Góra Świętej Anny () or óraŚwięSt. Anne Mountain (; ; ) is an inselberg in Upper Silesia, Poland, next to the community of the same name. It is the location of the Franciscan monastery with the miraculous statue of St. Anne and the imposing calvary, which is an important destination for Roman Catholic pilgrimage. It has been a strategic location important to both German and Polish nationalists, and in 1921 it was the site of the Battle of Annaberg, commemorated in the Third Reich by the construction of a Thingstätte (Amphitheatre) and a mausoleum. The theatre remains, but the Nazi mausoleum was destroyed and replaced with a monument to those who took part in the Third Silesian Uprising.
The Composed Cultural and Natural Landscape of Góra Świętej Anny was announced one of Poland's official Historic Monuments (Pomnik historii) by the National Heritage Board of Poland and the President of Poland.
Geology
The Annaberg is a volcanic cone of Tertiary basalt, the easternmost end of the Silesian volcanic belt and the easternmost occurrence of basalt in Europe. It is high.
History
The hill was a pagan shrine in pre-Christian times.
It was formerly known as the Chelmberg; around 1100 a wooden chapel to St. George was built on the hill, and it became known as the Georgenberg (St. George's hill). In 1516 the noble family of von Gaschin, who had moved to Silesia from Poland in the mid-15th century, erected a church dedicated to St. Anne on the Chelmberg. The hill became a popular pilgrimage destination, especially after the donation in 1560 of a wooden statue of St. Anne, containing relics, which is still in the church today.
Count Melchior Ferdinand von Gaschin wanted to make the hill the seat of Franciscans, and during the Swedish-Polish War, the order decided to close its houses in Kraków and Lwów and move to Silesia for safety, and an agreement was made under which they would take over the church on the Annaberg. 22 Franciscans moved there on 1 November 1655. The count had a simple wooden monastery building built and replaced the church with a new stone building which was dedicated on 1 April 1673. The church attracted increasing numbers of pilgrims and led to the hill's becoming known as St. Anne's hill. In addition to pilgrims' hostels and other infrastructure, in the 19th century, three publishing firms were established to serve the needs of pilgrims, by Franz Gielnik, Michael Rogier and Adolf Marcyago. In 1864, 400,000 pilgrims visited the church.
After the First World War, a plebiscite was held on 20 March 1921 under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles to determine whether the parts of Silesia which had belonged to Prussia and thus to the German Empire would remain German or join the reconstituted Poland. In the parish of Annaberg, as in most of Upper Silesia, a majority voted for Germany, but the local administrative district (Landkreis Groß Strehlitz) was one of the areas where the majority favoured union with Poland. In early May the Third Silesian Uprising began, with Polish units of the Wawelberg Group, against the wishes of the Polish government, seeking to unite with Poland those areas that had voted for it. On 4 May they captured the Annaberg, which in addition to the cultural importance of the monastery for German Silesians, had strategic importance since it dominates the Oder valley, from the legally limited forces of the German army. On 21–23 May, in the Battle of Annaberg, unofficial German forces of the Upper Silesian Selbstschutz and the Bavarian Freikorps Oberland, under the command of Generalleutnant Bernhard von Hülsen, retook part of the hill. There were heavy losses on both sides and fighting took place in several neighbouring villages. Several participants on the German side were later prominent in the Nazi regime.
With the battle added to its existing role symbolising the Catholic identity of Silesia within predominantly Protestant Prussia, the Annaberg became a powerful symbol of German regional nationalism; it features in this role in the 1927 propaganda film Land unterm Kreuz. It also had religious and cultural importance for Polish Silesians; it was the subject of a poem by Norbert Bonczyk; and after the 1921 battle, also became a political symbol for Poles.