Königsberg Cathedral

About

Konigsberg Cathedral, in German the Konigsberger Dom, stands on Kneiphof island in the Pregolya river, the most prominent survivor of the historic city of Konigsberg, largely lost in the Second World War. The cathedral was raised as the seat of the Prince-Bishops of Samland from around 1330, after Bishop Johann Clare secured Kneiphof from the Teutonic Knights and confirmed the church's autonomy by treaty with Grand Master Luther von Braunschweig in 1333.

Built on marshy ground, the cathedral rests on hundreds of oak pilings. Its main structure was largely complete by 1380, with choir frescoes continuing into the late fourteenth century. The first Lutheran sermon was preached here by Johann Briesmann on 27 September 1523, and the cathedral became the church of the Albertina University in 1544, remaining Protestant until 1945.

In the closing months of the war, two nights of RAF raids in late August 1944 destroyed much of old Konigsberg and gutted the cathedral. Reconstruction began only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with a new spire lifted into place by helicopter in 1994 and bells installed in 1995 that now chime the opening of Beethoven's Fifth on the hour.

Today the rebuilt cathedral houses a Lutheran chapel, a Russian Orthodox chapel, and a museum. Adjoining its northeast corner is the mausoleum of Immanuel Kant, completed in 1924 to mark the bicentenary of his birth.

History

An earlier, smaller Catholic cathedral stood in Konigsberg's Altstadt between 1297 and 1302 before the see was moved to Kneiphof. Albert, Duke of Prussia, was buried here along with several Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order and the Polish magnate Boguslaw Radziwill. The original twin spires burned in 1544; one was rebuilt and the other replaced with a gable roof beneath which the Wallenrodt Library found a home from 1650. After the 1944 bombing, decades of careful work between 1992 and the early 2000s restored the spire, roof, and interior, and the cathedral's image is now a registered architectural trademark whose royalties fund continuing repair.