Puschdorf Church
The Puschdorf Church ( Russian Кирха Пушдорфа ) was a simple field stone building without a tower from the middle of the 18th century and until 1945 a Protestant church for the residents in the parish of today's Puschkarjowo in former East Prussia . Today only remnants of the building can be seen.
Geographical location
Today Puschkarjowo belongs to Swobodnenskoje selskoje posselenije (Town Swoboda (Jänischken , 1938-1946 Jänichen) ) in chernyakhovsky district (Kreis Insterburg ) in the Russian Kaliningrad Oblast (region Königsberg (Prussia) ) and is located three kilometers south-east of Talpaki (Taplacken) , 28 kilometers west of the city of Chernyakhovsk (Insterburg) . The place can be reached via a side road that branches off the A 229 trunk road (former German Reichsstrasse 1 , now also Europastrasse 28 ) in a south-easterly direction. Puschkarjowo is also a station on the Kaliningrad – Nesterow railway line (Königsberg – Stallupönen / Ebenrode) - a section of the former Prussian Eastern Railway - for onward travel to Lithuania and the Russian heartland.
The location of the Puschdorf church can be found in the middle of the village.
Church building
Already in the pre-Reformation period, what was then Puschdorf was a church where a parish church was mentioned in 1486. It was " of a strong structure, protected by buttresses, with a tall, slender tower ". It was a common church with Stablacken (today Russian: Uschakowo), around the establishment of a legend: Originally the church was supposed to stand between Puschdorf and Stablacken. The stones for the first construction phase, however, disappeared overnight - heavenly beings seemed to have brought them to the valley of the Mühlgraben in Puschdorf. The farmers brought the stones back to the old place, but the next day they were back in Puschdorf. A higher fortune was recognized in this and Puschdorf was chosen as the location of the church.
In the years 1638/39 an altar and a pulpit were made, in 1640 side galleries were built. At the beginning of the 18th century, the building became dilapidated.
It was Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau who arranged for a new church to be built. This was inaugurated on November 19, 1769. It was a simple building made of field stones. In place of a tower, a half-timbered bell cage was built in which two bells were housed. The weather vane that was applied later bore the coat of arms of the old town of Königsberg (Prussia) with the year 1794.
The altar and pulpit came from the previous church and were combined to form a pulpit altar in 1770 , and in the same year a prince's chair was added. It was noticeable that a collar was attached to the church , which is said to have been used as late as 1820. Instead of one from the old town church in Königsberg, a used organ was acquired by the reformed church in Memel (now Lithuanian: Klaipėda) in 1836 .
In the Second World War in Puschendorf seven houses but the school and even the church were destroyed, survived, though plundered by Soviet troops. The substance of the church building was almost intact. From 1947, however, it served as a warehouse for the Red Army , which had taken possession of the northern part of East Prussia. The church equipment was lost. The pulpit door served as a footbridge over the mill moat, stalls and benches had been broken out and carried away. The church walls were still standing. After the soldiers left in 1995, the villagers used the building as a reservoir for building materials. And so the ruins of the church are very desolate today. Restoration measures are not recognizable.
Parish
Puschdorf was a church village even before the Reformation was introduced . From the middle of the 16th century, the Lutheran preachers who served the church until 1945 are known. Initially, Puschdorf was still part of the Wehlau Inspection (today in Russian: Snamensk), but then until the end of World War II it belonged to the Insterburg parish in the church province of East Prussia of the Church of the Old Prussian Union . The parish was of a manageable size; in 1925 it had 2054 parishioners.
Flight and expulsion of the local population as well as the subsequent restrictive religious policy of the Soviet Union put an end to church life in Puschdorf.
In the 1990s, new Evangelical Lutheran congregations emerged in the Kaliningrad Oblast , of which the one in Talpaki (Taplacken) is closest to Pushkarjowo. It is a subsidiary of the Church of the Resurrection in Kaliningrad (Königsberg) within the Kaliningrad provost of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of European Russia .
Parish places
Before 1945, apart from the parish, there were 14 other villages in the Puschdorf parish :
| Surname | Change of name (until 1946) |
Russian name | Surname | Change of name (until 1946) |
Russian name | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| * Albrechtsthal | Kyivskoye | Cow flow | ||||
| Almenhausen | Uralskoye | * Moritzlauken | from 1938: Moritzfelde | Bratskoje | ||
| Damerau | from 1928: Eichental | Pfeifershöhe | from 1938: Pfeiffershöhe | Polyanino | ||
| Frohnertswalde | * Piats | Meshdurechye | ||||
| * Great Ash Quarry | Svetayevka | Rahnkalwen | from 1938: Buchwald | |||
| Klein Eschenbruch | Rank varnishes | from 1928: Eichental | ||||
| * Klein Jägersdorf | from 1928: Jägertal | Kyivskoye | * Bar lacquers | from 1928: Pregelau | Ushakovo |
(* = School locations)
Except for Puschkarjowo (Puschdorf) and Uschakowo (Stablacken) all other places no longer exist today.
Pastor
Up to 1945 33 Lutheran clergy were in office at the Puschdorf parish church:
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References
literature
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Walther Hubatsch, History of the Evangelical Church in East Prussia , Volume 3: Documents , Göttingen, 1968, page 482
- ^ Georg Hermanowski, East Prussia. Guide through an unforgettable country , Augsburg, (1983) 1999
- ↑ a b Walther Hubatsch , History of the Protestant Church in East Prussia , Volume 2: Pictures of East Prussian Churches , Göttingen, 1968, page 103
- ↑ Puschkarjowo - Puschdorf at ostpreussen.net
- ↑ The church from 1769 from the time before 1945
- ↑ Кирха Пушдорфа: Pictures of the church ruins from 2010 and 2013 at prussia39.ru
- ↑ 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)
- ↑ Friedwald Moeller, Old Prussian Protestant Pastor's Book from the Reformation to the Expulsion in 1945 , Hamburg, 1968, page 116
Coordinates: 54 ° 37 ' N , 21 ° 22' E