Jacobi Church (Wehlau)
Coordinates: 54 ° 37 ′ 4.8 ″ N , 21 ° 13 ′ 51.9 ″ E
The foundations of the parish church St. Jacobi in Wehlau came from the years 1260-1280 and was a three-aisled hall church made of brick. Until 1945 it served as a Protestant church in the East Prussian district town of Wehlau. The church ruin is still a widely visible landmark of Znamensk in the Russian Oblast of Kaliningrad .
location
.jpg)
The place called Wehlau until 1946 is 50 km east of the oblast capital Kaliningrad (Königsberg) at the confluence of the Alle ( Russian Lawa ) in the Pregel (Pregolja). The former route of the German Reichsstrasse 1 still leads through the place where it now crosses the Russian trunk roads R 508 and R 514 . The new route as a trunk road A 229 (Kaliningrad - Tschernyschewskoje ( Königsberg - Eydtkuhnen )) in the north of the place. Znamensk is a train station on the Kaliningrad – Chernyshevskoye railway line ( Königsberg – Stallupönen ) for onward travel to Lithuania and the Russian heartland. The location of the church is to the east of the Alley and south of the Pregel and north of the railway line on the R 514 arterial road to the north .
Church building
The Wehlauer parish church was the most important church building in the district and was the only three-aisled church in the region. It was built between 1260 and 1280 and had to be rebuilt in 1347 after being destroyed by the Lithuanians in 1351. The choir and sacristy were built from 1360 to 1380, the nave and tower followed around 1370 to 1400 and the east gable at the end of the 15th century. The result was a three-aisled hall church made of brick with a rectangular choir and a west tower drawn into the nave. This was struck by lightning in 1537 and then rebuilt lower. In 1820 he received a Welsche hood and a lantern . The east gable was richly structured.
The interior was originally flat. In the 15th century it was subsequently given a star vault that rested on octagonal pillars. Remnants of medieval wall painting could still be seen. They were on the arch that opened from the first floor of the tower to the nave. They showed Jesus' betrayal by Judas, the carrying of the cross and the coronation of Mary. The altarpiece was in its intermediate position between the late Renaissance and Baroque of high historical and artistic value. It was created in 1633 and represented a symbolization of the vine that seemed to grow up from the base of the main picture. The paintings Good Friday , Easter and Pentecost were on the floors . The carved altar cupboard dates from 1688, the pulpit from 1715. The interior fittings included parts of old stands, candlesticks, epitaphs and altarpieces from the 17th and 18th centuries. The church received an organ in 1685. It was rebuilt in 1810 and replaced in 1896 by a new building by the Geelhaar workshop in Königsberg (Prussia) . The church had three bells.
The East Prussian Operation (1945) caused severe damage to the church. All equipment was lost. The vaults were still preserved, but were blown up in the 1960s . Today only the outer walls, the supporting pillars, the arcades between the nave and the tower and small parts of the protective walls southwest of the church remain . The building has been secured and partially restored through the participation of the Wehlau district community . The piles of rubble in the nave were removed, and in 1995 a steel structure was placed on the still existing tower stump with the help of a helicopter and given a helmet . The church tower could be made passable again, so that one can step onto the platform at a height of 58 m and enjoy a wide panoramic view.
In 1997 a service took place in the church and partly in the open air for the first time since January 21, 1945. A thermal power station was built next to the church, the tower of which is still the town's landmark .
In the church wall there is a stone slab with an inscription in German and Russian: Teutonic Order Church of St. Jacobi. Built 1260–1280. A ruin since 1945, a symbol for Wehlau that has to be preserved .
Parish
The establishment of a parish in Wehlau goes back to around 1380, i.e. in the pre-Reformation period. As early as Pentecost in 1524, Lutheranism found its way here. Until 1945 it was the parish Wehlau in the same church district involved and belonged to the ecclesiastical province of East Prussia the Protestant Church of the Old Prussian Union . At last there were three parish offices here. The incumbent of the third pastor's post was pastor and head of the educational institution in the parish of Altwalde from 1908. In the 1925 census, the parish Wehlau had a total of 7,076 parishioners.
The flight and expulsion of Germans from Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1950 as well as the restrictive religious policy of the Soviet Union made church life in Znamensk and in the entire Kaliningrad region after 1945 impossible.
It was not until the 1990s that new Evangelical Lutheran congregations emerged. The closest Znamensk is in Bolshaya Polyana (Paterswalde) . It is a subsidiary of the Church of the Resurrection (Kaliningrad) (Königsberg) in the Kaliningrad provost of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of European Russia .
Parish places
The extensive parish of the Wehlau parish church comprised a total of 18 villages up to 1945:
| German name | Russian name | German name | Russian name |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allenvorwerk | Dairy stall | ||
| Altwalde | Neuwalde | ||
| Alt Wehlau | Prudnoye | New Wehlau | |
| * Bürgersdorf | Gordoje | Pickertswalde | |
| * Groß Nuhr | Sawetnoye | Pinnau | |
| Grünwalde | Preusslauken | Ossipenkovo | |
| * Dutch | Seeckshof | Volostnovo | |
| * Klein Nuhr | Suchodolye | Pitcher | Letnoye |
| Klein Richau | Wehlau | Znamensk |
(* = School location)
Pastor (1524–1945)
From the Reformation to 1945, the following were officiating as Protestant clergy in Wehlau:
Parish Church of St. Jacobi I
- Heinrich N., from 1524
- NN., 1528
- Johann Röder, until 1530
- Sebastian Hoffmann, 1530–1534 (in Alt Wehlau)
- Georg Ranglauck, 1537–1541
- Johann Niger, until 1549
- Matthäus Vogel, 1550–1554
- Jacob Ritter, 1556-1561
- Theobald Axt, 1561–1573
- Erhard Sperber , 1574–1608
- Friedrich Stimer, 1608–1617
- Andreas Vogler, 1617-1625
- Friedrich Stimer, 1625–1631
- Matthias Sethus, 1631-1640
- Michael Reimann, 1641-1666
- Lambert Steger, 1667-1689
- Georg Heiligendörfer, 1689–1694
- Johann Matth. Grünmüller, 1695-1699
- Georg Meyer, 1699–1705
- Christoph Conrad Göritz, 1705–1752
- Theodor Friedrich Thiesen, 1737–1752
- Daniel Hönigke, 1752–1781
- Wilhelm Sperber, 1781–1819
- Rudolf Search, 1819–1830
- August Wilhelm Siehr, 1830–1832
- Benjamin S. Büttner, 1832-1837
- Daniel S. Weißsemmel, 1838-1852
- Heinrich Christ. Ziegler, 1853-1885
- Robert Eugen Zilius, 1885-1893
- Franz Louis Schwanbeck, 1893–1921
- Paul Gustav Hardt, 1921–1938
- Johannes Carl Julius Zachau, 1939–1945
Parish Church of St. Jacobi II
- Heinrich Coppius, 1550–1554
- Michael Stange, 1556–1559
- Johann Breder, 1561
- Laurentius Cursor, 1561-1570
- Laurentius Crause, 1570–1604
- Johann Sperber, 1604-1616
- Christoph Richter, 1616–1632
- Martin Reggius, 1632-1655
- Solomon Jester, 1655-1689
- Johann Matthäuas Grünmüller, 1690–1695
- Johann Richovius, 1695-1703
- Christoph Friedrich Lange, 1703–1710
- Wladislaus Heinrich Gensichen, 1711–1731
- Daniel Hönigke, 1732–1752
- Johann Gottfried Kempfer, 1752–1762
- Friedrich Philipp Schröder, 1763–1770
- Heinrich Ephraim Trentovius, 1731–1779
- Wilhelm Sperber, 1779–1781
- Johann Christian Maschke, 1781–1810
- Johann Zimmermann, 1810–1812
- Friedrich Wilhelm Arnold, 1812–1822
- Gottlieb Wilhelm Skronn, 1822–1834
- Leopold Sauer, 1835–1841
- Friedrich Wilhelm Seek, 1841–1878
- Robert Eugen Zilius, 1878–1885
- Wilhelm August CG Stengel, 1886–1887
- Carl Ludwig Wohlfeil, 1888–1896
- Heinrich Stuhrmann, 1896–1904
- Heinrich Federmann, 1904–1910
- Ernst August Ed. Sperling, 1910-1912
- Paul Gustav Hardt, 1912–1921
- Hugo Linck , 1922-1930
- Ludwig Grunwald, 1931–1934
- Erwin Rudolf Lange, 1936–1945
Altwalde Education Center
- Johannes Schwanbeck, 1906–1910
- Bernhard Czekay, 1910-1916
- Otto Meyhöfer, 1916–1938
- Arthur Fehr, 1930–1933
- Kurt Kohn, until 1935
- Wilhelm Sauermilch, 1938–1940
Church records
From the church book documents of the parish Wehlau have been preserved and are kept in the Evangelical Central Archive in Berlin-Kreuzberg :
- Baptisms: 1835-1944
- Weddings: 1839–1944
- Burials: 1836–1944
For the most part there are alphabetical lists of names, including those relating to earlier years. A special register documents the births of the (supposed) followers of Edward Irving from the years 1868 to 1872.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ D. Lange, Geographical Location Register East Prussia (2005): Wehlau
- ↑ The Protestant Church in Wehlau at ostpreussen.net
- ↑ Walther Hubatsch , History of the Protestant Church in East Prussia , Volume II: Portraits of East Prussian Churches , Göttingen, 1968, page 84, fig. 332 to 336
- ^ Walther Hubatsch, History of the Protestant Church in East Prussia , Volume III: Documents , Göttingen, 1968, p. 476.
- ↑ Evangelical Lutheran Provosty Kaliningrad ( Memento of the original dated August 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Russian German)
- ↑ Walther Hubatsch, History of the Protestant Church in East Prussia , Volume II (as above), page 476
- ↑ Friedwald Moeller, Old Prussian Evangelical Pastors' Book from the Reformation to the Expulsion in 1945 , Hamburg, 1968, pages 147 to 148
- ↑ Christa Stache, Directory of the Church Books in the Evangelical Central Archive in Berlin , Part I: The Eastern Church Provinces of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union , Berlin, 1992³, pages 114 to 115
