Weizberg Church

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Basilica on the Weizberg

The Roman Catholic basilica on the Weizberg is located on a hill in the east of the city of Weiz in Styria . The high altar is dedicated to the " Sorrowful Mother of God ".

Building history

Basilica on the Weizberg, seen from Oberfladnitz
Side view (February 2015)
Basilica on the Weizberg, high above the city

It is unclear when the first church was built on the Weizberg. One suspects the middle of the 11th century. It was a three-aisled Romanesque basilica with a two-story east tower. It was expanded in the middle of the 14th century (1357?) By adding a choir.

Since there were only hatches under the roof as windows, it was very dark in the church, which was often complained about. Various attempts to improve the lighting conditions in the church through renovations failed and so the dean and archpriest Doctor Franz Leopold Riedlegger (1726–1755) decided to build a new church. But he died before that.

His successor, Doctor Paul Hieronymus Schmutz , therefore appears to be the builder of the new church. Work began in 1757. The shell, erected under the master builder Joseph Hueber , was finished after a little over a year, on December 8, 1758 the miraculous image (a Pietà by the master of Neustift from the first quarter of the 15th century) was brought into the new church and celebrated first service.

There was initially no money for the interior design of the single-nave, late Baroque building. It was not until 1769 that the sculptor Veit Königer and the painter Joseph Adam Ritter von Mölk , who were also employed in the Taborkirche , could begin this work. On July 22, 1776, Bishop Joseph Philipp Graf Spaur von Seckau consecrated the church.

The court painter Joseph Adam Ritter von Mölk , who originally came from Vienna , needed 221 days for his frescoes with his colleagues in 1771 . The theme of the five ceiling paintings are the five great Marian feasts of the church year.

The splendid high altar on which the aforementioned Pietà is placed comes from Veit Königer .

The pulpit, completed in 1775, was made by the sculptor Jakob Peyer . The two side altars are also from him. They are consecrated to Saint Anne and Saint Joseph. The large altarpieces are by Ritter von Mölk.

In a fire in 1792, the church roof and the roofs of the 44 meter high towers were damaged.

The church on the "Himmelberg" was a popular pilgrimage church as early as the 12th century. The pilgrimages came to a temporary end during the Reformation. Only in the middle of the 17th century did the number of pilgrims increase again. During the reign of Emperor Joseph II , the number of pilgrims fell again and has not recovered to the present day.

View into the chancel

The organ of the Weizbergkirche was built in 2001 by Mathis Orgelbau and has 31 registers on three manuals and a pedal .

On December 6, 2017, the church was elevated to a minor basilica , making it the fifth church in the Graz-Seckau diocese to have this title.

memorial

In May 2011 a memorial was erected next to the basilica on the Weizberg to commemorate the systematic murder of the Roma and Sinti during the National Socialist era . It was designed by the Graz artist Walter Kratner and shows a broken wheel axle of a freight wagon, which is to be understood as a symbol for deportation and genocide . Behind it is an orange-colored board with the words " Porajmos " . At the beginning of July of the same year, a part of a wheel axle of the memorial was knocked over by strangers. The act was heavily criticized by Kratner and reported to the police.

literature

  • Leopold Farnleitner: Chronicle. Eight century wheat. In: Franz Hauser, Leopold Farnleitner: Weistum und Chronik. Eight centuries of Weiz - fifty years of the city. Weiz 1982, pp. 54-114.
  • Leopold Farnleitner, Franz Hauser, Hans Ritz: Weiz. History and stories. Weiz 1997, p. OA
  • Rochus Kohlbach : The Marienkirche on the Weizberg. The Thomaskirche in the Weizer Tabor. Weiz 1957 (= Weiz. History and landscape in individual representations 4).
  • Peter Krenn: Eastern Styria. Your artworks, historical forms of life and settlement Bd. CI, 2nd reviewed edition Salzburg 1987, p. OA (= Austrian art monograph ).
  • Isabel Zinterl: The parish church of the Sorrowful Mother of God on the Weizberg. In: Ingo H., Susanne Kropa ?: Weiz - impressions of a city. Weiz 2001.

Web links

Commons : Weizbergkirche  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kulturverein Weizberg (ed.): The new organ of the Weizberg Church . Weiz 2001 ( online [PDF; accessed June 27, 2012]).
  2. ↑ Report on mein district.at , accessed on January 3, 2018
  3. ↑ "Porajmos" memorial on the Weizberg: symbol for deportation and genocide. On: orf.at of November 26, 2013.
  4. ↑ Overturned memorial on Weizberg . Kleine Zeitung , July 4, 2012, archived from the original on October 21, 2014 .;

Coordinates: 47 ° 13 ′ 27 ″  N , 15 ° 38 ′ 8 ″  E