Category: Poland

This painting is in the collections of the National Museum in Wrocław and was painted by Adelbert Woelfl (1823-1896) in 1867. Woelfl was the best known artist of landscapes in Breslau, the German name for the city, and he was himself German having been born in Münsterberg (now known as Ziębice and part of Poland since 1945). It depicts St. Mary Magdalene’s Church which had been where the first Lutheran services had been held in the city in the early sixteenth century and it remained a Protestant church until the end of the Second World War, when it was restored to the Catholic tradition. I rather like the painting, it’s realistic and there’s a sense of reality about the individuals going about their business.

Here’s what the same view looks like now. The church was badly damaged during the Second World War and was substantially rebuilt, but they’ve been faithful (if you excuse the pun) to the original design, although the towers have been changed somewhat.

This is what fascinates me though, we have a German painter painting a German church in what was Germany. Everything is still there today, but everything has changed.

This wooden polychrome sculpture is in the collections of the National Museum in Wrocław and depicts St. Martin of Tours (336AD – 397AD) who was known for cutting his cloak in two to give warmth to a beggar. Very benevolent, although I wonder why he didn’t give him the whole thing, but there we go. As with all these things, some of the cloak that Martin kept survived and became relics likely dotted around numerous locations. The most important one was originally at Marmoutier Abbey and there were priests put in charge of looking after the holy cloak relic and the head priest of this operation became known as the cappellanu. Eventually, all priests who went to serve the military became known as cappellani, which in English became the word chaplain and that was all named after this relic.

Anyway, I digress. This sculpture was likely made in a workshop in Wrocław and it has been dated to around 1490. It was located at St. Martin’s Church, the only survived building from the former Piast’s castle in Wrocław. Before the Second World War, this was where the Polish people in the German city would have gone for services, but the building was damaged during the conflict. The sculpture is in relatively very good condition and a fair chunk of the paint has remained. And the moral of the story is that if you give half of your coat to a beggar, then you too could maybe have your own church named after you in the future and perhaps a word named after you as well.

This pietà is in the collections of the National Museum in Wrocław and it was made in the area, likely in around 1420. It’s a depiction of dead Jesus following the crucifixion, designed to have emotional intensity and evidently from the Gothic tradition. It’s a medieval polychrome wooden statue, although the colours have rather faded away over the centuries. I am fascinated by these depictions, not because they’re particularly cheerful, but because I can try and imagine the thousands of people in the medieval period who would have looked at them and maybe inspired by them.

It was originally located in St. James’s Church which was founded in around 1240 as a Romanesque church, although it underwent significant Gothic reconstruction in the 14th and 15th centuries. In 1530, after the displaced Premonstratensians took the church over when the Franciscans were kicked out, it was rededicated to St. Vincent of Saragossa which was their patron saint of the monastery that they’d been thrown out of. The building was badly damaged during the Second World War, including the Hochberg Chapel where this statue had been located. The chapel has now been reconstructed and they’ve placed a copy of this statue in there, with the main Cathedral (as it now is) being the home of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. I’m not sure whether this statue was recovered after the war from the damaged church, or whether it was moved earlier on to protect it, but it’s something of a survivor.

I also rather like that when this statue was originally placed here, the church was in Poland state (the Piast dynasty), although it then came under the control of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then the Habsburg Monarchy, then the Prussian Empire, then the German Empire, then the Weimar Republic, then Nazi Germany and only in 1945 did it return to Poland again.