Search Results (3)

Sacral historical monuments are primarily places of prayer, but also objects performing numerous other functions. These are public goods, including cultural goods that build national identity. Their preservation in the right condition is important not only for the owner, but also for the public authorities, whose duty is to preserve them for future generations. The study concerns the financing of sacral monuments in Poland. Its aim is to indicate the legitimacy of financing the revalorization of sacral monuments from public funds, the solutions applied in this area in Poland, and the sources and amount of support provided to the owners of these objects in the years 2017–2022. In it, the authors: (1) refer to such concepts as: public good, cultural good and cultural heritage, (2) define—based on Polish regulations—the concept of a sacral monument and indicate the multiplicity of functions that these objects perform, (3) present the number and types of sacral monuments in Poland, taking into account their location, (4) identify available sources of public funds for the revalorization of sacral monuments in Poland. The analyses carried out show that in Poland, every year, public funds play an important role in the revalorization of sacral historical monuments. In real terms, its volume remained at a similar level over the period considered. The methods used in the development are as follows: critical analysis of the literature and legal acts and selected methods of descriptive statistics. Full article

Polish Góra św. Anny (Saint Anne Mountain), previously German Annaberg, is one of the few places in the world where art was utilized to promote two regimes—fascist and communist. With the use of art, the refuge of pagan gods and then, Christian Saint John’s Mountain with Saint Ann’s church and a calvary site were transformed into a mausoleum of the victims of uprisings and wars—those placed by politics on opposite sides of the barricade. The “sacred” character of the mountain was appropriated in the 1930s by the fascist Thingstätte under the form of an open-air theatre with a mausoleum, erected to commemorate fallen German soldiers in the Third Silesian Uprising. After the Second World War, the same place was “sacralized” by the Monument of the Insurgents’ Deed, which replaced the German object. The aim of both of them was to commemorate those who had perished in the same armed conflicts—uprisings from the years 1919–1921, when the Poles opposed German administration of Upper Silesia. According to the assumptions of both national socialism as well as communism, the commemorative significance of both monuments was subjected to ideological messages. Both monuments were supposed to constitute not only the most important element of the place where patriotic manifestations were intended to be held, but also a kind of counterbalance for the local pilgrims’ center dedicated to the cult of Saint Anne. The aim of the paper is to present the process of transforming a Nazi monument into its communist counterpart, at the same time explaining the significance of both monuments in the context of changing political reality. This paper has not been based on one exclusive research method—historical and field studies have been conducted, together with iconographical and iconological analyses of the monuments viewed from their comparative perspective. The text relies on archive materials—documents, press releases, and projects, including architectural drawings of the monument staffage—discovered by the authors and never published before. They would connect the structure not only to the surrounding landscape but, paradoxically, to the fascist Thingstätte. Full article

This paper examines the role of Islamic sacred spaces in Spanish-Moroccan identity negotiations in contemporary Madrid, Spain. In doing so, I explore how these sacred sites produce diverse meanings and practices that resist the Spanish states hegemonic narratives of place. I argue that the multilayered resistance via the “memory” and “place” of these sacred sites ostensibly reconciles and situates Spanish-Moroccans within the larger Spanish imagined community. The paper will first discuss the trans-local experiences of the Spanish-Moroccan community and how their liminal state of being neither “here or there” necessitates an anchor (Muslim sacred spaces) to the new home context. I will then outline a brief historical narrative of the Muslim presence in Spain and then analyze the meanings attached to the sacrality of Islamic monuments and mosques to the Spanish-Moroccan community. Finally, the paper will explore how the historical memories and their discursive meanings attached to these sacred sites allow Spanish-Moroccans to produce counterhegemonic frameworks that challenge and reshape nationalistic spaces. Full article