Parish church Maissau

The parish church of St. Veit in Maissau in Lower Austria with a tower facing northeast and a semicircular apse stands on a terrace between the main square and the castle.

Parish church Maissau, view from the northeast

Floor plan of the parish church Maissau

The baroque Roman Catholic hall church belongs to the dean's office Sitzendorf in the vicariate Unter dem Manhartsberg and is under monument protection according to the ordinance of the Federal Monuments Office ( list entry ).

Parish history

The parish was probably created in connection with the establishment of the market from a stately benefit and was a stately feudal parish . In 1265, a pastor was first mentioned in Maissau.

In 1425 the church was destroyed during the Hussite Wars and later rebuilt. It is not known when the new building took place. With the Reformation , the place became Protestant for about 70 years .

The parish church was destroyed again in a fire in 1767, and most of the castle's archives, rich in old documents and certificates, were also destroyed.

In 1768 the new building took place in the late baroque- classical style. The organ, images of the Stations of the Cross, cult objects and valuable vestments were acquired from the Paulan monastery in Wiener Neustadt , which was closed in 1785 .

The church was renovated in 1867 and 1882.

Building description

Outside

The nave and the retracted choir are structured by a surrounding eaves cornice, simple plastered fields and arched windows from the third quarter of the 18th century and provided with a gable roof. The tower built in 1843 to the northeast in the first third of the nave is divided into four zones, has a clock gable above the arched windows of the sound floor and a pyramid roof crowned by a tower cross.

Inside

High altar

A short, drawn-in gallery yoke in the north-west is followed by the two-bay nave, which, through a semicircular triumphal arch with belt templates, opens up the also drawn-in square choir and the semicircular apse to the south-east.

Double belt arches on pillars with pilasters and heavily profiled entablature support the plaza vaults of the ceiling. On both sides of the choir there are square ancillary rooms, the south-western one with square vaults. From these rooms, stairs lead to flat-roofed galleries with segment-arched windows leading to the choir.

The vault paintings in foliage and ribbon shapes with central medallions depicting the Holy Trinity date from 1882.

Furnishing

Pulpit with plait decoration

Uniform classical equipment in black / gold accord from the fourth quarter of the 18th century.

The high altar consists of a high reredos with a radiant crown and fluted pilasters . The altar panel shows the martyrdom of St. Vitus and dates from the end of the 18th century. The rich tabernacle structure is flanked by figures of angels.

The baroque folk altar, a sarcophagus altar from the beginning of the 18th century, comes from the chapel (church building) of Rappottenstein Castle , was shortened and transferred to the parish church of Maissau.

The pulpit with plaited decoration has a putti figure with tablets of the Ten Commandments on the sound cover .

The fourteen large pictures of the Stations of the Cross from the mid-18th century were transferred from the abandoned Paulan monastery in Wiener Neustadt . Two paintings on canvas from the middle of the 18th century show St. Florian and a representation of the Madonna .

A baroque hunched holy water font and a baroque hunched baptismal font on a classicist pillar from the end of the 18th century complete the furnishings.

organ

The organ goes back to a single-manual instrument that Johann Michael Blazewicz created in 1756 for the Paulan monastery in Wiener Neustadt . After the abolition of the monastery, the organ was transferred to Maissau by Franz Xaver Christoph in 1785 and installed there in a new case. Christoph added a narrow three-part parapet positive and music-making putti. In 1876, Hesse built a free-standing gaming table and, instead of the three old bellows, a magazine bellows. Mauracher changed the disposition in 1933. The flat prospectus of the main plant is designed in three parts with two-story flat fields in the middle section. Mute, bronzed wooden pipes are set up in the upper field. The pedal unit is in a separate housing, mirror-inverted from the main unit. Except for the principal pipes in the prospectus, the registers made up of the Rückpositiv and pedal are still original, and in the middle section of the pedals they are mute. Prospect pipes from the Paulan monastery are still preserved in the main plant. The organ has 16 registers with the following disposition:

I main work CDE – c ⁴
Principal	8th'
Violon	8th'
Copel	8th'
Fugara	4 ′
Copel	4 ′
Dulciana	4 ′
Quint	3 ′
Mixture IV

II Positive CDE – c ⁴
Coppel	8th'
Principal	4 ′
flute	4 ′
Octave	2 ′

Pedal CDE – a ⁰
Sub-bass	16 ′
Principal bass	8th'
Flute bass	8th'
Octave bass	4 ′

Pairing : II / I

Bells

The bell tower houses a five-bell bell that sounds on the Salve Regina motif. The interwar chimes consisted of five bells, the smallest of which was preserved from 1928. It rang on the beats f ¹ - g sharp ¹ - b ¹ - d ² - f sharp ² . Bells 1, 2 and 4 were cast by Karl Kutter in Vienna in 1924. Bell 3 from 1896 came from Peter Hilzer , Wiener Neustadt . The small cutter bell from 1928 was the only one that remained. Josef Pfundner cast today's bells from tin bronze in 1948.

No.	Casting year	Foundry, casting location	Mass (kg)	Diameter (mm)	Chime
1	1948	Josef Pfundner , Vienna	891	1,120	f sharp ¹
2	1948	Josef Pfundner, Vienna	420	886	as ¹
3	1948	Josef Pfundner, Vienna	225	710	c sharp ²
4th	1948	Josef Pfundner, Vienna	167	642	dis ²
5	1928	Karl Kutter, Vienna	80	560	f sharp ²

literature

Dehio manual. The art monuments of Austria. Lower Austria north of the Danube. Edited by Evelyn Benesch, Bernd Euler-Rolle u. a. Verlag Anton Schroll & Co, Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-7031-0652-2 , pp. 698f.