wood beams, the bar continues to cultivate a pleasing and passable, if not strictly genuine, impression of a traditional English tavern or something that could or should be, and we’d like it no less if it was.

Now, if the Sir Francis Drake had been a genuine English pub, that is to say located in England, it would no doubt have got off to a reasonable start, but inexplicably over time, with no respect for theme or atmosphere, it would be out with the conforming styles and in with the girly-wirly lilacs, other pithy boutique pastels, a mish-mash of pale wood furniture raised on big block legs, inconvenient high-backed seats and, just for good ludicrous measure, a bar looking more out of place than anything that your imagination, even without an addiction to Gold Label and pickled eggs, could conceivably contrive.

I have personally witnessed, back in my days as a beer magazine and pub-guide editor, bars constructed of oak dating to the nineteenth century and period pieces from the 1950s manufactured in plywood kitsch, torn away and replaced with nasty pallid harlequin bricks or MDF veneer, materials which, even devoid of taste, you would not wish on an outside bog in Wigan, let alone install in a pub in Wigan or anywhere else for that matter.

So ten out of ten for the Sir Francis Drake for retaining its integrity and for showing the Brits that it can be done.

Less ten out ten, however, for not repelling the TV invasion. If the UK’s Sir Francis could see off the Spanish fleet whilst playing a game of bowls, thus consigning Spain to a fate of idle siesta-prone work-shies, surely Kaliningrad’s Sir Francis could have thwarted the millennial plot to inundate every last drinking establishment with an armada of flat-screen TVs. (We are talking tellies, not transvestites (which to your way of thinking is the lesser of these two modern evils?)

In all fairness, bars, wherever they may be, need to do whatever they can to bring the punters in. Nowhere is that more crucial than in the beleaguered pubs of England, which sadly in more recent decades have fallen foul of a political class that puts ethnics first and tradition last (But what of the Conservatives? What are they conserving? The answer is themselves.)

The Sir Francis Drake hasn’t much space, not enough in fact to swing a Spaniard in, but it has done what it can to cram as many people as possible into the space it’s got. In 2018 and 2019, at a time when we frequented it most, getting a seat on the off chance was a risky business indeed. Whether that is the case today, I cannot really affirm, since, at the time of writing the Sir Francis Drake is under new management, making its present popularity difficult to assess, whereas its erstwhile popularity was never in any doubt: want a table? Book in advance. So, book we always did, and just to play it safe we booked in April of this year.

The best tables in the joint, hence those that are snapped up first, occupy two elevated platforms on either side of the entrance. They cater simultaneously to two innate desires: the need to be seen and whence to see from ~ an exhibitionists’ and voyeurs’ dream hermaphrodite in fulfilment.

The 2018/2019 management, who probably threw in the beer towel during the mask-wearing coronavirus years, were without question, Sir Francis Drake’s most loyal and its most trusted friends.

Throughout their tenure they maintained and retained the integrity of the historic premise, even down to preserving the framed and glazed biographical timeline of the life of Sir Francis Drake, an absorbing document in many ways and one that inevitably showcases the achievement for which he is best remembered, the annihilation of the Spanish fleet, a military-geo-political triumph that paved the way for Britain becoming the greatest naval power on Earth and in the fullness of time the greatest empire.

Biographical Timeline in English-themed pub Kaliningrad

No less spectacularly, the same management also introduced a revolving selection of imported beers and lagers, authentic tasty pub-grub served by tasty female bar staff and young blokes behind the bar who looked as if they knew their stuff probably because they did. It’s amazing how many don’t.

Whilst all the other important fixtures and attractions remain intact, sadly Sir Francis Drake’s superb bar staff and their faithful if rather cliquey friends, who were the mainstay of the clientele, have, like the remnants of the Spanish navy, long since drifted away. People come and people go, but legends live on regardless.

Beer menu bar in Sir Francis Drake Kaliningrad

The last time that I raised my glass in the legendary Sir Francis Drake, September 2023 was drawing to a close. At that time, the menus, both food and drink menus, left over from the previous management were looking somewhat jaded. The beers advertised did not match the available brands, and the foodies who were with me voiced similar reservations with regard to the dishes advertised and the quality of the meals. The service was good, however, and the folks behind the bar efficient, warm and friendly. Thus, the latest report for Sir Francis Drake, which reads nothing like anything that has ever been written about its eponymous hero, is: ‘Has the ability … could do better … look forward to improvements …” Or have I simply taken these words from a long succession of my old school reports?

Let’s not search for the answer. In the Mick Hart Guide to Kaliningrad’s Bars, the Sir Francis Drake still rates highly ~ seven out of ten at least!

Epilogue

There is no question that the honour of laying the last word of this post should have gone to Sir Francis Drake himself, but, unfortunately, he is unavailable for comment.

Suspecting treachery among the UK’s ruling classes (yet again), I urged him to make all haste to Dover and there play bowls as he did before in Plymouth. If anyone can stem the French Armada and save us from the migrant hoards, Sir Francis is that man. But he must not tarry in his God-given task.

For even as we speak, the UK’s woke-finder generals are busy rewriting slave-trade history, liking and wanting nothing more than to besmirch and depose our national hero as an excuse for the great unwashed to tear his statue from its plinth and toss it into PC Pond. Then they will take each of the pubs that they say his name dishonours and rebrand them in the language of Woke. On t’other side of Hadrian’s Wall, it will be Humza Yousaf King of Kilts, and way down south in London town, Sound-as-a-Pound Sadiq Khan, that Diamond Asian Cockney Geezer. Cuh, would you Adam and Eve it! Is it any wonder that Sir Francis Drake cried “Bowls!” and hurried off to Russia?

Bars in Kaliningrad
4 Great Kaliningrad Bars, Mick Hart’s Pub Crawl
Badger Club Kaliningrad
The London Pub
Premiere Bar
Dreadnought Pub
True Bar

True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

True Bar makes its debut on the Kaliningrad music scene

16 October 2023 ~ True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

Invited to the opening of a new music venue by singer-songwriter Andrey Berenev, the 14^th of October 2023 saw us, my wife and I, rendezvousing with our friend and drinking collaborator, Inara, at a café close to the venue.

I wondered what type of music the bar would be playing; would it be underground? The music venue is. It is located on Krasnaya street. You can’t miss it, not because you can’t miss it, but because it has three notable landmarks: a café on either side of it, one of which we assembled in, and opposite an arts and crafts shop selling imaginative artwares inspired by the city’s alter ego Königsberg.

True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

The entrance to the bar lies in the forecourt that it shares with this shop and one of the two coffee shops. As it is below decks, you won’t see a building, just an elevated entrance, with the club’s name and logo attached to the wall. The place you are looking for is True Bar.

For the past two weeks, after a warm and sunny autumn debut, the wind has been howling, the rain has been pelting and the temperature has taken a turn for the worse. We were spared the rain on the evening of our visit to the new club, but the wind had not relented, and each gust was bitterly cold.

As we had arrived early, we hid in the arts and crafts shop for a while, and when we emerged discovered three or four young people waiting at the entrance to the bar. My wife, Olga, and our friend, Inara, were chuckling at the possibility that tonight’s venue would be exclusively for them ~ ‘youngsters’ ~ and that we would be the oldest patrons there. I made a mental note of this, whilst the track from Fred Wedlock played in the background: Would there be concessions at the bar for OAPs, sometimes know as OFs (Old Farts)? I was glad that I was wearing reasonably young person’s clothes. Do you think there’s a chance he missed them?

The bar was a bit behind schedule in opening, which meant that our small group of prospective clientele was growing by the minute. It was reassuring to note that among our fellow shiverers, one or two people of a more mature age had joined the throng, including singer-songwriter Andrey Berenev, who had invited us this evening. This was the first time I had met him in person. You may recall in my former post, The Badger Club, Olga had gone to the venue alone, and I had written about the club having been inspired to do so by her account of that evening and from the photographs she had taken. In a manner of speaking, however, Andrey had met me; he remembered me from Victor Ryabinin’s funeral.

When at last access to the bar was no longer denied to us, we shot downstairs like ferrets down a drainpipe.

True Bar Kaliningrad

The main staircase, which is a bit dim, so don’t go there in your carpet slippers, descends to what for me was a most welcoming sight indeed, the bar itself.

Behind the bar in a Kaliningrad club — I suppose that does mean we are pleased to see you?

A second staircase takes one down to the club floor. There is no stage, as such. The performers perform with their backs to the upper deck, the small bar area, which is big enough to serve as a viewing gantry. Every inch of the club area is utilised. Including the lower staircase.

Mick Hart with the menu in True Bar Kaliningrad — Perhaps not the usual vegetarian response to pigs ears on the menu

The club seating is a simple ‘homemade’ series of backrest slat benches arranged in pairs either side of a solid table. It’s what it is; and it works. People come here for the music and the atmosphere, and, of course, to drink; everything else is secondary.

I have used the word intimate already, and it gets more so when you want to go to the toilet. I’m not suggesting that you have to share the loo, but to get there you have to single-file between two lines of people: those spread out against the bar and those leaning over the balcony. As I said, one of the leading features of the club is its unconditional intimacy.

Aleksandr Smirnov with Mick Hart and Inara Eagle at a club in Kaliningrad — It’s amazing the fun you can have with cheese straws and vodka

I wondered what the sound quality would be in the club and was pleasantly surprised. The ceiling slopes down high at the ‘stage’ end and low at the other, which is not peculiar as the club sits below a vehicle ramp. My mind kept playing tricks with words ~ it often does. Here, was the word ‘garage’, and there the word ‘music’. I got the impression that the bands were none too pleased with the Vox amplifying system, but the general acoustics seemed fine to me.

Olga Hart at Kaliningrad music club — Olga Hart: an esoteric experience

As I mentioned earlier, I had not met Andrey Berenev before and neither had I met Aleksandr Smirnov. The latter made what can only be called ‘an entrance’, when he suddenly appeared dressed in his all- leather, self-made, signature ‘chimney sweep’ outfit.

From that moment onwards, all female tats, short skirts and shimmering stockings, as questionable and nice to view in that order, were instantly upstaged by Mr Smirnov’s imaginative rig, which, I am appalled to admit, made my red cravat and waistcoat look inexcusably tame. The only other gentleman in the room whose appearance attracted attention was he who was wearing a fawn-toned trench coat, carefully amalgamated with a sharp side-parting hairstyle, sixties tie and tie-clip. It’s not every day you meet JFK’s double.

True Bar scores high on the atmosphere chart but would benefit from a dimmer switch to bring the sheen from the lighting down to a level more in keeping with its underground ethos. In every other respect, as they were fond of saying in the roaring 20s’, ‘the joint was jumping’.

From the appearance of the first band to Andrey Berenev’s song, which he had written with Aleksandr Smirnov in mind and to which the flamboyant and charismatic chimney sweep took to the floor with relish, the atmosphere was beyond electric. If you like it lively, you got it!

Andrey Berenev takes to the 'stage' at True Bar, Kaliningrad

True Bar is a true bar. Maladits! I say in my very best Russian.

Kaliningrad Toilet Door is a thing of Beauty

Sponsored by Mick Hart

12 October 2023 ~ Kaliningrad Toilet Door is a thing of Beauty

Has it ever crossed your mind that one day you might be famous and, if so, in what capacity? Many dream of fame when they are young at a time when the reason is unimportant. This is one of youth’s luxuries: the dream of fame for fame itself.

But fame can strike at any time, when you least expect it, in the most unexpected way and for the most unexpected reasons. Take me [Frank Zappa: “Take me, I’m yours …”], for example, how could I have possibly predicted twenty years ago, when I was 14🙂, that fate would have me knock on the door of fame, or would have had me knock on the door of fame had there been a door to knock on.

When I was young, I staked my claim to fame, or so I would have them believe, on the publication of my first toilet wall. What an imagination! Yet even I, as fanciful as I was, could never have envisioned that it was not a wall but a toilet door that one day would consign me to the annals of posterity.

I can hear you asking, although you are rather faint, how such an extraordinary set of circumstances ever came to be and, considering its phenomenal nature, have I thought of contacting The Guinness Book of Records? Answer, in reverse order, I shall wait for them to contact me, but, whilst we wait in suspense together, the very least I can do is let you in on the noble act to which my fame is owed.

Kaliningrad Toilet Door

Not so long ago, the president of the Kaliningrad Auto Retro Club acquired a property which the club could use as a base for its activities and as a classic car museum. An historically interesting building, which, in the days of German Königsberg, had been used as an aircraft parts repository for Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe, it was otherwise perfect in every sense for what the club required, except in one respect ~ an important one, I thought. For this public venue where people would meet, attend lectures, be taken on tours and, if they so desired, could hire for private parties was lacking in one essential ~ it had no toilet door!

It is monumentally inconceivable that during the Third Reich’s reign the bog in the Luftwaffe building would have been doorless. I have it from a reliable source, a man who’s devoted his life to toilets ~ he majored in them at Cambridge ~ that, to quote his words verbatim, “They made very good doors those Germans did, and very good toilet doors!” We are left to conclude, therefore, that in the days when defeat was imminent, as well as destroying their vital papers, either the Germans destroyed the toilet door or hid it where no one could find it. We cannot put it past them. It is a typical Gerry trick, I’d say; the sort of thing they went round doing just to be awkward and spiteful.

However, to give credit where credit is due, the fact that the door was missing had not escaped the notice of the club. And it was patently clear to everyone that something had to be done about it, not the absence of German decorum but the absent toilet door. Then came the question, what exactly?

Mick Hart & Olga Hart at the Kaliningrad Auto Retro Club — **In the Club**

As with all complex organisations presided over by reams of committees, reliant on detailed reports from antithetical think tanks and subject to the dislocation of interdepartmental interests, the Kaliningrad Auto Retro Club faced a difficult dilemma. The knock-on effect, or no knock-on effect, as there was nothing to rap one’s knuckles on, of having no door to your toilet became one of those gritty [spelling correct] seemingly endless issues, destined to be shuffled about from one desk to another, until at last worn down and out by the suspenseful acrobatics of over-careful toilet timing, it fell on me, to coin a phrase, to roll out an initiative. “Why don’t I buy a door,” I said, “and have someone fill the hole with it!” The motion was passed unanimously.

Job done, you think. I can tell you that it wasn’t. Where would we find that fix-it person now Jim was no longer with us. He fixed a lot of things did Jim, including over-generous posthumous payouts for a herd of out-of-the-woodwork women now minted in their retirement years.

When, at last, we did find someone ~ and, of course, at last we did ~ it felt like every toilet trouble wherever it was in the world was nought but a poof in the wind. The handyman he fitted the door quicker than Brand got fitted up ~ he certainly knew his angles from his elbows ~ and before you could say ‘engaged’ or ‘vacant’ or ‘here’s another perfect example of a bum-wrap by the leftist state’, the club was no longer one door short of a toilet.

Some of you may feel that the saga of our toilet door was all a storm in a Portacabin, whilst the rather less polite amongst you might think it a load of c..p! And I am willing to concede that some of the visitors to the club may miss the thrill of sitting there whilst a friend or colleague stands guard for them, but I have to say from my point of view, it all looked rather cheeky. Bringing a bottle to an event is something not unheard of, but come on, really, deary, deary me, bring your own toilet door!

As the intelligence of my philanthropy leaked out far and wide, eventually reaching St Petersburg, my friend and colleague, Yury Grosmani, writer, author, journalist and latterly film producer, flushed with excitement at the news, immediately reached for his keyboard and wrote this moving tribute to me, which he posted on VK:

Вообще, музей без туалета, а равно как и музей с туалетом, но без двери, заведение абсолютно бесперспективное. Очень приятно, что известный журналист, писатель, а теперь мы уже знаем, что и киноактер, Мик Харт, выступил спонсором такого важного, нужного и благородного дела. Теперь музей АвтоРетроКлуба имеет на одно преимущество больше, чем самые известеые музеи мира. Например, на дверях туалета Британского музея такой таблички нет. Лично подтверждаю! А у нас она есть! Передаю слова огромной благодарности моему другу и коллеге МИКУ ХАРТУ 🇬🇧🇷🇺👍

And now in English:

“ [computer translation] In general, a museum without a toilet, as well as a museum with a toilet, but without a door, is an absolutely hopeless establishment. I am very pleased that the famous journalist, writer, and now we already know that film actor, Mick Hart, sponsored for such an important, necessary and noble cause. Now the AutoRetroClub Museum has one more advantage compared to the most famous museums in the world. For example, there is no such sign on the toilet doors of the British Museum. I personally confirm! And we do have it! I convey my deep gratitude to my friend and colleague MICK HART 🇬🇧🇷🇺👍

Whether I fully deserve this accolade, I will leave that up to you decide. As for the British Museum’s pitifully Mick Hart plaqueless status, there may be some truth in this; I can neither confirm nor deny. But should that august establishment ever find itself taken short by the urgent need to have one, then I’m the man for their big job.

For my own part, now that the door is up and the paperwork is done, I am happy to rest on my laurels, content in the certain knowledge that although my simple toilet door has not converted this lowly loo into anything close to a cistern chapel, it fulfils the function, as nature intended, to stop the things that shouldn’t come out from coming out of the closet. Small things in life, perhaps, but if by my private motion I have achieved some good in the public realm and in the process of doing so prevented the club’s reputation from hitting the skids big time and going down the pan, then per angusta ad augusta. It is just something we often say (as well as going ‘ahhh’) in the world of toilet-door sponsorship!

Note: The door sponsored by Mick Hart is available for viewing, and not least using, at the Kaliningrad Auto Retro Club Museum. To avoid disappointment, advanced booking is advisable.

Some other stuff without toilet doors in them

Three Kaliningrad Babushkas in a Bread Shop
Panic Buying, Shelves Empty
Tracking World Vaccination with the Prickometer
Harry & Meghan the sad case of déjà vu

Herman Brachert Museum Königsberg Sculptor

A unique museum in Otradnoye, Kaliningrad region

8 October 2023 ~ Herman Brachert Museum Königsberg Sculptor

Otradnoye [German: Georgenswald] is a small, unspoilt seaside enclave on Kaliningrad region’s Baltic Coast. It sits, relatively obscurely, on a wooded escarpment between the region’s two main resorts, Svetlogorsk (German: Rauschen) and Zelenogradsk (German: Cranz).

Otradnoye is worth discovering for its wonderful woodland walks, late nineteenth and early twentieth century German architecture and its small but white sandy beach (now smaller still, since a couple of thousand boulders have been netted there to tackle coastal erosion).

Herman Brachert Museum

Another reason for visiting Otradnoye is to acquaint yourself with one of its most famous and charismatic former occupants, the German sculptor Herman Brachert (1890~1972), whose home and studio has been faithfully preserved as a biographical record of his life and as a museum for his works of art.

Herman Brachert, who originated from Stuttgart, worked in Königsberg and the Königsberg region for 25 years. From 1933 to 1944, he lived and worked in the country retreat of Otradnoye.

The Brachert’s family home was built in 1931 by architect Hans Hopp. It was renovated in 1992 and became a museum the following year.

Much of Brachert’s work perished during World War II and/or was destroyed in the postwar years. Even so, the museum contains more than 700 exhibits, more than enough to be highly representational of the concepts, materials, forms and compositions with which Brachert is associated.

The museum’s curators continue to track down original Brachert items, aided in their quest by photographs, letters, documents and diaries from the sculptor’s family archive. Fortunately, Brachert’s wife, Maria, was an accomplished photo-artist, and many of her photographs are included in the museum’s display.

Herman Brachert Museum

Herman Brachert was particularly adept in the creation of small items, as evidenced by the museum’s collection of plaques and medals, arguably the most valued being the 1924 medal to the 200th Anniversary of the Unification of Königsberg. He also worked with plastics and jewellery.

The quality and detail of his work also shines through his larger projects, of which perhaps the most impressive, or at least most loved, is the figural sculpture Carrier of Water. This forlorn but beautiful woman rising from her knees clasping a pitcher of water upon her head is said to be the Goddess of Fate.

Carrier of Water, Hermann Brachert, Sculptor — *Carrier of Water*. Herman Brachert Museum.

In the winter of 2000, I made the lady’s acquaintance. She was quietly and gently decaying beneath the snow-capped trees of Svetlogorsk’s Larch Park.

Two years passed before a rescue party came and whisked her away to St Petersburg, where, at the State Hermitage Museum, under the direction of artist-restorer VN Mozgov, she was lovingly restored and later transferred to the Brachert Museum.

Another favourite among the Brachert exhibits is the goddess Demeter. A two-third figural composition of a young nude woman, produced by Brachert in 1939 and donated to the museum by patron of the arts BN Bartfeld, Demeter is said to personify strength, equanimity and feminine beauty.

In addition to free-standing figural sculptures, Brachert was also an expert in the field of bas-reliefs, fine examples of which can still be seen upon the surviving buildings of Königsberg.

In 2015, the Brachert Museum acquired two rare plaques, dating to the early 1930s, produced by students from the Königsberg School of Arts and Crafts, where Herman Brachert taught.

Herman Brachert Museum

The exhibits of the House Museum of Herman Brachert echo a golden era of Germanic sculpture and architectural embellishment, many strongly influenced by the Art Deco design concepts that were prevalent during the 1930s.

The same artistic principals resonated throughout the interior design of the Brachert family home. Structurally, the house is uncannily presented in almost every architectural detail, and though the fixtures and fittings that graced the original abode have long since disappeared, it is yet possible, using numerous family photographs within the museum’s collection, to see exactly what the interior looked like when the Brachert family lived there.

Brachert's room as it was when he lived there in the 1930s

One photograph in particular [see above] opens a poignant window into the past. Stand next to this photograph and look towards the far end of the room in the direction of the Carrier of Water, and you can easily reconstruct the entire room as it appeared during the Brachert era, locating with pin-point accuracy every piece of furniture and even Brachert himself sitting at his desk.

Female nude sculpture, Brachert, East Prussia

For time travellers, this is one of those ‘hairs standing up on the back of your neck moments’. A similar sensation can be replicated by gazing upon the portrait bust of the great sculptor himself.

Hermann Brachert, Sculptor, Konigsberg 1930s

The bust’s likeness of Brachert is so finely executed that his features seem to come alive before your very eyes, inviting you to think, ‘Here, indeed, is a man possessed of singular intellectual depth and charismatic intensity.’ He has the face of someone you would have liked to have known in person.

During their time in Otradnoye, not only did the Brachert’s have a modern country home nestled above the Baltic Coast, but they were also the fortunate owners of a large and pleasant garden, which follows the fall of the land to the edge of the wood beyond. Poignant photographs in the museum’s collection reveal the Brachert family in their natural setting: a woman leaning casually out of the ground-floor window and a boy with a sleeping dog, sitting and laying respectively, upon the garden terrace. Today, the garden is a quiet oasis, a green and tranquil backdrop for a cornucopia of widely differing sculptures, donated over the years by various artists.

Herman Brachert home in Otradnoye. Herman Brachert Museum.

**Former Brachert home as it is today [October 2023]**. **Herman Brachert Museum**.

Wandering recently through this exotic landscape, I wondered perchance would I meet again with my old friends Lenin and Stalin. Eighteen years ago, on a very wet and very cold day in January, I thrilled to the sight of them languishing incongruously in a hedge at the side of the Brechert Museum. Sure enough we were reunited, but now they had a proper station among the other exhibits. The plaque, which shows the ensemble before it succumbed to distress and decay, presents an ennobling tableau.

Lenin & Stalin statues in the grounds of the Brachert Museum

Plaque Lenin and Stalin statue in Otradnoye

Plaque (above): ‘Lenin and Stalin in Gorkah’. Fragments of sculptural group, constructed in 1949, were discovered during building work in Svetlogorsk. Donated to the Brachert Museum in 2003.

Skull sculpture in the grounds of the Brachert Museum, Otradnoye — Skull sculpture in the grounds of the Herman Brachert Museum by Evgeniy Dolmator and Gregory Bogachuk, Moscow, Russia (2016). A symbol of the continuity of life and a reminder that life should not be wasted.

Olga Hart with bull in Brachert museum garden

The House Museum of Herman Brachert

The House Museum of Herman Brachert showcases the work of a highly talented individual who produced legendary sculptures and architectural plaques in a wide range of materials and on scales both large and small.

In spite of Königsberg’s fate, examples of Brachert’s work live on, reminding us of the important role he played in the architectural heritage of the city and its provinces. In all, he was the progenitor of more than 20 outstanding sculptures made in and for the region of East Prussia.

Whatever material Brachert worked in, his breadth of imagination, elaborate detail and the innate energy of his compositions, exerts a signature brilliance.

I will stop just short of using a word like genius as through frequency of use it is fast becoming an unsustainable concept, and besides far too many of us today are deserving of the appellation. Perhaps, we should simply say that Herman Brachert, Königsberg sculptor, is the exception to our rule.

Mick Hart & Daniel Hart with Brachert's Svetlogorsk sculpture, Nymph — **Mick & Daniel Hart with Brachert’s bronze Nymph statue, Svetlogorsk (2004)**

Svetlogorsk, on Kaliningrad’s Baltic Coast, contains a number of Brachert’s works, the most celebrated being his bronze Nymph statue, which is framed in a giant shell surrounded by different coloured mosaic in a prominent place on the sea-front promenade.

(Above:) This gatefold advertising leaflet for the Herman Brachert Museum was produced in 1992, making it a collector’s item in its own right!
The calligraphic script featured on the front page is the work of our friend and artist Victor Ryabinin.
Victor introduced us to the museum in the winter of 2005, to be precise on the 12^th January 2005, as written in his inscription to us by hand in memory of that occasion.

Posts relating to Victor Ryabinin

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Victor Ryabinin Artist Four Years Out of Time

Posts relating to Kaliningrad’s Baltic Coast

The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast
Amber Legend Yantarny is a jewel in the coastal town
Architectural surprises along the Zelenogradsk Coast
Amazed at the Museum of Skulls and Skeletons in Zelenogradsk
Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk

The Main Thing

The Herman Brachert Museum caters for individual and group excursions. It plays host to exhibitions by Kaliningrad, Polish, and Lithuanian artists as well as from the collections of Russian and foreign museums, and has established itself as a favourite venue for concerts and creative plenaries.

House-Museum of Herman Brachert
Svetlogorsk, pos. Otradnoe, Tokareva Street, 7

Web: www.hbrachert.ru

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brachertmuseum/?fref=ts

Opening times
September–May: 10am to 5pm
June–August: 10am to 7pm