Theresienkirche (Innsbruck)

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The Theresienkirche from the west

The Theresienkirche is a Roman Catholic parish and pilgrimage church in the Hungerburg district of Innsbruck . The church, built in 1931/32, is dedicated to St. Thérèse von Lisieux and is a listed building .

history

Building history

The church from the south

In 1910 a "Church Building Association Mariabrunn" was founded on the Hungerburg, which had no church until now. One of the founding members provided a plot of land at the intersection of Gramartstrasse and Hungerburgweg. First, a simple chapel with a wooden turret should be built, but its construction was delayed. It was not until 1927 that an emergency church was set up in a garden house and consecrated to Theresa of the Child Jesus, who had been canonized two years earlier. In the chapel there was an image and a relic of the saint. These attracted numerous pilgrims, so that a new church was planned.

For the construction of the pilgrimage and parish church of St. Theresia of the Child Jesus was announced a public competition in 1931 , in which numerous well-known Tyrolean architects participated, including Siegfried Mazagg , Franz Baumann and Clemens Holzmeister . The young architect Willi Stigler received first prize for his modern design, while the simpler and more conventional design by Siegfried Thurner was carried out, presumably for financial reasons . The building was financed exclusively from association funds and donations. In a “brick campaign”, believers carried a total of 46,000 bricks from the city to the building site. The church was consecrated on June 19, 1932 and the image and relic were transferred from the chapel.

In 1941 the church and Widum were expropriated in favor of the NSDAP . This she sold in 1942 for a ridiculous price to the Innsbruck merchant and councilor Karl Neuwirth, who sought to execute and use it for residential purposes. At the urging of the Apostolic Administration, this was prevented by the Gauleitung, but only for the duration of the war, after the "final victory" the church was to be demolished.

In 1987 the interior was redesigned by Ekkehard Hörmann in line with the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council  .

The pilgrimage church was initially a branch church of Hötting and was made a parish vicariate in 1973 . On the initiative of Bishop Reinhold Stecher , the pastoral care of the Hungerburg was taken over by the Order of the Discalced Carmelites in 1983 , who in return set up a monastery in the rectory.

Controversy over the hamlet frescoes

Fresco Der Lanzenstich by Max Weiler

The church received its first artistic decoration in 1935 from the painter Ernst Nepo in the style of the neo-Nazars ; However, Nepo did not complete his work. Due to his activity as head of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts in Tyrol, a renewed assignment after the Second World War was no longer justifiable.

The painter Max Weiler won a competition for new furnishings . With the permission of Bishop Paulus Rusch, he painted the church with frescoes from 1945 . Hamlet painted The Lance Stitch , The Sun of the Sacred Heart , The St. John Minne , Mount of Olives and the Veneration of the Sacred Heart . The execution of Always in Need and Danger of War did not take place.

After its completion in 1948, "a kind of civil war" developed around his work, which triggered a police operation to protect the frescoes. A farm worker from Ebbs , who felt personally attacked by her, tried in vain against Weiler's work . In particular, the dispute over Weiler's portrayal of a blue horse and people in Tyrolean costume at the crucifixion of Christ ignited. The architect Clemens Holzmeister was one of the advocates of Weiler's work .

Opponents of the work under the leadership of the Jesuit father Karl Felch spoke to the Vatican . Felch relied on the encyclical Mediator Dei , in which Pope Pius XII. Artists were forbidden to depict sacred or religious objects in a distorted or defaced manner, as a result of which the feelings of believers are hurt and people could be perceived as unworthy of being depicted. The Vatican decided under threat of an interdict that the frescoes should be removed. They were veiled from 1950 to 1958.

description

Interior view, view of the choir

The Theresienkirche is located on the slope of the Nordkette , slightly elevated across the street and set off by an embankment wall with stairs. The church is a lengthwise building of the type of a Romanesque hall church in massive block-like forms with largely undivided wall surfaces. The cubic church tower with the outer pulpit on the southwest corner is rotated by 45 ° in relation to the church axis. The south-facing entrance and the tower are surrounded by a canopy. The retracted, semicircular closed apse in the north is surrounded by extensions. To the west are the rectory and the Carmelite monastery. The fresco of St. Theresia above the entrance was created by Ernst Nepo in 1935 .

The architecturally simple, high, flat-roofed interior has large frescoes as the dominant decoration. On the high triumphal arch there are representations of the Holy Family, St. Theresia, of Christ and Angels by Ernst Nepo from 1935. The frescoes on the nave walls created by Max Weiler in 1946/1947 were originally intended as a continuous cycle, but this was not completed.

literature

Web links

Commons : Theresienkirche Innsbruck  - collection of pictures

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Juliane Mayer: The architect Wilhelm Stigler Sen. 1903-1976. Volume 1: New studies on the architecture of Tyrolean modernism. Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2018, ISBN 978-3-7065-5377-3 , p. 69-73 . Juliane Mayer: The architect Wilhelm Stigler Sen. 1903–1976. Volume 2: Annotated catalog raisonné from the interwar period. Studienverlag, Innsbruck 2018, ISBN 978-3-7065-5387-2 , p. 76-79 .
  2. ↑ a b Bettina Schlorhaufer , Joachim Moroder: Siegfried Mazagg - interpreter of early modernism in Tirol . Springer, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-7091-1455-1 , pp. 283-286 .
  3. ↑ Martin Achrainer: “The 'bathroom' of little St. Theresia “at the Hungerburg. In: Lisa Gensluckner, Horst Schreiber, Ingrid Tschugg, Alexandra Weiss (eds.): Gaismair-Jahrbuch 2004. Gegenwind. Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck, 2003, ISBN 3-7065-1879-1 , pp. 179-184 ( PDF; 1.7 MB )
  4. ^ History of the Theresienkirche , Hungerburg parish, accessed on November 8, 2018
  5. ↑ P. Josef Nagiller: Innsbruck Hungerburg - Parish and pilgrimage church to St. Theresa of the Child Jesus . Ed .: Parish Vicariate Hungerburg. Kunstverlag The Best, Wels 2012, ISBN 978-3-902809-24-7 , p. 4 .
  6. ↑ Stefan Neuhaus, Johann Holzner: Literature as a scandal: cases-functions-consequences , p. 333 digitized

Coordinates: 47 ° 17 ′ 11.3 "  N , 11 ° 23 ′ 49.6"  E