Kościół Pamięci Króla Gustawa Adolfa, Wrocław

Before you is Kościół Pamięci Króla Gustawa Adolfa, a Lutheran church built for Sępolno in nineteen thirty-two and nineteen thirty-three. Its brick modernist design treats the basilica as a twentieth-century building, with a tower set at the front. Notice that front tower: Albert Kempter won the church council’s design competition, and the foundation stone was laid on the sixth of November nineteen thirty-two.

Exactly one year later, the completed church was consecrated. Its name honours Sweden’s King Gustav Adolf, who fought for the Protestant side in the Thirty Years’ War and died at Lützen in sixteen thirty-two. The building’s later history is unexpectedly dramatic.

Its Sauer organ was removed in nineteen fifty-one for use in Wrocław Cathedral’s echo organ. The following year, the secular authorities took over the church and converted it into the Światowid cinema and a cultural centre. It returned to the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland in nineteen ninety-six; after renovation, it reopened as a church in nineteen ninety-nine, with a small mechanical organ brought from the Netherlands. Today it serves the Saint Christopher parish and is also used by the DOM Wrocław Pentecostal church.