When speaking of Lesser Poland’s aviation heritage, should one mention Jan Wnęk? This 19th-century “lignifaber,” as he was called in the parish records, is a historical figure — his dates of birth and death are known (1828–1869), and brief entries in parish books allow us to establish the most important moments in his biography. Moreover, the works of his hands are known and preserved to this day — over one hundred sculptures out of — as tradition holds — approximately three hundred that he created. The rest of the information about Jan Wnęk that has been disseminated so far consists mostly of hypotheses, speculations, or simply a beautiful legend. Such conclusions emerge from an attempt to compare the most significant studies produced to date, devoted to the life and work of Jan Wnęk.
Jan Wnęk, if it is indeed true, was the first person (or rather one of the first in the world) who, on a wing system he constructed himself, made flights of significant length. Unconfirmed data indicate that on those wings, about whose construction we know nothing beyond general information, Wnęk made several flights from a freestanding church bell tower approximately 45 meters high. It is worth mentioning that the church buildings are situated on a hill rising 50 meters above the surrounding valleys. The first of these flights — following an earlier series of “jumps” from surrounding hills — was said to have taken place in 1866. The last, which ended in a fall that caused the prompt death of our hero, took place during the Whitsunday fair in 1869. The length of individual flights was said to have reached up to three kilometers.
The answer to the question of whether Jan Wnęk preceded Otto Lilienthal and other aviation pioneers by 20 years is therefore extremely difficult. On one hand, we have documented activities of pioneers who possessed engineering knowledge, funding, and the attention of the contemporary public, which recorded their endeavors; on the other — the son of a Galician serf, an illiterate, born and active in a remote, backwater village.
One of the streets in Odporyszów has been named after Jan Wnęk, and information about his aviation achievements has been displayed around the church in special showcases. Thus, when visiting Odporyszów and walking around the church, one can naturally admire Jan Wnęk’s legacy, and although there is no definitive, hard source evidence for his aviation achievements — since even the record of Jan Wnęk’s death in the parish books contains no mention that he died as a result of such an extraordinary event as an aviation accident — we nevertheless want to believe that he indeed “flew before Lilienthal.”
