William Faust, Fresco Artist, and other items of note...

"William Faust spent the last week visiting his parents.  William is now a member of the firm Dunn & Faust, fresco artists and decorators, with headquarters in St Cloud.  They are now engaged in decorating a church in the northeastern part of Iowa."

It's interesting to know that there were actual firms who contracted out to paint the inside of churches.  Of course there were, but a Faust, from Pierz?  Cool.

 


A postcard Larry found online, from Neidermuhl, the village our Heschs came from in Bohemia.  Johann and Marya and their sons Paul, Mathias and Anton had left 36 years earlier, so this would have been recognizable to them.

"On the pavements of Wroclaw, Poland, at the intersection of Piłsudskiego and Świdnicka streets, Jerzy Kalina installed a total of 14 life-like statues, seven people descending into the ground on one end of the junction and seven people emerging from the ground on the adjacent corner, as a symbol of the martial law in effect from 1981 to 1983, a time when many ordinary civilians were killed and went missing, which is reflected by the descending pedestrians who disappear into the Earth, the end of the martial law being echoed by the rise of the ordinary man on the opposite side of the street". 

To me, the sculpture is more about ordinary Polish people who've been persecuted thru the ages--"going underground" when necessary, and emerging when it's safe, but always coming back.  It's a beautiful monument to the indomitable Polish spirit, I think.