Castle, Cheese and Church in the Kaliningrad Region

Published: 28 October 2020

{See Feature image attribution at the end of this article}

Schaaken Castle is located in Nekrasovo, Kaliningrad Oblast. The castle, which was built for the Teutonic Knights in c.1270, was built on the site of an ancient fort and consisted of an octagonal walled-enclosure with two outer baileys. In the first half of the 14th century the original building, which was of wood construction, was replaced with stone. It was atypical of most of the castles constructed by the Teutonic Knights in that its perimeter wall was curved, almost round in formation, a feature that remains to this day.

In 1270, the castle defended the coast of the Curonian Lagoon against attacks from a Baltic tribe known as the Skalvians, who, by 1277, had been defeated and subjugated by the Teutonic Knights. Towards the end of the 13th century, Schaaken Castle’s defensive role took on greater significance in protecting the border and coast from repeated raids by Lithuanian pagans. It became one of a number of castles strategically positioned to prevent the Lithuanians from storming through the Curonian Lagoon. Towards the end of the 14th century its military function was controlled from Königsberg. The castle was destroyed by fire in the early years of the 17th century and only partly rebuilt. One of its greatest claims to fame is that Peter the Great and Catherine stayed there on three separate occasions between 1711 and 1717. 

During the 19th century it was remodelled in the Romanticist-Gothic style, and it was during this time as part of that refit that the distinctive corner towers, which can still be seen today, were added.

At the end of the Second World War, the castle, which in 1945 was a family farmhouse, came under Soviet state control. The land was requisitioned and used until the 1960s as a collective farm, the castle’s rooms hived off as domestic units. For a short period of time, the castle acted as a children’s home.

By the mid-1970s, the castle had begun to fall into ruins, but one family salvaged the rooms that were inhabitable and continued to live there.

In the early 21^st century under a joint Russian-German venture some renovation took place, and the castle was opened as a small museum exhibiting medieval artefacts. In 2012 the museum was damaged by fire.

And on 10 October 2020, it was visited by an Englishman in Kaliningrad, Mick Hart (I don’t suppose they would welcome a wall plaque?).

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle, Russia

Today, Schaaken Castle sits red-brick, gaunt and broken on a small eminence on the curve of a sharp bend overlooking the village of Nekrasovo within the Kaliningrad region, Russia.

To be perfectly frank, the first glimpse of what was left of the castle was one of unalloyed pathos, and getting out of the car into the damp-cold air, on the poor little bit of waste-ground that served as a make-shift carpark, and the sight of the wooden hut, the pay gate, knocked up of old odds and ends of ill-fitting boards, and the dog next to it, rather less than a thoroughbred, hanging off a piece of rope at the front of a homemade dog kennel, perpetuated this first impression. It had not taken me long to work out that this establishment did not enjoy the privileges and  patronage of either the state or a private consortium, in other words that it was not part of the National Trust or any other such august body, which is a crying shame as Schaaken Castle has a rich and noble history, both in its East Prussian and Russian context.

Today, there was a man at the castle gate. He came out of the rather sad little hut in his jeans and baseball cap and, after some money had exchanged hands, we were allowed inside.

We passed through the entrance into the enclosure. To the right and close by to us was what remained of the castle’s living quarters. The functional building is little more than a narrow strip of red brick, not battle scarred but weathered and distressed from years of neglect and, from what I have been told, actions amounting to cultural vandalism.

For the sake of our hosts, and Victor, I tried to look and sound interested, not an easy thing to do as I was busy wondering if, apart from the narrow remains and crumbling exterior, there was anything here to see.

Had I been on my own, however, what there was would have been enough. It only takes an old brick or two to get my nostalgic flails turning, but, amazingly enough, we were not alone. There were four or five small groups milling around in the courtyard and, I would soon discover, about 20 more visitors at subterranean level.

This was where we went first. I had perplexed myself enough wondering what the proper name was for the small Gothic ‘towers’ erected at either end of the castle building, high upon the roof level, and going down underground seemed like a good idea.

No sooner had I begun descending, down the steps under the low curved brick ceiling, than out came my wife’s, Olga’s, mobile phone, and I was instructed to pose for a photograph. Needless to say, this would be one of many photos, but I restrained my natural inclination to criticise her illicit love for the camera, reasoning that should I write a piece for my blog on our visit to the castle, photographs would be needed and besides, no matter how much I complained, if 10 years of Arsebook-incentivised photo-snapping had taught me anything it was that such remonstrations are just about as futile as asking a liberal to examine his conscience.

So, I posed for the photograph graciously, grimaced just a bit and eventually life resumed.

Down below, we found ourselves in one of two vaulted chambers. Space was relatively limited and the floor uneven. This was no dungeon by any stretch of the imagination, but the curators of the castle had seen fit to imply that it had been by using what space there was to mount an exhibition of medieval torture. You cannot blame them. Castles and dungeons go together like beer and hangovers; the two are inseparable, and there is nothing like an excursion into the dark side of human nature to draw in the punters and make them feel normal.

There were two chambers in this vaulted basement. We were in the first and in the second, the group of about twenty people I mentioned earlier, who were gathered together listening to the commentary of their guide, who was a young, stocky, bearded fellow. On hearing us talking in English, the guide called out to me in English. He addressed me as if I were an English gentleman (which, of course, I am) and I replied in kind, causing some of his audience to chuckle. On the way out, I was able to get my own back by addressing him in Russian, at least enough to state that “Excuse me, I have to go now as I want to drink vodka.”

Although the diabolical apparatus exhibited in the underground vaults are knocked-up scaled-down examples accompanied by photographs and text, if this sort of thing appeals to you there is enough to see, and from what I could make out the guide was doing a very good job of engaging his congregation.

Later, this same guide, on finishing his tour and we finishing ours, presented me with two small gifts outside the castle gate; one being part of a red brick from the castle itself, with the name of the manufacturer impressed into the surface, and the other a long, crooked smithy-made nail.

On reflection, I do feel more than a little guilty for accepting these gifts. There is not much left of Castle Schaaken, and it is evident to me that it needs giving to and doing to rather than taking from. “Conscience. What a thing. If you believe you got a conscience it’ll pester you to death,” Humphrey Bogart’s Fred C. Dobbs once said. And am I not very proud to have these artefacts displayed on the shelf in my attic? “Ahh, hypocrisy, who needs it?” ~ I said that.

Inside the walls, the living quarters, constituting three rooms and an entrance hall, are enclosed and complete, but the taller structure to which they are appended is a narrow, crumbling shell, the wing extending to the rear in a state of open collapse. The surmounting crenellation of the main structure has survived, and the Gothic interest it stimulates is further assisted by the balancing presence of two turrets raised at either end to form the highest points of the building.

Inside the three rooms, the curators have done their best to mock-up exhibits pertaining to the days when knights fought each other in armour and chain mail. There are a number of historical wall charts that map the history of the castle and of Königsberg, and a small diorama depicting a Soviet living room comprised of real artefacts and furnishings.

Outside, in the oval courtyard, other exhibits can be found demonstrating the skills of medieval artisans, and you can try your hand at archery. The centre of the courtyard contains what appears to be a combat ring, an area of ground set aside for re-enactors to demonstrate their skills of medieval martial arts. At one side, and close to the wall,  a viewing stage complete with canopy has been erected, and in front of this, on a lower platform, a chair has been affixed where, no doubt, during tournaments the adjudicator presides and who, at the close of the contests, hands prizes out to the victors.

In one corner of the compound, stands a large, brick building, which has undergone extensive renovation. It contains the castle’s cafeteria, but, as enticing as it was on a chilly day like today, we reluctantly avoided it in keeping with the official guidelines to limit association in the wake of coronavirus. My wife, who lives by her Facebook images, made sure that a couple of photographs were taken of us standing next to the window shutter, on which the skin of a wild pig had been nailed (not a good advert for a vegetarian! ~ not too good for the pig either).

There are more buildings that run along the end of the defensive wall, but these are hollowed out ruins. Beneath them, however, lies another chamber containing the castles well, and this is well worth a visit (ah hem).

To speak honestly and plainly, it does not take you long to see what there is and what there isn’t left of Schaaken castle. And yet, if you are a Time junky like me, this is irrelevant, as it is enough to visit and to rub shoulders with so much history. Having said that, however, even on an inclement day like today there were 30 or so visitors in the short time that we were there. Imagine how many more there would be if funds were allocated, first for a comprehensive programme of renovation and then for the installation of a fully fledged East Prussian museum!

Cheese-making centre

The second leg of our trip today involved using our legs to walk the short and pleasant distance from the castle to the local cheese-making centre. The friendly guide, who had presented me with gifts earlier, advised us to follow the castle wall into the meadow and cut across it to the cheese-making plant from there.

This route allowed us to take in just how massy the granite-boulder perimeter wall was, how high and thick and curved. It also allowed our friend Sergei to introduce me to some concrete silos in which at one time hay would have been stored for farm animals. I had always wondered what these concrete cylinders were and was slightly disappointed to find that they were not some kind of rocket launcher.

From these disappointments, it is only a short walk from the castle to the cheese-making plant, which is housed in a long, large, old brick building. From the looks of it, I conjectured that in a previous life it had most likely been a cattle barn. Inside, the presence of iron rings in the original wooden uprights and walls seemed to lend my supposition credence. The supports and cross timbers were a mixture, some extant to the original structure others added in sympathetic style, replacing, no doubt, earlier ones that had gone too far down the road to decay to bring them back to life.

In the centre of this capacious barn stands a rectangular counter where one can purchase all manner of cheeses, whilst on the left a central display unit and shelving extending around the L-shaped perimeter overflows with what they used to call up North in England ‘suckers’, but which we more civilised on our way down South colloquially referred to as sweets.

At the opposite end of the room, and to the right of the entrance, the brick wall ends at waist height, the remainder finished in glass, allowing visitors to look inside at the cheese-making process at work.

During my appreciation of the finer elements of the building and its history, my wife, Olga, had been procuring an adventurous selection of sweets and cheeses, which she passed to me for carriage as we emerged from the front door. On the shop forecourt stood a large decorative … “What do you call it in English?”

“Millstone,” I replied. “I’ve got one of my own; it’s called a wife!”

Our Russian friends enjoyed this sleight, as they had my previous remark, when, concerned that I might find the castle wanting in things to see, they asked me, “Is it [the castle] interesting enough?” To which I replied, “It’s fine. I love anything old … that’s why I love my wife!”

Fortunately, after 20 years together my wife makes allowances for me, and as long as I was carrying the chocolate and cheeses and doing an excellent job of alerting our party to the pavement presence of sheep droppings (Smartree Gavnor!!), which is where my knowledge of Russian language really excels, she was happy to let me babble inanely.

I shut up for a few moments whilst we were walking back through the village of Nekrasovo. It may only have one street, but now I had the opportunity to see at closer quarters, and therefore in more detail, the humble rusticity of the low-build German cottages and, of course, later domiciles that reared out and above the natural and cultivated vegetation, a little too obtrusively for scale and historical comfort.

The circuitous route we had taken also permitted us to see the castle from the opposite side of the enclosure, looking now at the perspective from the road to the T-shaped structure with its crumbling external walls and collapsed interior. It was obvious from this angle that to safeguard against further and irreparable dilapidation precise and extensive remedial work was urgently required.

Schaaken Church

From the castle, we drove the short distance to Schaaken Church, another ruined edifice of historical importance. Had it been built as a Gothic folly it would have been a wonderful evocation, but although its degenerated condition inspired reveries of a Romanticist nature, as the ruin it actually is, and as with all ruined churches, it was wreathed in a sense of loss that transcended the fault lines in bricks and mortar. What happens to all those prayers, all that hope for salvation once a church is abandoned and dies?

Through nature’s reclaiming influence ~ spindly trees, climbing plants and bushy overgrowth ~ the rectangular tower and outer walls, though partially screened from the road, are visible still. As with all ruins, the sight triggers an irresistible yearning to explore and, as with most ruins, when you get there you realise that so much human traffic has been there before you over the years ~ spot the early graffiti ~ and so much time has elapsed that it is an enduring mystery how the accumulative and many moments invested in the building are still able to exert such a powerful stimulus upon the imagination.

From a distance, this particular building looks less desecrated than it actually is. Close up comes the discovery that the roof is missing, the gaping holes in the walls are not all vestiges of former windows and much of the brickwork spalled on the outside are, on the inside, hollowed out in parts exposing the rubble core.

Adding greatly to the Romanticist ideal of the atmospheric ruin is the thick carpet of undergrowth that reigns supreme where once stone slabbed floors and pews would have been. The photograph that we had taken of us in the nave from inside the tower serves to illustrate the extent of the church and the extent to which nature is capable of re-asserting its claim over man-made structures, whatever they set themselves up to be.

It was just as well, then, that from the church we were taken to enjoy the view from an outcrop of land looking out over the bay. Our journey took us through an interesting and altogether uneven tract, which we would not have been able to traverse had we been travelling in anything else but a 4×4.

I cannot claim that we were off the beaten track, because the track was very beaten, but the joy was that it took us through one of those wild, densely vegetated areas that you stumble across now and then in this fascinating region, which bristles with all kinds of dwellings from different times of origin in all conceivable states of disrepair or stark modernity and whose spanned periods reflect the ethos of each epoch, with a heavy accent on Soviet make-do and esoteric improvisation.

I particularly liked the small series of boat houses, stamped with the individualism of their creators and imaginatively constructed from tin, asbestos, wood and concrete and/or made from the requisitioned back of trucks. These monuments to the Mother of Invention in association with build from what you’ve borrowed, which once would have looked so bold and brash, had, courtesy of the softening effect of time, settled in very nicely, achieving a singularly peculiar and yet quaint harmony in the leafy back-stream settings in which they had come to rest.

When we reached the end of our road (as we all must), the water-front opened out from the narrow stream against which the proud boat houses sat into a wide stretch of water, beyond which a distant Curonian Spit could be seen.

A slight breeze lifted a chill from the surface of the water, a coincidence of no deterrent to the two or three fisherman congregated at the waters’ edge, who, nevertheless, were complaining bitterly about the size of their catch, nor did it seem to worry the boating fraternity, several of whom were coming to shore in a small flotilla of motorised dinghies.

Inland, close to where we were at, a monument had been erected, typically demarcated by a heavy metal chain in black, testifying to the fact that back in the 1940s’ Russian lives had been lost along this stretch of water in running battles with the incumbent Third Reich. During WWII, Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) and its region was the scene of many a fierce battle and is therefore of special interest for anyone having a keen regard for military history.

All this history today had made, and was making, me thirsty. Anticipating that this would be the case, I had taken the wise precaution of bringing along a couple of bottles of Lidskae, whose contents I was destined to enjoy later this afternoon when we returned with our friends to their home.

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle, Russia

Schaaken Castle reminds me of a larger and ‘more grand on scale’ replica of a friend’s flat ~ it is being tarted up but needs a lot more doing to it. Having said that, I enjoyed my visit to the castle today. It really is hats off to those people, such as our guide, who put in so much time and effort in maintaining, running and raising funds in order to bring such unique heritage treasures as Schaaken Castle to the notice and appreciation of the public at large. It has not escaped me that with the right sort of planning and investment this modest attraction could be transformed into something monumental, something of a feather in the cap of the region’s cultural history. It already has the makings of a success story; all that it needs now is Vision, Support and Commitment ~ and there is your happy ending.

Essential Details

Schaaken Castle Heritage Museum
Ulitsa Tsentral’naya, 42, Nekrasovo, Kaliningrad Oblast, 236008
Tel: 8 (906) 211-73-00

Opening times:
Monday:        Closed
Tuesday:        10am–6pm
Wednesday: 10am–6pm
Thursday:      10am–6pm
Friday:           10am–6pm
Saturday:      10am–6pm
Sunday       10am–6pm

Copyright © 2018-2020 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.*
*Note: all attributed images are ‘In the Public Domain’