The first church in Schakuhnen was built in 1675. The second church was built of fieldstone in 1745. A modest building with a wooden roof turret. The brick tower was added in 1855-56. Plain both outside and inside. A hexagonal baptismal table with a plaster relief and lions’ heads at the corners, 1630–40. Altar and pulpit of 1845. A Baroque organ built in 1803. Bells of 1702 and 1855. The church was renovated in 1929.
After the Second World War the church and the memorial to the fallen of the First World War in front of it were intact. The collective farmers used the church to store hay.
But in the early 1950s the military needed stone to repair broken roads and, not daring to blow up the church for this purpose (residential houses stood right next to it), they set about dismantling it.
The soldiers were helped in the demolition by local residents, who found gold coins under the roof of the tower. Gradually, by 1952–53, the church had been demolished. The memorial was smashed too; today only fragments of its pedestal remain.
Photos on this page: Bildarchiv Ostpreußen, bildarchiv-ostpreussen.de
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
