THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF PEACE IN SWIDNICA, POLAND. SEVERAL COMMENTS ON ITS WOODEN CONSTRUCTION AND BUILDING TECHNOLOGY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 17TH CENTURY

As a result of the provisions of the Westphalian Peace ending the Thirty Year's War in 1648, three Protestant churches of timber frame construction, of a previously unknown size, were built in Silesia, outside the walls of the towns of Glogow (Glogau), Jawor (Lauer) and Swidnica (Schweidnitz) in the middle of the seventeenth century. The churches in Swidnica and Jawor, preserved until today, were entered in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2001 owing, among other things, to the use of pioneering architectural and constructional solutions. Answers to questions about the supporting structure designed by military engineer Albrecht von Sebisch in 1656 for the Church of Peace in Swidnica and what construction techniques were selected by master carpenters Andreas Gamper, and Kaspar Konig, master bricklayer Hans Zoller, and an unknown clay mason in the years 1656-7 for the von Sebisch project, have been sought on the basis of a detailed analysis focused on the following research aspects: construction layout and carpentry joints, carpenters' marks, building material and its processing, materials used to fill the frame fields, and external colour. This analysis has been supplemented by a study of the sources, the literature, and by dendrochronological and technological research. It has turned out that the main load-bearing system of the church is a system of longitudinal and transverse frames reaching in height through all the floors from the foundation to the top plate under the lean-to roofs above the aisles, or under the gable roof above the nave. Two storeys of the matroneum that encircle the entire interior were directly integrated into this system. The whole is crowned with an orchid truss both over the central nave of the main body and over both parts of the central nave of the transept. As joinery connections, mortise and tenon joints, scarf joints face halved, and cogged joints were used in different variants, depending on their function. Except for oak sill plates and down braces, only softwood was used. Only the whole trees were used, machined initially with an axe, and smoothed with a broadaxe. The fields created by the frame were filled with clay on staffs and plastered. The frame structure was painted dark grey, and the fillings whitewashed. A comparative analysis with other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century objects on the frame architecture of Lower Silesia shows that the scale of the Church of Peace is unique, while the construction techniques used do not differ from the solutions of that time.