Wooden Church of St Hedwig in Zabrze

In the mining town of Zabrze, building a church of wood was a matter of common sense, not nostalgia. When a church was planned in the late 1920s for more than 5,000 Catholics in the Poremba district, fear of mining subsidence settled it: a light timber structure would survive ground movement better than masonry. The result is the Church of St Hedwig of Silesia – an oval, twelve-sided building with four towers that is hard to mistake for any other church in the region.

How it was built

St Francis parish bought the plot on 13 April 1926, and construction began on 16 May 1928. The designer and site manager was the master builder Karl Kattentidt (spelled Kuttentodt in some sources). Fr Józef Bennek laid the foundation stone on 8 July 1928 and blessed the finished church on 25 August 1929. Funding came from, among others, the Wrocław diocese and the state-owned mines and coking plant, and the total cost was 360,000 marks. After the Second World War the chapel of ease became an independent parish, and on 8 June 2008 the church was entered in the heritage register.

Architecture: modernism in timber

The building stands on a reinforced-concrete slab weighing 57 tonnes, meant to protect it from ground movement. The plan is an oval dodecagon with four octagonal corner towers topped by copper caps, under a tall multi-pitched roof of ceramic tiles. Scholars describe the style as modernism with expressionist touches, and the four-tower layout is sometimes compared to Middle Eastern architecture. The church is on the Wooden Architecture Route of Silesia Province.

What to look for inside

• The triptych high altar by the Bytom sculptor Franz Schink, with reliefs of St Hedwig building a church and giving bread to the poor.
• The Crucifixion group on the rood beam.
• The coffered ceiling and paintings on some of the walls.
• The Gebrüder Walter organ in the gallery, moved here from the church in Lutynia; the Silesian Tourist Organisation dates it to 1883.
• 18 stained-glass windows installed during the 1994–2001 renovation.

Tripto tip

The church is at ul. Wolności 504 in Poremba and is an active parish church, so you are most likely to see the interior just before or after Mass; service times are on the parish website. The best view of the four-towered building is from the square in front of the entrance, and walking all the way round shows you all twelve sides. Allow 20–30 minutes for the exterior and a short look inside. In front of the church stands a statue of St Hedwig with a Latin inscription – easy to walk past, yet it explains the choice of patron: the Duchess of Wrocław and patron saint of Silesia.