Church of the Holy Spirit - a Roman Catholic temple in Torun. Initially, the building served as an Evangelical-Augsburg church. Since 1945 it has been in the possession of the Jesuit order. Ois currently the seat of the Jesuit-run Toruń academic ministry. The need to build a new temple for the old-town Evangelical community in Torun arose as a result of the aftermath of the religious riots between Catholics and Protestants that broke out in the city in July 1724 (the Torun tumult). As part of punitive sanctions, the Protestant community was deprived of its hitherto main temple - the former Franciscan Church of St. Mary. St. Mary's and services were held in the cramped hall of Artus Court. After raising funds at home and abroad, including in Germany, England and Denmark, where the senior member of the Torun clergy, Father Christopher Andrew Henry Geret, personally traveled for this purpose, the City Council held a competition for the design of the new temple, as a result of which the work of the Dresden architect Andreas Adam called Bähr was finally selected in 1741. Construction work began two years later, but was soon interrupted as a result of the unfavorable political and social situation, as the construction of the temple began to arouse opposition in wider circles of the radical Catholic camp - Catholics viewed the issue of the new temple as a violation of the punitive sanctions imposed on Torun after the tumulus. Thus, King August III issued a ban on the construction of the church, fearing the outbreak of new sectarian clashes. In 1754 a royal decision permitted the use of the existing foundations of the temple to erect a house of prayer. However, this building - in order not to irritate Catholics - could not resemble a church, but only a modest bourgeois house. Since the creator of the previous architectural concept for the temple was no longer alive, the need arose to find a new architect. He became a young, then 26-year-old, builder - Efraim Schroeger, who came from Torun. The project developed by him was approved in 1755, and already on July 18, 1756 the church was solemnly consecrated. The construction work was directed by August Konrad Hoffmann. Since the funds were exhausted in the meantime, a fund-raiser was held in Gdansk, Elblag, Malbork and Grudziadz, and since it was not enough, Samuel Luther Geret went on a two-year foreign fund-raiser. The church is 46 meters long, 23 meters wide and the interior height is 14 meters. It seated about 1,300 people, including 500 on the galleries. In addition to services in German, Polish services were held until 1797. In the form of a towerless house of prayer, the building survived until the late 19th century. Although in 1856 a society for the construction of the tower was established, the collection went rather tardily, and it was not until 1891 that the Berlin Society of Architects held a competition, where the neo-Baroque design of Hugon Hartung and Carl Schäfer was selected. Eventually, the 64-meter-high tower was erected 1897-1899 to a design by Hartung himself.
06.07.2013
