Jerzy Sołtan’s design of a church in communist Poland

Abstract

AbstractIn 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. Notes1 The changes in the Polish People’s Republic were directly influenced by the internal politics of the USSR. In February 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev delivered a secret paper, later made public, ‘On the Cult of the Individual and Its Consequences’, in which he criticises the crimes of his predecessor Joseph Stalin.2 On the rejection of socialist realism by the architectural community, see Andrzej Skalimowski, ‘“Pierwsza szczera narada architektów”. Motywy, przebieg i konsekwencje Ogólnopolskiej Narady Architektów w 1956 roku’ [‘“The First Honest Discussion of Architects”: Motives, Course and Consequences of the 1956 National Meeting of Architects’], Polska 1944/45–1989: Studia i materiały, 10 (2011), 181–203; Waldemar Baraniewski, ‘Odwilżowe dylematy polskich architektów’ [‘Dilemmas of Polish Architects During the Thaw’], in Odwilż. Sztuka ok. 1956 [Thaw: Art Around the Year 1956], ed. by Piotr Piotrowski (Poznań: Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu, 1996), pp. 129–32; and David Crowley, ‘Warsaw’s Shops, Stalinism and the Thaw’, in Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe, ed. by Susan E. Reid and David Crowley (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2002), pp. 25–47.3 The few church building permits granted at the time were treated by the state authorities as a reward for the loyal Catholic circles. Occasionally, churches damaged by warfare were rebuilt in an altered shape, and temporary makeshift chapels were erected illegally.4 On 27 March 1957, the Office for Religious Affairs [Urząd do Spraw Wyznań], which supervised religious associations, issued a document delineating the rules for granting permits for the construction of churches. This was a reaction to the numerous permits issued at the turn of 1956 and 1957. The procedure introduced at the time was intended to limit the number of churches planned for construction. On the short-lived normalisation in relations between state authorities and the Catholic Church from October 1956 onwards, see Antoni Dudek and Ryszard Gryz, Komuniści i Kościół w Polsce (1945–1989) [Communists and Church in Poland (1945–1989)] (Kraków: Znak, 2003), pp. 102–45; and Ryszard Gryz, Pozwolić czy nie? Władze PRL wobec budownictwa katolickich obiektów sakralnych w latach 1971–1980 [To Allow or Not To Allow? The Authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland Towards the Construction of Catholic Religious Buildings in 1971–1980] (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Akademii Świętokrzyskiej, 2007), pp. 43–69. On the phenomenon of church building in communist Poland, see Izabela Cichońska, Karolina Popera, and Kuba Snopek, Day-VII Architecture: A Catalogue of Polish Churches Post 1945 (Berlin: DOM publishers, 2019).5 This was prompted by demands from the architectural community: Biuro Organizacji Urzędu m. st. Warszawy, Wydział Archiwum (BUO WA), ref. 11/1, Budownictwo sakralne: plany robót, Plany robót budownictwa sakralnego na rok 1957 [Religious Construction: Plans of Works, Plans of Works of Religious Construction for 1957], p. 165, which is a copy of a letter from the President of the Warsaw Branch of SARP to the Chief Architect of Warsaw dated 1 March 1957; and ibid., p. 164, which is a copy of a letter from the Chief Architect of the City, Adolf Ciborowski, to the Metropolitan Curia dated 5 March 1957.6 Józef Gorzelany, Gdy nadszedł czas budowy Arki [When the Time Came to Build the Ark] (Paris: Éditions du Dialogue, 1988), p. 47.7 Eugeniusz Tatarczyk, ‘Przed konkursem na projekt kościoła na Bielanach’ [‘Before the Competition for the Design of the Bielany Church’], Stolica, 16 (1958), 16.8 Biographical information according to Jerzy Sołtan. Monografia / A Monograph, ed. by Jola Gola, trans. by Bogna Piotrowska, Joanna Sołtan, and Wojciech Holnicki-Szulc (Warszawa: Akademia Sztuk Pięknych, 1995). The Sołtans was a well-known noble family. Jerzy’s father served as Minister of Interior in the 1920s.9 Jerzy Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze [Conversations on Architecture], interview by Andrzej Bulanda, ed. by Jola Gola and Maryla Sitkowska (Warszawa: Akademia Sztuk Pięknych, 1996), p. 41.10 See, for example, Jerzy Sołtan, ‘Modernizm kołtuński i modernizm barokowy’ [‘Obtuse Modernism and Baroque Modernism’], Przegląd kulturalny, 46 (1958), 6–7 (p. 6); and Jerzy W. Soltan, ‘The Eternal Seesaw’, Ekistics, 120 (1965), 273–5. Sołtan did not accept the focus on only rational, assessed as ‘objective’, values of architecture. He highly valued intuition in the design process. It is also worth noting that the social realists employed the same terms (‘box’) to criticise modernism.11 He was imprisoned until 1945.12 Already in the spring of 1939, Sołtan translated and published fragments from this book: Le Corbusier, ‘Drapacze chmur Nowego Jorku są za niskie … ’ [‘The Skyscrapers of New York Are Not High Enough’], ed. and trans. by Jerzy Sołtan, Arkady, 6 (1939), 265–7.13 Sołtan was not the first Pole in Le Corbusier’s studio. In the 1930s, Zygmunt Skibniewski worked in his office. Seeking to earn money outside Le Corbusier’s studio, Sołtan also worked in the office of his cousin, Pierre Janneret, and with Claude Laurens. He also served as an assistant in the atelier of Marcel Lods at the École des beaux-arts.14 In 1957, Sołtan wrote the text Modulor. System wymiarowania Le Corbusier [Modulor: Le Corbusier’s Dimensioning System], published by the students of the Faculty of Interior Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw as a reproduced typescript. He also recalled that the first — not very kind — words he was to hear from Le Corbusier when he stood on the threshold of his apartment were: ‘Oh, it’s Soltan, but you’re too tall.’ [‘Tiens, c’est Soltan, mais vous êtes trop grand.’]; see Jerzy Sołtan, On i ja. O architekturze i Le Corbusierze [On Architecture and On … Le Corbusier (original English title of the book given by Sołtan)], trans. by Grzegorz Piątek (Warszawa: Centrum Architektury, 2020), p. 21. Sołtan used this anecdote to suggest that his tall stature influenced the Modulor’s then established proportions. According to the accounts of his collaborators, Sołtan was to make a tape measure of Modulor’s proportions for Le Corbusier; the information was provided by Marta Leśniakowska, ‘Modulor a sprawa polska. Kanon Le Corbusiera w warszawskiej Akademii Sztuk Pięknych’ [‘Modulor and the Polish Cause: Le Corbusier's Canon at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts’], Miejsce, 2 (2016), 174–200 (p. 191).15 See Jerzy Sołtan, ‘Główne kierunki w architekturze współczesnej’ [‘Main Trends in Contemporary Architecture’], Architektura, 3 (1960), 111–16 (p. 115): ‘[A]nyone really close to Le Corbusier knows that L.C.’s genius begins not at the formal, visual, plastic level, but deep at the source of all vibrations of life.’ The constancy of views shaped under the influence of Le Corbusier is also evidenced by the theses contained in Jerzy Sołtan, ‘Budownictwo i architektura sakralna w obecnej Polsce’ [‘Religious Buildings and Architecture in Present-day Poland’], Kultura (Paris), 1–2 (1991), 3–21.16 ‘But my dear Soltan, it must be beautiful.’ See Sołtan, On i ja, p. 35.17 Ibid. An excerpt from the memoirs was previously published in English as Jerzy Soltan, ‘Working with Le Corbusier’, in Le Corbusier. Unité d’Habitation, Marseille-Michelet, vol. 2, ed. by H. Allen Brooks, The Le Corbusier Archive, vol. 17 (New York, NUY: Garland Publishing, 1983), pp. ix–xxiv); in French as Jerzy Soltan, ‘Travailler avec Le Corbusier’, in Le Corbusier. 1887–1987. Europe et modernité, ed. by Pier-Giorgio Gerosa and Stéphane Jonas (Strasbourg: École d’architecture de Strasbourg, 1991), pp. 40–58; and in Polish as Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze, pp. 73–87.18 Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze, p. 48.19 Ibid.20 It was only in 1954 that he was allowed to teach design again.21 Years later, he recalled this period with distaste and a certain note of superiority, mentioning architects who disavowed the ideals of modernism by opportunistically adopting the doctrine of socialist realism, such as Helena Syrkus, who had previously participated in the CIAM; see Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze, pp. 49–53. Ise Gropius wrote in response to Syrkus’ letter to her and her husband in November 1950, in which the Polish woman spoke enthusiastically about socialist realism and Poland at the time: ‘[We] do not want to start to speak to each other through a megaphone in the language of political treatises and cliches. But I am afraid that is exactly what you have done in your letter though you may not realise it.’ See CIAM Archipelago: The Letters by Helena Syrkus / Archipelag CIAM. Listy Heleny Syrkus, ed. by Aleksandra Kędziorek, Katarzyna Uchowicz, and Maja Wirkus (Warszawa: Narodowy Instytut Architektury i Urbanistyki, 2019), p. 262. For the next fifteen years, Syrkus and the Gropius family did not write to each other.22 Sołtan’s faithfulness to his convictions and strength of character were emphasised, among others, by the art historian Juliusz Starzyński, a friend of Sołtan’s from his captivity in Murnau, who himself became one of the propagators of socialist realism: ‘I would still advise in concluding this opinion to emphasise one, in my opinion particularly valuable feature of his mind: the sharpness and consistency of both artistic and moral thinking, which in the system of Jerzy Sołtan’s views constitutes an inseparable unity.’ See Juliusz Starzyński, letter to the Dean of the Faculty of Interior Design at the ASP in Warsaw on Sołtan’s nomination for professor, 14 VI 1965, quoted in Joanna M. Sosnowska, ‘Juliusz Starzyński (1906–1974)’, Rocznik Historii Sztuki, 36 (2011), 137–155 (p. 154).23 Sołtan, ‘Główne kierunki’, p. 112.24 See Sołtan, ‘Kołtuński modernizm’, pp. 6–7. ‘There is something fabulously funny and at the same time sad when one looks at these works of neomodernism, in which one feels how the eye and the hand accustomed to handling the baluster, the pilaster, the volute, and the œil de bœuf — begin to look for their schematic equivalent in modernist detail, gluing it onto a mass that has neither the content sense nor the charm of the architectural spatiality of the new times.’ See Sołtan, ‘Główne kierunki’, p. 113.25 Initially the studio was called Zakłady Doświadczalne [Experimental Workshops] and renamed in 1960.26 Between 1956 and 1965, ZAB created numerous award-winning designs that were constructed — including the Warszawianka sports complex, the interiors of the Śródmieście railway station, and the Wenecja bar in Warsaw — along with the unbuilt design of the Polish pavilion for Expo 58’ in Brussels, based on the idea of a synthesis of the arts.27 Sołtan, ‘Budownictwo i architektura sakralna’, p. 18.28 The designs for the church in Nowa Huta developed by the team of Jerzy Sołtan and Zbigniew Ihantowicz in collaboration with the painters Jerzy Nowosielski, Barbara Pawłowska, and Janina Pol-Teliga belong to the collection of the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (inv. no. MASP 758) and the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław (inv. no. MAt IIIc-210/1 — 19).29 The designs for the Sochaczew church belong to the collection of the Museum of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (inv. no. MASP 758, MASP 1930 – MASP 1938, MASP 1940, MASP 7280 – MASP 7287).30 See ‘Rozstrzygnięcie konkursu zamkniętego Oddziału Warszawskiego SARP nr 253 na szkicowy projekt kościoła parafialnego w Sochaczewie’ [‘Settling of the Closed Competition of the Warsaw Branch of SARP No. 253 for the Sketch Design of the Parish Church in Sochaczew’], Komunikat SARP, 9 (1957), 11–12; B. G., ‘Co przyniósł konkurs na projekt kościoła w Sochaczewie?’ [‘What Did the Competition for the Design of a Church in Sochaczew Bring?’], Słowo Powszechne, 269 (1957), 3.31 Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze, p. 64.32 Zbigniew Ihnatowicz and Jerzy Sołtan, ‘Projekt kościoła parafialnego w Sochaczewie’ [‘Design of the Parish Church in Sochaczew’], Architektura, 2 (1959), 68–9 (p. 69).33 When constructing the new church in Düren, Schwarz referred to the earlier church that had been demolished during the war by using its rubble to build new walls and incorporating relics of the original building into his design.34 Ihnatowicz and Sołtan, ‘Projekt kościoła’, p. 69.35 On the significance of the Virgin Mary and women for Le Corbusier’s cosmogony, see Flora Samuel, ‘The Representation of Mary in the Architecture of Le Corbusier’s Chapel at Ronchamp’, Church History, 2 (1999), 398–416.36 Architekci autokarem: Czechosłowacja, Austria, Szwajcaria, Francja, Włochy [Architects by Bus: Czechoslovakia, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy], ed. by Tadeusz Barucki and Jan Dobrowolski (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Artystyczno-Graficzne, 1957), n.p.37 Jerzy Sołtan and Zbigniew Ihnatowicz, design for the church in Nowa Huta, perspective interior view (Museum of Architecture in Wrocław, inv. no. MAt IIIc-210/19).38 In his lecture delivered in 1965, Sultan pointed out that, nowadays, architects can, thanks to advances in technology, take an active part in programming the functions of a building and thus have a greater influence on it than before; see Soltan, ‘The Eternal Seesaw’, p. 275.39 Jerzy Sołtan, ‘Kochany Biszo!’ [‘Dear Biszo!’ (Ihnatowicz’s nickname invented by Sołtan)], letter to Zbigniew Ihnatowicz, July 1971, Architektura, 3 (1972), 94–103 (p. 102).40 See Ihnatowicz and Sołtan, ‘Projekt kościoła’, p. 68. On the influence of this milieu on art, see L’Art Sacré – Liturgische Räume [L’Art Sacré – Liturgical spaces], ed. by Michael Brandt and Walter Zahner (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2009); and Françoise Caussé, La revue ‘L’Art sacré’: le débat en France sur l’art et la religion (1945–1954) [The Review ‘L’Art sacré’: the Debate on Art and Religion in France (1945–1954)] (Paris: Cerf, 2010).41 Sołtan, ‘Kołtuński modernizm’, p. 7.42 See the film Jerzy Sołtan – Człowiek, który Polski nie zbudował [Jerzy Sołtan: The Man Who Did Not Build Poland], dir. Marcin Giżycki and Sławomir Grünberg (1995).43 See Flora Samuel and Inge Linder-Gaillard, Sacred Concrete: The Churches of Le Corbusier, 2nd edn (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2020), 1st edn 2013, ch. 2, ‘Le Corbusier and Religion’; and Peter Carl, ‘Architecture and Time: A Prolegomena’, AA Files, 22 (1991), 48–51.44 Ihnatowicz and Sołtan, ‘Projekt kościoła’, p. 69.45 Samuel and Linder-Gaillard, Sacred Concrete, p. 56.46 Ihnatowicz and Sołtan, ‘Projekt kościoła’, p. 68.47 Soltan, ‘The Eternal Seesaw’, p. 274.48 ‘Z życia Oddziału Warszawskiego’ [‘From the Life of the Warsaw Branch’], Komunikat SARP, 10 (1957), 10–1.49 Sołtan, ‘Kochany Biszo!’, p. 102.50 B. G., ‘Co przyniósł konkurs’, p. 3. This is a paraphrase given by a hostile reporter rather than a literal statement by Sołtan.51 Ibid.52 See a study on the transformation of the design of the church built in Warsaw from the late 1940s to the late 1960s by Wojciech Głowacki, ‘Modernity and Compromise: The Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Warsaw and its Designer Władysław Pieńkowski’, Ikonotheka, 28 (2018), 169–97.53 ‘Style sulpicien’ or ‘style saint-sulpicien’: a term derived from the Parisian Saint-Sulpice church district famous for its trade in traditional works of sacred art and devotional articles.54 See Robert Proctor, ‘Uncertainty and the Modern Church: Two Roman Catholic Cathedrals in Britain’, in Sanctioning Modernism: Architecture and the Making of Postwar Identities, ed. by Vladimir Kulić, Timothy Parker, and Monica Penick (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2014), pp. 113–38; and Kathleen James-Chakraborty, Modernism as Memory: Building Identity in the Federal Republic of Germany (Minneapolis, MN, and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), pp. 33–80.55 He directed the work of the Polish Episcopal Conference from 1948 to 1981, where he collaborated closely with cardinal Karol Wojtyła, future Pope John Paul II. In 1953, Wyszyński was imprisoned and released as a result of the political changes in October 1956. Because of his steadfast stance, he is known in Poland as the ‘Primate of the Millennium’, and the Catholic Church has recently proclaimed him blessed. As archbishop, Wyszyński had the right to decide on the religious art in the Archdiocese of Warsaw.56 It was established in April of 1947 and probably modelled on the Parisian institution ‘Chantiers du Cardinal’ [‘Construction sites / Projects of the Cardinal’].57 The fact that they wanted to bring together the widest possible group of people involved in church design is evidenced by the fact that the Deputy Chief Architect of Warsaw was also invited to this meeting, who noted on the invitation he received: ‘I did not go.’ See BUO WA, ref. 11/1, Budownictwo sakralne: plany robót, Plany robót budownictwa sakralnego na rok 1957, p. 70.58 ‘Jakie powinny być nowe polskie kościoły. Spotkanie Księdza Kardynała Wyszyńskiego z naszymi czołowymi architektami i plastykami’ [‘What the New Polish Churches Should Be Like: A Meeting Between Cardinal Wyszynski and Our Leading Architects and Artists’], Słowo Powszechne, 271 (1957), 3.59 Stefan Wyszyński, Pro memoria, vol. 4, 1956–1957, ed. by Michał Białkowski (Warszawa: Archidiecezja Warszawska, Archidiecezja Gnieźnieńska, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego, 2020), p. 459.60 Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze, p. 63.61 Ibid.62 Ibid, p. 64. Apparently, the architect’s views did not meet with Wyszynski’s understanding, as the former said: ‘[I]n order to be able to complain about these incidents to someone competent and close to me, I went to my sister — a nun — a few days after the meeting with the Primate. Our cousin, the Mother General of the congregation, also partook in the conversation. To the two of them I also laid out at length my disappointments and worries. What was the reaction? […] One looked at the other, after which the Mother General stated: “Well, yes, the Primate has a very clear opinion on matters of art and architecture”’. Both of Sołtan’s sisters were nuns.63 Wyszyński, Pro memoria, vol. 4, p. 495.64 ‘We do not have a single able architect, as evidenced by the torments of the arch[itectonic] commissions in the curia, Nowa Huta, Sochaczew. Catholica non leguntur among architects, few know the liturgy or dogmatics of the Holy Church.’ Catholica non leguntur is a reference to a Protestan maxime, which here means architects are not familiar with Catholic publications; ibid.65 This is according to the account by Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze, p. 64; also see Sołtan, ‘Kochany Biszo!’, p. 102. ‘[The Council] did not express any opinion on the design of the Sochaczew church by the architects Ihnatowicz and Sołtan, let alone accept it.’ See Council’s démenti in Stolica, 21 (1958), 23.66 Stefan Wyszyński, Pro memoria, vol. 5, 1958, ed. by Małgorzata Krupecka USJK (Warszawa: Archidiecezja Warszawska, Archidiecezja Gnieźnieńska, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego, 2018), p. 81.67 Wyszyński, Pro memoria, vol. 5, p. 186. In June 1958, the Primate noted in his diary: ‘1) the project is very expensive to maintain; 2) it does not consider the climate; 3) nor the very beautiful location; 4) it has too many motifs of “budokracja”, of which Sochaczew already has a lot. It is not suitable for implementation’. ‘Buda’ means ‘shed’ in Polish. In Wyszyński’s view, the issue lies in the overly simple forms of architecture that resemble makeshift buildings.68 Ihnatowicz and Sołtan, ‘Projekt kościoła’, pp. 68–9.69 Zygmunt Dejciński, ‘Duszpasterstwo w Sochaczewie. Potrzeba budowy nowego kościoła’ [‘Pastoral Ministry in Sochaczew: The Need for a New Church’], Ziemia Sochaczewska, 20 (1991), 3.70 Artur Stelmasiak, ‘Ostoja świętego Dominika’ [‘Bedrock of St Dominic’], Niedziela (Warsaw), 27 (2007), [accessed 22 August 2022].71 Ihnatowicz and Sołtan, ‘Projekt kościoła’, p. 68.72 This has recently been pointed out by Grzegorz Piątek in his text on the reception of Le Corbusier’s thought in Poland; see Grzegorz Piątek, ‘Cała Polska (nie) czyta Le Corbusiera’ [‘The Whole of Poland Reads (Or Do Not Read) Le Corbusier’], Teksty modernizmu. Antologia polskiej teorii i krytyki architektury 1918–1981, vol. 2, ed. by Dorota Jędruch, Marta Karpińska, and Dorota Leśniak-Rychlak (Kraków: Instytut Architektury, 2018), pp. 135–58.73 Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze, p. 33. See also a similar account of a conversation with Le Corbusier in Sołtan, On i ja, pp. 167–9.74 Sołtan spent the rest of his life in the USA, where he died in 2005. He became a respected lecturer there, serving as Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1967 to 1974. He was a member of Team 10. Even though he was opposed to postmodernism, Sołtan enjoyed the respect of some of its representatives who were his students. In 2002, he received the Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education. Sołtan helped persuade Le Corbusier to design his only building in the US: the Carpenter Center at Harvard University.75 It may be noted that Sołtan is not the only architect from Poland who contributed to the promotion of modernism outside his homeland. Also worth mentioning are Matthew Nowicki and his wife Stanisława in the USA and the milieu of The Polish School of Architecture in Liverpool, including Jerzy Faczyński, Lucjan Piętka, and Konrad Śmigielski among others. See Tadeusz Barucki, Mathew Nowicki: Poland, USA, India (Warszawa: Salix alba, 2010); Przemysław Kaniewski, Polska Szkoła Architektury w Wielkiej Brytanii 1942-1954 [Polish School of Architecture in Great Britain 1942–1954] (Warszawa: Marek Woch, 2013), part V, ‘Wykładowcy i absolwenci Polskiej Szkoły Architektury i ich osiągnięcia’ [Lecturers and alumni of the Polish School of Architecture and their achievements]; and Martin Kohlrausch, Brokers of Modernity: East Central Europe and the Rise of Modernist Architects, 1910–1950 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2019).76 Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze, pp. 64–6.77 The same happened earlier with the project for the stadium in Warsaw.78 Sołtan, Monografia, p. 47. In a report by Zbigniew Ihnatowicz: ‘The ecclesiastical patronage to which we tried to appeal at this point turned out to be no better than the official one, with which the problems seemed obvious.’ See Sołtan, ‘Kochany Biszo!’, p. 102.79 Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze, p. 66.80 See designs inv. no. MASP 4007 – MASP 4014.81 Sołtan, Rozmowy o architekturze, p. 65.82 Private conversation between the author and Konrad Kucza-Kuczyński (Council member since the 1970s), recorded on 24 August 2022.83 Wojciech Głowacki, ‘Przepis na kościół. Dyskusje o współczesnej architekturze sakralnej w Polsce w latach 80. XX wieku’ [‘A Recipe for a Church: Discussions on Contemporary Sacral Architecture in Poland in the 1980s’], Biuletyn Historii Sztuki, 1 (2022), 171–98.84 For findings on the process of sacred architecture transformation in Lorraine between 1945 and 1975, where many churches were demolished during the Second World War, just like in Poland, see Lucile Pierron, Églises lorraines des Trente Glorieuses. En quête de modernité [Churches in Lorraine during the Thirty Glorious Years: In Search of Modernity] (Genève: MétisPresses, 2021). The search for new forms in the post-war decades is also discussed by Céline Frémaux, Églises du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais 1945–2010. De la commande à la patrimonialisation [Churches of Nord and Pas-de-Calais 1945–2010: From Commission to Heritage] (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011), pp. 172–84.85 ‘But in the very process of design, […] the moment of synthesis (so little known, so mysterious) has to come.’ He emphasises that the master of the synthesis of these two elements (reason and emotion) is his patron: ‘The man in whose life these activities form a totally integrated monolith is, of course, Le Corbusier.’ See Soltan, ‘The Eternal Seesaw’, p. 275.Additional informationFundingThis study was funded by the National Science Center [grant number: 2019/33/N/HS2/00357].