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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
A group of James Bond enthusiasts in Poland have launched a fundraiser to build a statue of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, 007’s archenemy, in the city of Gdynia, which was the fictional supervillain’s birthplace.
The project is being supported by the local authorities in Gdynia, where a plaster model of the planned bronze sculpture – depicting Blofeld and his famous cat – will go on display later this month.
Blofeld, head of the global criminal organisation SPECTRE, first appeared in Bond novel Thunderball, where author Ian Fleming revealed that “he was born in Gdynia of a Polish father and a Greek mother on 28 May, 1908” (the same date that Fleming himself was born).
In 1908, Gdynia was a small fishing village and Baltic Sea resort that was part of the German empire. Poland itself did not exist, having been partitioned since the late 18th century between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia, only regaining independence in 1918 at the end of World War One.
In newly independent Poland, Gdynia was developed into a major port city, and today has a population of almost 250,000.
According to Fleming’s biography, “after matriculating in economics and political history at the University of Warsaw, [Blofeld] studied engineering and radionics at the Warsaw Technical Institute and, at the age of twenty-five, obtained a modest post in the central administration of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs”.
“We don’t know how it came about that, of all the millions of different places, Fleming’s pin happened to land on Gdynia,” Rafał Król, one of the organisers of the grassroots initiative from a group of locally based Bond fans, told Radio Zet.
The proposed statue “won’t be a monument, because monuments are put up in honour of someone distinguished”, he clarified. “We want to erect a sculpture of a fictional character to remind people that he is one of us.”
The municipal authorities have offered their support and earmarked a site for the statue on Ejsmonda Street in the centre of the city, Joanna Kamień, another of the project’s authors, told local newspaper Dziennik Bałtycki.
However, the organisers must collect the 270,000 zloty (€63,600) needed to create and install the sculpture themselves, and for this purpose they have set up a crowdfunding page.
On 30 May, just after Blofeld’s birthday, a full-size plaster model of the statue created by the sculptor Wojciech Sęczawa will be unveiled, before going on display at Gdynia’s Nadmorski hotel.
It depicts the character in the position with which he is most commonly associated, sitting in an armchair with a cat in his lap, with a scarred face and bald head, reminiscent of Donald Pleasence’s portrayal of the character in the film You Only Live Twice. Blofeld was most recently played by Christoph Waltz in 2021’s No Time to Die.
Should they reach their fundraising target, the organisers’ dream is to unveil the new statue on 28 May, Blofeld and Fleming’s shared birthday, next year. They believe that theirs would be the first statue of a Bond character anywhere in the world.
Although Blofeld is an unequivocal “baddie”, the initiative aims not to “promote the dark side”, but to commemorate a “popcultural phenomenon” and a “simply fascinating story”, says Kamień.
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: Tomasz Nowick (press materials)
Ben Koschalka is a translator, lecturer, and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
