In the 19th century the castle, as state property, was leased out, and it survived safely until 1945, albeit somewhat rebuilt. After the end of the Second World War, Schaaken Castle housed an orphanage for German children, which closed in 1948. After that the castle itself was used for housing, while the outer bailey and the outbuildings served agricultural needs.
In the 1990s the castle made its way into tourist guidebooks, and many Kaliningraders were surprised to learn that a surviving 14th-century castle stood just half an hour's drive away (the guidebook gave the date as 1270, but at that time the stone castle did not yet exist).
By then the castle had already been badly worn down by time and by a purely utilitarian attitude towards it. On top of that, the local authorities housed resettlers from CIS countries there. Only in 2002, when several more walls and sections of the roof had collapsed, was the castle bought by a private individual in order to create a museum and history complex on its grounds, which still exists there today. Unfortunately, a genuine restoration never took place: only a section of fieldstone wall was rebuilt, and conservation work was carried out to prevent further decay of the structure.
Cellars and part of the walls from the Order period survive at Schaaken. There is a museum complex, knightly tournaments are re-enacted, and a tavern and a cheese dairy are located nearby.
Photos on this page: Bildarchiv Ostpreußen, bildarchiv-ostpreussen.de, Mikhail Ogorodnikov
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
