Jerzy Sołtan’s design of a church in communist Poland

Abstract

In 1957, the Catholic Church in Poland was faced with the opportunity to build new churches for the first time since the end of the Second World War. One of the proposals was put forward by Le Corbusier’s pupil Jerzy Sołtan. His design for a church in Sochaczew, far from the austere and economical modernism promoted in Poland at the time, was favourably received by the architectural community. However, it was criticised and misunderstood by representatives of the Church. At the turn of 1957 and 1958, debates about contemporary churches in Poland emerged, a modest reflection of the debates in Western Europe in the years before and after the Second Vatican Council. The processes shaping sacred architecture in communist Poland until the end of its existence in 1989 were then revealed. The state authorities were hostile to the Catholic Church and actively fought against its building initiatives in the first decades after the introduction of communism in Poland in 1945. However, this case study of the design of the church in Sochaczew reveals that the state authorities did not openly interfere in the shaping of forms of sacred architecture. The Church, who was responsible for choosing the design, was not interested in employing avant-garde architectural language to distinguish itself from constructions promoted by the state.