Jan Sztwiertnia

Jan Sztwiertnia

Jan Sztwiertnia (born June 1, 1911 in Hermanitz near Ustroń in the Silesian Beskids ; † August 29, 1940 Gusen I concentration camp ) was a Polish teacher, musician and composer.

Live and act

Jan Sztwiertnia grew up without a father and, as his mother was overwhelmed with raising children, came to the Protestant orphanage in Ustroń in 1921 . In Ustroń he also completed compulsory schooling by 1925, before he attended the teachers' college in Teschen (Cieszyn) from 1925 to 1930 . His musical talent was already noticed there and he also practiced composition at the teachers' seminar.

After completing his teacher training, Jan Sztwiertnia started teaching at the elementary school in Rowne near Wisła-Głębce in the area of ​​the so-called Widderberg . In his free time there he created his first pieces of music, inspired by tranquility, nature and landscape. B. the opera Sałasznicy in 1932, based on a libretto by Ferdynand Dyrna , in which Sztwiertnia also processed motifs from local folk music.

In 1933 he came back from the mountains to Wisła, where he led the church choir and worked as an organist. During this time Sztwiertnia wrote a number of church fugues, preludes, chorales and cantatas.

In 1935 Sztwiernia was able to deepen his musical education at the music school in Teschen and in 1937 finally began studying music at the Kattowitz Conservatory . As a young talent, he was awarded a scholarship for in-depth music studies in Paris in 1939, but the beginning of the Second World War ruined any study opportunity for him in Paris.

Deportation to the Gusen concentration camp

Although Jan Sztwiertnia was in no way politically active, he was arrested by the Gestapo on April 23, 1940 at the age of 29 and, like thousands of other Polish intellectuals, deported to the Gusen concentration camp . After only a few weeks in the camp, he was put to death on August 29, 1940. The urn with his ashes was handed over by the SS to his relatives, who buried them in the evangelical cemetery "Na Groniczku" in Wisła.

Commemoration

• Jan Sztwiertnia composition competition in Teschen
• Monument to Jan Sztwiertnia in the City Park of Wisła
• On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of his death, an ecumenical memorial service was celebrated for Jan Sztwiertnia on September 20, 2015 in the parish church of St. Georgen / Gusen and a plaque was subsequently unveiled in the courtyard of the Memorial Crematorium Gusen.

swell

1. ↑ Danuta Szczypka. Jan Sztwiertnia (1911–1940) In: Celebration booklet for the 2015 commemorative weekend in St. Georgen / Gusen . Pp. 19-20.
2. ↑ http://www.gusen.org/de/2015/09/new-plaque-for-jan-sztwiertnia/

literature

• Evangelical-Augsburg parish Wisla. Celebration booklet "So that you will be remembered ..." for the commemorative weekend from September 18 to 20, 2015 in St. Georgen / Gusen. Wisla, 2015.