All Over the Place: Church of Peace, Museum of War
Issue 31: Świdnica, Poland
It’s been a while since I’ve written about the present, so with this issue I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things. When last we left off, I was writing about Thailand, but since then I’ve worked several places and am now back in Poland, teaching English in Wrocław, Poland’s third largest city. (Interestingly enough, I actually wrote about Wrocław in the first issue of All Over the Place.) Like the last time I was in Poland, I’ve been busy exploring and seeing new places, and that took me to the town of Świdnica, home to the Church of Peace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Its name is fitting, as it was only allowed to be built due to the Peace of Westphalia, the treaty that ended the Thirty Years’ War. As far as wars go, it’s not very well known today, but it was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, and featured a lot of conflict between Catholics and Protestants. Among other things, the Peace of Westphalia compelled the Catholic Hapsburgs to allow the construction of Protestant churches within their realms.
The Hapsburgs eventually accepted this, but added caveats. The church had to be a cannonball shot’s distance from town, had to be built in less than a year (keep in mind many historic churches took decades or centuries to build), and could not be made of stone but rather made from more perishable materials like wood. Their idea, which rests on some very shaky logic, was that the church would quickly decay and the Lutherans would then all become Catholics.
That was nearly four centuries ago, and the wooden church is still standing.
It does have a few unusual features. First, it does not look anything like a stereotypical Lutheran church, instead embracing the maximalist, extravagant Baroque style favored by Catholic churches.
Second, it has a lot of doors. While there is a main entrance (for common folk), wealthy patrons paid for the construction of private church boxes, and many of these had separate entrances on the outside.
Third, while the Hapsburg scheme to convert the Lutherans failed, there are very few Lutherans living in Poland today. In 1945, the Red Army surged into Central Europe, and the Soviets decided to not only redraw borders (making itself bigger, Germany smaller, and literally moving Poland to the west) but also forcibly relocated millions. The Germans living in Schweidnitz, Germany suddenly found themselves living in Świdnica, Poland, and not long after found themselves being forced to move to what is today Germany. Further east, many Poles found themselves suddenly living in the Soviet Union, and they were also forced to move west, many of them into the areas where Germans were forced out of.
Curiously, Świdnica is also home to the Museum of Arms and the Military, but I didn’t go because I heard that War & Peace takes a long time to get through. Ba-dum-ch!
New Article:
My newest article is a bit different than my others. This one is my first ever publication in a scholarly peer-reviewed journal, a fact of which I am very proud. In 2020, I learned about the subject of predatory publishing when I stumbled across a humorous sting article written by Matan Shelomi and stung a few myself. In 2022, I wrote an article for NBC News about the dangers of predatory publishing (and problems with legitimate journals). And now in 2025, I have written a paper with Matan, published in the journal European Science Editing, that gives advice to those who seek to expose fraudulent journals through stings.
“Stinging predatory journals: a brief overview and recommendations”