History:
A Lutheran parish in Vyborg appeared after the Swedish Reformation. Lutherans were given a city cathedral along with a church of a local Dominican monastery. The parish was predominantly Finnish, and a Swedish-German part of it had no place to gather for worship.
On 30 September, 1790, the Swedish-German parish appealed to the ruler of the Vyborg governorate, Karl von Ginzel. Thus, the initial project of the temple was developed by the provincial architect Johann Brockman. The project was later corrected by the famous master of Classicism Yury Felten.
The construction was supposed to start on June 23, 1793, but a massive city fire that happened two days earlier destroyed all the building materials. And yet, on September 6 that year, the first stone was laid in the foundation of the future temple. The consecration of the church took place on 29 June 1799, on the day of remembrance of the apostles Peter and Paul. And since the construction was completed under Emperor Paul I, the church ended up being called “Church of Peter and Paul”. Its first senior pastor was August Gottfried Wahl.
The church functioned up until the year 1940 when as a result of the Winter War Vyborg (Viipuri) went to the USSR. Unlike the rest of the churches in Vyborg which were destroyed by fire, St. Peter and Paul church survived. In the spring of 1941, the building housed a Red Army club. Altar decorations were removed, the chancel was covered by a scene. The fate of an organ and a bell are unknown.
In the summer of 1941, when Vyborg became Finnish again, the church resumed its worship, it also served as a garrison church. The parish did not have time to restore all the damaged and lost details of interior. On June 18, 1944, the church held its last service, after which the remaining residents of the city evacuated.
In Soviet times the church was supposed to be demolished as worthless, but it didn’t happen, and the church was transferred to the nearby navy training unit as a club. During this period, some premises were redeveloped, windows bricked up.
On June 29, 1989, the meeting in the city library resulted in creating an Evangelical Lutheran parish that consisted of 16 people. In its early days, worship was held in a local school. In 1991, the church building was finally transferred to the Lutheran parish. Later that year, the church was consecrated again in the name of Paul and Peter.
At that period, Aimo Kymäläinen served as a senior pastor. In 1993-1996, the church building went through major repairs, a new altar was acquired in Estonia in 1996. Finnish parish of Mikkeli gifted a Kangasala organ to the church. A new bell was cast in 2001 at a Baltic Shipyard.
