Then and Now: Königsberg/Kaliningrad

Another set of images from a bygone era

And here you go—arriving by train, we turn around and take a look at the main train station, or Hauptbahnhof. For its ‘official’ history, see here (Wikipedia). I shall merely note that the photographs below all hail from before WW2, and these buildings no longer exist (you may also double-check with Google Maps).

Today’s iteration, Kaliningrad Passazhirskij (lit. passenger) train station looks a bit like the one shown in the above postcard from the late 1920s:

We travel onwards to see Königsberg Castle (Schloss), which was heavily destroyed in WW2 and its remnants were eventually demolished in the 1960s:

If viewed from a spot approx. 90 degrees ‘leftwards’, it once looked like this (source):

(Note that this image isn’t from the Erich Sonntag Postcard Collection.)

From the top-linked Wikipedia entry:

In World War II the city of Königsberg was heavily damaged by a British bombing attack in 1944 and the massive Soviet siege in spring 1945. At the end of World War II in 1945, the city became part of the Russian SFSR (as part of the Soviet Union).

During the Cold War, in the late 1960s, the remnants of Königsberg Castle were demolished, which is shown by the following image (via Wikipedia):

Let’s move on to more ‘strange’ history and views, shall we?

The above picture shows the ‘old warehouses’ on the waterfront; they, too, don’t exist anymore. They were, as the German Wikipedia explains, also destroyed in WW2 (also look at that site for more pictures, btw; translation and emphases mine):

In the course of the 750th anniversary of the city on 1 July 2005, a number of construction measures were carried out in the city. The cathedral was further restored, as was the south (main) railway station. Shopping centres were opened in the area of today's city centre on Siegesplatz, with more to follow. The square itself was redesigned as a representative city centre with a fountain. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the interior of which is still unfinished, was opened here as part of the celebrations.

In addition, a shopping, business and hotel centre called ‘Fish Village’ [orig. Fischdorf] was built on the former site of the fish market on the Pregel River not far from the cathedral in a historicising style in the architectural style of old Hanseatic cities as well as Moscow and St. Petersburg, including a pedestrian bascule bridge already built over a branch of the Pregel River (Jubilee Bridge, also in historicising style, in the area of the former Imperial Bridge).

This is what it looks like these days; the difference between the picture above and this kind of buildings is quite…something to behold.

Also, talk about fake history, but I digress.

Once the traveller leaves behind the city limits, one approaches the Curonian Split (orig. Kurische Nehrung), today a UNESCO-protected ‘world heritage site’.

The caption reads “ship at the Haff”, with Haff being the East Prussian term for “lagoon”, by which is meant the Curonian Lagoon.

If looking at this photograph makes you a bit nostalgic, I recommend Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday for further reading.