Tenistaya Alley, 39A, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Region, Russia, 236010
Juditten Church (Kirche von Juditten) is a former Order Catholic parish church of the Virgin Mary located in one of the districts of Königsberg (Juditten). It is considered the oldest surviving building in Königsberg. The beginning of the construction of Juditten Church is dated to 1288, although historians do not have a consensus on this, and later dates also appear in documents.
Originally, the church was a fortress-temple, as evidenced by the massive lower tier and thick walls with loophole windows. The western tower was added later than the main building; in the early 16th century, it was completely rebuilt using brick masonry. The main nave of Juditten Church is constructed from unprocessed boulders, while the western wall is made of oversized bricks with Gothic bonding.
The church was built by the Teutonic Order in the style of early German Gothic, characterized by the strictness of its architectural solutions. Traditional local materials (large boulders and bricks) were used in the construction.
In the 14th–15th centuries, Juditten Church was a pilgrimage site for Teutonic and Livonian knights.
The main treasure of Juditten Church was the miraculous sculpture “Madonna with Child on the Crescent Moon.” Made of wood but unmatched in artistic expressiveness in Prussia, it was considered a masterpiece of 15th-century sculpture. According to legend, the sculpture was always warm and was attributed with various miracles and healings. For centuries, this drew crowds of pilgrims to Juditten.
During World War II and the Soviet assault on Königsberg in 1945, the church was almost undamaged, but after the war, it began to gradually deteriorate due to settlers. During the April 1945 battles for Königsberg, the church on Juditter-Kirchen-Strasse was largely unharmed. In the postwar years, the church building was used as a warehouse for the "Glavtabak" office, and later as a base for "Glavparfyumer." In the 1960s, the building was abandoned, began to fall into ruin, and was used by local residents as a garbage dump. At that time, the building lost its vaults, the western vestibule, and the upper part of the bell tower. By the early 1980s, at the time of the transfer of the church building to the Orthodox Church, it had turned into ruins. The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to open an Orthodox church in the building, which was consecrated in 1985. However, restoration work continued for another five years. In 1988 (the millennium of the Baptism of Rus), the first Orthodox service was held in the former church. Currently, it is the St. Nicholas Cathedral, the main active church of the St. Nicholas Women's Monastery.
The cemetery at Juditten Church has also been preserved. Near the church were buried the governor of Königsberg, General Field Marshal Johann von Lehwaldt, who commanded Prussian troops in the 1757 Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf, and the sculptor Stanislaus Cauer.
Sources:
https://www.prussia39.ru/sight/index.php?sid=3
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Юдиттен-кирха
