St. George's Cathedral (Wiener Neustadt)
The St. George's Cathedral is dedicated to St. George as the castle chapel of Wiener Neustadt Castle . Today it serves as the cathedral of the Austrian military diocese and the church of the Theresian Military Academy (MilAk).
history
Around the year 1440 by master builder Peter von Pusica on behalf of Friedrich III. Erected on the west side of the castle, the church dedicated to St. Mary was completed in 1460.
In 1479 the Order of St. George's Knights moved its seat to Wiener Neustadt , whereby the patronage of the church changed to St. George. Since Emperor Maximilian I was born in the castle, he was buried under the high altar of this church in 1519, although he had previously planned a tomb in Innsbruck . After the papal repeal of the Order of St. George Knight in 1600, the Jesuits became pastors of the church, followed by Cistercians and Piarists . In 1608 and 1616 fires damaged the castle as well as the church, for which Archduke Maximilian III. cared. The establishment of the “ Aristocratic Military School or Academy for Wiener Neustadt ”, the current “Theresian Military Academy” by Empress Maria Theresa on December 14, 1751 was also an important event for the church, because it closely linked the church to the fate of the castle: the The cemetery of the military academy was laid out in 1753 (expanded in 1815 and 1829), the next year the chapel in its current inventory. In that year the military academy was also placed under the jurisdiction of the Wiener Neustadt bishop, but the separation from the city parish remained. Three towers of the castle were destroyed in a severe earthquake in 1768. The church was restored between 1936 and 1938, and frescoes over the main entrance were also exposed. The castle and the church were largely destroyed by the bombing on March 12, 1945, but the reconstruction took place in 1946 and was completed in 1951. The Vienna Archbishop Theodor Innitzer consecrated the church again. When the military academy started operating again in 1958, the church was handed over to the military pastoral care, and from 1963 the seat of the Austrian military vicar . A highlight was the elevation of the church to the daughter of the Lateran Basilica in 1967. The first Austrian military bishop Alfred Kostelecky solemnly took over the church in 1987 as its cathedral.
In the course of the upcoming Lower Austrian State Exhibition 2019 , the grave of Maximilian I will be honored on the 500th year of death, the interior of the church will be changed after a restricted competition of five designs. The jury, in which the military bishop Werner Freistetter was also represented, decided in favor of the design by the Tyrolean artists Martin and Werner Feiersinger .
Appearance
Inside the main portal, which was built in 1777, you can access the cathedral via a double staircase. A tympanum - fresco (late 15th century) through the main gate, shows Jesus to St. John and St. Koloman...
The church is located above a five-bay, star-vaulted gate hall, which was probably completed in 1449. The three-aisled church has no apse and is 32.15 meters long, 18.80 meters wide and 15.01 meters high. Untersberg marble clad the church floor.
The flat late Gothic vaulted ceiling is supported by 8 round columns that are over 13 meters high. The central nave is designed as a ribbed vault , the side aisles as a ribbed vault . A gallery surrounds the interior space on three sides, and in the chancel it goes over into an oratorio. This gallery is supported by corbels connected by double, interlocking arches. This gallery is adorned with a large number of coats of arms, which were borrowed from a template from Grünberg's " Austrian Chronicle ". There is also a reference to genealogy with the coat of arms. The 55 coats of arms are distributed on the south side with 21 coats of arms, on the west side there are 19 coats of arms and the north side 15 coats of arms. The oratorio on the left, used by the emperor, is more richly designed than the one on the right.
A shield with the imperial double-headed eagle and the Habsburg lion can be found above the gallery . The church has nine windows, three on the east side of the altar, three on the west side, two on the north side and one window on the south side, but the latter was covered by the construction of the west wing of the castle between 1769 and 1777. Only the beautiful glass paintings remain from the eastern windows, the other windows are filled with blue antique glass .
Church furnishings
Nothing remained of the originally late Gothic furnishings, multiple changes and redesigns, as well as the destruction in 1945 were the cause. In 1986 the newly created facility was adapted to the new liturgical guidelines, from 1988 to 1990 the interior was redesigned by installing new chandeliers, raising the floor and setting up a walkable altar (people's altar ). An electric bench heater was also installed. A Frederician reliquary has been restored and supplemented.
In 1990 an anteroom to the church was designed as a burial place for military bishop Alfred Kostelecky . The otherwise empty room on the first floor contains the marble sarcophagus and a metal representation of Kostelecky's bishop's coat of arms.
A single column (in front of the right oratory) with a well-preserved fresco from the time of Emperor Friedrich III. survived the destruction of 1945. These nine representations could be replicas from the 15 miniatures of the prayer book of Kaiser Friedrich III. be.
From top to bottom they show stations in the life of Jesus as described by Luke:
- Resurrection of the Ascension
- Christ's Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles
- Assumption of Mary into heaven
- Coronation of Mary
- Adoration by the three magicians
- Presentation of Jesus in the temple
- Escape to Egypt
- the twelve year old Jesus in the temple.
In addition, this column carries a large crucifix , the body of which - an Austrian work - dates from the 14th century, the cross itself was renewed in 1988.
Altars
Seven steps lead to the original main altar. Under these steps, his will was buried in 1519 as a penitent according to Emperor Maximilian I, but in the regalia of the Order of St. George Knights. The first, Gothic high altar is said to have been decorated with a painting by Albrecht Dürer - "Baptism in the Jordan". Archduke Maximilian III. replaced this with a winged altar . In 1770, Empress Maria Theresa donated a new high altar and the two side altars were replaced by baroque altars. A statue of St. George, which stood on the high altar during the period of the Order of St. George, was placed on the former main altar. This Milanese bronze work from the time of Emperor Frederick III. was stolen in 1948 and broken into 14 parts, but could be restored. Between the people's altar and the right side altar is the cathedra , the bishop's seat of the Austrian military bishop with his coat of arms and motto.
The original of the "Cherry Madonna" from 1470 from the coat of arms is placed on the right side altar. It shows a statue of the Madonna with baby Jesus holding a fruit basket in his hands.
The left side altar is the sacrament altar and carries a newly created tabernacle .
Baptismal font
The twelve- sided font from Adneter Rotscheck, a work from the 15th century, which was probably used for the baptism of Maximilian I in 1459, comes from the original church .
Reliquary
Around the year 1480 the of Emperor Friedrich III. donated reliquary, which was built three fathoms (= 5.68 meters) from the main entrance of the church. It stood on four bronze columns and is decorated with the coat of arms of the Habsburg possessions of the time. Saints who are likely to be related to the relics are depicted on fourteen panels; the middle panel shows the monogram of Emperor Frederick III.
At the request of Emperor Rudolf II , relics were removed and brought to Prague ; Bishop Lambert Gruber of Wiener Neustadt wrote a protocol about this in 1580.
During the renovation of the church in 1779, under the director of the military academy, Franz Josef Graf Kinsky, the shrine was torn down and dismantled; the two outer parts found their place in the presbytery of the Neuklosterkirche . During the restoration in 1989, the parts were brought together again and the missing middle section and two large pegs were replaced.
organ
Today's organ is the fourth organ in the history of this church and dates from 1951. It has 23 stops on two manuals and a pedal . The total number of sounding pipes is 1519.
Votive and memorial tablets
The clay votive tablet was made around 1600. It shows Archduke Maximilian III. with St. Mary and St. George. It could be a model relief for his tomb in the Cathedral of St. Jakob in Innsbruck , which was modeled by Hubert Gerhart (Munich) and Caspar Gras (Innsbruck) and cast by Heinrich Reinhart.
A top plate made of red marble with the inscription “ Tell me, dumb stone, whose bones are you hiding? Look to the right and read the name in ore “by the first column on the right and a memorial plaque points to the Chorbishop of Cologne, Wolfgang Georg Friedrich von der Pfalz , who came from an audience of the Pope in Rome in 1683 at the age of 24 in Wiener Neustadt passed away. He was buried in the court church in Neuburg an der Donau .
Two memorial plaques, which the emperor ordered in his will, commemorate the loyal advice of Maximilian I, Siegmund von Dietrichstein , and his wife Barbara. Siegmund von Dietrichstein was buried in the parish church of St. Jakob in Villach.
Late Gothic stained glass
Only remnants of the original late Gothic glass windows from 1478 and 1479 are preserved in the upper tracery; they were destroyed during the siege by Matthias Corvinus between 1485 and 1487. The windows, which were renewed by a Dutch painter in 1492, were damaged in a fire two years later. King Ferdinand I had the windows renewed in 1558, today only the windows on the east side are preserved, they are considered an important work of Mannerism .
The middle window is 7.59 meters high and 2.53 meters wide. The middle part of this glass window shows, from left to right, Philip the Fair , King of Castile (son of Maximilian and Maria of Burgundy), Emperor Maximilian I, his second wife Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan, next to her the baptism in the Jordan first wife Maria of Burgundy and - shown somewhat smaller - the daughter Margarethe, governor in the Netherlands. The apostle Andreas depicted over King Philip - the patron saint of the Order of the Golden Fleece refers to Habsburg and Burgundy. The coat of arms of Spain, the imperial double-headed eagle and the coats of arms of Sforza and Burgundy are depicted at their feet.
The master of these stained glass paintings could perhaps be one of the three people behind the apostle Andrew.
The two side windows are 1.89 meters wide and show depictions of saints in 18 fields each, which are probably related to the relics of the Frederician reliquary. Female saints are generally shown in the right window and male saints in the left window, but male saints are shown in the second row from the top of the right window. The processing of the glass panes and the painting technique, as well as the spelling of the year "1479" under the property mark AEIOU in the top right window - the year the church was handed over to the Order of St. George, indicate production in the 16th century.
Bells
The original ringing of four bells was housed in the north-west tower of the castle, the Rakoczy Tower , but they were lost in the fires of 1608 and 1616. On the instructions of Archduke Maximilian III. 4 new bells were cast by Heinrich Reinhart in Innsbruck in 1617, of which the large H bell (weight 5040 kg) - it bears a representation of the crucifixion and the fourteen helpers - and the small H bell (weight 1680 kg) have been preserved .
Today's bells consist of 3 bells in B minor: the big bell from 1617, the middle bell (D) "Georgsglocke" was re-cast in 1950 and the small bell (Fis), which is a donation from Emperor Franz Josef I. is from 1896 and has a picture of the emperor.
The coat of arms
The intention of using the Georgskirche as a burial place is indicated by the construction of the building master Peter von Pusica commissioned by Friedrich III on the east wall facing the courtyard in 1453. erected coat of arms. It represents a fantastic genealogy of the House of Austria, which is probably based on the " Austrian Chronicle of 95 Dominions " of the Viennese clergyman Leopold Stainreuter , the court chaplain Albrechts III. which was built in 1384 and 1385. This genealogy is the first purely Austrian representation and was most likely made by Duke Albrecht III. edited by myself. Only 19 of the 107 coats of arms are real coats of arms, the rest are fictitious ("fable coats of arms").
The real coats of arms represent the Habsburg possessions at the time of Emperor Frederick III in three fields:
- In the field above left, next to the three female saints, there are (from left to right, from top to bottom): Laufenburg, Säckingen, Raron, Pfannberg and Rapperswil.
- In the field to the left of the statue of Frederick III. are located: The coats of arms of Styria, New Austria (red-white-red shield), Burgau, Portenau, Tyrol, Kyburg and Habsburg.
- In the field to the right of the statue of Friedrich III. are the coats of arms of Old Austria (five golden eagles in blue), Carinthia, Krain, Windische Mark, Upper Austria, Alsace and Pfirt.
15 coats of arms had to be rebuilt during the reconstruction, two more had to be restored. Only the " Cherry Madonna " and the figure of the emperor, who is depicted as an archduke, are preserved from the original figures on the coat of arms. These sculptures are younger than the coat of arms itself and were possibly made by a Wiener Neustadt master around 1470.
In the upper part of the coat of arms there are statues of three female saints in three niches: to the left of her St. Barbara , in the middle St. Maria (copy of the "Cherry Madonna") and on the right St. Catherine . These two outer statues were recreated in the course of the reconstruction. In 1938 the original of the Cherry Madonna was replaced by a copy and thus escaped destruction. The original is on the right side altar of the church.
Coordinates: 47 ° 48 ′ 36.6 ″ N , 16 ° 14 ′ 42.5 ″ E
literature
Albert Camesino : About a bas-relief located in the castle of Wiener-Neustadt in the Georgskirche in the messages of the emperors. royal Central Commission for the Research and Conservation of Architectural Monuments Volume 2, 1857., (Category with associated images on Commons )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ burgen-austria.com - Wiener Neustadt - Castle . Accessed January 1, 2015.
- ^ Oxford Index - Peter of Pusica (c. 1400-1475) . Accessed January 1, 2015.
- ↑ Chronology of the Theresian Military Academy - Timeline ( Memento from January 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ St. George's Cathedral will be rebuilt in 2018. NÖN week 05 January 30th 2018 p. 23.