Groß Engelau has been known since the time of the order. The community covered an area of 1279 ha. In addition to the village, only the Groß Engelau mining farm and the Kipitten forest workers' farm (Russian: Cholmogorje) belonged to the political community that existed until the end of the Second World War.
During the First World War , Groß Engelau was occupied by Russian troops and partially destroyed. Until 1945 the village was in the south of the Wehlau district .
In February 1945 the front of the Second World War reached the Allenburg area, where heavy fighting took place in the course of the enclosure of the German Fourth Army in Natangen ( Kessel von Heiligenbeil ). Groß Engelau also suffered damage in the process, but remained as a place. The German population tried to flee westward on January 20 or 21, 1945. But not everyone succeeded; they were usually assigned to the surrounding estates / sovkhozes , such as Trimmau , after the village fell to the Soviet Union after the end of the war . In 1947 it was renamed Demjánowka , but the settlement was soon abandoned. Until 1948, when they were fully expelled, many residents perished from hunger and disease. The place was completely demolished except for the church tower. At the western end of the village, a hall, evidently a shelter and workshop for vehicles, was built and surrounded by a pile of earth from which the surroundings could be overlooked. Today the location of Demjánowka is in a military training area, which roughly includes the Frisching (area between Friedland / Právdinsk and Tapiau / Gvardéjsk) and in which the Groß Engelau church tower is the main landmark. Mainly tank gunners are trained there.
The church in Groß Engelau was built in the second half of the 14th century. In the 15th century the high stepped gable tower with the characteristic panel fields and the Gothic west portal were added. During the First World War , the religious order burned to the ground. The equipment was lost. The faithful reconstruction was completed shortly after the end of the war. The ruined tower of the church, which collapsed at the beginning of 2015, was the only remaining structure in the disappeared village.
↑ Through the Указ Президиума Верховного Совета РСФСР от 17 ноября 1947 г. «О переименовании населённых пунктов Калининградской области» (Ordinance of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR "On the Renaming of Places of the Kaliningrad Oblast" of November 17, 1947)
Anatolji Bachtin, Gerhard Doliesen: Forgotten culture. Churches in North East Prussia. A documentation . Husum Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Husum 1998, ISBN 3-88042-849-2 .
Werner Lippke, Rudolf Meitsch (ed.): Pictures from the Wehlau district . Leer, Rautenberg 1989, ISBN 3-7921-0433-4 .
Christian Papendiek: The north of East Prussia. Land between failure and hope . Husum Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Husum 2009, ISBN 978-3-89876-232-8 .
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