There are more things in Znamensk than meet the eye

9 May 2024 ~ Znamensk (Wehlau) Before You Go What to Know!

It is about 50km / 30 miles from Kaliningrad to Znamensk. That is no distance when you are whipping along in an all-mod-cons motor vehicle, but when you are travelling by classic car, such as a 1960s’ Volga, ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ is less likely to spring to mind than ‘oversprung and lurch quite drastic’. But isn’t that just the fun of it!

As is the custom of the Kaliningrad Auto Retro Club, those members who were attending the latest meet, met up on the concourse of a filling station. As pre-planning goes, this strategy cannot be faulted. Most large filling stations have all you need for a temporary stop: fuel, food, tea and coffee, toilets, and, most importantly, a place to park and space to stretch your legs.

They are also perfect for saying hello to and shaking hands with people whom you may not have seen for months, and you can amble around and look at the cars and, of course, take numerous photographs.

All of these things we did, until, when all the participants were herewith assembled, we hopped into our respective motors and cavalcaded away.

Znamensk (Wehlau)

Znamensk, our destination, is a small rural settlement, population less than 5000, situated in the Gvardeysky District, east of Kaliningrad, Russia. As with many places in this region it has a chequered and violent history, changing hands many times over the course of centuries.

Wehlau, as Znamensk was known in Prussian times, fell to the Teutonic Order in the mid-13^th century. Having populated it with Germans, the Order then went on to fill the town with horses. In the first half of the 14th century, civic charters were granted turning the hitherto sleepy settlement into a major centre for horse trading. Three horse fairs were held each year, one of which lasted for three whole days.

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Велау (Знаменск). Довоенные виды. | Pro History | Tilsit | Дзен (dzen.ru)

Opposition to Teutonic rule in the mid-fifteenth century sparked a war between the Kingdom of Poland and the Teutonic Order. Lasting for 13 years, someone with an eye for detail decided to call it the Thirteen Years’ War. The outcome of this conflict was that the eastern lands of old Prussia, including the town of  Wehlau, was granted to the Teutonic Order as a fief and protectorate of Poland. The Teutonic Order had not been entirely vanquished, but it was certainly no longer the force it had been.

The sixteenth century came and went. It was not the best of times for Wehlau as it suffered a number of natural disasters, including a terrible fire. But in the 17^th century, its fortunes changed. Frederick William, ‘The Great Elector’ of Brandenburg, acquiring full sovereignty over Prussia, proceeded to develop the country into a major power.

In January 1701, the Kingdom of Prussia was formed, and in 1871 Wehlau, along with the rest of Prussia, was absorbed by the German Empire.

During the 19^th  century and up until the mid-20^th century, Wehlau grew into a handsome town and one with a thriving community. The town was served by all essential amenities, including a school, a court and a church. The Prussian Eastern Railway provided access to Königsberg and also to Berlin and from Berlin a link to St Petersburg.

On the 23 January 1945, Wehlau’s history ended. After two days of gruelling urban warfare, Russian troops wrested the town from its embedded German defenders. By the time the fighting was over, nearly all that was left of the old town centre was rubble. In the aftermath of war, the ruins were flattened and cleared, and the town in its pre-war form was never rebuilt.

WWII: January 1945, the Red Army attack and take Wehlau
Wehlau (now Znamensk) was almost totally obliterated in the last year of the Second World War, but it was not an easy prize. Record has it that it took the Soviet forces two days of intense fighting to defeat the German defenders and, as with other East Prussian towns, the only way to rout the enemy was to confront them street by street, building by building. The Soviets eventually won the day but casualties were high.

Znamensk (Wehlau)

Before we set out on our trip today, I had been forewarned not to expect too much of Znamensk, as there was little left to see.

First impressions of the still-standing Seven-Arch Bridge over the Pregolya River and the bronzed cupola of St Jacob’s Church visible above the distant rooftops appeared to belie what I had been told. But after snaking our way through a narrow street with German buildings on either side, we emerged into nothing much — much of empty space but little of town. To the left stood the ruins of St Jacob’s church, to the right a block of flats, typically Soviet 1970s, rather rundown and tired and of no aesthetic value.

Trundling on, we eventually hung a right, which brought us into a little enclave of shops nestled against the side of the river. This partly developed oasis in the desert of Wehlau’s former glory is pretty much today what Znamensk is all about — a place to come if you own a boat and want to make use of the water. And what a lovely stretch of water it is!

We passed a rack of canoes and a vehicle with a boat in tow and pulled up beside a building, which, we would later be pleased to discover, was an attractive restaurant serving good food.

It was here on a narrow strip of ground that our Captain of Ceremonies, Arthur Eagle, would have the unenvious responsibility in his role of car-club president of marshalling the cars in our company into some kind of orderly parking

With no responsibility for us to abdicate, which is one of the joys of travelling passenger class, Olga and I disembarked, and, after a statutory session of photograph-taking, using the river as a picturesque backdrop, we took to the nearby restaurant.

Minimalist and light, bright and sensorially breezy, it is hard to picture a restaurant more inviting, especially after an hour or so of motoring classic style.

Halfway through our repast, however, Mr Eagle attempted to roust us out, we and the other club members who had sidled in for a bite to eat, for a guided tour of St Jacob’s, but the twin considerations of the restaurant being well-appointed and a paucity of enthusiasm when it comes to guided tours, we politely declined the order. 

We would stroll to St Jacob’s church in our own good time, take in it’s red-brick architecture and feel our way back through the centuries to the dawn of its inception (1380), but as for the moment, it was comfy seats and coffee.

St Jacob’s Church Znamensk (Wehlau)

Like so many churches decommissioned by time, St Jacob’s is a shell, but it must have been born with survival in mind, because in 1540 a fire engulfed the town and the church was one of the very few buildings to resist complete destruction. Likewise, in 1945, most of Wehlau went up in smoke, save for St Jacob’s church. It seems that in this world of ours some things are heaven blessed, whilst others suffer the consequences of unmerciful indifference.

St Jacob’s church is often described as the only building of note in Wehlau to have survived the  Second World War, but this is in fact untrue. Rising above the German buildings on the approach to the railway crossing, in all its faceted and Gothic glory, is the lead-crowned tented roof, complete with spire-topped dormer windows, of what easily could be mistaken for the bold, extravagant centrepiece of a medieval castle but which is in point of fact a 1913 water tower.

Standing on an abrupt eminence next to the railway crossing, the tower built according to the Gothic revivalist style cuts an imposing figure, its tall tapering brick arches contrasting with and complementing the railway lines it looks down upon, as they sweep past in opposing directions and vanish quite spectacularly into the distance of themselves.

Wehlau tower was love at first sight, which is probably why fate stepped in and prevented me from buying it. ‘You can’t buy love’, the Beatles warbled? And when I inquired is the tower for sale? I learnt the bitter truth that it had been for sale most recently but most recently had been sold.

Thwarted, thus, there was nothing more to be done than to cross to the other side of the tracks and find yourself in an abandoned graveyard.

Between two brick piers, minus their gates, the ground beyond was unkempt, and though not a spinney as such, it was interspersed with far more trees than would otherwise permit it to be described as open land.

Not exactly a stranger to graveyards, on the contrary I have tarried within and walked through many a graveyard in England, most of which are neglected to some degree, and yet I cannot recall witnessing one so complete in its desertion that, like the inmates it accommodates, it had fallen into abject decay.

I assumed this piece of ground was once the town’s main burial plot, dating at least to the mid-19^th century, but should my assumption be correct, where was the immediate evidence of legacy German tombstones?

It had been the railing enclosures that first made it known to me that I was walking across a graveyard, and these, as I suspected and later would confirm, were not of German but Russian ancestry. All told, the sight they presented was emphatically forlorn, almost film-set in their sorry spectacle, randomly scattered among the trees, some with trees having grown up through them. The railings forming their compounds were for the most part intact, but with yellow, green and blue paint fading, bleached by the sun, scoured by the frost and the rain. And some of the enclosures lay at awkward angles, pushed up from the ground by tree roots or brought down into hollows by water-logged and sinking soil.

The tombstones, where surviving, were all to an object gnarled and cracked, their inscriptions barely legible. They shared their space with plastic containers, improvised make-shift flower vases, now destitute of purpose and strangled by the undergrowth. All were sad reminders of moments of grief in people’s lives, who, many years long since past had gathered at these gravesides to bid farewell to their nearest and dearest. They had placed their flowers upon the graves and continued with this ritual until, within the relentless march of time, they had either grown too old to visit, moved so far away that visiting was impractical or kept their own appointments with death and now, in turn, were the visited ones and would continue in this way until such a time would come when the reasons I have given would commit them to a solitude even greater than first inflicted. And now, in the here and now, was I, staring down at the graves of the dead-forgotten, among whose number we already belong in the eyes of those who are staring down at us and thinking the thoughts that I am thinking, but whom we will never know as they exist in a future that we have run out of. 

Whilst I was engaged not in what I would define as a reflection of a morbid kind so much as a contemplation of mortality, Olga had gone on a mission, to hide from what I was seeing and not to share in what I was thinking. For a short while, therefore, but who is to say it was not an eternity, I was given free reign to immerse myself in the oddity of it all; to ponder on time’s mysteries and the obsolescence it inevitably brings. Znamensk is that sort of place, you know; it does this sort of thing to you and does it when you are least expecting it.

Suddenly a grating noise, as though Peter Cushing was dragging the lid from Christopher Lee’s sarcophagus, startled me from my solitary reveries. For a split second I knew not what to make of it,  and then I remembered my smartphone ~ yes, I actually had one of those. It was ringing in my pocket, but not with a ding-a-ling-ling or a tune to make you look silly. It was ringing with a customised tone, the guttural sound of the TARDIS in the famous throes of it taking off. How very appropriate, I caught myself thinking.

There are no prizes for guessing who it was who was ringing me. It was not a long-distance call. She was, in fact, ‘next door’, having discovered, as she said, a ‘wonderful Catholic church’.

We made arrangements to meet there. Not bad things, these smartphones, ay?

The gardens of the church next door do have an air of wonder about them. They are neatly laid out, formal style, in stark contrast to the graveyard opposite, and the church which they contain alludes to renovation in a period not too distant to the one we occupy now.

I found Olga where she said she would be, sitting on a park bench with the caretaker of the church, whom she had told me was about to lock up and go home but was willing to wait a while to allow us to look around.

This church, the deserted graveyard, the gorgeous red-brick water tower, St Jacob’s church, the handful of old town buildings that had refused to give into destruction, the river bridge and near-river scenes, everything, in fact, that constitutes the town that was and the settlement that is, works a kind of magic. I could feel it in the air as surely as I could feel the warmth of the sun upon my body.

Don’t be fooled by what people tell you: There is much to see in Znamensk: much of what was and is. And that which you cannot see with your eyes, if you give in to your inclination, you will see with your mind and your heart, and something, call it imagination, will join the dots between.

Places to visit in the Kaliningrad region

Waldau Castle
 A 750-year-old castle, now under the auspices of a friendly curator-family from central Russia. The castle shares ground space with a fascinating museum.
Nizovie Museum
Once it was a multifunctional retail premise, then a school and now an evocative museum dedicated to local social history, vintage transport and Soviet militaria.
Fort Dönhoff (Fort XI)
One of the 19th century forts that formed historic Königsberg’s formidable ring of defence, now restored to a high standard and offering visitors a labyrinth experience on a scale and of a kind most likely never encountered.
Angel Park Hotel
A rural recreation centre on the site of an old East Prussian settlement set in a beautiful natural landscape replete with timeless mystique.

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