Former parish church of Klaus on the Pyhrnbahn
The former Roman Catholic parish church of Klaus an der Pyhrnbahn (also called Bergkirche Klaus ) is located in the municipality of Klaus an der Pyhrnbahn in the Kirchdorf an der Krems district in Upper Austria . It is consecrated to St. John the Baptist and belongs to the Windischgarsten Dean's Office in the Diocese of Linz . In 1983, Bishop Maximilian Aichern established and consecrated a new Klaus parish church in the center of the village .
The building is a listed building .
history
1616–1618, the mountain church Klaus is built above the castle as a Protestant parish church by Ludwig von Storch, together with the predicant house and cemetery. In 1622, Ludwig and Anna Johanna Storch donated a golden communion chalice for Protestant services. When the Storchs had to leave Austria due to the Counter-Reformation and settle in Vach near Fürth (Bavaria), they donated the chalice to the local Protestant church, where it is still in use today. In the course of the Counter-Reformation, the mountain church was consecrated as a Catholic parish church in 1674, which Baron Georg Siegmund von Salburg and his successor Gotthard Heinrich, Count von Salburg, had strived for for years. The Church is under the patronage of St. John the Baptist placed, a marble baptismal font is set up.
From 1677 to 1696 Casparus Podevin from Brussels, at that time pastor of Leonstein , carried out the furnishing . Valuable ceiling frescoes and a high altar characterize the interior of the church. In 1858 the organ (now a listed building) is built. In 1884, to commemorate the overnight stay of "His Imperial Highness Archduke Johann von Österreich" in the castle on the way to the mountain church, the so-called imperial linden tree is planted, which is still there today. In 1960 restoration work uncovered 37 frescoes that had been covered for more than 150 years.
With the addition of a chapel to the parsonage in the village of Klaus, the mountain church loses its importance and has been used mainly for weddings and funerals ever since. In 1962 the first concert took place in the idyllic church at the foot of the “Kirchmauer” mountain. The annual “Musik Sommer Klaus” has been taking place since 1967 and is one of the smallest music festivals in Austria.
Furnishing
Ceiling frescoes and stucco work
After the inauguration as a Catholic parish church in 1681, the then pastor of Leonstein , Casparus Podevin, a native of Brussels, was commissioned to undertake the artistic interior decoration. The frescoes show pictures from the life of John the Baptist . Behind the high altar the Jordan landscape, on the ceiling first a portrait of “Mary's Assumption into Heaven”, then several stations of the Baptist: His preparation for the coming Savior in the desert, his decapitation (above the organ console) and his transfiguration (behind the organ ). Various saints are depicted around the altar and in the nave . A portrait of Bernhard von Clairvaux to the left of the organ is particularly rare . In the presbytery on the right there is a self-portrait of the artist Casparus Podevin, shown with a color palette in one hand and with the other he reaches over the stucco frame of the picture.
The round beam in the central nave bears the inscription from the consecration to the Catholic parish church on May 1, 1674 as well as the reference to the patronage .
The ceiling frescoes of the mountain church, which consisted of 37 pictures with stucco frames, were painted over for around 150 years. When it was exposed in 1960, several layers of paint had to be removed. The painter Prof. E. Daringer took care of the careful restoration.
High altar
The high altar is a manual work by the Ried master carpenter Wolf Waglhuber. A special feature is the free-floating crown above the full sculpture "Jesus baptizes John". To the left of it there is a depiction of the high priest Zacharias and to the right Elisabeth , the parents of Johannes, which come from the Lambach sculptor Joachim Ertl and were only erected in 1774.
Mary Altar
In the course of the redesign and renovation of the mountain church in 1761 by Provost Grundtner, an artistically less important side altar was made. The master carpenter is unknown.
pulpit
The pulpit was also made by the master carpenter Wolf Waglhuber from Rieder . The carving on the pulpit , which was completely adapted to the stucco work, has only come into its own since the restoration carried out in 1995 .
epitaph
A beautiful marble work is reminiscent of Peter Christoff Praunfalckh and was built around 1630. There are three coats of arms carved in marble above the grave monument: the Dietrichstein, the Praunfalken and the scrap of Kienberg.
Organ and gallery
In the organ loft there is a seldom seen ornamentation , which probably also comes from Casparus Podevin. It is believed that it was an instrument made by the well-known organ builder Egedacher . In 1928 the Mauracher brothers installed a pneumatic organ in the baroque case, in which the pipes from two registers of the old organ were presumably reused.
Stations of the Cross
The origin of the Stations of the Cross is not known. There are suspicions that they either come from Gottfried Krall from Bad Ischl , or from Wolfgang Andreas Heindl . The date of creation is unknown.
Bell jar
The bell was cast in Steyr in 1645 by the bell caster Simon Urndorfer and was a donation from the then castle owner Freiherr von Salburg, as the inscription shows.
The other bells - the large (163 kg) and the medium (109 kg) were taken over by the army administration in 1917/18. In 1923 two new bells were purchased. This, like the old little bell, was confiscated during the Second World War . However, the little bell came back to Klaus.
Individual evidence
- ^ Parish, timetable. Klaus an der Pyhrnbahn municipal office, December 1, 2014, accessed on December 26, 2015 .
- ^ Upper Austria - immovable and archaeological monuments under monument protection. ( Memento of June 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) . Federal Monuments Office , as of June 26, 2015 (PDF).
- ^ Pöllinger. Markus: 950 years of St. Matthew in Vach . Gunzenhausen, 2009, pp. 75-81 and pp. 130-131.
- ^ GFF Association for Family Research in Franconia eV: Eberhard Krauss in "Blätter für Franconian Family Studies". Volume 26-2003, pp. 136-141.
- ↑ Dirngrabner, Gertrud: "Die Herrschaft Klaus (Upper Austria) 1512 - 1761." Inaugural dissertation to obtain the doctorate of the philosophical faculty at the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz. 1958. pp. 115-116.
Web links
Coordinates: 47 ° 49 ′ 25 ″ N , 14 ° 9 ′ 8 ″ E