Jelenia Góra Town Trail · the long route · Cieplice

Church of the Saviour

This church exists because the ruler changed. When Silesia passed to Prussia and the new king was a Protestant, the Lutherans of Cieplice wrote to Frederick II – and had his consent in under two weeks. They put up a wooden church almost at once. Thirty years later they started on a brick one, and then came something the information board leaves out: a year before the consecration the tower collapsed.

A petition answered in two weeks

The story of this place begins not with stone but with a letter. In December 1741 the Lutherans of Cieplice sent a petition to King Frederick II. Consent came on 29 December 1741 and was repeated on 4 January 1742.

That speed was not a miracle but politics: Silesia was passing from the Catholic Habsburgs to Prussia, and the new king, a Protestant himself, was building support among Silesian Protestants. There was an economic side too – the Protestants of Cieplice were often glass cutters, and glassware was booming at the time. So they had the permission and the money at once, which in the history of church building happens less often than one might think.

Wooden, in a matter of weeks

The first church was wooden and was consecrated between 20 January and 15 March 1742, barely weeks after the royal consent. The rite was performed by deacon Jeremias Ketzler.

One object survives from that building, and it is easy to walk past: the font, dated 1742. It stands in the brick church as a keepsake of a building that is gone – and it is more than thirty years older than everything around it.

The tower that collapsed

Work on the brick church began in 1774; it was consecrated on 31 October 1777, on Reformation Day – a date chosen on purpose.

Along the way came a disaster: on 6 September 1776 the tower collapsed. That date is worth a pause as you look at today's three-storey tower with its lantern. A year after the structure came down the building was finished and consecrated – which says more about this parish's determination than any description of the furnishings.

The builders were master Demus of Jelenia Góra and Baltazar Eßmert of Lubomierz. Demus's first name is unknown – every source writes “a certain Demus”, which for the man behind the most important building in this part of town is remarkable in itself.

The money was raised by pastor August Jacob Fritze, who put savings aside for well over a decade and collected four thousand thalers.

A Catholic count as patron of a Lutheran church

Here is a thread you will not find on the board by the door. The patron of the church was Johann Nepomuk von Schaffgotsch (1732–1808) – the same count who built the palace two hundred metres away.

The Schaffgotsches were Catholics; their family crypt is in the church of Saint John the Baptist across the square, and one of them became bishop of Wrocław. And yet it was he who was patron of a Lutheran church. Walking the trail, you pass between two churches of two denominations linked by a single name.

What is inside

The interior is a single nave with two tiers of galleries running along the walls. In 1790 the pews and gallery balustrades were painted white, and that one decision changed the character of the place: from dark it turned light.

The altar and the organ case were made by Heinrich Wagner, the sculptures by Exner of Malinnik, the tower roof by master Krołob, and the bells were cast in 1774 by Johann Ehrenfried Seifert of Jelenia Góra. The altar carries figures of Peter, Paul, Mary and John, and the pulpit is decorated with reliefs of the Evangelists. The painting of Christ was made in 1870 by Johann Eduard Ihlée.

Look out for two more things. The first are the glass chandeliers, known here as “spiders”, and the mirrored sconces – in a town of glass cutters that is not random decoration but the calling card of the trade that paid for this church. The youngest of them probably come from the Józefina glassworks in Szklarska Poręba.

The second is the rococo door lock with the monogram FR beneath a crown – *Fridericus Rex*, a tribute to the king who granted the permission. A thank-you built into the door.

The organ: two instruments, one case

This story often gets muddled, because two instruments stood here one after the other in the same case.

The first was built by Johann Gottlieb Meinert (1725–1812) of Wleń – the board by the church dates the installation of the organ to 1794. The master who made the tower clock also came from Wleń.

Today's instrument is a century and a half younger: it was built in 1927 by Gustav Heinze of Żary as his opus 150. It has three manuals and a pedal, pneumatic action and cone chests. Since its general overhaul in 2002 it has been considered one of the finest instruments of its kind in Silesia.

That is why the Cieplice Organ Concerts – every Saturday in July and August are held here rather than anywhere else. If you are in Cieplice in summer, this is the simplest way to get inside and hear the building instead of only looking at it.