A wooden church from 1928-1929 on an oval dodecagonal plan with four towers, on the Wooden Architecture Trail.
The Church of St Hedwig of Silesia in Zabrze is a wooden church from 1928-1929, built at ul. Wolności 504 and entered in the register of immovable monuments. It belongs to the Wooden Architecture Trail of the Silesian Voivodeship. The building stands out for its plan of an oval dodecagon with four octagonal corner towers.
Wood was chosen because of the risk of mining damage. After the First World War the district was home to more than 5,000 Catholics, so it was decided to build a new church. The initiator was the parish priest of the parish of St Francis in Zabrze, Fr Józef Bennek, and in 1926 the parish bought a plot for the building.
The founders were the Episcopal Curia in Wrocław, the State Mines Group and the Upper Silesian Coking Plant. The construction manager and designer was the government building officer Karl Kattentidt, and the technical documentation was prepared by the building counsellor Beck. Work began on 16 May 1928, and the church was blessed on 25 August 1929. The consecration took place in 1932.
The wooden structure stands on a reinforced concrete slab weighing 57 tonnes. The heritage register describes the style as modernist, and other descriptions speak of modernism with elements of expressionism. The whole is covered by a high, multi-pitched tent roof covered with ceramic tiles, and the tower caps are clad in copper sheet. The four towers recall the architecture of the Middle East.
Inside there are six altars. The main altar in the form of a triptych was made by the Bytom sculptor Franz Schink, and a Crucifixion group is placed on the rood beam. The ceiling is coffered, and some of the plastered walls have paintings. In the gallery stand an eight-stop organ from 1833 by Gebrüder Walter, moved from the Church of St Joseph in Lutynia; sources differ on the date of the move, from 1929 to the first half of the 1930s.
In 1994-2001 the church was renovated and 18 new stained-glass windows were installed.
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