St. Alexander Nevski - the Orthodox council in Łódź, the
cathedral of the Łódź-Poznań diocese of the Polish Autocephalous
Orthodox Church and the seat of the local parish (in the deanery of
Łódź). It is located at Jana Kilińskiego 56, in the vicinity of the
park. Stanisław Moniuszko and the Łódź Fabryczna railway station.
The parish church was erected in the years 1880–1884 on the
initiative of a committee established by the largest factory owners
in Łódź who intended to prove their loyalty to the tsarist
authorities by building an Orthodox church building. The temple was
designed by Hilary Majewski. The church was consecrated in 1884 by
the archbishop of Chełm and Leoncjusz from Warsaw. It was also
continuously active during World War I, when Russian officials and
soldiers left the city. In the interwar period, unlike many other
churches built in the Kingdom of Poland for the needs of the
Russians, it was not recovered for the Catholic Church or
dismantled, which is usually explained by the circumstances of its
construction - it was funded by wealthy and respected citizens of
Łódź. In 1951, in connection with the establishment of the
Łódź-Poznań diocese, the temple was given the rank of a cathedral
council.
Inside the building, the original 19th-century
furnishings with a three-row iconostasis have been preserved.
The circumstances of the creation and construction
The first
Orthodox families appeared in Łódź in the 1850s; they were only
Russians. Initially, their number was insignificant, only after the
January Uprising and the tightening of the Russification policy did it
begin to grow. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Orthodox
constituted about 1-2% of the inhabitants of Łódź (the difference
results from including the total number of Russian soldiers stationed in
the city), i.e. about 7,000. residents. For religious purposes, a small
community used a rented room in a private house, a branch of the All
Saints Parish in Piotrków, and did not strive to build a free-standing
facility. The soldiers of the 37th Yekaterinburg Infantry Regiment had a
separate home church in the apartment of retired military man Andreyev,
located at Nawrot Street.
The initiator of the construction of
the Orthodox Church in Łódź was the governor of Piotrków, Iwan Kachanow.
Initially, however, his appeal for the erection of a free-standing
Orthodox temple in Łódź did not bring any results. The city authorities
did not accept the concept of building the church near Nowy Rynek (today
Wolności Square), proposing that it should be built in the park on
Widzewska Street (now Kilińskiego Street), next to the railway station.
It was a prestigious location, but it had a significant disadvantage,
which was the wetland of the land. At the same time, it was a plot of
land owned by the city, which meant that any repairs of the building
would be at its expense. On May 24, 1877, Kachanow asked the Mayor of
Łódź, Maurycy Taubworcla, to take concrete steps to start construction
works. The city architect Hilary Majewski then designed the building,
but the Orthodox community, which at that time numbered three hundred
people, was not able to cover the costs of the work. The Holy Ruling
Synod also decided not to finance the investment.
The initiative
to build a church in Łódź was again undertaken by local entrepreneurs,
who themselves were not believers of the Orthodox Church. On April 6,
1879, a church building committee was established, including the largest
manufacturers of Łódź: Karol Scheibler, Juliusz Heinzel, Józef
Paszkiewicz, Edward Herbst, Ludwik Meyer, Symon Heiman jr., Izrael
Poznański, A. Tumski, Aleksander Chudziński and Karol Strenge, and also
the mayor of the city, Walerian Makowiecki. On the initiative of the
committee, the temple was to commemorate the figure and rescue of Tsar
Alexander II from the attempt on his life carried out four days earlier
by Alexander Soloviev in front of the Winter Palace. The factory owners
hoped that erecting a sacred building to commemorate such an event would
help them gain government support for their own investment and
commercial projects. In particular, they hoped to move the capital of
the Piotrków Governorate to Łódź and to obtain new contracts. The
committee chose St. Alexander Nevsky - patron of Alexander II. Karol
Scheibler chaired the committee until his death in 1881, later he was
headed by Ivan Kakhanov. In March 1880, Majewski's design was approved
for implementation. Already during the works, the construction committee
was joined by Herman Konstadt, Reinhold Finster and Ludwik Grohman, as
well as the new president of Łódź, Władysław Pieńkowski
The cost
estimate for the construction of the church was PLN 69,000. rubles. The
Scheibler family covered the largest part of the costs (25,000 rubles).
11 thousand Juliusz Heinzel donated rubles for the construction, and 10
thousand. Karol Scheibler's son-in-law, Edward Herbst. In addition,
Heinzel paid for carpentry work worth 7,000. rubles, and Herbst bought
the church equipment for 5 thousand. Izrael Poznański donated 8,000 for
the construction, and Herman Konstadt 4,000. rubles. The architect
Hilary Majewski covered the cost of making stained glass in the amount
of PLN 1.5 thousand. rubles. Private donors, none of whom were members
of the Orthodox Church, collectively covered more than 86% of all
construction costs.
On May 8, 1880, Fr. Konstantin Ryżkowski,
parish priest of All Saints parish in Piotrków Trybunalski, blessed the
cornerstone. The construction works were carried out by the Lodz company
of Robert Nestler. The consecration of the temple took place on May 29,
1884. The building was consecrated by the Archbishop of Chełm and
Leoncjusz from Warsaw in the presence of Warsaw governors Iosif Hurka
and Nikolai Zinoviev from Piotrków. The building could accommodate 300
people at one time. Therefore, it was not a large temple, but the
favorable location in the background of the park and spatial layout
added to its splendor.
The square around the church was fenced in September 1891. The
construction of the fence was financed by Izrael Poznański. Originally,
the square of the church was much larger than it is today.
Orthodox church until 1918
In the year of its commissioning, the
temple received a set of silver and gilded liturgical vessels as a gift
from Tsar Alexander III.
Until 1906, the number of Orthodox
inhabitants of Łódź increased again. In 1906, Russians of this religion
constituted about 3% of all inhabitants of the city (10,000 people),
which was related to the influx of workers working on the expansion of
the railway line from Warsaw to Kalisz, as well as the bringing of
additional officials during the revolution of 1905. In the following
years, there was a noticeable decrease in the number of Orthodox
Christians, who in 1911 again constituted about 1% of the inhabitants of
Łódź. Most of the people of this faith left the city during the
evacuation of Russian officials in 1915, so that in 1918 the share of
Orthodox Christians in the population of Łódź was 0.4%. Until 1917, the
pastor of the parish of St. Alexander Nevsky, Fr. Antoni Rudlewski.
After he was sent to pastoral work in Warsaw, his duties were taken over
by Fr. Teodor Walikowski. This meant that throughout the entire period
of World War I, the temple remained active and suffered no material
losses. Thanks, Fr. Rudlewski the bell from the church of St. Alexander
Nevsky, weighing nearly two tons, was not confiscated by the German
army.
Orthodox church in the interwar period
In the interwar
period, the number of Orthodox Christians in Łódź increased again, which
was influenced by the return of some Russian families to the city and
the settlement of Ukrainians and Belarusians there. A group of white
Russian emigrants also settled there, but there is no data determining
their number. In 1927, 3,000 people lived in Łódź. Orthodox believers,
and in 1937 nearly 11 thousand. (according to the questioned data of the
Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare), which made the city the largest
Orthodox community in the region.
In the reborn Polish state, the
Orthodox Church of St. Alexander Nevsky became officially the seat of
the parish in 1920. It was to be attended not only by the faithful from
the city and district of Łódź, but also from the counties of Kalisz,
Koło, Konin, Łęczyca, Sieradz, Słupca, Turkish and Wieluń. In the first
post-war years, during the restitution of Orthodox churches, when many
churches erected at the initiative of the tsarist authorities were
demolished, the church of St. Alexander Nevsky was never intended to be
closed and liquidated. Similarly, the Łódź magistrate never considered
the destruction of the church of St. Olga and the cemetery church of the
Dormition of the Mother of God. It was presumed in the literature that
the temple's survival was favored by the fact that well-known figures
associated with Łódź, not only representatives of the tsarist
authorities, were involved in its construction. Perhaps, however, the
decision to keep the temple was made for pragmatic reasons (at the
Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Enlightenment or at the
level of municipal authorities), recognizing that the Orthodox parish in
Łódź really needed this sacred building.
In the interwar period,
the city authorities co-financed the renovation of the church several
times. In the years 1928–1929, the building underwent a major
renovation, during which its façade and tower were renovated, and the
roof was repaired. In 1936, the facade of the building was renovated
again. In the same year, the plot and the church became the property of
the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church by prescription.
World
War II and the post-war period
During World War II, the Orthodox
clergy serving in St. Alexander Nevsky issued false baptism certificates
to the Jews of Łódź. The Germans demanded that the parish give up church
bells to be melted down, but the parish priest, Fr. Stefan Rudyk hid
them, walling them up on the belfry. After the liberation of Łódź from
the occupation, the bells were restored to liturgical use.
In
1951, the temple obtained the rank of a council, becoming at the same
time the cathedral of the Łódź-Poznań diocese. After World War II, the
number of Orthodox Christians in Lodz fell again as a result of the
persecution of white Russian emigrants by the NKVD. In 1951, 3,000
people belonged to the parish. faithful. At the end of the 1960s and the
beginning of the 1970s, the number of the faithful attending it was
estimated at 2,500 people, of which only 600 were actually practicing.
In the 1960s, due to the widening of the street in front of the church's
façade, the parish square was removed from the parish and the building
was located almost in the immediate vicinity of the road.
The
temple was entered in the register of monuments on January 20, 1971
under number A / 117.
In August 2014, the relics of St. Mary
Magdalene brought by monks from Athos.
At the beginning of the
21st century, the building was completely renovated, regaining the
external appearance of the first years after completion of construction.