Stephanuskirche (Eggenburg)
The parish church of St. Stephanus is a Roman Catholic church in the town of Eggenburg in Lower Austria .
history
The church is visible from afar and towers over the city with a nave with a high pitched roof and a choir flanked by two towers. The church initially stood to the west outside the city walls. To the north, the church is connected to the former rectory by a covered corridor . The Karner St. Michael was demolished in 1792. Initially part of the parish of Gars am Kamp , the church was elevated to a parish church in 1135. From 1266 to 1564 a double parish with gars was formed. The well-endowed chancellor parish, awarded by the sovereign, was from 1274 to 1304 under pastor and Magister Heinrich, from 1323 to 1349 under Otto Graf von Maidburg-Hardegg, from 1403 to 1435 under Andreas Plank, from 1500 to 1505 under Lang von Wellenburg and 1705 to 1730 under Konrad Ferdinand von Albrechtsburg. The east towers from the 12th century have been preserved from the Romanesque church building. The high Gothic long choir was built around 1340. The outer walls of the late Gothic nave were built between 1482 and 1485. In 1486, construction came to a standstill when Matthias Corvinus conquered the city . The vaulting and continuation of the nave began in 1500. The church was consecrated in 1537. In the 18th century, the church was partially baroque. At the end of the 19th century the church received a neo-Gothic interior.
External church building
The wide rectangular three-aisled, four-bay nave has high stepped buttresses with keel-arched gables and pinnacles, a base and coffin cornice and slender, pointed-arched tracery windows. In the east of the nave at the transition to the choir there is a hexagonal gable tab from 1520, on consoles, with rectangular gabled openings, pinnacles and finials. To the south is a bricked-up late Gothic portal with tracery decoration, to the north there is also a bricked-up late Gothic portal with a crossed shoulder arch. To the south, a porch with a monopitch roof and groin vault and rectangular portal was added in 1712. The smooth western gable front has notch windows, a coffin cornice and a stone gable cross and a reinforced shoulder arch portal with richly profiled pointed arches. The west facade is followed by a passage hall open on two sides with beveled pointed arches, then a former council meeting room and to the west the Loreto Chapel, with ribbed vaults on the ground floor. A graffiti from 1979 by Ernst Degasperi the goal of peace in the open entrance area entitled Stronger than death reminds us of the extermination of Jews in World War II with Zyklon B . On the upper floor is a high hall with an open roof structure, the multi-lane tracery windows are walled up and a crossed pointed arches as access to the gallery of the nave. A polygonal stair tower with late Gothic door walls with a built-in spiral staircase and a robe portal also leads to the gallery.
The high-Gothic two-bay choir with five-eighth end , with two- and three-lane tracery windows, with buttresses in the polygon, has a slightly higher eaves line and a lower roof compared to the nave. Above the eastern part of the window is a Romanesque relief depicting Adam and Eve .
Two Romanesque towers flank the choir in the corners of the choir to the nave, with the tower front being drawn in or narrower towards the nave. The towers have high pyramid roofs, the southern one has three storeys, the northern one four storeys. They have regular ashlar masonry with corner pilaster strips and profiled cornices with blind arch friezes. There are some head consoles, checkerboard friezes and slotted windows. On the upper floors, Romanesque bifor windows, some of which were walled up, were changed on the south tower in the 16th century with ornamented reveals and balusters instead of the central column. To the east of the south tower is a Romanesque stone lion as a gargoyle.
The two-storey Gothic sacristy with an oratory from the 14th century adjoins the choir to the north and has a square stair tower with slit windows.
To the north there is a covered corridor to the old rectory with three brick arches. In the connecting passage there is an inserted Romanesque arched window with diamond cut decoration from the 12th / 13th centuries. Century, transferred here from the former Johanneskapelle in the Rathausstrasse No. 5. In the roof height there are inserted Romanesque console stones and a walled-in wattle stone, probably from the 9th century. The connecting corridor was formerly also connected to the Karner.
Inner church building
The four-bay nave as a three-aisled hall has an impressive and uniform character under the influence of the Viennese building works . Six bundle pillars with net rib vaults divide the nave into three naves of almost the same width. The ribbed vault in the central nave has a honeycomb configuration. The slightly deeper ribbed vaults of the side aisles have a star-shaped configuration and a stronger emphasis on the yoke division. The ribs in the vault and on the aisle walls rest on bundled round services with capitals. The arcade and partition arches are framed by continuous pear rods. At the top of the west wall is the inscription 1561.
In the south aisle there is a gallery with a reinforced shoulder arch portal from the end of the 15th century. The west gallery with groin vault on raised pillars in the first central nave yoke was built in 1688 and provided with a stone balustrade. A wooden latticework was added in 1730.
Around the side portals a stucco marble garment with corner pilasters was erected above it, a lunette and profiled gable with braid painting and in the middle of the 18th century with putti and angel statues and the saints. Peter and Paul and provided with baroque door fittings.
The single-nave choir with two square yokes has a five-eighth end . The ribbed vault around 1340 has pear ribs on round services with chalice capitals above a coffin cornice with foliage consoles. A rosette keystone shows the Lamb of God as a relief . The grooved sacristy portal with round bar accompaniment and iron plate door was built around 1500. To the north is a late Gothic keel-arched sacrament house with barbed garments with a wrought-iron rosette grille from the 3rd quarter of the 15th century, opposite is a pointed-arched session niche , which is used as a tombstone frame. In the southern slope is a 15th century lava niche. Around 1710, domed flat-arched oratorio windows were installed in the north of the choir.
On the northern reveal of the pointed triumphal arch is a late Gothic light house with the donor's inscription 1505 Matthäus Lang .
The sacristy with a ribbed vault is from the end of the 13th century and was built in the 14th and 15th centuries. Century expanded in the west by a higher room with barrel vault and a staircase with a shoulder portal. The Gothic oratorios with groin vaults and arched openings in the choir were built in 1710.
The two tower ground floors have Romanesque ashlar masonry approx. 1.5 m thick and a groin vault, the upper floors have bricked, round arched and coupled window frames.
In the choir loft there is a rectangular portal with the painted inscription 1513 and there are partly visible stone gutters. The nave attic is a carpentry from 1513.
Gothic wall paintings were uncovered during a restoration from 1960 to 1961. In the choir Mary with Child, flanked by Saints John the Baptist, Katharina, Dorothea and Agnes. On the east wall of the north aisle is a three-part picture with the Deësis group and the Last Judgment, with the Adoration of the Kings and the donor family, from the 1st quarter of the 16th century. On the organ loft the picture Annunciation marked 1677 and donated by Wolf Steinböck.
The figural stained glass is labeled 1889 and 1907.
Former Karner
The Karner St. Michael , depicted on the city seal before 1280, was removed in 1792. From 1974 to 1976, the basement of the round building with a semicircular apse was exposed and covered in ashlar masonry from the 12th century. Remains of an attached brotherhood room with a corridor from the church to the old parsonage have been preserved from a Marian brotherhood mentioned in a document in 1361.
Reception in art
- 1847 clay lithograph The parish church of Eggenburg. by Josef Erwin von Lippert
literature
- Dehio Lower Austria north of the Danube 1990 , Eggenburg, parish church hl. Stephanus, former Karner, Pfarrhof, pp. 149–154.
Web links
- Bundesdenkmalamt : Monument of the month: Eggenburg, parish church hl. Stephen
- Parish Eggenburg: history of the parish church
Individual evidence
- ↑ Knight Josef Erwin von Lippert (1826–1902): The parish church of Eggenburg (1847) in the database of the state's memory of the history of Lower Austria ( Museum Niederösterreich )
Coordinates: 48 ° 38 ′ 35.6 " N , 15 ° 48 ′ 50.7" E