Prohászka László: Polish Monuments - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

public square after Lósy Imre utca and Lippay (presently Lippa) utca were opened. Ligeti’s sculpture was transferred to the inner courtyard enclosed by the building of the Central Seminary at Papnövelde utca 7, a street bearing the name of the religious institution in 1935. The choice of the place was by no means accidental, since the Baroque building had been the home of the Pauline order until the end of the 18th century, when Emperor Joseph II dissolved the religious orders. The well of the Pauline friars could thus be said to have arrived back home and standing in that place it luckily survived the devastation of World War II and the demolition campaigns of the post-1945 period.

In the second half of the 19th century approximately twelve million Poles from the formerly Polish territories, now annexed by Austria, Germany and Russia, sought their living outside their homeland. At the beginning of the 20lh century a hundred and fifty thousand Poles found refuge in Hungary, forty thousand of them settling in Budapest. As has already been mentioned, a major community (of about 10,000 Poles) was formed in Kőbánya, where they found employment mainly in industry, stone quarries, and in the beer and porcelain factories. The Polish community established a church and a Polish House in Ohegy utca, and a fund-raising campaign was launched as early as 1905 for the construction of a Polish Roman Catholic church.

The legal committee of the Budapest municipality approved the plan for the building of an independent Polish church and provided a site for construction in the following year. Had it not been for World War 1, construction would have soon started.

Although many Poles returned home after 1918 at the call of their re-born independent Poland, there were many who stayed behind. In Kőbánya alone, there were approximately twelve thousand Poles in the inter-war period. In 1920 another fund-raising campaign was launched for the building of the Polish church, with substantial donations arriving from as far as the United States. Finally, in 1930 the wish of

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