Silent Night Chapel
The Silent Night Chapel is located in the town of Oberndorf in the Austrian state of Salzburg and is dedicated to the memory of the Christmas carol Silent Night, its lyricist Joseph Mohr and its composer Franz Xaver Gruber . It stands in the place of the former St. Nicholas Church (St. Nikola), in which the Christmas carol was performed for the first time on December 24, 1818.
Schifferkirche St. Nikola
The church of St. Nikola (formerly also the parish church of St. Ni c ola ) dates back to a Romanesque building from around 1135–1141 and was consecrated to the patron saint of boatmen . As a special feature, it had a chest-high wall in the center aisle to separate men and women.
Although there would have been solid conglomerate for the foundation just below the building surface , the church stood on wooden pilots, which later gave way. The collegiate dean of the collegiate church Laufen Dr. Georg Paris Ciurletti reported on an on-site inspection on February 27, 1654, during which it was established that wooden structures that had already been brought in were unable to prevent the subsidence and inclination of the wall that had already occurred. It was only when the Salzburg administration threatened the Electorate of Bavaria to take over all the church income that they relented and led to the renovation of the church. The roof structure, the vault, the main altar and the side altars were also renewed. Wolfgang Pfaffinger, the father of Josef Anton Pfaffinger , created the high altar . On February 19, 1663 Archbishop Guidobald von Thun and Hohenstein approved the construction of a side altar by Georg Lang, a carpenter in Laufen, then the purchase of priestly robes and, in 1665, the curtains for the altars.
On April 1, 1757, Oberndorf was struck by a fire that destroyed 79 houses, 22 barns and the Nikolakirche. Elector Maximilian III. Joseph arranged for the church to be rebuilt, and on March 15, 1770, Vinzenz Joseph von Schrattenbach laid the foundation stone. The plan for the church was drawn up by Franz Alois Mayr , who envisaged a new nave in the Rococo style, but left the old tower; it was raised and given a dome.
For the interior decoration, mostly Bavarian artists and craftsmen were used. Christian Wink (high altar picture and picture of the Maximilian altar 1775), Franz Ignaz Oefele (picture of the Rupertus altar 1775), Johann Georg Kapfer from Trostberg (three altars and pulpit) and Georg Wolfgang Pröbstl and Johann Georg Lindt (1734–1795), resident in Burghausen, carried out carpentry and sculpture work (many works of art were transferred to the parish church after 1900 and have been preserved). The inauguration of the new Nikolakirche and the three altars was carried out by Sigmund Christoph von Waldburg zu Zeil and Trauchburg von Chiemsee on October 28, 1798.
In the course of the salt export treaty of 1594 and its modification in 1611, Kurbayern took over the patronage of the Schifferkirche St. Nikola , which expired in 1816: According to the Munich Treaty of April 14, 1816, Laufen was divided between the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Austrian Empire . The most important churches in Laufen were located on Bavarian territory, only the Schifferkirche St. Nikola , which had been administered under Bavarian patronage, was on Austrian territory . From 1816, the St. Nicholas Church was therefore the most important place of worship for the residents of Altach and Oberndorf , and this was therefore initially provisionally, from 1850 onwards it was definitely elevated to the parish church of Oberndorf . In order to improve his financial situation and in the hope of receiving the teaching post in Oberndorf one day, Franz X. Gruber took over the cantor and organist service in the St. Nicholas Church from Arnsdorf in 1816 and until 1829 . Franz Xaver Gruber was able to carry out the often combined activities of teacher , organist and sacristan .
organ
In 1825 , apparently at the same time as in Faistenau , the Tyrolean organ builder Karl Mauracher (* 1789, † 1844) installed an organ he had created. It was the first instrument with a chromatic keyboard, i.e. without a short octave , in the state - then the Duchy of Salzburg. Conrad Franz Xaver Gruber was organist in Oberndorf from 1816–1829 and played this instrument from 1825 onwards.
Disposition
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- Remarks
- ↑ in the depth of wood in the height of tin. That sounds very nice .
The church gave up due to flooding
Towards the end of the 19th century, the church was damaged several times by the floods of the Salzach . This occurred after the straightening of the Salzach 1851 - 1873 , the Karl Schwarzschild in the area of Salzburg city limits conduct had to press ahead. In particular, the Altach district was destroyed by floods in 1899 . This led to the decision to rebuild the entire town of Oberndorf including the parish church of St. Nikolaus approx. 800 m upstream. The Nikolauskirche, the oldest parts of which date back to the 12th century, was then demolished, with furnishings being taken over in the new church, but not the organ that Franz Xaver Gruber had designed.
A renovation of the damaged St. Nikola Church was refrained from for two reasons: On the one hand, they avoided the costs and the continuing risk of flooding, and on the other hand, they wanted to persuade the parish to accept the less attractive church built in 1906 in the new town center . The old parish church was demolished, and since 1913 only a cone of rubble has been a reminder of the historical place of origin of the now widely known Christmas carol.
Silent Night Chapel
The 100th anniversary of the song coincided with the hunger winter of 1918/19 , immediately after the First World War . The citizens of Oberndorf wanted to erect a memorial to Mohr and Gruber's message of peace: in 1924 it was decided to build a memorial chapel. Under the difficult conditions (political and economic crises in the First Republic ), the project only slowly got into the implementation phase.
The building, then called the Silent Night Memorial Chapel, was built on the rubble cone of the demolished church between 1924 and 1936. The chapel is in the shape of an octagon with a bell helmet and a lantern, the portal has a hipped canopy. The arched windows were created in 1935 by the Tyrolean glass painting company . The altar with a high relief Nativity is by the sculptor Hermann Hutter from 1915. A predelle relief Adoration of the Magi, Crucifixion, Escape from Egypt is from 1936 by the sculptor Max Domenig .
Every year the memorial chapel and the museum next to it attract numerous visitors from all over the world, especially in Advent . Every year on December 24th at 5 p.m. there is a solemn commemorative mass, at which the Christmas carol is sung in several languages by the visitors and celebrated as an event that unites people. This celebration has been broadcast on the Internet via webcam since 2002.
As part of the 200th anniversary of the Christmas carol 2018, the chapel and museum are one of the locations of the Salzburg State Exhibition 200 Years of Silent Night! Holy Night! , which takes place until Mariä Lichtmess 2019 and in which all parishes take part that have a historical connection to Franz Xaver Gruber and Joseph Mohr , the authors of the song.
Replicas
Replica models of the Silent Night Chapel exist in the Minimundus amusement park near Klagenfurt in Carinthia (1:25 scale) and in the Mönichkirchen model park in Lower Austria. There is also a 1: 1 scale replica in Frankenmuth in the US state of Michigan.
Picture gallery
Silent Night Chapel with Christmas decorations
altar
Window motif: Josef Mohr
Window motif: Franz Xaver Gruber
literature
- Dehio manual. The art monuments of Austria: Salzburg. Urban and countryside. Oberndorf near Salzburg. Silent Night Memorial Chapel. Bundesdenkmalamt (Ed.), Verlag Anton Schroll & Co, Vienna 1986, ISBN 3-7031-0599-2 , page 290.
Web links
- Silent Night Chapel as an interactive 360 ° × 180 ° panorama photo (requires Adobe Flash )
- Information page of the Silent Night Chapel
- Silent Night Chapel (webcam)
- Silent Night website of the city of Oberndorf
Individual evidence
- ^ Pillwein, Benedikt (ed.): History, geography and statistics of the Archduchy of Austria above the Enns and the Duchy of Salzburg . New edition, fifth part: The Salzburg district. Verlag der J. Ch. Quandt'schen Buchhandlung, Linz 1843, p. 416.
- ↑ See Oberndorf Parish, Timetable: Archived Copy ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed September 8, 2015.
- ^ Friederike Zaisberger: History of Salzburg . In: History of the Austrian Federal States , ed. by Johann Rainer (Munich and Vienna 1998), p. 249.
- ↑ On May 28, 1850 Johann Waibl (1788–1866) was invested as the first pastor.
- ^ Gerhard Walterskirchen: Organs and Organ Builders in Salzburg from the Middle Ages to the Present . Dissertation University of Salzburg 1982, p. 266.
- ^ Gerhard Walterskirchen: Organs and Organ Builders in Salzburg from the Middle Ages to the Present . Dissertation University of Salzburg 1982, p. 170.
- ^ Dehio Salzburg 1986
Coordinates: 47 ° 56 ′ 43.8 " N , 12 ° 56 ′ 11.04" E