The first mention of Rauschen (as Svetlogorsk was formerly called) dates from 1258. By 1540 it had about 70 inhabitants, and 300 years later the population had grown to 128. A castle stood on the hill, but no traces of it have survived; it appears only on maps of that period. Officially, the resort of Rauschen is considered to have opened on 24 July 1820.
The Lutheran church of Rauschen was designed by the architects Otto Walter Kuckuck and Ernst Wichmann, with the participation of the state master builder Eschner from Königsberg and the artist Adolf Göring from Rauschen. The building is in Gothic style.
The tower was built on the south-west side.
A sacristy with a handsome gable was added on the east side.
The lancet windows are separated by small buttresses. The church has a wide but short closed chancel. Altarpiece depicting the Crucifixion, 1907. The pulpit was made in Gothic style. Of the three bells, two were surrendered as non-ferrous metal in 1917: during the First World War Germany was short of non-ferrous metals.
After the Second World War the whole village and the church were intact. For a while the church stood abandoned; then a gymnasium was set up in it. In the 1990s it was handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church. Today it houses the Orthodox Church of St Seraphim of Sarov.
Modern photos by Mikhail Ogorodnikov.
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
