Ceremonial presentation and conference: “The historic return of the head of St James the Elder”

About the statue
The statue of the Apostle James the Elder belongs to the Apostle’s College – a group of sculptures from the decoration of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the High Castle in Malbork. It was originally set on the sixth console of the south wall of the sanctuary, counting from the east, forming part of a wider iconographic programme of decoration for this interior. The colonnade consisted of almost three-dimensional figures placed on consoles under architectural canopies.

Dating from around 1340, the statue of the saint was positioned facing the interior of the church. His bearded, oval face, with well-defined cheekbones and a high forehead, was framed by twisted locks of hair poking out from under a distinctive hubcap-type hat. The apostle was dressed in a long undershirt with a high-tie belt and a voluminous cloak fastened at the neck. The hem of the coat was luxuriantly draped in folds running down the sides of the figure. There were bare feet sticking out from under the robes. In the palm of his right hand, bent at the elbow, the apostle held a book.

War damage in the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the High Castle
As a result of the warfare in 1945, Malbork Castle suffered the most damage, especially its eastern part. During the Red Army’s artillery shelling, the castle church and St Anne’s Chapel suffered the most, with the main tower collapsing. At that time, the eastern part of the church, including the vault and an eight-metre-high mosaic figure of the Madonna and Child, slid into the castle moat. Many structural elements and architectural details, including the artistic elements, were destroyed, amongst them the sculptural cycle of the Apostolic College, which at the time lay in heaps of rubble both inside the church and on the adjacent grounds. 

Clearing the rubble from the Holy Mary Church at the High Castle
After the end of hostilities, the church remained inaccessible for nearly five years. The first cleaning work in the interior was undertaken when the castle was under the protection of the Polish Army. Branch No. 1 of the Museum of the Polish Army in Warsaw was established on the castle grounds. During the removal of rubble from the church between 12 and 16 January 1950, numerous artefacts from the church’s former furnishings were discovered. Among other things, several statues of evangelists, angel heads and fragments of the image of Our Lady of Humility were pulled from the rubble during these days.

When the Malbork branch of the Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society (PTTK) took over the management of the castle in 1957, work on restoring the church and St Anne’s Chapel gained momentum. In the summer of that year, on behalf of the Provincial Conservator in Gdańsk, supervision of the works was entrusted to inż. arch. Maciej Kilarski, who sorted the excavated historic elements and architectural details. As M. Kilarski writes, at that time ‘considerable amounts of rubble were cleared from the base of St Anne’s Chapel, from inside the chapel and from both adjacent porches – particularly on the south side, where the pile of rubble reached the level of the cloisters’. Some of the historical artefacts unearthed at that time were displayed in a temporary exhibition entitled ‘A display of architectural fragments from St Anne’s Chapel and the Castle Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary’. It was displayed in the corridor adjacent to the guest chambers in the east wing of the Middle Castle. 

The missing head of the statue
The last debris removal work was carried out in late 1957 and early 1958. The documentation from that period, compiled in 1960, contains valuable information as well as photographs of the excavated artefacts, including parts of the statue of St James the Elder. There is an interesting annotation – which proved to be significant for the fate of this monument – that the head of this sculpture remains ‘for the time being missing’. As early as in 1958, in unexplained circumstances, most likely as a result of theft, the artefact was transferred to an auction house in Munich, from where it ended up in the collection of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. This monument was first mentioned in the literature in 1965 in the catalogue of this museum’s collection, Die Bildwerke in Stein, Holz, Ton und Elfenbein bis um 1450, by Heinz Stafski, with a note that it is a deposit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the years that followed, the artefact was displayed at two major international exhibitions, where it was shown alongside the torso of the same figure, which remains in the collection of Malbork Castle Museum.

Return to Malbork
Discussions about the possible return of the head to Malbork have been taking place since the 1990s, but they have come to nothing. It was not until the activities carried out by the Loss Project that the monument was added to the National List of Monuments Stolen or Illegally Exported Abroad in December 2022. Thanks to the actions of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the head of the statue of the Apostle James the Elder returned to Poland in December 2025 and was transferred to the collection of the Malbork Castle Museum. 

The formal handover of the figure’s head took place on 03.12.2025 inside the Royal Castle in Warsaw. It was a major diplomatic success, marking the completion of many years of efforts to recover further cultural artefacts that had once been lost.

Head of the statue of the Apostle James the Elder from the apostolic college of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the High Castle in Malbork

-Prussia, Malbork, workshop unknown, ca. 1340 

-art stone (screed gypsum); casting in mould, stonework, polychroming, gilding

-depository of the Treasury, ref. R/000076