One of the few monuments of historic Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) is the reconstructed St. Mary's and St. Adalbert's Cathedral. One of the few historic monuments in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) is the reconstructed Cathedral of St Mary and St Adalbert. Among the works of art preserved in it is the epitaph of Boguslaw Radziwill and his wife.

Kaliningrad, or Königsberg
Situated just a few dozen kilometres from Poland's northern border, Kaliningrad (the historical Königsberg) is perhaps one of the most familiar cities in Central Europe. Königsberg's historic buildings suffered severely during the Allied air raids in the summer of 1944, the Soviet siege in the spring of 1945 and its subsequent affiliation with the Soviet Union.

History was particularly brutal on Knipawa, an island in the forks of the Old and New Pregolese rivers, one of the three historic parts of Königsberg. During the Second World War, its buildings were almost completely destroyed. The monumental Königsberg Cathedral of the Virgin Mary and St. Adalbert, located on the island, also suffered this fate.

Boguslaw Radziwill - a famous but controversial representative of the Radziwill family
Boguslaw Radziwill (1620-1669) was one of the most prominent representatives of the Radziwill magnate family in the 17th century. Thoroughly educated, a talented commander (general of the Crown Guard, distinguished, among others, in the Battle of Beresteczko in 1651). He held the rank of Lithuanian equerry, and was a several-time deputy to the Sejm. He was a fervent evangelist and protector of Protestantism in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

At the time of the Swedish Deluge - following in the footsteps of his cousin (and later father-in-law), Voivode of Vilnius Janusz Radziwill - he strove to make Lithuania independent from the Crown under the Radziwill rule. Consequently, in 1655, he accepted the patronage of the Swedish king. After the Deluge, he became permanently associated with the Brandenburg court. On behalf of his cousin, Friedrich Wilhelm Hohenzollern, "Great Elector", he held the office of Governor-General of Ducal Prussia from 1657 until his death (1669).

Boguslaw Radziwill died suddenly while hunting partridges near Königsberg. Related on the distaff side to the Hohenzollerns, he was laid to rest in Königsberg Cathedral.

In Polish historical memory, Boguslaw Radziwill is still regarded as the archetype of the traitor, to which his portrayal in Henryk Sienkiewicz's Potop largely contributed.

Epitaph of Boguslaw Radziwill and his wife Anna Maria
In the Königsberg Cathedral, in the presbytery, there is a tomb monument to Albrecht Hohenzollern, the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. Right next to it is the Polonicum of interest: the epitaph of Prince Boguslaw Radziwill and his wife Anna Maria of Radziwill (1640-1667), which is a hundred years later. This placement of the Radziwill epitaph indicates the exceptionally close family, political and religious ties linking Boguslaw Radziwill to the Hohenzollerns.

The epitaph was founded by the prince himself after his wife's death in 1667, and was most likely created by Dutch sculptors working in the workshops of Gdansk. The work was already completed after Boguslav's sudden death.

The epitaph (dimensions: 380 cm high, 344 cm wide) is roughly square in shape. Inside, two oval convex inscription plaques are visible, framed by alabaster borders. The left one, dedicated to Boguslaw, is surrounded by a wreath of panoplies (decorative-symbolic motifs composed of bundles of weapons and protective armament). The ornaments are topped with a knight's helmet with a ducal mitre. The right panel, commemorating Anna Maria, is surrounded by a wreath of roses and lilies. It is crowned by a skull on crossed tibias, above which is carved a ducal mitre. Between the finials of the plaques, a full-figured figure of a putto with outstretched hands is set on a cloud.

In the lower part of the epitaph, on the axis of the panels, there are semi-plastic busts of the deceased spouses, in en trois quatre position, facing each other. The duke is depicted in half-armour and toga, with a jabot under his neck and wearing a wig. Anna Maria - in a toga imposed over a gown with exposed shoulders and a neckline over which a teardrop-shaped pearl falls. Around her neck the Duchess is wearing a pearl necklace, her hair artfully pinned up in curls. Between the busts are placed a pair of putti mourning the dead. Above them is a crowned ducal eagle, with the Radziwill coat of arms on its breast.

Outside the oval, in the corners of the monument, are the coats of arms - at the top: Pogo of Lithuania and Eagle, at the bottom: Ostrog (of the ancestors of the deceased, the Ostrogski princes) and Radziwill's Trumpets. The background of the epitaph is made of black Belgian marble, while the ornaments are made of light English alabaster. The form and ornamentation of the entire establishment are very sophisticated.

Restoration of the epitaph of Boguslav Radziwill and his wife in Kaliningrad
. The catastrophic damage to the monument was caused by air raids in 1944 and the collapse of the cathedral ceiling. During the reconstruction of the church, a large fragment of Boguslaw Radziwill's inscription plaque was found, which became the impetus for talks with the Russian side on the possibility of restoring the epitaph. With the agreement of the Ministry of Culture of the Kaliningrad Region, comprehensive conservation and reconstruction works of the monument were carried out in 2007-2008 with funds from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The project was coordinated by the Culture and Art Beyond Borders Foundation, and the work of the team of Polish conservators was led by Andrzej Kazberuk.

St Mary's Cathedral. St Mary and St Adalbert Cathedral in the former Königsberg
. Construction of this Gothic church began around 1330. Half a century later the cathedral was largely completed, although the following centuries still brought some changes to its architecture. Initially, it served as the seat of the bishops of the Sambian diocese. After the secularisation of the Teutonic Order state in 1525, it was a Lutheran church until 1945. In August 1944, a British air raid caused very serious damage to the cathedral, whose roof and vaulting collapsed into the interior. The ruins, in the middle of empty Knipawa, lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union.

Reconstruction of the cathedral, one of the few surviving monuments of Königsberg's pre-war architecture, began in 1992. Its interior was adapted for cultural purposes and now houses, among other things, a concert hall and the Immanuel Kant Museum; services of various confessions are also occasionally held here.

Works of art in Königsberg Cathedral
The interior of Königsberg Cathedral was filled with numerous works of art. Among them - located in the presbytery - the tomb monument of Albrecht Hohenzollern, the last Grand Master of the Order and the first prince "in Prussia", nephew of Sigismund the Old and a fief of the Polish monarch. His tombstone, a high-class work of art, chiseled by the outstanding Flemish sculptor Cornelis Floris de Vriendt (nowadays clumsily reconstructed), formed a kind of mausoleum of the Hohenzollern family together with the epitaph of his wife, Dorothea (Queen of Denmark), placed on the adjacent wall.