Made in a South German workshop around 1500, the polychrome and gilded altar wing from Ingeln in the collection of the Malbork Castle Museum, which under unknown circumstances ended up in the Holy Trinity Church in Gdańsk after the war, will be returned to its original location. Documents in this regard were signed by representatives of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (MKiDN), the Province of St Maximilian Maria Kolbe of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual in Poland and the Malbork museum.

The altar wing was part of a medieval altar settee from the church in Ingeln in Lower Saxony. In 1893, two altar wings and individual sculptures were purchased for the Malbork Castle collection. The left wing was hung on the southern wall of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the High Castle in Malbork. In June 1945, the wing was handed over to the City Museum in Gdańsk and then, under unknown circumstances, it ended up in the Holy Trinity Church in Gdańsk. In December 2023. Province of St Maximilian Maria Kolbe of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual in Poland (Franciscans) decided to return the wing to Malbork.

To this day, the collections of the Castle Museum in Malbork contain five of the sculptures purchased at the end of the 19th century, a fragment of the chest and one painted wing.

As the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage reminds us, the altar wing from Ingeln is another object lost from the Malbork collections during or just after the Second World War, which is returning to the collection of the Malbork Castle Museum thanks, among other things, to the research carried out by the institution’s staff on lost movable artefacts from Malbork.

Since 2018. Malbork Castle Museum has been participating in the Programme of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage ‘Research on Polish war losses’. To date, the project’s activities have led to the identification of more than 2,000 lost objects from Malbork and many artefacts scattered in various institutions in the country and abroad.

Adrian Andrzejewski