Dear Fellow Christians,

For this year's Reformation celebration, let's talk about a church that is one of UNESCO's world heritage treasures. It is an impressive symbol of the Lutheran faith, namely the Church of the Holy Spirit in Jauer, Silesia, today known as Jawor, Poland. Twice in its history this church has experienced events corresponding to the meaning of its name.

The first event took place at the time of its construction during the Counter Reformation toward the end of the Thirty Years War. At the time of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 the Lutheran people of Silesia were allowed to build churches in the Duchies of Glogau, Schwinitz and Jauer. Consequently these three churches were named "Peace Churches." The discriminatory requirements for the construction of these churches included that the edifices must be erected outside the gates of the city, without a tower and cut stone, using only wood and clay. Although the State Restitution Commission responsible to the Roman Catholic Court in Vienna re-appropriated and re-Catholicized the Lutheran churches in these duchies and drove out their pastors, the "Peace Churches" were allowed to provide worship services for the Lutheran population within a 50-70 kilometer radius. This became the reason why the "Peace Church" in Jauer erected a building with four balconies seating 6000 people. It remains today the largest freestanding wooden hall church in Europe. All of this was financed during the long war primarily through the nobility and the guilds of the region supplemented by gifts and offerings from the people of Silesia as well as by people from greater Germany and from Lutherans outside of Germany. These gifts provided for painting the church's interior as well. The 2^nd and 4^th balconies had paintings of the Old and New Testament and the 1^st and 3^rd balconies had paintings of the coats of arms of the nobility as well as the signs of the participating guilds.

Impressive is not only the participation of people of all economic strata in this construction, but also the Sunday attendance at this church. Despite the great distances that people typically had to walk to get to church, the church with all of its balconies was usually packed for Sunday worship.

To be able to attend a Lutheran Worship Service, the Lutherans assembled for processions on Sunday in the Roman Catholic regions of Lower Silesia. This means that they gathered on Sunday mornings with no concern for the weather during all seasons of the church year. At a predetermined starting point they formed a procession and marched together to the closest Lutheran church. The destination could have been any one of 20 border churches found along the borders of Lusatia, Brandenburg or Poland. It could have been one of the churches of refuge that had been established on the borders of the re-catholicized duchies. It could have been one of the three "Peace Churches" The members also brought their children to be baptized in these Lutheran churches. It is recorded that in the "Peace Church" at Schweindnitz alone in 1708, fifteen hundred children were baptized. It was surely no different in Glogau and Jauer.

These Sunday processions took place for about 90 years, until Frederick the Great marched into Silesia in 1740 and brought about a new era for the Lutheran Church. At that time, the so-called "Prayer Churches of Frederick" came to be built, in all 220 of them across the countryside and financed by the Lutherans themselves.

The "Peace Churches" remain today a symbol of the faithfulness of the Lutherans of Silesia to their Reformation Confession. Those two "Peace Churches" which have survived, in Jauer and Schweidnitz, are today recognized by UNESCO as treasures of the world's heritage. They are used by Lutheran congregations in Poland. To respect their history, the churches have been preserved in their original condition so that the German Bible passages and inscriptions may still be read. However, the history of these places has not yet come to an end.

The second time period in which the "Peace Church" in Jauer/Jawor played a significnat role in Lutheransim took place after 1945-after the flight and expulsion of the Germans and the arrival of the Polish settlers in Silesia. I will use two examples to demonstrate this.

First, there is the speech of the people in Letmathe, today a part of Iserlohn. As with so many other communities, the people of Letmathe experienced in a very short time in 1945 profound changes to a way of life that continue to have implications up to the present day. It was very difficult to reunite those who remained behind and those who were driven from their homeland, but it became possible. As stations along this way, the August 1959 "Charter of the German Refugees" identifies the building of Lutheran churches and their dedication in the year 1957 as "Peace Church." The memory of the "Peace Church" in Jauer/Jawor, recalled by the Silesian refugees, played a crucial role in the discussion around the naming. The effort toward reconciliation among the refugees achieved a further high point at the 40^th Anniversary of the Letmather "Peace church." At that time, in October 1997, a relay entitled "For peace-and against Forgetting" was organized to run from East Berlin to Letmathe in which over eighty runners participated.

Ten years after that the "Tour of Remembrance and Reconciliation-A Bridge within Europe" took place between May 14^th and 20^th in 2007. The idea came from Burckhardt Hölscher, the congregation's pastor. He wanted to remember the expulsion of the Germans from the Silesian village of Streckenbach/Swidnik. "In memory of the expulsion of the people of Streckenbach he wanted a 50^th anniversary celebration of the "Peace Church" to retrace the distance from Silesia to Letmathe, but this time the participants would be riding on bicycles and in a bus." This sporty version of the trip included 47 cyclists divided into four teams and accompanied by a bus and a van. Fifty people also joined the journey, most of them elderly, riding in the bus. Most of them were from Streckenbach and were using the occasion to return to their home village as well as the village of Jauer, only 30 kilometers distant. An ecumenical worship service, led by clergy of both denominations and both nations, was held in the former Lutheran and now Roman Catholic Church of Strekenbach/Swidnik. This united the various teams and groups, the Poles and Germans, the Catholics and Lutherans. A woman from Strekenbach, who now lives in Letmathe, shared her feelings in these words: "The people of Streckenbach have buried their hate and look forward to peaceful relationships, not only in Germany and Poland." Besides the ongoing meaning for the participants themselves, the journey led to an official partnership between the "Peace Churches" in Jauer and Letmathe which was formalized at a church festival and anniversary worship Service on November 11, 2007 in Letmathe.

           The other example comes from September 1, 2009. To remember the invasion of the German troops into Poland seventy years ago, and thereby the beginning of World War II, a memorial service took place in Jauer. Participating were important Polish Roman Catholic and Polish Lutheran bishops as well as countless Lutheran bishops from Germany, along with various other church officials and laity. The chair of the bishops of the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD), Bishop Wolfgang Huber, preached the sermon. He closed his sermon with the words:

"We are celebrating this worship service today in the "Peace Church" at Jauer. This church reminds us of the Peace of Westphalia at the end of the Thirty Years War. However it has survived to this day, and regularly gathers within its walls a smaller flock of faithful people. It continues to testify to the peace of God and encourage peace in our world. The church in Jauer is dedicated to the Holy Spirit. It is through this Spirit that we grow and change. Peace is the fruit of this Spirit."

The Term "Peace Church" has thus taken on a new meaning, different from the one it had in 1648, but with certainty, within the meaning provided by faith in the Gospel, one that binds us together for the future.

Literature:

Hofbauer, Katja. Erinnern und Versöhnen: Die Letmather Friedenskirche und die Vertriebenen. Hg. aus Anlass des 50. Jubiläums der Evangelischen Friedenskirche Letmathe. Iserlohn,  2007.

Graf von Reichenbach, Heinrich (Hg.). Die Emporenbilder in der Friedenskirche zu Jauer in Schlesien. Dokumentation, Bd.I: "Die biblischen Darstellungen an der zweiten und vierten Empore." Wennigsen, 2006; Bd. II: "Die Bilder an den Logenbrüstungen der ersten und dritten Empore - Adel, Geistlichkeit, Zünfte." Wennigsen, 2008.  

Schott, Christian-Erdmann. "Die Bedeutung des Westfälischen Friedens für die Evangelischen in Schlesien." In: Hey, Bernd (Hg.). Der Westfälische Frieden 1648 und der deutsche Protestantismus (Studien zur deutschen Landeskirchengeschichte 3). Bielefeld, 1998.

Translator: Prof. em. Dr.Dr.David Zersen

djzersen@aol.com