The chapel was built by the Königsberg Real Estate and Building Society. Construction cost at least 60,000 marks, and a further 40,000 marks were allocated for the interior finishing, the altar and the bells. Building began on 16 July 1902. The chapel was consecrated on 14 November 1904.
Originally it was a small Gothic chapel with a slender tower on the north side and small buttresses on three sides.
The altar of St. Adalbert's Chapel.
It was later planned to enlarge it to 250 seats. On the east side, in a window niche, St. Adalbert was depicted against a gold background. The altarpiece, made in Prague, was also dedicated to Adalbert.
The nave, lost during the Second World War, turned the chapel into a church.
In 1932 an additional section was added to the chapel, with lancet windows and a portal already designed in a modern style. It was flanked by large round windows (see above).
The altar was rebuilt in 1939.
Next to it stood the pastor's house, which cost 32,000 marks to build. In 1911 the Catholic cemetery of the St. Adalbert's Chapel congregation was opened on Dürerstraße.
The Königsberg chapel of St. Adalbert was the successor of the Tenkitten chapel, which collapsed in 1669.
The chapel was damaged during the fighting in the storming of Königsberg in April 1945. It was mainly the new extension and the spire of the tower that suffered.
Architectural plan of St. Adalbert's Chapel in Tenkitten,
recorded in 1847 by building inspector Becker.
After the war the extension was dismantled for its bricks, and the old part of the chapel was handed over to a prosthetics enterprise, which remained there until 1975. The chapel building was then transferred to the magnetic and ionospheric observatory of the Kaliningrad branch of IZMIRAN (the N.V. Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences). Inside, the building was remodelled and divided into three floors.
In 2018 it was decided to move the IZMIRAN observatory elsewhere.
From 2019, repair and restoration work was carried out in the chapel with funds from the Russian Orthodox Church and benefactors. The first Orthodox service in the church, now dedicated to the Archangel Michael, was held on 21 November 2023.
The building is a cultural heritage site of regional significance. The priest's house and the cemetery have not survived.
Modern photo: Mikhail Ogorodnikov.
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
