We follow the folds in the landscape, keeping the hills to our left. During that happy summer interlude in 2020, when the COVID clouds all too briefly receded, it was possible to head out and explore. So here we are in southern Poland, dodging thunderstorms and enjoying a rare sense of freedom. We slip through Dzierzoniów which, with its neat square, is one of those immediately likeable small Silesian towns.
Everywhere in this region has its hidden history. And Dzierzoniów is no exception. There was a spell, after the Second World War, when Germans remaining in Dzieroniów were obliged to wear white armbands and doff their caps when they met Jewish residents in the street. In an eerie reversal of Nazi etiquette, it was the Germans who walked in the gutter. The short-lived attempt to create an autonomous micro-homeland for the Jewish people (a yishuv) propelled Dzierzoniów to unlikely prominence as a Polish Jerusalem. But the experiment failed, its main protagonist was imprisoned by the Polish authorities, and the settlers emigrated, many of them finding new homes and lives in Israel.
A bank of cloud over the Owl Mountains away to port, as we play cat and mouse with the tiny River Piława, criss-crossing it several times, and cresting a gentle ridge to drop down into the Lesk Valley. We too are in search of a Jerusalem. And the clue is in the name of a river.
From the Lesk we cut through the forests, skirting the north side of Góra Świętej Anny (St Anne’s Mountain) from where we look down on the great Baroque basilica at Krzeszów. It is there in the shadow of the abbey that a tiny stream flowing down from the low hills reaches the River Zadrna. The stream is called the Cedron, recalling the Polish rendering of the valley which in Jerusalem separates the Mount of Olives from the Temple Mount. In English it is more commonly known as the Kidron Valley. Our detailed map of the area reveals another biblical allusion. Tucked away in the woods just north of the Cedron is a place called Bethlehem (rendered as Betlejem on Polish maps).
For generations of pilgrims, most of them Catholic, the monastic complex at Krzeszów and the surrounding landscape have been a sort of Jerusalem substitute. Over pierogi and salad in a simple refectory, a Benedictine monk explains how the monastery has been variously Cistercian and Benedictine. With good grace he admits that the foundation’s heyday was under the tenure of the Cistercians who were here from 1289 to 1810. “The Cistercians were pretty well forced to leave in 1810,” he says, referring to the spat between the Prussian authorities and religious orders which led to many Silesian monasteries being closed. “We didn’t get it back till 1945,” he adds, almost as if referring to the recovery of a family home.
“Today,” the monk continues, “we take travel for granted. Or we did until recently. Yet there was a time when the places associated with the life of Jesus Christ in the Holy Land just weren’t accessible to visitors from Europe. And that’s why back in the 17th century, right across the Polish lands, religious orders sponsored the development of pilgrim trails that replicated the religious experience of visiting the Holy Land.”
Walking over the meadows and into the forest, we realize that the arrangement of chapels and shrines mimics the Via Dolorosa (Way of Sorrows) in Jerusalem — the route taken by Christ on his way to crucifixion which in this Lenten season is recalled by Catholics in the processional prayer known as the Way of the Cross. These renderings abroad of the holy sites of Christ’s life, passion and death are known as calvaries, and the example at Krzeszów is, as they go, not especially elaborate or ambitious. It incorporates 16 chapels with a number of ancillary shrines giving a total of 30 stops in all. Those who want to recall Christ’s birth and death in a single visit can pause at Bethlehem, located by a lake in the forest, enhanced by a wooden pavilion once used as a place for prayer, reading and retreat by the Cistercian monks at Krzeszów.
There is a leafy stillness to this green and rather murky pool, the quiet broken only by the croak of a frog and some rustling in the leaves in the woods behind us. “Keep moving if you want to avoid the midges,” says an elderly lady who is walking by with her dog. It looks as though the pavilion has seen better days and might be in need of a lick of paint. Yet this modest octagonal structure houses a remarkable series of two dozen Baroque paintings, on its interior walls and ceiling, which together constitute a profound meditation on the twin themes of water and the Old Testament personage of King David.
Krzeszów was originally a Benedictine foundation. The church was rebuilt in Baroque style by the Cistercians around 1730 (photo © hidden europe).
This is just one of the many surprises in and around Krzeszów. The monastery’s calvary is a nice example of a calvary, though the flattish topography means there’s none of the drama associated with Italy’s sacri monti and the Krzeszów calvary cannot compete with the Mannerist flair evident in the very much larger calvary at Kalwaria Zebrzydowska near Kraków. Yet there is still a happy conjunction of devotional architecture and pleasing nature that marks this place out as having special spiritual significance. The calvary was first developed in the late 17th century under the patronage of Abbot Rosa who also commissioned the Bethleham pavilion.
We wander back past the various shrines towards the abbey, there to meet the monk with whom we had shared lunch. “So, tell me again where you are from,” he asks.
“Berlin,” we reply.
“Ah, so you know about the link between Berlin and here?” he queries.
We have to admit that we don’t.
“The manuscripts,” he says in a conspiratorial whisper. “In the war.”
And that evokes for us the flicker of a tale that in the early 1940s huge numbers of manuscripts and books from the National Library in Berlin were moved to protect them from the bombing of the German capital. They were brought to a monastery in Silesia for safe keeping. And as it turns out that monastery was at Krzeszów (then known in German as Grüssau). After the war, the bulk of that collection was taken to the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Comprising half a million mediaeval manuscripts, early printed books and hand-written music by some of Europe’s greatest composers, the collection (known as Berlinka) is a fabulous cultural asset, one which the German authorities would dearly like to see back in Berlin.
“Kraków’s gain, our loss,” says the monk.
We smile and think the same, as we head to the car to drive back to Berlin.
