Carmelite Church (Leopoldstadt)

Parish Church of St. Josef in Leopoldstadt

The parish church of St. Josef (colloquially: Karmeliterkirche ) is a Roman Catholic parish church in the 2nd district of Vienna Leopoldstadt on Karmeliterplatz . The parish is in the deanery 2/20 of the Archdiocese of Vienna belonging city Vicariate Vienna . It is the holy Josef ordained . The building is a listed building .

history

After the convent of Carmelite in Vienna during the Reformation broke up in 1554 and its monastery at the court of the Jesuits was passed, called Emperor Ferdinand II. After by the chaplain Dominicus a Jesu Maria mitentschiedenen Battle of White Mountain , the Carmelite order in 1622 to Vienna and founded a monastery for the reform branch of the Carmelite Order , the Discalced Carmelites .

In 1623 the emperor gave the Carmelites a place in the “Unteren Werd” to found the church and monastery, who later gave their name to the Grätzl Karmeliterviertel . The first small church was completed in 1624 and the foundation stone for the monastery was laid in 1627. In 1639, the new church, made possible by a Liechtenstein foundation, was consecrated by Prince Bishop Philipp Friedrich von Breuner in honor of the Virgin Mary and St. Theresa. During the second Turkish siege of Vienna , the monastery and church were devastated in 1683 and then restored.

In the course of the Josephine church reform and the resulting new parish division of Vienna, the monastery church was raised to a parish church in 1783 and consecrated to St. Joseph and the monastery garden was parceled out and houses were built on it. The Carmelites continued to look after the monastery building and the church as the “Carmelite Parish”. After the Carmelites moved to Linz in 1838 and the convent was temporarily closed, the parish passed to the secular clergy . In 1848 the nuns of the Sisters of Mercy from Zams , whom Empress Karolina Augusta called to Vienna in 1832, set up a branch in the former Carmelite monastery, which existed until 1896.

New Carmelite monastery in Döbling

In 1897 an agreement was reached between the Carmelites and the government. This stated that the Carmelites renounced the old monastery and received a compensation of 350,000 fl from the religious fund. Subsequently, the Carmelites built the Carmelite Monastery in Döbling . After the Carmelites moved to Döbling, the monastery building in Leopoldstadt was demolished from 1904 to 1906. In the course of this, the parsonage adjoining the choir of the church was built and the former house chapel was relocated to the side of the nave on the Taborstrasse side .

The church served as a template for the Carmelite Church in Linz , which was built between 1690 and 1726 in place of an older church on Landstrasse .

architecture

The early Baroque church building has a nave with low side chapels under a pent roof and a transept, with a high nave roof covering the crossing dome . The simple eastern nave wall lies in the line of Taborstrasse. The representative church facade without a tower points in the direction of the inner city to Karmeliterplatz and bears the coat of arms of the House of Liechtenstein . A simple church tower stands west of the sacristy.

Furnishing

Interior of the parish church

The high altar before 1770 bears an altarpiece with the theme of the vision of St. Theresa von Avila by Martin Johann Schmidt from 1771. It is flanked by the statues created by Jakob Christoph Schletterer (from left to right): Saint Andreas Corsini , Prophet Elias , Prophet Elias and Saint Cyrillus . The Viennese city stone mason Johann Philipp Högl carried out stone carving work at the Carmelite Church in 1783.

literature

The art monuments of Austria. Dehio Vienna suburbs 1993 . District II: Leopoldstadt, Carmelite Church, Parish Church of St. Josef (originally Hll. Maria and Theresa), pp. 12-14.