Polish traditions in Catholic churches of the Ruhr area

Churches as witnesses to Ruhr area history
 

The “Ruhr area” is an extensive mining district in western Germany between the Ruhr and Lippe rivers in the centre of North Rhine-Westphalia. It only emerged in the second half of the 19th century when the industrialisation of coal mining and steel manufacture transformed this once rural region into a gigantic urban landscape within a few decades. From then on, pit frames and blast furnaces competed with traditional church towers to dominate as landmarks. [ . ] 

Among the masses of immigrant working-class families, people with Polish as their native language formed the largest national population group. Before the First World War, more than 300,000 Catholic Poles who had mostly been born in the Prussian provinces of Posen, Silesia and West Prussia lived in the Ruhr area. There were also 150,000 Protestant Masurians from the province East Prussia. Companies built numerous worker settlements, known as “colonies”, to accommodate them. [ . ] Town centres expanded around the mines and ironworks with more residential housing, administrative buildings, businesses, schools, and churches. [ ., ., . ]

The places of worship in the industrial area reflect the history of the Ruhr region in a variety of ways. In some of the mining villages, the enormous influx of religious immigrants meant that the small churches dating back to the Middle Ages needed to be extended. In Dortmund-Kirchlinde the old bell tower was torn down and replaced with a monumental church tower that was connected to a sweeping neo-Gothic nave on the other side. [ ., . ] Clay bricks were the main construction material in many new buildings. [ ., . ] They often came from mine brickworks and were fired from marl clay which had to be extracted as a waste product from coal mining. In Protestant sacred buildings, steel pillars are often found that were likely donated to the parish by neighbouring ironworks. [ ., . ]

Catholicism initially favoured sprawling church spaces that, alongside the central nave for the main services, also included divided-off areas for private piety and the worshipping of saints. However, in the early 20th century, it is noticeable that the interior spaces were increasingly designed to be more open. Now the wide, high nave accommodated many pews and both sides of the nave were reduced to the function of narrow side passages. [ ., . ] This understanding of space can – according to pastor Johannes van Acken from Gladbeck in his “Christocentric” architecture theory – be understood as a reaction to a dramatic situation in the Ruhr area where the parish clergy was challenged by a dissonant demographic around 1900: “Large masses of a rapidly merging population, often of different nationalities, sometimes with less of a religious background should learn, detached from religious customs from their home, to feel that they belong in the places of worship as members of a parish and children of one Father. The importance of this vibrant sense of community and belonging for religious life in the new district speaks for bringing the parish together in a more unified church space.” Using the example of the Holy Cross Church in Gladbeck-Butendorf, Acken explained that a Mass celebrated together in this ideal space could help to reduce national tensions among the faithful: The “expansion of the central church space” explicitly took place with the intention that “the altar be the centre of attention, the heart, and point of sight for everyone ideally.” [ ., ., Quotation [freely translated]: van Acken, pp. 8.]

 

Ruhr-Polish pastoral care in conflict
 

The pastoral ministry saw a huge social challenge in the large influx of religious immigrants. After all, the life of miners and steelworkers was characterised by hard and dangerous work in shift operations, by often insufficient living conditions, by the feeling of being uprooted, and by loneliness in the vast tumult of the dirty and poisoned urban landscape. The local population especially distrusted the new arrivals from Poland, accusing them stereotypically of foolish behaviour, carelessness, mendacity, laziness and alcoholism. The colourful clothing of Polish women was considered tasteless and their housekeeping as disorderly.

Around 1900, especially in the northern Ruhr area, there were essentially “Polish mines” in which Polish-speaking miners made up more than 50 % of the labourers. This meant that Polish dominated in numbers in some church parishes, for example in the Sacred Heart of Jesus parish in Bottrop [ . ], which was met with irritation from residents who had lived there a long time. Polish majorities in elected church committees were ignored or sabotaged. Established church associations resisted accepting foreign-speaking new citizens. This is also one of the reasons a specifically Polish association emerged around the church, although the German town pastor or his chaplain presided over this. [ . ] 

The use of the Polish language in church services developed into a key area of conflict. Religious services in the Ruhr area were initially carried out by secular priests of Polish nationality who had been recruited from the Prussian eastern provinces. They lived in the Redemptorist Monastery, from which the German padres had been expelled in the course of the 1873 Prussian “cultural battle” [ . ], and from there visited individual parishes. The peak of this pastoral care were multiple-day Polish “people’s missions” with a wide-ranging offer of celebrations of Mass, confessionals, and religious instruction.

In the eastern Ruhr area, Franciszek Liss, the founder of, for example, the popular newspaper “Wiarus Polski” was particularly busy since 1890. However, he soon came under suspicion – and not entirely without justification – of acting in Polish national interests. This led the Prussian authorities to dismiss the busy pastor from the Bishop of Paderborn in 1894. For some time after, regional pastoral care for the Ruhr Poles was provided by German secular priests, and as of 1900 by Upper Silesian padres from the Dortmund Franciscan monastery [ . ] who first had to acquire the necessary language skills. These clerics were quickly suspected of wanting to Germanise the Polish parishioners on behalf of the state with the help of the pastor and were therefore often distrusted and rejected.

Despite this conflict, Polish parishioners and Polish associations were often involved in building and furnishing churches in the Ruhr area. There are records of financial donations to, for example, Dortmund (Franciscan Monastery, Holy Trinity Church), Gelsenkirchen-Schalke and Recklinghausen-Bruch. In Bottrop-Eigen and Bottrop-Batenbrock Polish parishioners also supported such projects with their labour. Pensioners supplied bricks and sand, and miners helped physically with construction after their shift. 

To furnish the churches Ruhr-Polish parishioners and associations donated multiple altars to, for example, churches in Dortmund-Eving (St. Barbara), Herne (St. Bonifatius), Duisburg-Laar (St. Ewaldi) und Castrop-Rauxel-Schwerin (St. Francis). The donation of confessional booths mostly took place on the occasion of a Ruhr-Polish mission. Examples of this are documented, for example, for Dortmund (St. Apostles), Dortmund-Marten (Holy Family), Herne-Börnig (St. Peter and Paul), Oberhausen-Osterfeld (St. Pankratius) and Duisburg-Meiderich (St. Michael). These confessional booths were then also used by Polish pastors and parishioners after the people’s mission.

Mission crosses with Polish inscriptions were sometimes donated to commemorate such events, for example to Gelsenkirchen-Bismarck (St. Francis), Recklinghausen-Hillerheide (St. Gertrudis) and Dortmund-Nette (St. Joseph). Some priests to whom the Polish community members felt especially connected received liturgical items as a gift, e.g. Communion chalices or containers for Communion bread in Witten (Church of Our Lady) and Dortmund (St. Anna, Holy Trinity Church). There are only a few of these donations left in the Ruhr area. These objects are presented further below. [ ., ., ., ., ., . ]

 

Ruhr-Polish veneration of saints
 

The immigrant Poles felt connected to some saints that also enjoyed international veneration. However, their veneration of Mary comprised a specifically nationalistic Polish aspect. In reference to the icon of the “Black Madonna” at the pilgrimage site Częstochowa, the Mother of God was also worshipped as “Queen of Poland” in the Ruhr area. [ ., ., . ] Prussian authorities criticised this veneration as inadmissible nationalistic propaganda. In Essen-Schonnebeck, for example, a church association flag was changed upon police order for this reason; the Madonna portrait was removed.

Holy Joseph, husband of the Mother of God and Jesus’ foster father, was worshipped in the Ruhr area by both German and Polish Catholics. [ ., . ] There were seven churches dedicated to him in the Dortmund city district alone. As a trained carpenter (see. Book of Matthew, 13:55), he is still considered a patron saint by Catholic workers worldwide. 

There is an even closer emotional connection to the mining industry than carpenter Joseph: mining patron saint Barbara. According to widespread legend, Barbara lived in the Roman Empire in late antiquity. Following her conversion to Christianity, her pagan father punished Barbara by locking her in a stone tower and ultimately executing her. In the industrial era the themes of being locked in the darkness and the continual risk of death were interpreted as a link to mining. Barbara was introduced to the Ruhr area as the patron saint of miners by immigrants from Upper Silesia in around 1890. After 1945, her cult received more momentum in Western Germany from Silesian refugees and displaced people. Churches in the Polish (and Czech) mining districts often depict her holding – as in the Ruhr area – a vessel for Communion bread to bring food for the last journey of injured miners. [ ., ., ., . ]

Multiple association names refer to Polish patron saints that were not worshipped in the Ruhr coal district before the industrial era: Kasimir and Hyazinth, Bronisław and Czesław, Wacław and Jadwiga. Jadwiga is Hedwig of Anjou, Queen of Poland from 1373–1399. [ . ] Wojciech und Stanisław Kostka were especially popular in the Ruhr area. Today, pictorial representations of them only exist in two churches in Herne and Recklinghausen. They are presented and interpreted below. [ ., . ]

Ruhr Poles who fought and fell for the German Empire during the First World War are commemorated still in some churches with plaques bearing Polish family names. [ ., . ] The situation changed significantly following the November Revolution of 1918. Many miners moved to the newly founded Polish state or to the coal districts in northern France. Although there was no longer any pressure for Germanisation in the Weimar Republic, an assimilation process for the remaining families in West Germany accelerated at the cost of their Polish identity. At the same time, the appreciation of national Polish traditions in the churches of the Ruhr area declined. 

In the Second World War, some sacred artefacts fell victim to Allied bomb attacks, e.g. a Stanislaus Kostka window in St. Magdalene Church in Dortmund-Lütgendortmund. In many places, liturgical items were replaced by more modern inventory after 1945, including a Mary altar in the Church of Our Lady in Herne-Baukau which was donated in 1900 by the local Polish Brotherhood of the Rosary. In Gelsenkirchen-Schalke there was a much-venerated Madonna of the Rosary, whose dark face resembled the “Queen of Poland in Częstochowa”, for a long time. Even after its rescue from the rubble of the ruined Joseph’s Church, the Mary figure received an honorary place in the temporary church during the post-war period until it was “destroyed to avoid necessary renovation” in the 1960s. [ ., Quote in Brandt, Schalke, p. 391] Meanwhile Duchess Hedwig of Silesia (1174–1243) was canonised as a protective saint for refugees and displaced people who had to find a new home in the Federal Republic of Germany. [ . ]

 

Preserved to this day: Depictions of Polish patron saints in the Ruhr area 
 

Nowadays only a few witnesses in the places of worship of the Ruhr coal district commemorate the large number of Polish Catholics that practised their religion here over 100 years ago. First there is an altar wing from 1908–1911 which was broken off from the old Röhlinghausen parish church in 1965. It was consecrated to both the mining saint Barbara and to the Holy Ghost. [ ., ., ., ., ., ., ., see online exhibition] There you can see for example the Holy Bishop Adalbert (Wojciech), who played a key role in the formation of the Polish state in the Middle Ages. Three years after his murder – Adalbert was slain by pagan “Old Prussians” in 997 during a failed mission attempt – Emperor Otto III ordered the martyr to be brought to the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, now the cathedral, in Gniezno. During the ceremonies that followed, Otto III bestowed the titles “frater et cooperator imperii” and “amicus populi romani” upon the Polish duke Bolesław Chrobry, thus raising his noble rank. This official act is regarded as an important step towards the development of a Polish kingdom independent of the German “regnum”. 

In the altarpiece in Herne, Adalbert is holding a club in his left hand, a reference to his violent death. On his left is the Duchess Elisabeth of Thuringia, who is essentially venerated in Germany as a national patron saint due to her charitable work. Considering the social and political tensions between Germans and Ruhr Poles at the time the painting was completed (1908–1911), this altarpiece in Herne-Röhlinghausen can be interpreted as an appeal for the peaceful coexistence of people and ethnic groups of different nationalities! [ . ]

A Stanislaus Kostka window in the St. John Church (St.-Johannes-Kirche) in Recklinghausen-Suderwich shall be interpreted as a second depiction of a Polish national saint in the Ruhr coal district. [ ., ., ., ., ., ., see online exhibition] The historic Stanislaus (Stanisław, born around 1550 at Roskowo Palace in Masovia) experienced two mystical visions in 1564 while he was a student at the Vienna Jesuit College and suffering from a life-threatening illness: Holy Barbara sent two angels to give him Holy Communion. The Virgin Mary placed the Christ child into his arms and urged him to enter the Jesuit Order in Rome. Despite his authoritarian father forbidding this, Stanislaus followed this instruction. He died in 1567 in Rome. During his short life, Stanislaus Kostka impressed those he met with his cheerful demeanour, personal modesty and deep piety. Stanislaus Kostka is the patron saint of young students, novices in the Jesuit Order, and of the severely ill and dying. Because his intercession was said to have led to several victories in important battles he was proclaimed patron saint of the Polish-Lithuanian crown in 1674. 

In the window in Suderwich, Stanislaus is holding a pilgrim’s staff in his left hand, indicating his pilgrimage on foot from Vienna to Rome. In his right arm he is holding the Christ child, whose universal rule is expressed by a small globe. The colourful window calls to mind the appearance of Mary before the feverish Jesuit scholar in Vienna: In his mystical vision, the Mother of God handed him her son to hold. [ . ]

 

Ruhr-Polish donation inscriptions on altars, mission crosses and a confessional booth
 

Today there are only a few objects with inscriptions referring to Ruhr-Polish donations. It is especially important to highlight the altar of Mary in the St. Barbara Church in Dortmund-Eving. [ ., ., ., . ] There is Polish and German writing on both narrow sides: gewid[met] v[om] S[ank]t Jos[efs] Polenverein in Eving 1900 / Pamiątka od Tawarzytwa (sic!) polskiego św[iętego] Józefa w Eving dnia 19.3.1900 (Donated by Saint Joseph’s Polish Association in Eving 1900). On 9/3/1897, the Ruhr-Polish newspaper “Wiarus Polski” already reported that the local Joseph Association had collected “40.60 marks for an altar in Eving” in the previous year. The parish chronicles of St. Barbara noted that Polish parishioners had donated a total of 4,291 marks for this project in 1900. 

It was a neo-Gothic altar of Mary. The Mother of God is not carrying the Christ child on her arm; as such it does not resemble the depiction in the popular miraculous image of Częstochowa. Instead her hands are folded and with her left foot, as the “new Eva”, she treads on the head of the snake from Paradise holding the apple of temptation in its mouth. Small sculptures of Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, are clearly visible on the left and right. 

Around the turn of the century, almost half of the Eving Church parish were immigrants also pursuing national Polish interests. On 30/3/1899, the “Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung” newspaper reported that the Joseph Association had collected 450 marks that were to be used exclusively for the education of not only Polish-speaking, but also Polish-thinking clerics [quotation according to Brandt, Poland, p. 148]. This took place at the same time as its work for the altar of Mary in St. Barbara.

The Catholic temporary church in Castrop-Rauxel-Schwerin from 1907/08 that was dedicated to the Holy Francis was torn down in 1970 and replaced by an impressive, new modern building. In the course of these measures, a neo-Gothic Mary altar with a Polish donation inscription ended up at the Dioceses Museum in Paderborn and is currently not accessible to the public there. 

In the St. Apostles Church in the Dortmund district of Nordstadt a confessional booth is preserved on which a donation inscription in Polish commemorates the first people’s mission that was held in this place of worship: Pamiątka Missyi świętej 1907 (In remembrance of the Holy Mission 1907). This is surely also an indication that Ruhr-Polish parishioners were able to confess in their native language here. Another inscription is written in Latin: ab occultis meis munda me domine (Free me from my sins, Lord!). The Latin language is a reference to the universal church, to which the Polish-Catholics’ national-religious understanding of faith is also subordinate. A crucifix in St. Apostles Church notes the years of seven people’s missions between 1907 and 1951. However, there is no indication that this cross would have been donated by Ruhr Poles on the occasion of the mission in 1907. The church was closed in 2020; the confessional booth is to be moved elsewhere should the place of worship be deconsecrated in future. [ ., ., ., . ]

A mission cross with a donation inscription in Polish is still at the St. Joseph Church in Dortmund-Nette and is very valued there. The text reads: I, SZA MISYA ŚW W MENGEDE KOL OD I.XII.XIII. DO X.XII.XIII. (First Holy Mission in the Mengede Colony. From 1/12/[19]13 to 10/12/[19]13) By way of clarifying this inscription: The village of Nette had belonged to the Mengede administration since 1889, which was not incorporated as part of Dortmund until 1928. The church parish in Nette only became independent in 1941; beforehand it was a subsidiary parish of the main church St. Remigius in Mengede. The “Mengede Colony” was also part of the Nette subsidiary parish in 1913, and this is evidently what the inscription on the crucifix refers to. [ ., ., . ]

The church parish in Recklinghausen-Hillerheide was also donated a crucifix to mark the occasion of a Polish-speaking people’s mission. A small brass plaque notes: Na pamiątkę Missyi św. 1911 (In remembrance of the Holy Mission 1911). At the beginning of the 21st century, this mission cross was no longer at the modern parish church of St. Gertrudis, erected in 1954 instead of the temporary church of 1908, and instead was stored in one of the church’s own storehouses. Today it belongs to the inventory of RELiGIO, the Westphalian Museum for Religious Culture in Telgte, near Münster. [ ., ., . ] 

 

Liturgical items with Polish donation inscriptions
 

In a few cases liturgical items have survived that Ruhr Poles gifted to a church parish or individual priests. A ciborium for holding Communion bread bears the inscription: Podarunek od polskich niewiast św. Anny (Gift of the Polish Women to the Parish of St. Anna). This refers to the St. Anna Church in the Dortmund Unionviertel district, known as the Church of the Polish Catholic Mission (Polska Misja Katolicka) since 2003. [ ., ., . ]

A Communion chalice, a drinking vessel for consecrated wine, under the base of which a Polish dedication is engraved, comes from the Holy Trinity Church in the Dortmund district of Nordstadt: Swemu dyrektorowi, Wiel. k. Mehlerowi Bractwo Różańca św. parafii św. Trójcy. 10. XII. 19103. (To its director, the honourable Priest Mehler, the Brotherhood of the Holy Rosary of the Parish of the Holy Trinity. 10 December 1913). The name of the goldsmith’s workshop “H[ermann] Cassau” from “Paderborn” is also noted under the base of the chalice.

In the early years of the 20th century, Ruhr Poles made up more than a third of the parish members of Holy Trinity. There were three Polish worker associations as well as the Brotherhood of the Rosary, which was founded in 1911 and united almost 1,000 people. Gustav Mehler, who headed this church as chaplain from 1908–1930, was one of the German clerics that was educated for Polish pastoral care by means of financial support from the Prussian state and thus learned the Polish language. The Communion chalice is testament to Mehler’s popularity. Clearly, he was not rejected under the suspicion of wanting to Germanise the Polish parishioners on behalf of the Prussian state. The official designation dyrektor can be translated as “association president” of the Brotherhood of the Rosary, to which he provided spiritual guidance. [ ., ., ., . ]

In December 1909, close to the Holy Trinity Association, the football club Borussia Dortmund (BVB) was founded. This happened against the explicit wish of upset chaplain Hubert Dewald, a fellow minister of Gustav Mehler. Dewald regarded this “football nonsense” as competition for his Sunday youth confessional. Individual Polish family names allow us to assume that Ruhr-Polish teenagers were also involved in this conflict. However, the unruly footballers remained loyal Catholics in the long term; many of them later married in the Church of the Holy Trinity and had their children christened there.

The Church of the Holy Trinity is currently being rebuilt as the “BVB founding church” into a “historic place of remembrance” to which “football fans, religious people, neighbours and people with open hearts” are welcome. This is by definition an “intercultural and interreligious project” (bvb-gruenderkirche.de). It was closed as a parish church in 2023. Individual services can, however, be celebrated here again in future. The Ruhr-Polish Communion chalice was taken on by the Dortmund Nordstadt parish “Holy Three Kings” to which the Church of the Holy Trinity belongs.

 

Concluding comments
 

In retrospect, the following can be said about the topic of sacred traditions: The Christocentric architecture of Catholic churches from the early years of the 20th century commemorates the mass migration and points to the necessity of a joint celebration of Mass to help overcome latent tensions between the faithful of different nationalities. The Poles set their own tone by not only deepening the already common worship of worker patron saint Joseph in the Ruhr area but also the mining patron Barbara. They brought a specific holy cult to their new home, the worship of the Mother of God of Częstochowa as well as various Polish national saints. They were involved in the construction of new churches and donated inventory: altars and confessional booths, mission crosses and liturgical items.

It should be noted that there are still dozens of Polish association flags in the Ruhr area today. Some are found in churches, others now in museums, in private or association collections. [ ., ., ., . ] A systematic observation and scientific documentation is yet to happen.

Many of these donated objects increasingly lost their symbolic value and thus also their appreciation with the departure of a large number of “Ruhr Poles” after 1918 and the national integration of the remaining immigrants in Germany. During the following decades, much was removed from the places of worship, disposed of and destroyed. This makes what remains even more valuable, especially when a donation inscription in Polish commemorates the strained cultural and social history of the Ruhr area. 

 

Thomas Parent, March 2026

 

Selected bibliography:
 

van Acken, J[ohannes]: Festschrift zur Einweihung der Kirchen zum Hl. Herzen Jesu und zum Hl. Kreuze in Gladbeck, Gladbeck i. W. 1914. Faksimilierter Nachdruck des Originals, ed. by Ralph Eberhard Brachthäuser, Gladbeck 2022.

Bachem-Rehm, Michaela: Die katholischen Arbeitervereine im Ruhrgebiet 1870–1914. Katholisches Arbeitermilieu zwischen Tradition und Emanzipation, Stuttgart 2002.

Brandt, Hans Jürgen: Die Polen und die katholische Kirche im Ruhrgebiet 1871–1919, Münster 1987.

Brandt, Hans Jürgen: Schalke 91. Eine katholische Arbeitergemeinde im Ruhrgebiet mit Tradition, Paderborn 1991.

Haida, Sylvia: Die Ruhrpolen. Nationale und konfessionelle Identität im Bewusstsein und im Alltag 1871–1918, phil. Diss., Bonn [masch.] 2012.

Kleßmann, Christoph: Polnische Bergarbeiter im Ruhrgebiet 1870–1945. Soziale Integration und nationale Subkultur einer Minderheit in der deutschen Industriegesellschaft, Göttingen 1978.

Murphy, R. C.: Gastarbeiter im Deutschen Reich. Polen in Bottrop 1891–1933, Wuppertal 1982.

Murzynowska, Krystyna: Die polnischen Erwerbsauswanderer im Ruhrgebiet während der Jahre 1880–1914, Dortmund 1979.

Parent, Thomas (texts) und Thomas Stachelhaus (photos): Kirchen im Ruhrrevier, 1850–1935, Münster 1993.

Parent, Thomas: Gute Arbeit, hoher Lohn. Zukunftsversprechen für polnische Immigranten ins Ruhrgebiet und ihre Einlösung, in: War die Zukunft früher besser? Visionen für das Ruhrgebiet, Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung, Essen 2000, p. 43–60.

Peters-Schildgen, Susanne: „Schmelztiegel“ Ruhrgebiet. Die Geschichte der Zuwanderung am Beispiel Herne bis 1945, Essen 1997.

Stefanski, Valentina-Maria: Zum Prozess der Emanzipation und Integration von Außenseitern. Polnische Arbeitsmigranten im Ruhrgebiet, 2nd ed., Dortmund 1991.