History
The Szczecin church of St. Peter was first recorded in 1237 (“ecclesiam Sancti Petri, que sita est extra municionem”). This structure was supposedly founded on the site of a timber church founded during Otto of Bamberg’s Christianization mission in 1124, serving the population of the fishing settlements outside Szczecin (Dolny Wik). The original wooden church may have been destroyed in 1189 during the Danes’ siege of Szczecin, as the chapel of St. James, located in a less exposed location, suffered a similar fate. The reconstruction, or rather the construction of a new church under the same name of St. Peter, probably took place after several or a dozen years, perhaps only after the Danes had left Western Pomerania and the ending of economic and political stagnation by Barnim I in 1223. In 1237, the prince resolved a dispute between the Slavic and German communities, defining the boundaries of the parishes of St. James and St. Peter. The church must therefore have been fully operational by then.
In 1238, Prince Barnim I transferred patronage of St. Peter’s church to the monastery in Bamberg, ostensibly in memory of Bishop Otto. However, in 1243, at the prince’s behest, the patronage was assumed by the newly arrived Cistercian nuns in Szczecin. They too, did not long derive income from St. Peter’s church, as in 1261 the prince assigned it to a chapter with twelve canons, founded with the consent of the Bishop of Kamień, Hermann von Gleichen. Within two years, however, the townspeople managed to relocate the chapter within the city fortifications, to the chapel of the Virgin Mary, next to which the collegiate church of St. Mary was later built. St. Peter’s church remained a parish church, encompassing the port square, Dolny Wik, the Panieńskie suburb, part of the city, and the villages of Grabowo, Niebuszewo, Żelechowo, and Niemierzyn. In 1277, it fell into dispute with the collegiate church, ended with its full independence and the granting of parish rights to the northern part of the city. As a result, St. Peter became a suburban church, subordinate to St. Mary’s collegiate.
The original 13th-century church, perhaps still wooden, was thoroughly rebuilt at the beginning of the second quarter of the 15th century. This work was carried out by a workshop influenced by the Gothic architecture of Heinrich Brunsberg, a master mason and architect active in the Brandenburg March, including at St. James’s church in Szczecin. Around 1460, the church was extended by a single wide western bay, topped with a central tower. However, because it had structural problems, the bells were removed and sold in 1546, and then the tower was demolished in 1556, necessitating a further transformation of the church’s façade. A little earlier, in 1534, like most other religious buildings in Western Pomerania, the church of St. Peter and Paul was taken by the Protestant community.
During the Swedish Wars in the first half of the 17th century, the church was surrounded by early modern fortifications. Exposed to artillery fire, the building was damaged in 1677, but thanks to the quick intervention of the townspeople, a fire in the roof truss was extinguished and the vault temporarily saved. Unfortunately, soon after, rain and strong winds toppled the weakened western gable, which collapsed onto the vault and the pillars. The reconstruction was carried out in the years 1679-1683, during which the divisions between the aisles were eliminated, the vaults were not rebuilt, and the external facades were simplified. In 1702, Hans Kamerling made an apparent vault, i.e. a wooden ceiling shaped like a brick vault, in 1707 the floor above the northern chapel was demolished, and in 1731 an annex was added at the sacristy. In 1817-1818, during the renovation, most of the Baroque elements were removed and replaced with neo-gothic furnishings, while in 1901 the western façade and the southern portal were regothisated. Conservation works combined with architectural research were carried out in the years 1960-1961.
Architecture
The church from the second quarter of the 15th century, was built of bricks in a Flemish bond, on a stone foundation and plinth, north of the chartered town. The building was located outside the city walls, near the ducal castle, within a fenced cemetery. The main entrance led from the Maiden Gate, while the opposite wicket gate faced the path to the Mill Gate. The church was designed as a hall structure, originally aisled and five-bay, measuring 30 x 15.5 meters, enclosed pentagonally on the east, without an externally separated chancel. The walls reached 9 meters high. To the north of the nave, closer to the eastern section, were the sacristy and a chapel with a gallery on the upper floor. In the third quarter of the 15th century, the church was extended by one bay westward, bringing the total length of the building to 37.3 meters. It was twice as wide as the other bays, but identical in style. It was topped by a four-sided tower with a spiral staircase in the northwest corner.
All outer facades of the church were rhythmized with two-part pilaster strips made of moulded bricks, led from the plinth to the cornice under the roof eaves. The pilaster strips were framed with a three-shaft shaped bricks and decorated alternately with black, glazed and red bricks. In the middle of their height were pairs of plastered niches, topped with wimpergs and mounted on ceramic corbels shaped to the form of the heads of medieval inhabitants of Szczecin of various sexes and ages. Probably once these consoles were the basis for the sculptures displayed on them. Between pilaster strips, almost the entire width of the bays was filled with large, ogival windows, set on high sills, which constitute the main horizontal division of the facades. In the northern wall of the sacristy, an alms niche with an opening for donations was placed. The most representative was the western façade, in which a large portal with moulded jambs was placed, almost reaching the cornice forming the base of the gable.
The medieval church interior was divided by brick pillars into central nave and two aisles and vaulted throughout. The aisles were 3.2 meters wide, while the central nave was 3.9 meters wide, in keeping with the late Gothic tendency to make all the aisles similar in width (as opposed to the older double-bay system, in which the central nave was twice as wide as the aisles). The buttresses, pulled inwards, formed a ring of shallow chapels, reducing the interior width to 11.7 meters. The chapels were covered with cross-rib vaults and opened onto the aisles with high, moulded arcades. Narrow, pointed-arch niches were placed in the eastern and western walls of the buttresses, while segmental arch niches framed with moulded arches were incorporated in the walls below the windows. A spiral staircase was embedded in the wall at the junction between the northern annexes.
Current state
Currently, the church, although it is one of the most valuable Gothic monuments in the region, differs significantly from the state from the end of the Middle Ages. First of all, the tower above the western bay is missing, the western gable is entirely the result of regothization from the beginning of the 20th century, and the floor above the chapel and sacristy has been rebuilt (the upper part is a reconstruction from 1930). The western annex by the sacristy is also modern, although the columns used in its portico are Romanesque, taken from the dissolved monastery in Grabów. The interior of the church lost much of its former splendor due to the loss of the vaults and inter-nave pillars. The nave is currently covered with an early modern wooden ceiling, but the chapel recesses between the buttresses with arcades and wall niches have survived. Also noteworthy are the rich, elegant external facades with intricate decoration of pilaster strips and recesses with head consoles. The alms niche from the first half of the 15th century on the north side has also been perfectly preserved.
bibliography:
Architektura gotycka w Polsce, red. M.Arszyński, T.Mroczko, Warszawa 1995.
Jarzewicz J., Architektura średniowieczna Pomorza Zachodniego, Poznań 2019.
Pilch J., Kowalski S., Leksykon zabytków Pomorza Zachodniego i ziemi lubuskiej, Warszawa 2012.
Radacki Z., Historia i budowa kościoła św. Piotra i Pawła w Szczecinie, „Materiały Zachodniopomorskie”, tom 8/1962.