Prussian Kaleidoscope

I can allow that in two or three hundred years a new level of understanding of the Universe will come, and that it will be many times higher than the present one.

...I walked across the bridge over the Pregel River, which flows south of the House of Soviets, and crossed to Kant Island by the footbridge. Everything is arranged just as in Hiroshima: there, having walked to the middle of the Aioi Bridge, you turn south towards the Peace Memorial Park (only the direction differs by 90 degrees). The irony is that where Hiroshima has its Peace Memorial, here stands the House of Soviets.

I took a speed-reading course and read “War and Peace” in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

Kaliningrad identity is a pattern containing segments of Russian, European and regional identity. Not opposing one another, they strive towards harmonious consonance.

To me it is perfectly obvious that Königsberg is alive. What is more, I am convinced that it will stay alive even if a bulldozer is run over it a few more times, as was done in Soviet times. As for whether the centre should be recreated or not, here too, in my view, no special arguments are needed. It is enough to look at what was and what has become of it. We are not all blind, really…

Königsberg Castle is just as inseparable a part of our cityscape, of the very image of the city, as the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the statue of Christ above Rio. It cannot be forgotten, it cannot be replaced by anything. Look at the city's souvenirs! Even if we have to live without it for a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years, it will still return to its place.

People like the fact that you can simply get into a car and in a few hours drive to Warsaw or Berlin. It turns out that these cities, as it were, share a particle of their charm with ours.

First of all, our city has been extremely lucky. It is famous not for the name of some celebrated tyrant or warlord, and not at all for the name of the figure in whose dubious honour it is now named. Its principal inhabitant is not a darling of fortune raised to fame by chance, but a self-made man who, through painstaking work of thought and consistent effort of will, rose to the heights of the spirit from a starting position that promised little. Kant was not bothered by the provincialism of the city; he, the son of a saddler, simply went and put it on the map of world culture.

Infill construction has killed the city in quite a serious way. Those who build think neither about the people who will live in the building nor about the people who will live around it.

I urge you not to prepare for another life, but to make better use of the only one you have been given, so as to meet with dignity, when it comes, the only death you are destined to experience.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and the more steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Returning to the subject of the castle and the urban environment around it, I repeat that I see no rational alternative to recreating the central part of the city in the form in which it fell victim to the fighting and to the short-sightedness of the regional leadership in the last century.

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.

There are probably other points of view on this, but Russia is Europe after all, and it has yet to return to the common family of nations once it gets tired of sulking on the sidelines.

There is only one way out — to rebuild the castle. You won't be able to live without this castle; it will be rebuilt anyway, and if not under this government, then under the next one. It's needed there for your tourism. You must rebuild it according to the old plan and put a five-star hotel there; or, if you like, a series of restaurants or concert halls. But the outer forms must be the same — you will have all the photographs in the world, and you will be the richest region.

I believe that any restriction of freedom, even for the purpose of preventing its abuse, is unbearable; it oppresses the soul, for it sharply contradicts human nature.

“Attic hares” (German Bönhasen, Bodenhasen) – craftsmen outside the guilds, solitary artisans working secretly in attics without permission and prosecuted by law.

In contemplating Königsberg the soul is strangely stirred to the most intense excitement! How much this city has accomplished and how much it has suffered over the centuries! What splendid examples it has given the world to follow, and what great geniuses it has borne and sheltered!

We must preserve bridges of communication and cooperation wherever possible. Disagreements come and go. Whereas a diplomat's job is to preserve the very best that there is between us.

Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.

It's high time conductors were taken out of concert halls and onto the streets. Streets are trending now. Street culture runs everything now. Let a conductor stand at the crossroads by the Schiller monument and conduct. Just like that, in his proper tailcoat and with his baton. He simply stands on a raised spot and conducts the cars, the brakes, the rooks, the iron doors, the winds and the people talking to each other. At least once a week, on Sundays.

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

A province is a remote region surrounded by others like it, in which all processes are entirely determined by the metropolis. For Russia this is the usual story: some oblast surrounded by the same kind of oblasts. And that is not at all what we have here, in Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad is not a “province by the sea” but a peripheral region; it is in close contact with other cultures, and processes take place here that are not typical of other regions.

“Amalienau” on Marx and “Altstadt” on Engels - that's wonderful.

If everyone who wanted to leave stays, life here will be more fun than in Moscow-Petersburg-Berlin-London.

You need to come up with a legend. A real legend, like in Transylvania, the legend of Dracula. There may never have been any Dracula, but everyone goes there to see his castle. Or take Sherlock Holmes... And then everything will work out for you. Everyone will come to you. A legend is more priceless than any infrastructure.

The most famous of all the buildings in Königsberg may be deemed the so-called Castle, or palace of the former Dukes of Prussia. This enormous and, by virtue of its antiquity, magnificent building is erected on the highest knoll, or hill, situated in the very middle of the city. It is built as a quadrangle, exceedingly tall, and encloses within itself a four-sided, remarkably spacious courtyard, and it lends adornment to the whole city.

Kaliningrad is the second capital of Russia. The second and the secret one.

To me it is perfectly obvious that Königsberg is alive. What is more, I am convinced that it will stay alive even if a bulldozer is run over it a few more times, as was done in Soviet times. As for whether the centre should be recreated or not, here too, in my view, no special arguments are needed. It is enough to look at what was and what has become of it. We are not all blind, really…

People talk a great deal and very loudly in order to say as little as possible. It is a very noisy silence. The only things that are truly essential and interesting here are the backstage deals, which are not mentioned by a single word.

Cynics have the easiest characters, idealists the most unbearable. Don't you find that strange?

Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand everything.

A man whose youth fell in the early 1960s told me that he and his peers earned money by turning in lead sewer pipes and all sorts of non-ferrous metal items for scrap. Rumour had it that the original of the Kant monument also vanished in the depths of Vtortsvetmet, the non-ferrous scrap trust.

If someone has decided to drown, it is no longer possible to save him.

When it comes to recommending someone for a little cross or a little post, how can one not do a favour for one's own dear kin!

It is impossible not to take into account that this land was owned by Germans for almost seven hundred years: first the Teutonic Order, then the Kingdom of Prussia, the Second and the Third Reich. And only for seventy years has the Kaliningrad Region belonged to Russia. This fact has a serious influence on the whole historical landscape, on the consciousness of the people living here.

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible.

The history of Königsberg is not alien to you, the present-day inhabitants of Kaliningrad.

There is some meaning in the fact that the church on Komsomolskaya Street is framed by Chekistov Street and Karl Marx Street.

If in Russia they start talking about patriotism, you know: somewhere something has been stolen.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

VI

The feast... the bombers' feast has died away.
From portals March washes flakes of soot.
Here and there the tails of firecrackers stick out,
plumes stand, turned to stone forever.
And if you poke around here (to me,
a ruined house is like a hayloft full of needles),
then you may well find happiness
beneath the Quaternary shroud of shards.

VII

The maple puts out its first sticky leaf.
In the cathedral, a sawmill's whistle is heard.
And rooks are coughing in the deserted park.
The benches are soaking. And, all eyes,
a goat stares from behind the fence into the distance,
where greenery has burst forth at the farmstead.

Here (in Königsberg – ed.) there are fine gardens where one can stroll with pleasure. In large cities public pleasure grounds are very much needed. The craftsman, the artist, the scholar rests in the fresh air at the end of his work, without needing to go out of town. Besides, the exhalations of gardens refresh and cleanse the air, which in large cities is always filled with putrid particles.

Preserving the ruins of the Royal Castle in no way contradicts the idea of recreating it.

The book “The Decline of Königsberg” should be in every Kaliningrad family.