Jelenia Góra Town Trail · the long route · Sobieszów

Church of St Martin

The bill for this tower has survived in a form that says more about old Sobieszów than many a chronicle: 365 thalers, 23 groschen and two quarts of spirit. It was raised in 1647 by Protestants, at a time when the church belonged to them. The building itself is much older – it is the oldest surviving structure in Sobieszów, and a parish has worked here since at least the fourteenth century.

Villa Hermanni, or the beginning

The village appears in a document of 1305 under the name Villa Hermanni. Seventy-five years later, in a document of Duchess Anna of Świdnica dated 1 January 1380, Nicholas, parish priest of Sobieszów is named – the earliest pastor of this church known by name.

The original patron was Saint Barbara. Saint Martin arrived much later, in circumstances worth knowing.

Two changes of denomination in a hundred and thirty years

In 1520 the church was taken over by Protestants. That same year parish priest Marek Meischeider died – the last Catholic pastor before the change. His tombstone lies in the chancel, and the Latin inscription gives the year of his death. Meischeider had earlier extended the parish: in 1490 he raised a wooden chapel in Szklarska Poręba.

In 1654, on the wave of the Counter-Reformation, the church returned to the Catholics. That is when the dedication was changed to Saint Martin – and under that name the parish works to this day, even after its main church became a completely different building after the war.

A parish that reached into the mountains

One detail from the life of priest Meischeider says more about old Sobieszów than any description of furnishings: in 1490 he raised a wooden chapel in Szklarska Poręba.

That means this parish also covered settlements lying deep below the ridge of the Karkonosze – more than a dozen kilometres from here, up the valley, on roads that in winter practically did not exist. Sobieszów was therefore the mother parish for settlement pushing into the mountains, and chapels were built in distant villages so that people would not have to walk down for every mass.

Today's division, in which Szklarska Poręba is a separate town with its own churches, is a far later matter. When you look at this unremarkable church, you are looking at the administrative centre of a sizeable piece of the Karkonosze.

A tower for 365 thalers and two quarts of spirit

The tower stands separately, beside the church – a campanile on a square plan, crowned with a wooden octagonal cupola. Work on it was carried out in 1647, in the Protestant period, and the surviving bill reads: 365 thalers, 23 groschen and two quarts of spirit – drunk to mark the tower's completion. Alcohol in a building account was nothing unusual at the time.

From the same period come the bells and the clock (the clock itself was replaced in 1728 – made by Georg Klose). And with one of the bells goes a story that neatly closes the neighbourhood of Chojnik: it was said to have been cast from cannon from the castle.

How much truth there is in that is hard to say – and better said plainly. The heritage record gives the origin of the bell outright, a regional study speaks of a single old cannon, and a guidebook cautiously says “of which it is said that”. No source points to a specific gun – we do not know how many there were, from what period they came or who decided to melt them down. All that is known is that Chojnik was adapted for firearms in the sixteenth century, so artillery at the castle is nothing improbable.

A hundred and thirty years in other hands

The Protestant period was not an episode here but a whole century and more: from 1520 to 1654. That is long enough to build a tower, hang bells and install a clock – that is, everything by which you recognise this church from a distance today.

So in Sobieszów the situation is the reverse of most places nearby: a Catholic church has a Protestant tower, while the Protestants who built it were left without a church for nearly a century after 1654. They built their own only after the change of state, in 1744–1745 – today it is the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on ul. Cieplicka.

Then history came full circle. In 1946 the Catholic parish of Saint Martin took over that former Protestant church and moved its main services there. The two buildings swapped roles – the older one, the most important for six hundred years, became the second.

Baroque from the Schaffgotsches

In 1778–1782 the church was rebuilt in the Baroque style on the initiative of Count Johann Nepomuk Schaffgotsch – of the same family whose palace stands 250 metres away. The rebuilding also meant new furnishings.

The altars were made by the Jelenia Góra sculptor Augustin Wagner, and the main painting with Saint Jude Thaddeus was painted by the painter Pratz of Cieplice. From that time survive a wooden font and a pulpit.

Older than these is a stone font of 1486 – except that it stands today in Podgórzyn, and nobody knows when or why it went there.

Nineteenth-century tidying

Further works ran through the whole nineteenth century: 1870 – a roof beam with that date, 1881 – a new floor, 1885 – the consecration of new Stations of the Cross, 1887 – the side altars moved and the main altar renewed, with paintings by Professor Hieronim Richter. The stained glass dates from 1921.

Epitaphs and a cemetery that is not there

Inside and in the walls survive epitaphs of people connected with the family estate. One of them commemorates Johann Carl Neumann – an official, clerk and steward of the Schaffgotsch estates, born in Cieplice on 28 October 1671 and died in Sobieszów on 26 January 1741.

The church stood in the middle of an old cemetery enclosed by a low stone wall. In the 1960s the municipal authorities did away with the cemetery. Today only the wall and the empty ground around the church remain – worth knowing as you stand on the grass around it.

Since 1945

On 31 October 1945 the first Polish priest arrived, Franciszek Marszał-Olszowski, and the church became a gathering point for resettled people. A year later the parish took over the former Protestant church on today's ul. Cieplicka and moved its main services there.

Renovation works were carried out in 1955 and 1961; after a further renovation the church was consecrated in 1986 by Bishop Adam Dyczkowski, and in 2000–2003 the main altar, the Baroque pulpit and the fonts were restored.

What you can see

From outside: the tower of 1647 and the wall of the former cemetery. It is the oldest thing standing in Sobieszów, and you can see it in the proportions – the building is squat, without the sweep of later foundations.

Inside, outside services: the Baroque altars by Augustin Wagner, the pulpit and font from the time of the rebuilding, the tombstone of priest Meischeider in the chancel and epitaphs connected with the Schaffgotsch estates.

The climb to Chojnik starts here – the castle from whose cannon the bell above your head was cast.