Catholic Holy Cross Church (Augsburg)

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Catholic Holy Cross Church

The Catholic Holy Cross Church in Augsburg is the former collegiate church of the Augustinian Canons - Holy Cross Monastery , pilgrimage church and, since 1932, Dominican priory church . The late Gothic hall church was destroyed in the Second World War and rebuilt in a simplified form. As an architectural monument, it is entered in the Bavarian list of monuments.

history

The Catholic Holy Cross Church to the left of the Protestant Holy Cross Church, etching from 1703

Romanesque predecessor buildings and chapels

Interior before destruction, around 1935

A Heiligkreuzkapelle in front of the city may have existed since the time of Bishop Ulrich . In 1143 a hospice was founded next to it . Around 1160, Bishop Konrad von Hirscheck transferred it to the Augustinian Canons, who had the first permanent church built. After a miracle of the host is said to have occurred in the church in 1194 (see below), the pilgrimage to the so-called miraculous property began . A parish has existed since 1199. After a fire in 1314, which also destroyed the monastery, a new church was built. The lower part of today's tower dates from this time and could originally have been part of the Augsburg city fortifications . The St. Catherine's Chapel has stood in the vicarage since 1210, and was replaced by the Ottmar Chapel in 1445, a predecessor of today's Protestant Holy Cross Church .

Late Gothic construction and baroque style

The current late Gothic church was built between 1492 and 1508 under the Augustinian Canons as a collegiate church under Provost Vitus Fackler. The previous Romanesque building had to give way for the most part. The builder was probably Burkhart Engelberg . Emperor Maximilian I donated a window to the new church. In 1514 the tower was raised for the first time. During the Reformation , in 1525, the city council gave the Ottmar Chapel to the newly established Protestant community as a preaching house. Provost Johannes Schall procured new altars, chairs and a pulpit for the church in 1627. In 1677 the church was first converted to Baroque style . The tower was given a superstructure with a baroque onion top. The plans came from Michael Thumb , who also had a new convent building built from 1681 to 1687.

The interior was redesigned in the Baroque style between 1716 and 1719 by the master builder Johann Jakob Herkomer . As a result, the windows and columns were changed and the choir with the miraculous manor was given a baroque dome. The model was the reconstruction of the parish church of St. Moritz . The wall and ceiling frescoes that are no longer preserved today, including a cycle of frescoes on the theme of the Holy Cross , were created by Johann Georg Bergmüller in 1732. On his way to Paris, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited the church in 1777 and played the organ there. In 1782 he paid a visit to the monastery with his father Leopold Mozart and his sister Nannerl .

Secularization and Dominican Priory Church

In the course of secularization , the monastery was dissolved in 1803 and became the property of the city. From 1805 the site was used by the French army as a military hospital and from 1808 to 1882 as a barracks for the royal Bavarian military . The comparatively small parish was abolished in 1809/10. At times it was considered to convert the church into a theater , which could be prevented by the protest of the population. The church was restored in 1877/78.

After the evacuation by the military, the former monastery moved into a school for construction technicians . In 1932, Bishop Joseph Kumpfmüller transferred the Holy Cross to the Dominicans. As a result, the church was elevated to a Dominican priory church.

Destruction and rebuilding

Inscription on the destruction and rebuilding of the Catholic Holy Cross Church

During the air raids on Augsburg on the night of February 25th to 26th, 1944, the interior of the church was relatively little damaged. However, since an emergency roof could not be erected in time, part of the vaults collapsed. The rest was removed for security reasons. The former monastery buildings suffered a total loss.

The reconstruction in a simplified form according to plans by Michael Kurz and Robert Pfaud began as early as 1946. The late Gothic room of the church was restored and a shell vault made of cast concrete was drawn in. The nave was completed by 1950. The destroyed baroque dome of the choir, completed in 1957, has now been replaced by an octagonal tent roof. The not-covered tower only got its original baroque bulb back in October 1989. In 2013 the interior of the church was renovated.

Pilgrimage

Inscription with the story of the "wonderful good"

In connection with the Holy Cross Church, a miracle of the wafers is said to have occurred in 1199 .

Tradition tells of a woman who, after communion , secretly took the host out of her mouth there in 1194, took it home and covered it with wax to keep it permanently. She had the consecrated host at home for five years when she felt remorse and confessed . Because the host in the wax had changed strangely in the meantime, Bishop Udalschalk was informed, who had it brought to the Augsburg Cathedral , where it was so swollen in front of many people during a mass that the wax came off by itself . The sources also report that the host was blood-red or flesh-like and split into two parts that were connected by veins. That is why they were brought back to Heilig-Kreuz in a solemn procession, kept there permanently in a crystal bowl together with the wax cover, and from then on they were revered in a special way as the so-called “miraculous property”.

Every year on May 11th, the “Feast of the Miraculous Good” was celebrated in the church and it was elevated to the parish church. The pilgrimage gained national importance. In the 13th century, the von Rechberg aristocratic family donated a rectangular shrine embossed in silver, which has been modified and decorated several times and is still the place where the sanctuary is kept ( monstrance ) today. In 1486 the famous theologian Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg supported the pilgrimage with personal sermons in Augsburg. In 1494 a detailed investigation was carried out by Bishop Friedrich II von Zollern . The shepherd and his cathedral chapter stated that "after almost 300 years it was not dust or paint, but a very thick, flesh- and blood-like shape".

When the interior of the church was redesigned from 1716 to 1719, a representative dome was built over the blood host. After multiple relocations due to circumstances, it with its pompous monstrance is kept in the church to this day. After the 8 o'clock mass the tabernacle is opened for about half an hour and the "view of the Lord in the form of bread" is released.

Historical pilgrimage souvenirs

  • Devotional picture 1699

  • Devotional image, early 18th century

  • Devotional picture around 1850

architecture

inner space
Looking back to the gallery
Late Gothic ribbed vault under the gallery

The late Gothic hall building with a simple exterior facade has three naves . The baroque bell tower with cubic Romanesque basement floors is provided with an onion dome. The slender round pillars inside the church bear a shell vault from the post-war period. A late Gothic ribbed vault has been preserved under the organ gallery . The sacristy north of the choir is decorated with a three- bay reticulated vault from 1504.

Furnishing

Only a few pieces of the once rich furnishings of the church have survived, including:

After an interior renovation of the church from 1976 to 1982 with a redesign of the choir, it contains new pieces, including:

  • Assumption of Mary by Peter Paul Rubens or his workshop (approx. 1622/25)

  • Miracle of the Cross of Saint Helena , attributed to Giuseppe Vermiglio (first half of the 17th century)

  • Wooden crucifix by Georg Petel (1626)

  • Two figures from Ignaz Wilhelm Verhelst's Cross Finding Group (1782)

  • Wrought iron grille (1744)

organ

Today's organ was built by the organ builder GF Steinmeyer from Oettingen as Opus 1784 in 1949. The organ has 19 sounding stops, divided into two manuals. Your disposition is:

I Hauptwerk C – g 3
Wooden principal 8th'
Quintad 4 ′
octave 4 ′
Gemshorn 4 ′
Forest flute 2 ′
mixture 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
II Swell C – g 3
Salizional 8th'
Covered 8th'
Ital. Principal 4 '
Reed flute 4 '
Octave 2 ′
third 1 3 ⁄ 5  ′
Quint 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
Cymbel 1 ⁄ 2 ′
Rohrschalmei 8th'
Tremulant
Pedal C – f 1
Sub-bass 16 ′
Soft bass 16 ′
Octave bass 8th'
Pommer 4 ′

See also

literature

  • Michael Hörmann: The Augustinian Canons in Augsburg in the Middle Ages , Diss. Munich, 1931
  • Thomas Aquinas Dillis: The miraculous estate at Holy Cross in Augsburg , 1949
  • The history of the Augustinian Canon Monastery at the Holy Cross in Augsburg , 1952
  • Helmut Rößle: Churches in the Bobsleigh War - The destruction of Augsburg churches in the Second World War. Regio Akademica Verlag, Augsburg 2004, pp. 48–50
  • Walter Pötzl : Terrible accidents and terrible diseases. How our ancestors found help with the wonderful property in Heilig Kreuz in Augsburg. Special volume of the Heimatverein for the district of Augsburg e. V., Augsburg, 2019. ISBN 978-3-925549-34-2

Web links

Commons : Katholische Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche Augsburg  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Catholic Holy Cross Church | Mozart city. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 25, 2018 ; accessed on August 25, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mozartstadt.de
  2. ↑ Detailed recordings of the shrine In: Manfred Eder : Pilgrimages, Eucharistic in the portal Historisches Lexikon Bayerns in the house of Bavarian history ; on the left the old original shrine, on the right the monstrance developed from it today
  3. ↑ Website from Augsburgwiki with details on the history of pilgrimages
  4. ↑ Website on the pilgrimage history, with a photo of the "wonderful good"
  5. ↑ "Welcome to the Dominican and Pilgrimage Church of the Holy Cross", Flyer
  6. ↑ Wolfram Hoyer op: 75 years Dominicans at the Holy Cross , Augsburg, 2007, p. 53ff, p. 101
  7. ↑ Wolfram Hoyer op: 75 years Dominicans at the Holy Cross , Augsburg, 2007, p. 55ff, p. 101
  8. ↑ Wolfram Hoyer op: 75 years of Dominicans at the Holy Cross , Augsburg, 2007, p. 57
  9. ↑ Wolfram Hoyer op: 75 years Dominicans at the Holy Cross , Augsburg, 2007, p. 53ff, p. 102

Coordinates: 48 ° 22 '17.1 "  N , 10 ° 53' 29.3"  E