[I have] a mental picture of the principal square [Krasiński Square] in the Polish city of Warsaw some time in the late nineteen-twenties. In the course of the first Russian occupation of Warsaw (1814-1915) the Russians had built an Eastern Orthodox Christian cathedral on this central spot in the city that had been the capital of the once independent Roman Catholic Christian country Poland. The Russians had done this to give the Poles a continuous ocular demonstration that the Russians were now their masters. After the reestablishment of Poland’s independence in 1918, the Poles had pulled this cathedral down. The demolition had been completed just before the date [1928] of my visit. I do not greatly blame the Polish Government for having pulled down that Russian church. The purpose for which the Russians had built it had been not religious but political, and the purpose had also been intentionally offensive.
The church had been built in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries for Piarist friars. In 1834, following the failed November Uprising of 1830-31, the Russian authorities turned it into an Orthodox church of the Holy Trinity. Between 1835 and 1837 it was reconstructed by Antonio Corazzi and Andrzej Gołuński in a style reminiscent of Rastrelli. They destroyed much of the interior, inserted Orthodox frescoes and a large iconostasis and added large onion domes to both towers.
When the Russians left Warsaw in 1915, the church was used as a depot by the German army stationed there. When Poland regained her independence in 1918, the decision was taken to restore it to its former look.
Between 1923 and 1927 it was reconstructed by Oskar Sosnowski, who based his design on seventeenth-century drawings, and reconsecrated as a Catholic church, but not returned to the Piarists. Instead, it rose to the dignity of a cathedral (Toynbee, no doubt correctly, calls it a cathedral during the Russian period), as the seat of the field bishop of the Polish Army. Toynbee must have been able to see the new building.
The Luftwaffe detroyed it on August 20 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising.
Between 1946 and 1960 a team of architects led by Leon Marek Suzin rebuilt it. It remained a cathedral and the seat of the field bishop of the army, though the post was purely titular, as religion had no place in the army in Communist-led Poland.
1830, painting by Marcin Zaleski
Russian rebuilding
Today
One World and India, New Delhi, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Orient Longmans Private Ltd, February 1960
August 5 2011 at 1:32 pm
Michael Derrick died fifty years ago today.
He wrote much about the Catholic Church in Poland during the Cold War, and was interested in the Orthodox churches too.
August 5 2011 at 1:52 pm
Is there another large onion dome at the back of the cathedral?
September 2 2011 at 12:02 pm
On the left of the first picture it’s a dome of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, but not connected to the Orthodox Church, rather to baroque style.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Castle,_Warsaw
On the right of the second picture it can probably be the dome of the Basilians order’s greek-catholic church (Miodowa str. 16), which still exist, rebuilt after Germans partly destroyed it in the WW2, but without the dome.
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerkiew_i_monaster_Za%C5%9Bni%C4%99cia_Naj%C5%9Bwi%C4%99tszej_Marii_Panny_w_Warszawie
H_Piotr.
September 2 2011 at 6:31 pm
Thanks for pointing out these additional landmarks. (This isn’t contradicting anything in the post, as far as I understand. My question was because the Russians are said to have added a large onion dome to “both towers”, but I could only see one large dome.)