It is a phenomenon on a European scale. The inconspicuous chapel in Czermna in Kudowa-Zdrój hides a macabre secret. She was made of thousands of human skeletons.
From the outside it looks very inconspicuous, one could even call it "idyllic". A yellow baroque chapel against a clear sky ... It was built in Czermna, just over a kilometer from the center of Kudowa-Zdrój. She is over 200 years old, but that's not what makes her stand out. Whoever decides to go inside will be among… thousands of human skulls.
Macabre building
There is one such place in Poland, and 9 in Europe. The construction of the Skull Chapel took 18 years. It was erected at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. The entire building is in fact a large ossuary (i.e. a vessel for bones or ashes) for thousands of dead.
About 3,000 human skulls and bones were placed on the walls. The exact amount of the remains in the crypt located under the floor has never been determined - it is estimated that their number is in the range of 20-30,000 .
From the outside, it looks very inconspicuous, you could even call it "idyllic".
Where did such a macabre building come from in Lower Silesia? It was created thanks to priest Wacław Tomaszek. He was a parish priest of Czech origin who took over the parish in Czermna and - importantly - in 1775 he visited the Roman catacombs .
The underground necropolis of the Holy See made an unforgettable impression on him. Perhaps that's why, when he found human bones under the church's belfry several months later, he decided to make use of them.
They probably simply protruded from the nearby escarpment, although, according to a local legend, the remains were dug up by a dog. Whatever the case, the parish priest, seeing the skulls, sent for the gravedigger Langer and the churchman Schmidt to help him recover the shallow-lying skeletons. Neither of them expected how much the earth is hiding.
Also read:Brothels by cemeteries, feasts on graves and a way to ward off evil spirits. Did the Romans fear the dead?
Eternal life begins in the tomb
In the end, the priest - with the financial support of the local magnate, Leopold von Leslie - decided to create a place of remembrance and reflection from the bones found. What for the dead became a mass grave and a final farewell, was to remind the living of the final judgment and eternal life.
There were found not only anonymous bodies from the belfry of Czermno. The parish priest gathered helpers with whom collected the remains from the vicinity of Kudowa, Duszniki and Polanica for almost two decades . Langer, in turn, was ordered to clean and whiten the bones that men carried in the chapel until 1804, when Wacław Tomaszek died.
The exact amount of the remains in the crypt located under the floor has never been determined - it is estimated that their number is in the range of 20-30 thousand.
Since then, for the next 200 years, the building hardly changed. Thousands of empty eye sockets. Crossbones in walls and ceiling. A modest altar, a Baroque cross, wooden figures of angels with a trumpet and scales, as well as Latin inscriptions:"Rise from the dead" and "Go to judgment".
Later, a monument was added with a slogan in three languages: "For the victims of wars in memory, and the living as a warning, 1914" , and for tourist purposes, the most interesting bones were displayed on the altar.
Read also:Templar chapel in Chwarszczany - unique on a global scale
Who is resting in the Skull Chapel?
Almost all skeletons are anonymous. It is known for certain that in the building lie Jan Langer and priest Wacław Tomaszek - both of them wanted to go to the chapel, which was their life's work. Also known are the village administrator Martinec and his wife, whose skulls bear clear traces of brutal death. What happened to them? They died at the hands of the Prussians during the Seven Years' War .
The man was shot when it was revealed that he was leading Austrian soldiers through the maze of Errant Rocks. The woman was killed with a sharp instrument, perhaps a bayonet, when she tried to shield her husband from the bullets with her body. One skull belongs to the Tatar, as evidenced by its anatomical structure, but the owner's identity remains a mystery.
What about the other tens of thousands buried in the Skull Chapel? Well, the land of Kłodzko hides memories of many conflicts and absorbed hectoliters of spilled blood. Bones collected by Father Tomaszek most likely come from more than one source and are of different ages.
Read also:Beer war in Wrocław
From air, hunger, fire and war
Silesia was not bypassed by the Thirty Years' War front, and later this region was long the cause of a dispute between Prussia and Austria . A wealthy district through which three wars waged in the 18th century , in the end, most of it found its way to Prussian borders. Unfortunately, it was not without huge losses - it is estimated that about 20% of the population died as a result of the Silesian wars.
Almost all skeletons are anonymous. It is known for certain that in the building lie Jan Langer and priest Wacław Tomaszek
As if that was not enough, shortly after the end of the conflict, the Kłodzko land again found itself at a crucial point between Prussia and Austria - in the years 1778–79 there was a war for the Bavarian succession, also known as the Potato War. On top of that, a cholera epidemic has broken out . And the Silesians were extremely susceptible to this.
Poor diet, poor hygiene. After all, the inhabitants of Silesia at that time lived in chambers with their animals. The wind was blowing in most of the houses and vermin nested, but it was difficult to find a warm, dry corner and a portion of meat. From the third decade of the nineteenth century, the situation became almost catastrophic, but the Czermna parish priest did not survive the peak of the epidemic, famine and typhus.
Sources:
- Brygier W., Kudowa-Zdrój - skull chapel [in:] Naszesudety.pl [access:25/09/2021].
- Brygier W., Dudziak T., The Kłodzko Land. Guide , Pruszków 2018.
- Galas A., The history of Silesia in dates , Wrocław 2001.