Königsberg Castle
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The Königsberg Castle (German: Königsberger Schloss, Russian: Кёнигсбергский замок) was a castle in Kaliningrad, Russia (formerly Königsberg, Germany), and one of the landmarks of the East Prussian capital Königsberg.
[edit] History
At the beginning of the first century AD, the Germanic tribe of the Goths erected Tuwangste Fortress near the Pregel River at an important waypoint in mostly Prussian Baltic territory. It was alternatively known as Twangste, Tvangeste, Twongst, Twoyngst. The name of this fortress was derived from the Gothic word "wangus" and describes cutting down trees in an acorn forest. As the oak was a symbol of Perkunos, the God of Thunder, it was held in high regard, forbidding even native Baltic Old Prussians to touch the trees.
After conquest of the area by the Teutonic Knights in 1255, the fortress at Kneiphof in Königsberg was renamed and a new Ordensburg castle was developed in 1257. The castle was greatly enlarged and refortified in several stages during the 16th to 18th centuries.
The fortress, later designated a castle, was the residence of the Grandmasters of the Teutonic Order and later residence for Prussian rulers. At 83 m long and 18 m high, the Muscovite Hall received fame as it was for centuries the largest hall in Germany. Also the Blutgericht, a wine selling tavern, was situated within the castle.
Before the Second World War part of the castle was set up as a museum. Among other things, this accommodated 240,000 exhibits of the Prussian collection, a collection of the state and university library as well as many paintings by the artist Lovis Corinth. During the war, various pieces of captured Russian art were stored there, possibly including parts of the Amber Room.
Following the bombing of Königsberg by the RAF in the Second World War in 1944, the castle completely burnt out. However, the thick walls were able to withstand both the aerial bombing and Soviet Artillery, as well as urban fighting in April 1945, allowing the ruins of the castle to stay standing. The largely destroyed Königsberg became part of the Soviet Union and was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946.
Kaliningrad was to be rebuilt as a model town on the remains of Königsberg, without a reminder of the German past left standing. Leonid Brezhnev consequently ordered that the remains of the castle be disposed of so they would no longer be seen as a vestige of Prussian militarism in the eyes of the Soviet Government. Despite protests from students and intellectuals from Kaliningrad, the ruins of the castle were destroyed in 1968.
[edit] Current situation
Today, the centre square of Kaliningrad resides on the site of the castle, which despite its name, actually lies to the southeast of the town centre. Adjacent to the centre square on the filled-in moat is the "House of Soviets" which in 1960 was intended to be the central administration building; however, building was halted and it remains a ruin with an uncertain future. Continuation of development was stopped in the 1980s as the massive building gradually sinks into the structurally unsound soil stemming from the collapse of tunnels in the old castle's subterranean levels.
The current Kaliningrad city administration debated whether to rebuild the castle with the financial assistance of the Russian Department of Culture. In contrast to the Königsberger Dom, there would be the difficult task of erecting the castle upon new ground, so plans were dropped for the time being. Instead, the centre square is cobbled.
Since September 2001, the German magazine Der Spiegel has financed the excavation of parts of the castle's cellar, which was carried out with the Kaliningrader Kunsthistorischen Museum (Kaliningrad Art History Museum). It is hoped that various buried treasures of the previous castle museum are uncovered, and possibly the rest of the Amber Room. So far, thousands of articles have been discovered. In June 2005, an occult silver casket with medals and amulets was found, causing a sensation among experts. It is planned that after completion of the excavation, parts of the castle's vaults will be made accessible as an open air museum.
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