Ch 4-3 We Find Heydekrug

Focal point in the city is the tall spire of the Lutheran, or German Evangelisch, church. It is a simple, white structure with a thin spire built in 1926.  In this church my parents were married on April 3, 1944, not in her old parish church in Werden. When she took up residence in Heydekrug she defected to the 'big' city church. Werden is now part of this city and that church rotted to nothing after use for storage by Russians.

There is no doubt these Lutheran churches are a roduct of northern temperaments – no gaudy ornamentation here. Religion is dour and spared of excess decorations reflective of the landscape and climate. On the architectural side, this Heydekrug church doesn’t have the square towers typical of most East Prussian churches probably due to its more recent construction.

I missed the opportunity to go in and view the church do regret it. I've never experienced a German church service. Would anything have seemed familiar to what I grew up hearing?  We never attended German language services in Detroit which were held into the 1960's. My parents were pragmatic so we attended a neighborhood church, Lutheran Missouri Synod. They did not gravitate to the old German communities on the east side of Detroit. When they could break their bondage period they wanted to settle someplace new away from relatives and Germans.  It is a hard decision for all immigrants whther to stay together or explore the new.

That other Lutheran church, much older, was in an adjacent village - Werden. It was

destroyed in the war, we're told. But later I read an account that Russians used it for flax storage after the war; it then burned and was rebuilt.  At any rate, it's gone, now an empty lot next to a small stream.  Werden used to be the Redetzki family parish church where Mom was confirmed. For years it served as the Parish church for the communities of Gnieballen, Grabuppen, Kirlikken.  These are the communities where my ancestors lived.  The loss of the church means the loss of church records, a problem for researching genealogy.

The hierarchy for placing churches was strictly regulated by the bureaucracy of the Evangelische Kirche, somewhat in the same way the Catholic Church designates parishes.  Several villages made up a Kirchspiel. In turn several of these made up the Kirchkreise that was the equivalent governmental unit. When searching church records you have to establish which village belongs to a respective Kirchspiel. Not so easy as they changed frequently over 200 years as populations grew. Sometimes the new parishes don’t make geographic sense.  While easy to find the dates for when a Kirchspiel was established, the list doesn’t tell you which group they belonged to prior to any change. This means I can find church records for Groß Warningken, home for the Meihoefers, Kirchspiel founded in 1893, but I need records prior to that date.  Means I have to search handwritten records of adjacent parishes until I find the records pertaining to Groß Warningken. There goes my eyesight.