Tag Archives: Englishman in Kaliningrad Oblast

Znamensk (Wehlau) Before You Go What to Know!

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.

Mick Hart & Olga Hart with a classic Volga car in Kaliningrad Oblast

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^thcentury 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, Znamensk. The cupola can be seen above the rooftops

St Jacob's church, Znamensk, front elevation

Mick Hart expat kaliningrad near St Jacob's church, Znamensk (Wehlau)

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.

Znamensk (Wehlau) water tower built in 1913

Railway lines at the crossing in Znamensk

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.

Trees grow through grave compound in Znamensk garveyard

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’.

Orthodox Christian Church in Znamensk, Rssia

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.

1927 Bootleggers’ Cadillac is the Star in Kaliningrad Film

1927 Bootleggers’ Cadillac stars in Last Tango in Kaliningrad

Published: 22 February 2022 ~ 1927 Bootleggers’ Cadillac is the Star in Kaliningrad Film

A couple of days ago I wrote a post in which I recounted a recent interview about a forthcoming film in which I play the part of a wartime MI6 officer. Within that post I practised humility by confessing that the only reason I was interviewed and not the star of the film was because cars can’t talk, and even if it could we would have never got it up the steps and into the studio of Baltic Plus radio.

The star of the film Last Tango in Konigsberg, conceived and written by journalist, author, historian and screenplay writer Yury Grozmani, is a 1927 Cadillac.

Apparently, this particular model was designed for use as an ambulance, but the elongated, tall and rectangular shape of the body made it highly suitable for servicing hotels, representational functions in embassies and consulates and the final ride to the graveyard.

The current owner of the vehicle, a Mr Ivan Zverev, is a well-known collector. In addition to the Cadillac, he owns an excellent collection of household items from the German era and the Soviet period and is the founder and creator of the historical museum in the village of Nizovie, Guryevsky district, Kaliningrad Oblast.

According to Mr Zverev, bootleggers used the Cadillac to transport illegal alcoholic beverages during the prohibition era in the United States, which possibly explains the presence of several bullet holes in the cabin and the body of the vehicle.

I have it on good authority that the bootleggers had just such a car in Billy Wilder’s famous film, Some Like it Hot.

Technical spec
Make: Cadillac
Series: 314 (One of the ‘Superlux’ models)
Manufacture: Cadillac Motor Car Co, Michigan, USA
Date of manufacture: 31 December 1927
Engine configuration: V8
Engine size: 5173cc
Engine power: 80hp

1927 Bootleggers’ Cadillac — **Ivan Zverev at the wheel of his 1927 Cadillac**

Photographs reproduced by kind permission of Yury Grozmani

The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast Kaliningrad

We will find them off the beaches

Published: 20 May 2021 ~ The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast Kaliningrad

The Kaliningrad region has two main coastal resorts, Zelinogradsk and Svetlogorsk. When I first came to this part of the world twenty years ago, both were quiet, sleepy and remote, rundown by the destabilising repercussions of perestroika but no less charming and appealing in the history of themselves and the beauty of their location.

Fast forward to the coronavirus summer of 2020, and we open the TARDIS doors onto two highly developed and equally commercialised venues teaming with people, not only bonafide Kaliningradians but Russia’s World and its Wife.

Closed borders, bans on international air travel and a finely tuned and successful alternative ‘holiday at home’ programme have seen tourism rocket, the word on the street being that virtually every hotel in and around the two main coastal resorts and in Kaliningrad itself are pre-booked for the summer season. Last year, a friend of ours who has a dacha in Zelenogradsk that she rents out during the summer season was able to grant us a couple of weeks free accommodation, which we were pleased to accept. This year, her dacha is fully booked. We will have to sleep on the beach.

The natural beauty of the Baltic Coast, Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad Oblast, the Kaliningrad region, is a relatively small piece of land. In fact, locals refer to it as ‘small Russia’ as distinct from the Russian mainland, which is ‘Big Russia’. Although transport facilities have greatly improved, with good rail connections and upgraded rolling stock together with a spanking new road system of motorway standard, the sheer volume of people that flood here in the summer months and the increasing number of people moving here from Big Russia or, as a friend of ours put it, people with deep wallets who can afford to buy holiday homes, can, when the sun comes out, create if not a logistics nightmare at least a logistics headache.

For beach bums this is a bit of a bummer. The last thing that young, toned bodies eager to exhibit themselves on the best stretches of sandy beach want is to be stuck where they cannot be seen, all hot and sweaty, in a three-mile traffic tailback. What about my new tattoos or my little skimpy bikini! It is at times like these that Kaliningrad ‘O Blast’ really lives up to its name!

But take heart! All is not lost! For those of us who appreciate natural beauty, free from the face- and buttock-lifting Botox of commercialisation, the Kaliningrad region possesses many unique off-the-beaten-track locations that have not yet entered the telescopic sites of the cash-quick entrepreneur.

What these secluded coastal places do not have in terms of grand hotels and expensive restaurants, they more than make up for in timeless quality, and whilst they may be lacking in sandy beaches and ever-rolling waves they are also lacking in hordes of people. In other words, such places are the preferred habitat for the solace-seeking discerning coastal visitor, a haven for the sleepy backwater type who values the natural world above artifice and seclusion above high-density beach bathers.

The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast Kaliningrad

It may take a little more effort to find where you are going to than it does when you go to the coastal resorts, but once you have arrived there you will be glad you made the trip.

True outdoor types will marvel at the idyll of small inlets shaped and shuttered by wetland reed beds that form a pie-crust pattern of coves along a rambling scenic coastline unmolested by change, a coastline replete with all kinds of waterfowl, a fascinating ecosystem offering beautiful views across the lagoon including inspiring sunrises and magnificent sunsets.

This chain of small coves is so tucked away from the modern world that as you sit there on one of the water-worn breakers gazing out to sea, Gates, Shutterbugger, indeed the entire Silicon Valley mob, seem as distant and insignificant as second-rate villains in a Marvel Comic (just don’t forget to switch off your mobile phone!).

Baltic Coast Zalivino — The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast Kaliningrad

Here, the only connection that you need are those that connect you with the real world ~ your natural senses. Tune your mind to these and sentience just takes over.

The large boulder that you are sitting on could be one of a group, one of an arched construction that follows the shape of the cove, or an early rock in the long parade that stretches out into the bay. It is a good place on which to perch and contemplate, if it wasn’t, then why would those sea birds mimic you?

**Mick Hart & Olga Hart, Baltic Coast (May 2021)**

In some places the coves are beaches in miniature, wide enough to lay a blanket and to bed down on for an afternoon’s duration; in others, they are a natural composition of millions of small shells and tubular reed fragments.

Closer to civilisation, extensive gardens of old German and Soviet houses nestle just a few yards away from the waterline, whilst gnarled, split and hollowed out old crack willow trees, which generations of children, before PlayStation came along, made rudimentary playgrounds out of, still support swings and climbing ropes from their strong, low-lying, outstretched branches.

**Mick Hart & Olga Hart, Baltic Coast, Russia (May 2021)**

Away from the villages, nature takes over completely: on one side, the relatively still water surface shimmers on the lagoon, on the other, tall encompassing reeds, wetland meadows or dense woodland complement the sequestered scene.

The Kaliningrad region has two main coastal resorts, Zelinogradsk and Svetlogorsk. They are well publicised, and rightly so, as much for their beautiful sandy beaches and tantalising seascapes as for their history and their architecture. But the Kaliningrad region also has an evocative natural coastline, an ecological treasure trove that is as near and dear to the heart as it is far from the madding crowd. It is a many jewelled retreat in this extraordinary region’s crown; not somewhere where you go to, but somewhere where you go to be.

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle Russia

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.

(Photo credit: Caspar Henneberger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schaaken_Henneberger.jpg)

(Photo credit: Mmdocent, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D0%BD_2.JPG)

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.

(Photo credit: Сергей С. Петров – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73135063)

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.

Mick Hart going underground at Schaaken Castle, Kaliningrad, Russia — Mick Hart going underground at Schaaken Castle

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.

An Englishman at Schaaken Castle Russia — Mick Hart with Schaaken Castle guide and historic iron 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.

**End towers to the extended section of Schaaken Castle.**
(Photo credit: Сергей С. Петров, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File)

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).

Mick & Olga Hart at Schaaken Castle, Kaliningrad region, October 2020

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.

Nekrasovo cheese-making factory, Kaliningrad Region, Russia — In here they make and sell lots of delicious cheeses!

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.

Mick & Olga Hart inside Schaaken's ruined church, October 2020 — Mick & Olga Hart inside Schaaken’s ruined church, October 2020

Mick Hart Englishman in Russia at Schaaken Church — Mick Hart going up in the world at Schaaken Church, Russia, October 2020

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