One of the historical, surviving, originally Evangelical churches in the city.

The historical building is located in the area designated as a monument of history (“Poznań - the historical urban complex” - Regulation of the President of the Republic of Poland of 28-11-2008).

History

The church of the Holy Cross was erected for the Evangelical-Lutheran community, also called Old Lutheran. The Evangelical-Lutheran Church came into being as a result of separation of the opponents of the United and Uniting Churches, created in 1817 under the administrative union uniting the Lutheran and the Calvinist Church, introduced by Frederick William III of Prussia.

The Old Lutheran community was created in Poznań in 1835. Initially, its members held services in a building at Ogrodowa Street, located on the same plot, apportioned out of the land originally belonging to the Mycielski family, which was handed over to the Lutheran community as part of compensation for the cemetery of the Hill of St Adalbert, taken from the community in the first half of the 19th century. In its western part, there was a manor house which was designated to serve as a pastor’s house. In the garden surrounding it, a cemetery was created, consecrated in 1831, to which grave monuments from earlier Protestant graveyards were transferred.

The church of the Holy Cross was built in the years 1885-1886 according to a design by architect Bernhard Below. The master constructor was Julius Klau. The building was erected on a plot located east of the cemetery. In the interwar period, the cemetery was closed and no longer used for burial purposes. During the war, it was destroyed, which was one of the reasons for its liquidation in the years 1948-1950 and for the creation of the Park of Liberation on its terrain (currently the Jan Henryk Dąbrowski Park). The church, although damaged, had survived through the war and in 1946, it was donated to the Evangelical-Methodist community, to which it belongs today. On 8 June 1947, after the church was rebuilt and the interior was furnished with a new altarpiece, stained glass windows, organ gallery, and pews, the first mass was celebrated in it.

During the 1950s, the pipe organ was replaced by a pump organ from the turn of the 19th and the 20th century. In the years 1970-1984, in two pairs of window openings in the southern part of the church’s nave, new stained glass panes were installed. In 1984 and 1986, slate covering the roof was replaced by copper sheet metal.

Description

The plot on which the church is located, is situated at the intersection of Ogrodowa, Piekary, and Krysiewicza Streets, in the north-eastern corner of the Jan Henryk Dąbrowski Park. The building is located in the central part of the plot. On its south-western side, on an adjacent plot, there is a four-storey outbuilding comprised of two wings connected at an obtuse angle, where probably services were held at first. From the side of Ogrodowa Street, and partially from the side of the park, the land plot is circumscribed by a cast fence with brick spans, on a foundation. The church’s front façade faces north.

It is neo-Gothic in style. The elongated rectangle of the nave is adjoined from the south by a narrower, rectangular chancel. In the south-eastern corner which forms the body of the main nave and the chancel, there is a rectangular sacristy, perpendicular to it. From the north, the nave is adjoined by a tower built on a square floor plan, and on the sides, by two semi-hexagonal annexes.

A dominating element in the compact, bricked body of the church, faced with clinker brick, is the three-storey tower preceding the front façade, topped with a high, pyramid tented roof resting on an octagonal plinth. The nave and the lower chancel is covered with a gable roof, and the sacristy - with a flat roof. The annexes on both sides of the tower are topped with three-sloped roofs. All roofs are clad with copper sheet metal.

The façade is closed by a triangular gable topped with a corbelled cornice. In its face, on each side of the tower, there are three high pointed-arch blind windows with paired window openings. On the axis of the front façade, there is a high, three-storey tower, embraced by corner, single-step buttresses reaching the height of the upper storey. Within the bottom storey, there is a pointed-arch, stepped door opening, decorated in mid-height with little stone columns with surrounds, topped with capitals adorned with foliate motifs. The upper storey contains a tripartite window opening with semi-circular top section. The highest storey is crowned by a corbelled cornice, and there is a high, pointed-arch, stepped window opening in the front. Side façades of the tower on that level contain bipartite blind windows with round blind windows over them. The high pyramid tented roof with window openings at the base rests on an octagonal plinth with three slits corresponding to directions of the world.

On both sides of the tower, there are one-storey semi-hexagonal annexes resting on a high plinth, with five pointed-arch window openings in niches, covered with three-sloped roofs reaching the base of the triangular gable of the front façade.

Side façades of the church are four-axis, with high, pointed-arch window openings resting on a high plinth topped with an eaves cornice, partitioned, at two third of their height, with a dentil frieze running horizontally along the church’s body. The façades, similarly as the triangular gables, are topped with a crowning cornice resting on brick corbels. The nave body are reinforced from the south by two corner buttresses. In the side façades of the chancel, there are single pointed-arch window opening.

The single-nave interior of the church and the chancel which is elevated in relation to it and separated by a high pointed-arch rood arcade, are covered by tented weatherboarding. The fittings of the church come from the post-war period, except from the pump organ from the turn of the 19th and the 20th century, which was installed in the 1950s of the last century. In window openings of the nave body, there are stained glass windows made during the post-war reconstruction of the church and in the 1970s and 1980s.

Limited access to the historic building. More information on the opening hours and services can be found on the website of the Evangelical-Methodist parish www.metodysci-poznan.pl (access date: 16-06-2015)

compiled by Anna Dyszkant, Regional Branch of the National Heritage Board of Poland in Poznan, 17-06-2015.

Bibliography

• Atlas architektury Poznania, Poznań 2008, s. 217.
• Gołdych J., Kościół staroluterski św. Krzyża przy ul. Ogrodowej, „Kronika Miasta Poznania” 2007, nr 3, s. 98-106.
• Katalog Zabytków Sztuki w Polsce, t. VII: Miasto Poznań, cz. II, 2: Śródmieście, kościoły i klasztory 2, pod red. Kurzawy Z., Kusztelskiego A., Warszawa 2002, s. 108-109.