Wall pillar church

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A wall pillar church is a church with a special design. This term is used to denote single-nave, vaulted church buildings in which wall-tied pillars on the longitudinal walls structure the interior, especially when the wall pillars protrude from the walls into the interior of the church, so that individual parts of the room arise on the longitudinal walls between the pillars.

Wall pillar church: Dillingen study church

History and forms

Medieval forms of the pilaster church are found in the Gothic style in the south of France ( Albi Cathedral ), but also in the German late Gothic style ( Katharinenkirche in Brandenburg , Frauenkirche in Munich ).

The architecture of the post-medieval pilaster church has preliminary stages in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque architecture. While medieval architecture preferred multi-aisled churches, Leon Battista Alberti's building of Sant'Andrea in Mantua introduced the single-nave hall church covered by a large barrel vault as a new type of building. In order to structure the walls and to enable the lateral thrust of the vault to be absorbed, the longitudinal wall forms chapels with transverse barrels at regular intervals. This type of building allowed an uninterrupted view of the high altar and created a single room. The further development in the Jesuit church Il Gesù in Rome had a resounding effect on church construction in modern times. In the floor plan, the walls between the chapels appear like the wall pillars drawn inwards from the outer wall of the building, which is why the name of the wall pillar church has erroneously become common in German usage. In terms of space, however, it is not a question of inwardly drawn wall pillars, but rather buttresses outside the hall, which is mostly basilically raised, and which at the same time form the partition walls of the chapels, which are much lower than the interior. The spatial impression inside is characterized by a wall with a column arrangement, which is closed off with a continuous beam. Therefore these buildings can be described as hall churches with chapels; The term "Il-Gesù type" is also commonly used.

The wall pillar church in the narrower sense developed north of the Alps from these models as well as late Gothic room types (hall churches with flat insert chapels). Particularly in the phase of the first adoption of Italian Renaissance and Baroque forms north of the Alps as well as when they are strongly influenced, mixed forms are possible ( St. Michael in Munich , Klagenfurt Cathedral ). In contrast to the Italian hall building, the outer wall of the south German wall pillar church, which towers to the full height, is stabilized and structured by wall pillars drawn into the interior. Typically at the same height, both the main vault of the room and the (barrel) vaults of the secondary rooms between the pillars are positioned above these wall pillars, which cut into the main vault. In this case, the wall pillars do not have a continuous entablature, but only short pieces of entablature and appear as individual, large-scale shapes. In some cases, especially in the so-called Vorarlberg building scheme , the wall pillars can stand almost freely in front of the wall. This brings the room layout closer to that of the hall church ( Weingarten basilica ). As a rule, the spaces between the pillars are used as chapels , in which the altars are not on the outer wall, but in front of the flanks of the pillars facing the entrance. The spaces between the wall pillars are often spanned by galleries .

In the South German and Austrian Baroque , the wall pillar church was one of the preferred types of construction for sacred buildings. The Jesuit church building played an important role with the Munich Michaelskirche and the study church in Dillingen for the education and dissemination of the building type. The Vorarlberg master builders active in the entire southern German-speaking area used this type of building almost consistently, which is why one speaks of the “Vorarlberg Cathedral Scheme” or the “Vorarlberg Wall Pillar Church”. However, the building type was neither developed by the Vorarlbergers nor is their buildings peculiar to themselves.

In this overview and with the following examples only Catholic churches are mentioned. However, there are also some Protestant church buildings of this type.

Examples

Early and mixed forms

South German type

"Vorarlberg Cathedral Scheme"

literature

  • Joachim Büchner: The late Gothic pilaster church in Bavaria and Austria. Hans Carl, Nuremberg 1964
  • Max Hauttmann: History of ecclesiastical architecture in Bavaria, Swabia and Franconia 1550-1780 . F. Schmidt, Munich a. a. 1921
  • Stephan Hoppe : What is baroque. Architecture and Urban Development in Europe 1580-1770 . Scientific book society. Darmstadt 2003
  • Norbert Lieb: The Vorarlberg baroque master builders . 3. Edition. Schnell and Steiner, Munich a. a. 1976
  • Bernhard Schütz: The church baroque architecture in Bavaria and Upper Swabia 1580-1780 . Hirmer Verlag, Munich 2000
  • Kai Wenzel: A lot of anguli, so used before Jaren in the Pope. Central European wall pillar churches around 1600 in confessional competition , in: Susanne Wegman, Gabriele Wimböck (ed.): Confessions in the church. Dimensions of the sacred space in the early modern period , Korb 2007, pp. 95–114

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Büchner: The late Gothic wall pillar church of Bavaria and Austria. Nuremberg 1964
  2. ↑ Undifferentiated use of the term z. B. from Wilfried Koch, Baustilkunde, Munich 1988, p. 250
  3. ↑ Stephan Hoppe, Was ist Barock ?, Darmstadt 2003, pp. 28, 61–63.
  4. ^ Hauttmann, Max, Geschichte der kirchlichen Baukunst, 1921. P. 107–116
  5. ↑ Ulrich Fürst: ›Wall pillar church‹ - about a confusion in the technical terminology of architectural history and about a denominational cross-over in the establishment of a modern building typology ; in: Jan Ha rasimowicz (Hrsg.): Protestant church building of the early modern times in Europe. Basics and new research concepts ; Regensburg 2015, pp. 147–160