Polish traditions in Catholic churches of the Ruhr area

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.