CMENTARZ PROTESTANCKI WE WSCHOWIE

• Authors: Chwistek Marek

Title variants

EN

The Protestant Cemetery in Wschowa

• Languages of publication: PL EN

Abstracts

EN

In 1604, theWschowa Evangelical congregation was compelled to return a parish church, used since the mid-sixteenth century, to the Catholic parish. The same year, it adapted for cult purposes, two burgher houses situated within the walls of the Old Town. Unfortunately, the area around the ensuing church, located in densely developed urban space, lacked sufficient place for a traditional church cemetery. In this situation, the Protestants came to terms with the municipal authorities, and decided to establish a new necropolis outside the town walls (extra muros), in a suburban landed estate. This was the origin of a Christian cemetery constituting an autonomous whole, the first of its type to the east of the Odra river (1609). Its foundation broke with the almost thousand years–long tradition of locating cemeteries next to churches (ad sanctos et apud ecclesiam ). The only exception were mediaeval cemeteries of the Italian campo santo type, to whose aesthetic programme the Wschowa cemetery referred. TheWschowa Old Town cemetery is invaluable testimony of the historical splendour of the town, and a document containing an enormous amount of information about the life of its residents in the course of more than three centuries. An area of 2,5 hectares, encircled by a wall, contains a considerable number of stone epitaphs, tombstones and cemetery buildings of assorted origin and stylistic features, from Late Renaissance to Third Reich. From the viewpoint of an historian of art, greatest value is represented by Manneristic and Baroque epitaphs; the majority of the 170 objects is well preserved. It is those monuments which are being conserved in the first place (15 objects). Installed in the cemetery walls and in chapels, they comprise complexes connected with burgher families of foremost significance for the history of the town. From the moment of its origin, the cemetery was twice enlarged to the west.After the western wall was pulled down, the epitaphs located there were transferred to the newly built southern wall. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the cemetery was expanded by adding a Catholic part, in which a Classicistic funeral house was erected. In 1989– 1990, this building was thoroughly restored and adapted for exhibition purposes (Galeria Lapidarium). Equally careful restoration was applied in the case of the chapel of the Teschner family, and the epitaphs featured therein. The conservation of the whole cemetery wall, conducted this year, was financed by the budget of the commune.

• Publisher: Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa
• Journal: Ochrona Zabytków
• Year: 1999
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 296-303

Dates

published

1999

Contributors

author

Chwistek Marek

References

• M. Wieczorkowski, Sprawozdanie z rozpoznania i oględzin zabytkowego zespołu cmentarnego we Wschowie, Warszawa 1973, s. 10.
• M. Eliade, Sacrum, mit, historia: wybór esejów, Warszawa 1970, s. 46.

Identifiers

ISSN

0029-8247