Around 1999, a committee was formed in Bolesławiec to build a millennium cross. The committee members were looking for a good sculptor who would be able to create such a serious work. They chose the outstanding artist Zbigniew Frączkiewicz. He was valued by renowned German galleries and exhibited at respected museums in Poland and Europe. He achieved his greatest fame thanks to the series of sculptures created in 1984 under the title “Iron Men”. The series of stark, larger-than-life figures of naked men symbolized—according to the artist—creations degenerated by civilization and industry.
Świńster
One of the sculptures became the protagonist of a pig-related scandal that shook Gorzów Wielkopolski in the 1990s. City councillor Józef Finster purchased the artist’s outstanding work for 250 million old złoty, most likely intending in this way to honour the struggle against the former system. Frączkiewicz’s “People of Iron” referred in some way to Andrzej Wajda’s famous anti-communist film “Man of Iron”.
Unfortunately, the councillor failed to take into account the wave of bigotry that swept through Poland in the 1990s and remains a strong current in the country to this day. In the sculpture of a naked man with his genitals exposed, the more devout Catholics failed to see the idea of communist unification and the degradation of humanity, seeing instead moral outrage and obscenity. The sculpture was called “Świńster”, combining the councillor’s surname with the Polish word for “pig”.
Condoms were put on the sculpture’s penis and it was doused with paint, but when a procession from a nearby church was due to pass alongside it, the sculpture was covered with a sack so as not to offend children and devout women. Finally, after an art protester attempted to chop off the sculpture’s penis with an axe, it was moved to a less prominent location.
Jesus Christ
We do not know whether the members of our millennium cross construction committee knew this story. Some very zealous defenders of morality were among them. Perhaps they did not connect the artist with the sculpture or the moral scandal his work had caused in Gorzów.
The models for the figure of Christ were two young men: Eryk and Krzysztof. Work on the sculpture took place in the unheated garage hall of the Jeleniogórskie Mineral Resources Mines in Szklarska Poręba. First, a 1:5-scale model was made, and then the artist began work on the actual figure. The plaster casts were transported by truck to a location near Poznań, where the figure was cast in Szymanów; in September 2001, the completed figure arrived in Bolesławiec. It initially stood in front of the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and in 2003 it was hung on a 30-tonne cross.
Desperate People on the Millennium Cross
The Millennium Cross did not become merely an indifferent landmark in the cityscape or a place of worship. It is well known because of desperate people and would-be suicides who regularly climbed the cross and mobilized all the emergency services, which had to bring them down.
Eventually, the cross was covered with a sturdy mesh up to a height of 3.8 metres from its base so that no one could climb it. But the joy over this security measure was short-lived. Less than four months later, a man once again climbed the Bolesławiec Millennium Cross despite the safeguards—apparently for the umpteenth time. According to the police, it was probably the sixth or seventh time. Each time, a dozen or so onlookers gathered beneath the cross, while online forums suggested connecting the cross to electricity to avoid trouble with another desperate person.