Gilge Church

Gilge village church (East Prussia) (the church no longer exists)
Construction year:	1849-1851
Inauguration:	September 21, 1851
Style elements :	Neo-Gothic, stepped gable, without a tower
Location:	55 ° 0 '43 "  N , 21 ° 14' 16.8"  E Coordinates: 55 ° 0 '43 "  N , 21 ° 14' 16.8"  E
Location:	Matrossowo Kaliningrad , Russia
Purpose:	Evangelical Lutheran Parish Church
Regional Church :	Church province of East Prussia of the Church of the Old Prussian Union

The church in Gilge ( Russian Кирха Гильге ) was a brick building in neo-Gothic style , which was inaugurated in 1851. Until 1945 it was a Protestant church in the old fishing village known today as Matrossowo in the former East Prussia and in today 's Kaliningrad Oblast ( Königsberg region (Prussia) ) in Russia .

Geographical location

Matrossowo is located at the mouth of the Gilgestrom (today Russian: Matrossowka) in the Curonian Lagoon . From the district town of Polessk (Labiau) a side road leads along the coast to here. The city of Polessk, 21 kilometers away, is also the nearest train station and is on the Kaliningrad – Sovetsk railway line (Königsberg – Tilsit) . Until 1945, there was a connection to the Elchniederungsbahn , a small railway that ran between Seckenburg and Hoheneiche (now defunct) via the Seckenburg train station (now in Russian: Sapowednoje) .

The location of the church Gilge was north of the Gilgestrom.

Church building

Predecessor church from 1707

A first church was built in Gilge in 1707, which was consecrated on the St. John's festival (June 24th). It was a half-timbered church with white stalls, a baptismal angel and numerous figures on the altar .

The church from 1851

In the years 1849 to 1851 Gilge received a new church, which was consecrated on September 21, 1851. It was a brick building in neo-Gothic style with an altar niche. There was no tower. In its place, the staggered east and west gables had essays, with a bell chamber in the west gable.

The high interior made a rather sober impression. Except on the east wall, it had galleries running around it . Altar and pulpit formed a whole. Some wooden figures from the previous church could be taken over into the new church.

According to old chronicles, two bells were originally intended for the church under construction. When these bells were transported by ship across the lagoon, however, the seamen got caught in a storm. In order not to capsize, a bell was thrown into the water. One of the men drowned. He was later recovered and buried at the church. In this way, the ringing of the Gilger Church consisted only of a bell.

The church remained intact during the war, and the organ is said to have been playable in 1948. Demolition of the building began in the early 1950s. Their stones were to become building material for new storage facilities. However, they were not built, and so the population took the stones for their own building purposes. In 1996 only the east wall and the choir are said to have stood. Today there is no longer any trace of the church.

Parish

The parish of Gilge existed since 1707 and was created by spinning off the town church of Labiau . Since around 1684 the Gilgers drove every third Sunday across the lagoon to the church in Labiau (today in Russian: Polessk). The parish in Gilge was the northernmost in Labiau County .

From 1853 onwards, Agilla, located in the south, was included in the Gilge parish, which was henceforth called "Gilge-Agilla parish". A year later, the Lauknen Church (1938–1946: Hohenbruch, today Russian: Gromowo) was spun off from the parish and made independent. Finally, in 1909, the town of Juwendt (1938–1946: Möwenort, today Russian: Rasino) with a newly built church was converted into a subsidiary community of Gilge-Agilla. At the same time a vicar took over his service here.

Until 1945 the parishes of Gilge / Juwendt belonged to the parish of Labiau in the church province of East Prussia of the Church of the Old Prussian Union . In 1925 the Gilge parish had 4,460 parishioners.

With the flight and expulsion of the local population between 1944 and 1948 as well as for reasons of the restrictive church policy of the Soviet Union , Protestant church life in Gilge came to a standstill. It was not until the 1990s that a new Evangelical Lutheran congregation was formed in Matrossowo, as in other places in the Kaliningrad Oblast , mainly made up of Germans from Russia who had settled here. It belongs to the Kaliningrad provost of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of European Russia .

The rectory in Matrossowo has survived from German times to this day. Today it functions as a hotel with the name "Gilge".

Parish places

Before 1945, eight towns belonged to the Gilge-Agilla / Juwendt parish:

Surname	Change name (1938-1946)	Russian name
Gilge Parish :
* Gilge		Matrossowo
Marienbruch		Saschenzy
* Nemonies	Elchwerder	Golovkino
Tawellnink	Taw wave break	Bisserowo
Parish Juwendt :
* Agilla	Haffwerder	Krasnoye
* Alt Heidendorf	Heidendorf	Rasino
* Juwendt	Seagull location	Rasino
Ludendorff until 1918: Groß Friedrichsgraben II

Pastor

Between 1707 and 1945 in Gilge and 1909 (as well as earlier) and 1945 officiated as Protestant clergy in Gilge and Juwendt:

Gilge District: Johann Friedrich Falck, 1707–1709 Georg Berlin, 1709-1730 Gottfried Dresler, 1730–1735 Johann Christoph Pohl, 1735–1744 Carl Friedrich Geelhaar, 1745–1775 Christian Michael Pötsch, 1775-1800 Johann Friedrich Glogau, 1800–1819 Gottfried Leberecht Ostermeyer, 1819–1827 Georg Heinrich Rappolt, 1828–1835 Johann Friedrich Brenke, 1835–1847 August Friedrich Schultz, 1847–1853 Friedrich Ludwig Schlager, 1853–1882 Daniel Julius Görke, 1884-1894 Theodor Adolf Pastenaci, 1894–1902 Otto Tautorus, 1902–1913 Valentin Gailus, 1915 Hermann K. Gustav Schnöberg, 1917–1921 Emil Franz Theodor Pipirs, 1922–1925 Friedrich Werner, 1926–1928 Martin Anskohl, 1928

Juwendt district (auxiliary preacher): Hermann Adolf Rumpel, 1905–2906 Franz Trautmann, 1906–1910 Paul Gustav Hardt, 1908–1912 Franz Hammler, 1925 Johannes Hildebrandt, 1925–1926 Hermann Braun, 1926 Johannes Schenk, 1926–1928 Kurt Murach, 1928–1933 Richard Press, 1933-1936

Church records

The church registers of the Gilge and Juwendt parish have been preserved and are being kept at the German Central Office for Genealogy in Leipzig :

• Baptisms: 1785 to 1790 and 1795 to 1820 (also: name register 1731 to 1838)
• Weddings: 1766 to 1820
• Burials: 1767 to 1805 (incomplete) and 1808 to 1820.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Кирха Гильге The Gilge Church (with picture from 1930) at prussia39.ru
2. ^ Matrossowo - Gilge at ostpreussen.net
3. ↑ Church picture at flickr.com
4. ↑ Walther Hubatsch , History of the Protestant Church in East Prussia , Volume 2: Pictures of East Prussian Churches , Göttingen, 1968, page 59, Fig. 190
5. ↑ after Rudolf Grenz in the home book Der Kreis Labiau ,
   by Katharina Schroeter, online local family book Gilge
6. ↑ Patrick Plew, The churches in Samland, here: Gilge
7. ↑ Walther Hubatsch, History of the Protestant Church in East Prussia , Volume 3: Documents , Göttingen, 1968, page 464
8. ↑ 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) 
9. ↑ Matrossowo - Gilge at ostpreussen.net (as above)
10. ↑ The former rectory at flickr.com
11. ↑ Walther Hubatsch, Volume 3, page 464 (as above). - * = school location
12. ↑ Friedwald Moeller, Old Prussian Evangelical Pastors' Book from the Reformation to the Expulsion in 1945 , Hamburg, 1958, pages 42 and 60
13. ↑ Friedrich Brenke († 1886) was a member of the Corps Littuania .
14. ^ Gilge at the Association for Computer Genealogy