Transfiguration Church (Vienna)

Transfiguration Church, Vienna 2., Am Tabor 5. This street runs to the left of the church, Trunnerstraße is on the right; behind the white building in the background is Taborstrasse.

Blackboard on the facade

The Transfiguration Church is an Evangelical Lutheran church in the 2nd district of  Vienna , Leopoldstadt . It serves the Evangelical Parish AB Vienna-Leopoldstadt and Brigittenau as a place of worship.

location

The church is located at Am Tabor 5, about 100 meters south of the border with Brigittenau, the 20th district. About a hundred meters to the east is the Roman Catholic parish church Am Tabor . The Transfiguration Church was built free-standing between the streets Am Tabor ( tram line 5) and Trunnerstraße, which diverge like a gusset . In front of the east-facing main entrance there is a small green area. Behind the gusset, on which the church and a higher residential building stand, runs Taborstrasse (tram line 2), one of the main streets of the 2nd district.

architecture

Southwest view of the parish church with the rectory in the foreground; Trunnerstrasse in the back left

The building complex of the Transfiguration Church, consisting of the actual church building and the attached rectory, is the work of architects Siegfried Theiss and Hans Jaksch, who emerged from a tender . They later planned the Herrengasse skyscraper in Vienna's 1st district and the new Reichsbrücke over the Danube, which opened in 1937 .

The facade of the Transfiguration Church, which is reminiscent of a medieval fortress , is largely unadorned. There is a relief-like crucifixion group above the main portal. In the simply designed interior of the church, a fresco with a representation of the transfiguration of the Lord is attached above the chancel , which comes from the artist Adolf Wolf-Rotenhan (born 1868 in Brno ), who is close to the community .

In the Protestant church building in Austria of the First Republic, the Transfiguration Church, together with the Kreuzkirche and the Zwingli Church, represents the culmination of the development of renouncing traditional church- architectural structuring principles and emphasizing the functionality of the building.

history

The listed church, begun in 1912, was not completed until over a decade later and handed over to its intended use in 1926. The long construction period resulted from interruptions in construction caused by the First World War . The church tower could only be completed in 1965, after the Second World War .

The Viennese Evangelical Lutheran parish acquired the building site in 1909 after lengthy negotiations from the Vienna city administration. 130 architects and architectural associations took part in the tender for the construction of the church.

The Transfiguration of the Lord, after which the church, consecrated in November 1926, is named, is associated with Mount Tabor in Israel in Christian tradition . The street Am Tabor and the nearby Taborstraße are named after a Tabor as a fortification . Such a tabor was often built around fortified churches (" tabor churches ") in Austria - and the architecture of the Transfiguration Church is, in turn, not free from echoes of a tabor church.

The Tabor, which was once established here, did not protect a fortified church, but a transition over the still unregulated Danube , which was not regulated until 1868–1875 . In 1814, at the end of what was then the street of Prague towards the city center , Emperor Franz I received his allies, Tsar Alexander of Russia and King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, who had planned to arrive at the same time for the Congress of Vienna , and moved with them into the city. The nearby Allied Road is a reminder of this (see Allied Quarter ).

Details

The theologians Werner Horn and Fritz Zerbst both completed their vicariate in the Transfiguration Church. The parish of Leopoldstadt and Brigittenau became independent in 1949 and belongs to the Evangelical Superintendentur AB Vienna of the Evangelical Church AB in Austria .

literature

The warning and memorial plaque on the portal of the Transfiguration Church

• Alexander Grabner: The church buildings and church designs by the architects Siegfried Theiß and Hans Jaksch . Diploma thesis, University of Vienna 2002

Web links

Commons : Church of the Transfiguration  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Evangelical parish AB Leopoldstadt and Brigittenau

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Writing based on Lehmann's General Directory for Vienna, 1910 edition
2. ↑ Herbert Unterköfler: Between Two Worlds - Notes on the Cultural Identity of Evangelicals in Austria . In: Spiritual life in Austria during the First Republic . Edited by Isabella Ackerl , Oldenbourg, Munich 1986, ISBN 3486537318 , p. 357
3. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from April 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was 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 on January 15, 2009 

Coordinates: 48 ° 13 '30.3 "  N , 16 ° 23' 7"  E