Pomnik Józefa Piłsudskiego, Katowice

Józef Piłsudski Marshal Monument - a monument to Józef Piłsudski unveiled in 1993, located on Bolesław Chrobry Square, in front of the front of the Silesian Provincial Office building in Katowice. The monument was placed with its back to the building of the former Provincial Council of Trade Unions.

The author of the monument is the Croatian sculptor Antun Augustinčić, who sculpted the Statue of Peace in the gardens of the United Nations in New York. The monument was commissioned by the people of Upper Silesia before World War II. However, the bronze statue did not reach Poland in 1939. For many years, it stood in the sculptor's museum, first in Yugoslavia and then in Croatia. In the communist times, the figure of the Marshal was a kind of taboo. The monument was brought to Katowice only in 1990 and underwent conservation works. Before the monument was erected, a huge non-functional fountain in the shape of a vesica piscis, which was located in Chrobry Square, was filled in. In 1998 the figure of Piłsudski on horseback was placed on a 6-meter plinth. Originally the pedestal was to be surrounded by a group of sculptures: Silesian insurgents and a Silesian woman with her dead insurgent son.

The sculpture shows the marshal sitting on a horse. In his right hand he holds a sabre. The inscription on the pedestal on the side of Jagiellonska Street reads: Józef Piłsudski 1867-1935; from the side of J. Lompa Street: The equestrian statue of Jozef Pilsudski was brought from Croatia to Katowice in 1991 on the initiative of the Inter-association Commission of SH, SARP and TUI Creative Associations through the efforts of the government, provincial and city authorities, placed temporarily in 1993 in its original location, and raised to the pedestal in 1998. In 1994 the Piłsudski's sabre disappeared. The theft was suspected. It was later found by children playing in the bushes near the monument.