Melchior from Zaunagg

Melchior von Zaunagg (born January 4, 1667 in Zwettl , † April 28, 1747 there ) was an Austrian Roman Catholic clergyman, Cistercian and abbot of the Zwettl monastery .

life and work

Zaunagg (also: Zaunack ) came from a small noble family. His father Georg Gottlieb was the court clerk of the Rappottenstein castle . An older brother became mayor of the city of Buda . Zaunagg attended the Jesuit school in Krems and entered the Cistercian monastery in Zwettl in 1689 . He made his profession in 1790 , was ordained a priest in 1795 and elected abbot in 1706. He worked as such for 40 years.

Client

Zaunagg shaped the appearance of Zwettl Abbey today. After he had rehabilitated the financial situation of the monastery in the first 16 years of his abbey, he realized a program of baroque buildings from 1722 to 1735 including the medieval building fabric, which was spared (with the exception of the Romanesque nave of the collegiate church, which he replaced with a Gothic Replaced extension of the hall choir). Its most striking buildings were the library room and the tower facade of the church; the tower is still the symbol of the monastery today.

Musician

After he had already made an outstanding contribution to the musical education of the monastery students as a choir director from 1697 to 1701, he had Johann Ignaz Egedacher build one of the most important baroque organs in Austria from 1728 to 1730 , which is still the center of an annual organ festival today.

author

Zaunagg wrote numerous writings in Latin, which remained a manuscript (documented in the Dictionnaire des auteurs cisterciens ).

literature

• Emile Brouette, Anselme Dimier and Eugène Manning (eds.): Dictionnaire des auteurs cisterciens. Rochefort, Belgium, Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint-Remy de Rochefort, 1975–1978, column 751.
• Gerhard Wenda: Abbot Melchior von Zaunagg (1706 - 1747) and the third period of Austrian baroque monastery life in Zwettl Abbey. Dissertation University of Innsbruck 1951.
• Pius Manzador: Speech of honor and mourning for the Rev. Weyland ... Mr. Brach-Monaths; held by his corpse-Besingnuss in his Stiffts-Kirchen. Heyinger, Vienna 1747 (25 pages).
• Johann Tomaschek: Cistercian Monastery Zwettl , ed. by Joachim Klinger. Christian Brandstätter, Vienna 1989.

Web links

• Website of the city of Zwettl for the 350th birthday of Zaunagg
• portrait
• Lexicon article on Zaunagg's musical work

predecessor	Office	successor
Robert Scholler	Abbot of Zwettl Monastery 1706–1747	Rainer I. Kollmann