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Fisherman’s House Museum Zalivino Kaliningrad

Fisherman’s House Museum Zalivino: a must for social history buffs

27 March 2024 ~ Fisherman’s House Museum Zalivino Kaliningrad region

If you are planning on visiting Zalivino lighthouse or taking a day trip to Zalivino, you should take the time to stop off at Zalivino marine and maritime museum, aka Fisherman’s House. Although it is tucked away, if you head to the sandy cove at the far end of the village, a short walk from the village’s second bus stop, and follow the road to the left, you will find you are almost there. Now, just look for a white building with a painted seascape mural on its wall.

Zalivino’s museum is dedicated to the village’s fishing heritage. It provides an unforgettable insight into the working lives of the people who lived there across successive eras and subsequent generations from when it was German Labagienen, then Haffwinkel, throughout its Soviet years.

The museum, or rather how it came to be a museum, has an interesting history of its own. During the perestroika years, Zalivino, a once thriving community, which relied on the water for its livelihood, had declined so substantially that even access to the lagoon had been rendered virtually impossible. Left to its own devices, the coastline had clogged itself with vegetation, turning the erstwhile open shore into a dense and impenetrable forest, choked with invasive reeds, wetland plants and willows.

In 2015, local residents, some of whom personally remembered the coastline’s former glory from their childhood days, got together to form a group to action the shoreline’s reclamation.

Calling themselves ‘Clean Coast’, the group’s hard work won them recognition in a fund-raising competition. The proceeds from this competition enabled the group to launch an assault on the stifling shoreline foliage. They trimmed back trees and bushes, removed strewn rubbish and, when the clearing job was done, used its remaining funds to purchase planks with which to make public benches.

Inspired by their success, the group’s next venture was to establish a museum, which would tell Zalivino’s story as a working fishing village. The property in which the museum is now housed came to fruition following the Clean Coast’s group successful application for a charitable foundation grant, which once obtained was used to develop both the building and the site.

Research suggests that in German times the renovated building was less likely to have been a private dwelling than a warehouse or stable. Personal recollections from the Soviet period see it as a sawmill and a wood-working shop, turning out an array of goods from oars and boat boards to coffins, and later, in the 1990s, when the sawmill was relocated, as the village’s communal bathhouse.

From bathhouse to social history museum, the first exhibit to mark the transition was a sleigh of German origin dragged from the lagoon. According to those in the know, such sleighs in Soviet times were given a new lease of life. Come winter, they were attached to and drawn by horses to trawl the ice-bound waters across the bay for fish.

Zalivino’s museum may be small, but it is also neat and compact, every space having been carefully utilised to bring the story of the settlement’s past to life. Photographs, display boards and documents intermesh successfully with the exposition’s tell-tale artefacts ~ the fishing lines, nets, floats, waders, kerosene lamps and household items ~ all of which have a part to play in the biography of the village.

Weathervane history at Fisherman's House Museum in Zalivino

But whilst they aid the visitor to reconstruct a picture of what life was like in the village many years ago, the museum’s greatest assets are by far its guides, who, because of their palpable love for their subject, enthuse and infuse in equal measure, turning the pieces the past has left for us into a thought-provoking dynamic.

In days of old a fisherman’s life was hard ~ some would say, still is. Relying for your livelihood on the quantity and quality of fish caught in the surrounding waters, and fishing those waters come rain or shine, day in, day out, and often at ungodly hours, was no faint-hearted occupation. The photographs in the museum’s collection underscore this hardship. But they also reveal expressively in the gnarled and weathered faces, in the look of determination, in the brightness of the villager’s eyes and the smiles upon their lips, a satisfaction almost bucolic, deriving from sometimes aligning with, sometimes doing battle with but always being respectful of the laws and forces of nature. After all, to coin a phrase, every villager was in the same boat.

Overall, there is nothing in the Fisherman’s House museum that fails to captivate. But if I was asked to select from the many exhibits one that hits the unusual spot, then the one I would be inclined to choose would be the weathervane.

I am not talking about a wrought iron something that typically spins in the wind high above a chimney pot but of an intricately carved and brightly painted sign-board made of wood which, whilst effectively showing the wind’s direction as any weathervane should, had as its primary function to identify the sailing ship to which it was attached together with the details of its owner. All Curonian sailing ships would be marked by such a device, and those who were acquainted with the lexicon of their symbols would be able to decipher them without a second glance.

Museum Fisherman’s House, Zalivino, is not just a venue for examining relics from a sepia-coloured bygone age, as entrancing as they are, it is a meeting place for the past and present, which will take you into a world and introduce you to a way of life made obsolete by the tides of time and the undercurrents of ‘progress’.

The world it preserves was different then and life in its way much harder, but, as the exposition depicts, it was strong in kinship and fellowship ties. Visiting this museum will help you to understand that it is also Zalivino’s social history as much as its natural landscape that infuses it with allurement and awakens the senses to timeless mystery.

The main thing

Fisherman’s House
Zalivino, Kaliningrad region, 238633

Tel: 8 (962) 266 44 57

Opening times
Monday to Friday 3pm to 5pm
Saturday and Sunday 11am to 4pm

Website: http://tos39.ru/

More about Zalivino

Support the restoration of Zalivino Lighthouse
Zalivino Lighthouse flashes again after 36 years!
Zalivino Lighthouse Restoration reaches new heights!
The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast

Zalivino Lighthouse Restoration Reaches New Heights

Return to Zalvino Lighthouse

Published: 5 February 2023 ~ Zalivino Lighthouse Restoration Reaches New Heights

Returning to Zalivino lighthouse last month, it was remarkable to see what progress had been made since we first explored the site in 2021. Let’s start with the cosmetic improvements first and then proceed in order of importance:

{Links to previous posts can be found at the end of this article}

1. The grounds of the lighthouse have been tidied

2. The weather mast has been painted

3. A new addition is the weather vane, with the intricately designed rotating ornament and stained-glass inclusions

Ornate weather vane at Zalivino Lighthouse

4. The compound has been enclosed with a new fence and a gate at either end, the effect is both cosmetic and security oriented

5. The boardwalks laid down last year from the sandy cove to the compound perimeter have been extended into and across the site

6. The outlying buildings have been reroofed

7. The outlying buildings have been given new wooden doors; good solid stock, with a vintage chevron and diamond-pattern finish

8. Three solid-state buildings constructed from red brick have been added to the site. They consist of a utilities building, ticket office and the now completed tearoom, which on our last visit was at a functional stage minus proper windows.

Zalivino Lighthouse Restoration: the lighthouse keeper’s cottage

The most significant development is the structural renovation and the complete interior restoration of the former lighthouse keeper’s cottage.

The first photograph below denotes the condition of the cottage in 2021; the photograph beneath it, how the cottage appears today.

Zalivino Lighthouse before restoration — BEFORE

The restored keeper's cottage at Zalivino Lighthouse — AFTER

The following account of our latest visit to Zalivino lighthouse is an extract from my personal diary:

Zalivino Lighthouse Restoration

At last, numb and red nosed, we reached the perimeter, by way of the coastal route, of Zalivino Lighthouse. Outside the lighthouse grounds, the old German buildings lining the water’s edge facing out across the Curonian Lagoon appear to have been given the once over, either that or I missed this fact on my previous visit. The brickwork looks cleaner, and the lovely wooden doors and window shutters strike me as being recent installations along with the terracotta-modelled roof.

German barns restored on Curonian Lagoon

Inside the compound, everything looked immediately more presentable. To the left and right are single storey buildings, red brick with Georgian-style roofs. One, I imagine, is the toilet block; the other the ticket office and, next to that, the completed tea and loitering room, which on my previous visit had thick translucent polythene sheeting where windows were wanting but wanting no more.

Olga Hart outside ticket office Zalivino Lighthouse — Olga Hart in proud receipt of her ticket from the ticket office

The former lighthouse keeper’s cottage, which had been nothing more than a shell, ravaged by time and cannibalised by thieves when the site fell derelict after perestroika, has been renovated to such a high standard that had I not witnessed the dereliction with my own eyes and taken photos to prove it, I would have scarcely believed it was the same building.

Although the museum it would like to become has a long way to go, for those interested in marine life, the old keeper’s cottage contains an interesting display of marine paraphernalia and artefacts associated with lighthouse history.

The two rooms of the cottage also contain some rather fetching reproduction antique furniture and other curios. For example, a not-for-the-squeamish stuffed and mounted seabird and a round-shaped Deco-style early plastic radio that may or may not be original but is endowed with vintage appeal. There is also a Vienna-style wall clock, two hefty wagon wheels and, in the centre of the room, a polished wooden dining table and corresponding chairs.

I think it is safe to say that this level of homeliness is not the one that the lighthouse keeper would have been accustomed to, and yet the warmth transcending the basic need for warmth on a bitterly cold winter’s day would have probably been no stranger to him.

What also affected me was the solidity of the building which, considering its exposed location, was reassuring indeed, since no amount of huffing and puffing was about to blow this house in. Strong, solid, durable and intuitively enriched, the lighthouse keeper’s cottage could hardly have been more welcoming.

Zalivino Lighthouse tower

A visit to Zalivino Lighthouse without climbing the tower would be like going to the pub and ordering an empty glass. Thus, even on this coldest of days, off and up we went.

At the time of our ascent, or rather a few minutes before, Zalivino suffered a power outage, so we had to climb the tower without the aid of electric lamps. The first few steps were enveloped in darkness, but the windows in the tower walls, as small as they are, are sufficient to light the way and as you reach the base of the lamp room the light pours in from the dome above.

The elevated view from the lighthouse window reveals the extent to which the outlying buildings and the site in which they stand have been improved and whilst up there in the Gods, we got to gaze across and enjoy the scene of the winter landscape complete with icicle-petrified coastline.

As stimulating as these prospects were, there were two impressions from the top of the tower whose tenacity cannot be equalled. The first was the sound of the wind, rushing across the lagoon, curling around the lamp room like the giant tentacles of a phantom sea squid.

The second was that of Olga daring to step outside onto the wind-swept lighthouse’s viewing platform so that I could take a photo of her. Of course, I was champing at the bit to get out on the ledge myself, make no mistake about that! But someone had to cower inside in order to take the photo.

The renovation and refurbishment of Zalivino lighthouse has come on in proverbial leaps and bounds in a relatively short space of time. If you are not personally acquainted with the near demolition site that it was in 2020 at the outset of the project, the photographic collage within the keeper’s cottage will give you a good idea of just how bleak the damage was, as will the photographs used in my earlier post.

You will also find in the keeper’s cottage a framed composition of images depicting where the restorationists want to be with the project by 2024. Unfortunately, the photograph that I took of the wall-mounted display is not good, as my hands were in need of a warm cup of tea and the light from the window reflected badly into the lens of the camera.

Comparison of the photographic evidence of the condition of the lighthouse, its ancillary buildings and site as they appeared in 2020 with the photos taken this year (2023) demonstrate the achievements to date, making the 2024 target a less ambitious objective than might otherwise be supposed.

Without a shadow of a doubt, a lot of work, care and attention has been invested in the project, not to mention wonga. The results so far are superlative, returning the lighthouse to its historical origins and turning it, metaphorically speaking, into a restoration beacon for other projects across the region to follow.

Visitors aloft Zalivino Lighthouse tower

Support the project

Raising funds for the restoration of the lighthouse is an ongoing process, and any donation that you would care to make would be greatly appreciated. Your generosity will help to preserve an important element of marine cultural heritage and if that’s not reward enough, your part in the preservation will be forever a part of the lighthouse’s history.

For further information, please click on the link: Old Lighthouse Zalivino

Zalivino Lighthouse Restoration: the ticket office

Previous posts about Zalivino Lighthouse
Support the restoration of Zalivino Lighthouse
Zalivino Lighthouse flashes again after 36 years!

Zalivino Lighthouse Flashes Again after 36 years!

An illuminating experience by the Curonian Lagoon

Published: 11 June 2021 ~ Zalivino Lighthouse flashes again

The last time we visited Zalivino Lighthouse it was a blisteringly cold day in early January of this year. We were back again today (8 June 2021) in temperatures reaching 23 degrees, and with a refreshing breeze skimming across the surface of the lagoon, to witness the official inauguration of the lighthouse’s new lantern.

What a difference sun, blue skies and the thriving natural habitat along this beautiful stretch of the coastline makes, and what a difference five months of concerted conservation commitment and hard work has made to the restoration progress of Zalivino lighthouse.

On our last visit the keeper’s cottage and abutting building were nothing more than ruined shells. Then, we had a hard time trying to find something substantial to hide behind to shelter us from the bitter winds, but here were those same buildings, less than six months later, brickwork intact, windows and doors in situ and spanking brand new roofs in the latter stages of near completion.

You only have to compare the photographs that I took on our previous visit (see Support the Restoration of Zalivino Lighthouse) with the ones that I took today, to see how things have progressed. No wonder that the great and the good, the dignitaries, movers and shakers and representatives of Kaliningrad’s Ocean Museum were out in force today to congratulate each other. Who could say that they did not deserve it?

Zalivino Lighthouse flashes again after 36 years!

Local administration and World Ocean Museum representatives Kaliningrad region — **Zalivino Lighthouse flashes again! ~ official ceremony, 8 June 2021**

Zalivino Lighthouse
Zalivino Lighthouse is one of three lighthouses in the Kaliningrad region built before World War II.

For almost a century Zalivino lighthouse was an important navigation signal, enabling ships to plot their course safely across the Curonian Lagoon.

In Prussian times, Zalivino, as it is known today, comprised two settlements, Rinderort and Labagienen, renamed in 1938 as Haff-winkel. For centuries, fishermen would set off early in the morning from these shores to fish the surrounding waters, returning late in the evening. The sustained livelihood of the families that lived here depended on a good fishing yield and, of course, the safe return of the breadwinner.

The region’s first navigation system came into being in 1868. Standing next to a fisherman’s house in Rinderort, it consisted of a coal lamp with a lens fixed to a 12-metre wooden pole. Elevation was transacted with a manual lifting device, and although the light had obvious benefits it was only effective at short distance.

Zalivino lighthouse, as we know it today ~ the 15.3-metre cylindrical brick tower with lantern room, observation platform, copper cupola and stone spiral staircase ~ replaced the light on a pole in 1889. It, and the adjoining lightkeeper’s house, was built by W Jourlauke, whose name can still be seen stamped into the brickwork.

The lighthouse lantern had two sections, one red and the other white, with a range of 7 and 12 miles, respectively. One lighted the lagoon toward the Spit and the second one marked the entrance to the mouth of the Deyma River.

The lighthouse ceased operation in 1985. In 2020, the Volga-Balt administration transferred the lighthouse to the Museum of the World Ocean, under whose auspices it is now undergoing phased restoration in recognition of its unique maritime heritage status in both its East Prussian and Russian contexts.

Zalivino Lighthouse flashes again after 36 years!

A lighthouse without a light is about as useful as a pub with no beer, so it was a personal joy for us, and everyone else present, to see the lighthouse flashing again after 36 years of dormancy.

The Fresnel lens, a gift from commanders of the Baltic Fleet and officer-hydrographers, would not let us leave without we say hello to it, so we retraced the stone spiral staircase that we had climbed in January and clambered up the short metal ladder into the lighthouse’s lantern room, at last occupied by a fully functional lamp. And what a beauty she is!

Once acquainted, we pushed open the heavy metal door and side-stepped onto the narrow platform gallery. From here, we received a birds-eye view both of the restoration work to date and the inspiring coastal scenery, a view for the most part unchanged, as seen through the eyes of lighthouse keepers for close on a hundred years.

Looking down onto terra firma made my wife giddy, as it did me, albeit for other reasons. Seeing the new roof taking shape on top of the keeper’s cottage reminded me that a similar makeover was needed for our dacha!

New roofs Zalivino Lighthouse — **Zalivino lighthouse keeper’s cottage gets new roof**

Since our previous visit, other improvements in and around the lighthouse were also evident. They include new glazing to the observation deck, cleaning of the well, dredging of the coastal strip, planting and maintenance of an apple orchard and, for security purposes, the installation of perimeter fencing and video-surveillance cameras.

A gazebo, where visitors will be able to rest themselves, take in the historic and natural scenery and indulge in light refreshments, is also under construction. Today, this brick-built addition to the site of the Zalivino lighthouse chalked up another first to keep the new lantern company, prematurely fulfilling its role as a dispenser of food and beverages.

Unfortunately, the free fish soup was strictly off limits to me; one spoonful would have meant revoking my membership of the newly incorporated Zalivino Vegetarian Society ~ a strange thing indeed for a place like this, whose fortunes historically are inextricably tied to manly men in oilskins, their boats, nets, fish and, one might hazard a guess, fish soup in abundance. This reminds me, when you visit Zalivino Lighthouse do make time to call in on the Zalivino village museum, an admirable establishment devoted to the history of the settlements in this region and the marine heritage on which their survival depended (more of which I hope to post later).

Further information about Zalivino Lighthouse, including fundraising activities, accessibility and so on can be found at the end of my previous post, Support the Restoration of Zalivino Lighthouse.