The Monument to the Defenders of the Coast

Technique: sculpture in light grey granite, reinforced concrete structure in the monument’s foundation

Dimensions: monument: height 25 m, obelisk width 9 m, weight of monument 1150 t

mound: height 22.5 m, diameter 20 m

Object: The Monument to the Defenders of the Coast and the urban development around it was created to commemorate the defence of the Military Transit Depot in the Free City of Gdańsk from 1 to 7 September 1939. The heroic struggle of the Polish soldiers against the vastly superior German forces is considered to be the symbolic beginning of World War II.

The decision to erect such a monument at Westerplatte was made in the early 1960s by the Council for the Protection of Remembrance of Struggle and Martyrdom. Earlier, on the initiative of the soldiers themselves, a symbolic cemetery with a plaque commemorating the fallen was set up at the site of the destroyed guardhouse no. 5. The competition for the monument was held in 1963. It was won by a team consisting of architect Adam Haupt, who worked out the urban layout of the area, and sculptors Franciszek Duszeńko and Henryk Kitowski, who created the form of the monument, the central part of the entire project.

Construction began in 1964 and the monument was unveiled on 9 October 1966. Apart from Duszeńka and Kitowski, the sculptors included Zbigniew Erszkowski, Czesław Gajda, Józef Galica, Stanisław Radwański, Piotr Solecki, and Zbigniew Zabrocki. When designing the urban layout, Adam Haupt had to consider two extremely important issues. Above all, the former military site had to be given a monumental function, while bearing in mind that the designed space is to become a popular tourist destination.

The centrepiece of the composition at Westerplatte is a monumental memorial set on a mound 20 metres in diameter and 22.5 metres high. The designers created the mound from the soil excavated during the widening of the harbour channel. Such elevation of the site immediately created the centre of the composition, yielding an ideal location for the monument. A 25-metre-high sculpture was placed on top. It is composed of 236 light grey granite blocks brought from quarries in Strzegom and Borów. The monument was erected on a reinforced concrete foundation structure that was concealed in the mound. Its irregular shape is intended by the designers to evoke a chipped bayonet stuck in the ground or a sword with a shattered guard.

The formal composition of the monument is divided into three parts: lower, middle and upper. The lower part contains references to the events related to the defence of the Polish Coast in 1939. This is symbolised by a bas-relief depicting the figures of the fallen and wounded defenders, as well as the names of the battle sites in the defence of the Polish Coast: Hel, Oksywie, Westerplatte, the Polish Post Office in Gdańsk, the Gdynia Scythemen. The central part of the monument commemorates the wartime efforts of Poles at sea and features the names of bodies of water and places of naval battles of World War II involving Polish sailors: La Manche, Dunkirk, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, Narvik, Murmansk and the inscription ‘To those at sea’. The upper part of the monument symbolises the liberation struggles of the joint Soviet and Polish armies. There are two half figures of a seaman and a soldier under arms and inscriptions: Lenino, Studzianki, Kołobrzeg, “Glory to the Liberators” and the date of the liberation of Gdańsk, 30 March 1945.

Adam Haupt also envisaged the construction of a museum pavilion in his urban planning project, but this idea was not realised. However, at the foot of the monument, on a stone platform, seven candles were created in the form of metal cylinders, symbolising the seven days of Westerplatte’s defence. Another addition to the memorial is the inscription ‘No more war’, which is located on the mound’s perron. The inscription is placed on a vertical grid. Mounted on it were metal-cut letters about 1.5–2 metres high, forming a slogan about 50–60 metres long.

Place:

Commemorating the defence of the Westerplatte peninsula, the monument is located on a vast former military area. In the 1920s, it housed a Military Transit Depot, i.e., a site for transhipping weapons and ammunition. Moreover, four guardhouses were built at Westerplatte in the late 1930s. To this day, the preserved military buildings, including three guardhouses, a shelter, ammunition magazines and a rangefinder tower, can be explored through a network of alleys. Guardhouse No. 1 houses the Chamber of National Remembrance, a branch of the Museum of Gdańsk.

The Westerplatte peninsula is located in the north-eastern part of Gdańsk in the Przeróbka district, between the Gulf of Gdańsk and a bend in the Dead Vistula, the so-called Zakręt Pięciu Gwizdków (literally, the “Five-Whistles Bend”).

Information about the authors:

Adam Haupt was born in 1920 in Kraków and died in 2006 in Sopot. Architect, rector of the State Higher School of Visual Arts in Gdańsk (now the Academy of Fine Arts) from 1962 to 1965. He studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Lviv Polytechnic National University, and later at the Krakow University of Technology. He was also a student at the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. He obtained his diploma from the Faculty of Architecture at the Krakow University of Technology in 1946. As a professor at the State Higher School of Visual Arts in Gdańsk from 1947 to 1998, he presided the Naval and Industrial Forms Design and Fundamentals of Industrial Design studios. He is the author of the design for the French Military Cemetery in Gdańsk, the Stanisław Staszic monument in Piła, and co-author of the Monument to the Victims of the Treblinka Extermination Camp (together with Franciszek Duszeńko and Franciszek Strynkiewicz).

Franciszek Duszeńko was born in 1925 in Gródek Jagielloński near Lviv and died in 2008 in Gdańsk. Sculptor, professor at the State Higher School of Visual Arts in Gdańsk (now the Academy of Fine Arts) and its rector from 1981 to 1987. Prisoner of German concentration camps. He studied at the State Institute of Fine Arts in Lviv under prof. Marian Wnuk. After the war, he continued his studies at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Sopot (now the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk), graduating in 1952. In 1950, he began teaching at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, where he led the Sculpture Studio in the Department of Sculpture. Between 1952 and 1962, he was involved in the reconstruction of Gdańsk together with professor Stanisław Horno-Popławski, professor Alfred Wisniewski and professor Adam Smolana. He is the author of, among others, the female sphinxes on the pillars in front of the stairs of the tenement house at Długi Targ 8, the knights on the tenement house at Długi Targ 40, the portal of the tenement house at Ogarna 99. Author and co-author of monuments: of the Victims of the Treblinka Extermination Camp (together with Adam Haupt and Franciszek Strynkiewicz), the Polish Artillerymen in Toruń and Maria Konopnicka in Gdańsk, as well as the design and elements of the artistic design of the Church of St. Catherine in Gdańsk. The project is located in St Joseph’s Church in Gdynia-Leszczynki. Between 1986 and 1987, he prepared a revitalisation project for the Westerplatte Monument.

Henryk Kitowski was born in Gdynia in 1937. Architect, teacher at the State Higher School of Visual Arts in Gdańsk (now the Academy of Fine Arts). He studied at the State Higher School of Visual Arts in Gdańsk, where he graduated in 1961 at the Faculty of Architecture. From 1961 to 2003, he worked at the University of Gdańsk in the Department of Preliminary Design and the Department of Interior Design.

Condition of the object: good

Owner/guardian: Gdańsk Road and Greenery Authority (substantive supervision: Pomeranian Provincial Conservator of Monuments, Museum of the Second World War). The entire area, together with the monument and facilities of the Military Transit Depot, was declared a monument of history of the Battlefield at Westerplatte, and on 17 May 2001, by decision of the Pomeranian Voivodeship Conservator of Monuments, was entered in the register of monuments under No. A1219.

Author of the entry: Dorota Kucharczyk