Silesia Culture & Language

Silesian culture is working-class, Catholic, and conscious of being different from the rest of Poland.

The Black Madonna

The icon at Jasna Gora in Czestochowa is the most venerated object in Polish Catholicism. Tradition attributes it to Saint Luke; the scars on the Virgin’s cheek are said to date from a Hussite raid in 1430. The monastery withstood a Swedish siege in 1655, which was taken as miraculous and made the icon a national as well as a religious symbol. Several million pilgrims come each year, many on foot in organised walking groups that take up to two weeks from the far side of the country.

Mining tradition

Barborka, the feast of Saint Barbara on 4 December, is the miners’ day: parades in dress uniform with plumed shakos, brass bands, a mass underground, and a long evening. Mining brass bands are serious ensembles with their own competitions.

Architecture

The workers’ settlements — Nikiszowiec and Giszowiec in Katowice — are remarkable pieces of planning, and the region has outstanding modernist architecture from the interwar years when Katowice was building a capital.

Music now

Katowice is a UNESCO City of Music with two major festivals, a strong alternative scene, and the composers Gorecki and Kilar both worked here.

Kroll and the industrial image

Silesia has a strong tradition of painting its own working life, from the naive painters of the mining settlements — a recognised school, many of them miners who painted at weekends — to the photographers who documented the conurbation as it was built and as it closed. The Silesian Museum holds the collection, and it is the best single explanation of what the region thinks about itself.

Language and literature

A growing body of writing in Silesian, and Szczepan Twardoch’s novels have brought the region’s divided identity to a wide audience.

Polish is the language of everything official, and everyone speaks it.

Silesian — slaski — is spoken by a large number of people in the region, particularly in the towns of the coalfield and among older speakers, and increasingly as a deliberate identity choice among younger ones. It has substantial German vocabulary, a distinct pronunciation, and a written form, and whether it is a language or a dialect is a live political argument. Visitors will hear it and will not follow it.

German is spoken by a recognised minority, particularly in Opole to the west, and place names are bilingual in parts of that area.

English is common in Katowice and among younger people, less so in the smaller industrial towns.

Useful Polish: dzien dobry, dziekuje, prosze, na zdrowie. In Silesian, szczesc Boze is the traditional greeting and pyrsk an informal one.