Annaberg (1934: St Annaberg, 1941–1945: Annaberg O. S.)

Góra Świętej Anny/Sankt Annaberg (bilingual since 2008)

Originally also known as ‘Chelmberg’ or ‘Góra Chełmska’, named after the Old Polish word ‘chełm’, meaning ‘hill’. In the early modern period, the hill took its name from the former St George’s Chapel, which is why it was also known for a long time as ‘Georgiberg’, ‘Georgenberg’ or ‘Sankt Georgenberg’. The present-day name, which only became established in the 18th century, is associated with the pilgrimage church of St Anne.

St. Annaberg is situated at 50° 27' north, 18° 10' east, above the village of the same name, south-east of Opole and north-west of Gliwice.

The St. Annaberg inselberg is the highest point in the Polish Opole Voivodeship (Województwo opolskie).

Upper Silesia

Poland; Opole Voivodeship; Municipality of Leschnitz/Leśnica.

The town of Sankt Annaberg does not have its own coat of arms.

St Annaberg is of outstanding political and religious significance both for Poland and for the German minority in the region. The complex, comprising the pilgrimage basilica, monastery and Calvary, is the most important Catholic place of pilgrimage in Upper Silesia.

The monastery on St. Annaberg.
[Friedrich Bernhard Werner: *Silesia in Compendio
* *seu Topographia das ist Praesentatio* and *
* *Beschreibung des Herzogthums Schlesiens*, 18th century.
(Wikimedia Commons)]

The earliest written records of Annaberg date from the late 15th century; according to which, in 1480, the then lord of Poremba/Poręba, Christof Strela (Krzysztof Strzała), and his son Krystek endowed a church in honour of St George. According to a document issued by the Bishop of Wrocław, Johann Thurzo, on 25 June 1516, Nikolaus Strela (Mikołaj Strzała) placed the new St Anne’s Church under the jurisdiction of the parish priest of Leschnitz.^[1] Even at that time, the hill and the miraculous image of St Anne with the Child and the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of merchants, mothers and miners, were a destination for pilgrimages. The lime-wood statue, crafted in the 15th century and said to contain the relics of St Anne, has been situated in the high altar of the pilgrimage basilica since at least the time the Franciscan monks settled there.^[2] In 1637, the Counts of Gaschin acquired Poremba, including the Annaberg.^[3] In 1655, Count Melchior Ferdinand von Gaschin initiated the settlement of twenty monks of the Franciscan Order, who had lost their monasteries in Lemberg/Ľviv/Lwów and Kraków/Kraków as a result of the Swedish invasion of Poland. From 5 August 1656, the church officially belonged to the Franciscans, who initially erected a wooden monastery. In 1665, construction began on the Baroque pilgrimage church of St Anne (Kościoł św. Anny), which was consecrated eight years later.^[4]

Between 1700 and 1709, the Italian architect Domenico Signo, P.p. commissioned by Count Georg Adam von Gaschin, built the Calvary with three large and 30 smaller chapels representing the most important stations of Christ’s Passion. The present-day monastery building was constructed between 1733 and 1749. Rising numbers of pilgrims led to the renovation and extension of the monastery complex in the 18th century: between 1760 and 1764, Count Anton von Gaschin had further chapels built, and in 1781 the church was extended. The Catholic inhabitants of Upper Silesia began visiting Annaberg in increasing numbers after Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) had banned cross-border pilgrimages and the more popular pilgrimage church of Jasna Góra near Częstochowa was no longer accessible.

Under the Edict of Secularisation of 10 October 1810, the monastery’s property passed to the Prussian state. In 1813, the buildings were temporarily used as a powder magazine. Count Leopold von Gaschin tried in vain to claim the monastery as his property through the courts. The expelled Franciscans returned in 1860 at the behest of the new owner, the Prince-Bishop of Wrocław, Heinrich Förster, but as early as 1875 the monastery was dissolved once again in the context of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf. Twelve years later, the friars returned once more, and the monastery and chapels on Calvary Hill were restored.

Between 1912 and 1914, the Lourdes Grotto was built, which can accommodate up to 15,000 pilgrims. A pilgrims’ hostel was constructed between 1929 and 1934. Despite the national tensions in divided Upper Silesia, at the centre of which Annaberg stood (see ‘Political History’), religious books and writings continued to be printed in both Polish and German during the interwar period. Bilingual pastoral care continued until 1939, when the Nazi authorities imposed a ban on Polish-language devotions. On 13 November 1940, the Franciscan monks were forced to leave the monastery for the third time in the history of Annaberg.

After the end of the Second World War, Polish monks took over the monastery. From then on, Masses were only permitted to be celebrated in Polish. St Anne’s Church, which had been redesigned in the Neo-Baroque style in the 1950s, was elevated to the status of a minor basilica by Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) in 1980 to mark the 500th anniversary of the Kirchberg. A special event for the place of pilgrimage was the visit by this Pope, who celebrated Mass in 1983 in the fields of St Annaberg together with a million worshippers.

Since 4 June 1989, services and annual pilgrimages have once again been held on the Annaberg in the language of the German minority. A minority pilgrimage organised on 3 June 2001 served as a symbolic act of reconciliation between all minorities in Poland and the Polish majority.^[5]

Alongside its religious significance, Annaberg also plays a prominent role in the consciousness of German and Polish Silesians as a symbol of the clash between two national ideologies, which is why it was – and to some extent still is – fraught with nationalist sentiment on both sides.

When, in a referendum on the territorial affiliation of Upper Silesia in March 1921, a majority voted to remain part of Germany, Polish insurgents occupied the strategically important Annaberg. From 21 to 27 May 1921, the largest battle of the Third Uprising in Upper Silesia took place in the surrounding area, during which the pilgrimage site was recaptured by German Freikorps units.^[6] The events of the Silesian Uprisings were exploited for nationalist propaganda on both the German and Polish sides, during both democratic and totalitarian periods.

Following the partition of Upper Silesia in 1922, Annaberg remained part of the German Reich. Between 1934 and 1936, a Nazi ‘Thingstätte’ (assembly site) in the shape of an amphitheatre was built in the quarry, with 7,000 seats and standing room for 23,000. In 1937/38, the ‘Reich Memorial to the Freikorps Fighters’ was erected on the rocky plateau above, based on a design by Robert Tischler, as a mausoleum for the German soldiers who fell in the Silesian Uprisings; it was inaugurated on 22 May 1940. There were plans to rename the Annaberg ‘Ahnenberg’.^[7] According to the intentions of the National Socialist planners, the aim was to create a centre for German cultural propaganda here, whilst at the same time serving as a counterbalance to the sacred place of pilgrimage.^[8] In 1940, the Franciscans were expelled. On the Annaberg, the Nazi authorities set up a transit camp for‘ethnic Germans’, which later served as a ‘Reich motorway camp’ for Jews and Poles, from 1941 as a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, and from November 1942 for sick Jewish prisoners^[9] and, from August 1943, as a camp for Jewish prisoners.^[10] It was closed down in January 1945.

In 1946, the mausoleum was blown up as part of a patriotic demonstration.^[11] In its place, a monumental memorial to Polish fighters was unveiled on 19 June 1955, as a symbol of ‘Poland’s eternal struggle against the German drive eastwards’.^[12] It was designed by the sculptor Xawery Dunikowski (1875–1964), who was imprisoned in Auschwitz from 1940 to 1944. In 1961, the Museum of the Uprising (Muzeum Czynu Powstańczego) was opened at the foot of the hill. Once a “contested object of national identity”,^[13] Annaberg is now regarded both as a divisive symbol and as a place of encounter.

• Danuta Berlińska: Symbols of a Complex History in Opole Silesia. In: Zbigniew Mazur (ed.): The German Cultural Heritage in the Polish Western and Northern Territories. Wiesbaden 2003 (Studies of the Centre for Research on East Central Europe at the University of Dortmund 34), p. 161–183.
• Juliane Haubold-Stolle: The Holy Mountain of Upper Silesia – St Anna’s Mountain as a place of remembrance. In: Marek Czapliński, Hans-Joachim Hahn, Tobias Weger (eds.): Silesian Places of Remembrance. Memory and Identity of a Central European Region. Görlitz 2005, pp. 201–220.
• Fryderyk Kremser: Góra Św. Anny – Leśnica [St. Annaberg – Leschnitz], booklet, Leśnica 1991.
• Joanna Lubos-Kozieł (ed.): Pilgrimage and Art. St Anne’s Mountain and Other Places of Pilgrimage in Silesia [Pilgrimage and Art. St. Annaberg and Other Places of Pilgrimage in Silesia]. Wrocław 2005 (Historia Sztuki 22, Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis 2846).
• Janusz Oszytko: The Forced Labour Camp for Jews on St Anne’s Mountain (1941–1945) [Forced labour camp for Jews on St Anne’s Mountain (1941–1945)]. In: Krzysztof Pilarczyk, Stefan Gąsiorowski (eds.): Jews and Judaism in Contemporary Polish Research. Proceedings of the conference held in Kraków, 24–26 November 1998 [Jews and Judaism in Contemporary Polish Research. Proceedings of the Conference in Kraków, 24–26 November 1998]. Kraków 2000 (Żydzi i judaizm 2), p. 325– 337.
• Józef Szulc: Around St Anne’s Mountain. A brief monograph on the municipality of Leśnica [Around St Anne’s Mountain. A brief monograph on the municipality of Leśnica]. Leśnica 1996.

• www.swanna.pl/ (the monastery’s website; ibid. Archive of the Franciscan Monastery on St Anne’s Mountain, Order of Friars Minor Conventual – OFM Conv. [The Archive of the Franciscan Priory on Anne’s Mountain] 47–154 Góra Św. Anny, ul. Klasztorna 6).
• www.herder-institut.de/bildkatalog/wikidata/Q1025165 (Images relating to Sankt Annaberg/Góra Świętej Anny in the image archive of the Herder Institute, Marburg)

[1] See Norbert Bonczyk: Góra Chełmska. Góra Św. Anny – Memories from 1875 [Chelmberg. St. Annaberg – Memories from the Year 1875]. Krzyża, Opole 1985, p. 107.

[2] See Fryderyk Kremser: St Anne’s Mountain – Leśnica [St. Annaberg – Leschnitz]. Leśnica 1991.

[3] See Bonczyk: Chełmska Mountain (note 1), p. 107.

[4] See Bonczyk: Góra Chełmska (note 1), pp. 112ff.

[5] See Jürgen Joachimsthaler: Philology of Neighbourhood. Culture of Remembrance, Literature and Scholarship between Germany and Poland. Würzburg 2007, pp. 120ff.

[6] See Kai Struve: Upper Silesia after the First World War: Studies on a National Conflict and its Memory. Marburg 2003 (Conferences on East Central European Research 19), pp. 27ff.

[7] See Bonczyk: *Góra Chełmska* (note 1), p. 125.

[8] See Karl Mendrygalla: ‘A Proposal for the Annaberg Monument. A Settlement as a Monument’. In: *Der Oberschlesier*. Upper Silesian Weekly 12 (1934), pp. 722ff.

[9] See Oszytko: Forced Labour Camp for Jews, p. 337.

[10] See Franciszek Hawranek (ed.): Encyklopedia powstań śląskich [Encyclopaedia of the Silesian Uprisings]. Opole 1984, p. 151.

[11] See Berlińska: Symbols of a Difficult History, p. 177.

[12] See Kremser: Mount St Anne (note 2), n.p.

[13] See Joachimsthaler: Philology of Neighbourhood (note 5), p. 208.

Felicitas Söhner: Sankt Annaberg/Góra Świętej Anny. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32258 (as at 30 July 2021).