St. Thekla: A Rococo Votive Church in Welden, Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page12 sections
History
St. Thekla is a Roman Catholic votive church in Welden, Germany, dedicated to Saint Thekla of Iconium and belonging to the Diocese of Augsburg. Built in the Rococo style in the eighteenth century, it stands beside the site of a medieval castle on the former castle hill above the Laugnatal. The church is regarded as Hans Adam Dossenberger’s principal work, as the most important church building in the Augsburg district, and as one of the finest Rococo interiors in Bavarian Swabia.
Foundation and construction
Count Joseph Maria Fugger von Wellenburg commissioned and endowed the church. Its foundation was connected with a vow made by the count after an alleged hemorrhage suffered while hunting in 1755. A votive church is built in fulfillment of a vow or in thanksgiving for deliverance from danger or illness, while a votive image records the event associated with that promise. Fugger’s vow was also probably connected with the distress caused by the imperial ban imposed on him after the failure of his marriage. Emperor Francis I lifted the ban in 1754 and restored the count to his former rights.
Fugger had financed a wooden chapel in 1753 in the forest between Bonstetten and Heretsried, but it was demolished in 1755. He then ordered a second wooden chapel on Thekla Hill as a model for the planned stone church and renamed the area “Neuleblang.” In October of that year, workmen began demolishing the keep of the former castle on the hilltop. The stones were initially intended for the new church, although they apparently were not used in its construction.
Construction began in 1756 to designs by Hans Adam Dossenberger of nearby Wollishausen. Augsburg auxiliary bishop Franz Xaver Freiherr Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden laid the foundation stone on 25 July 1756, and the completed church was consecrated on 19 September 1758. The project cost approximately 60,000 to 70,000 guilders. Dossenberger received 6,600 guilders, and after his death in 1759 at the age of 43, his brother and heir Josef received a further 586 guilders in the final settlement. Part of the construction was financed by cutting two-thirds of the fief forests and selling the timber.
Early use and later changes
A small hunting lodge and a house for the benefice holder were originally attached to the church. A benefice was a church office or endowment that provided income for a cleric, often with responsibility for a particular church or chapel. The benefice was dissolved in 1814. The hunting lodge was demolished in 1845, and the benefice holder’s house was demolished in 1900. The site later became the location of a Carmelite convent.
In 1894, Count Carl Fugger von Babenhausen transferred the votive church to the municipality of Welden after the founder’s remains had been reburied in Babenhausen. The church no longer had practical use for the princely family, and the donation was made under threat of demolition if the municipality refused it. The count also provided a building fund of 1,000 marks. In 1913, responsibility passed to the Fugger Foundation Administration because the municipality could no longer afford the building’s maintenance.
A small convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns was added in 1929 to 1931, and St. Thekla has since served as its convent church. The Discalced Carmelites are a reformed branch of the Carmelite order. Major restoration campaigns took place in 1896 to 1897, 1913, 1956, and 1973 to 1974. The last major renovation addressed serious structural damage through concrete foundations and other stabilizing installations.
Remains
Exterior and plan
Exterior form
The elongated church extends 33.5 metres from west to east. Its exterior is articulated by shallow pilasters, a high plinth band with a surrounding masonry course, and an architrave above the window zone. The outer walls of the nave curve slightly outward. Numerous curved windows of different sizes illuminate the interior, while two putti above the west portal hold the Fugger coat of arms beneath a count’s crown.
A tower rises through the roof structure above the western facade. It is crowned by an unusual copper hood influenced by Austrian models associated with Jakob Prandtauer, an Austrian Baroque architect. The ridge of the choir roof is approximately two metres lower than that of the nave. The exterior’s flowing forms and restrained modelling belong to the Rococo, an eighteenth-century style known for curved shapes, light ornament, shell-like rocaille decoration, and theatrical spatial effects.
Interior plan
The nave forms a hall articulated by pilasters, with rounded corners partly screened by thin, shell-like walls. Above a high cove, the room is closed by a flat mirror ceiling. The choir is recessed and terminates in a semicircle. A further recessed section contains the sacristy, although this end was originally intended to serve as the altar area. On the north side, a spiral staircase leads to the upper floor, which formerly contained the priest’s residence.
The choir has a shallow domed ceiling and ends in a semicircular niche with a half-timbered rear wall. The surviving spatial arrangement combines the elongated hall, the recessed choir, and the curved internal surfaces. Its plan and architectural forms recall the buildings of Dominikus Zimmermann, particularly the Frauenkirche in Günzburg.
Interior decoration
Frescoes and stucco
Franz Xaver Feichtmayr the Elder and Johann Michael Dreyer created the stucco decoration in 1758. Stucco is a plaster-based material used for architectural modelling and ornament. Their work includes rocaille forms, leafy and flowering branches, putti, and angel heads. Above the choir arch, a rocaille cartouche frames the Fugger coat of arms and the founder’s initials, expanded as Joseph Maria, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, Fugger of Wellenburg.
Johann Baptist Enderle painted the frescoes in the choir, beneath the lower gallery, and in the adjoining rooms of the second upper floor in 1758 to 1759. The large nave fresco was once incorrectly attributed to Franz Joseph Maucher of Augsburg. It was painted instead by Balthasar Riepp of Reutte in Tyrol and depicts Saint Thekla in her glorification, surrounded by Saints Barbara, Catherine, Cecilia, Agnes, and others. The choir fresco shows Saint Thekla feeding the poor while a hovering angel hands her a bowl. Some groups of figures were apparently based on models by Johann Georg Bergmüller and Johann Evangelist Holzer.
Enderle also painted illusionistic wall paintings around the oil-painted altarpieces, using painted effects in place of real altar structures. The high altar appears to project theatrically into the room. Painted statues of Saint John of Nepomuk and Saint Francis Xavier stand between pairs of columns and pilasters. The altarpiece depicts the death of Saint Thekla and is signed by Balthasar Riepp with the date 1758.
Altars and pulpits
The side altars have simple column arrangements. Their unsigned paintings depict the death of Saint Joseph on the right and the death of Saint James the Elder on the left. At the centre of the nave’s side walls stand two unusual stucco altars made by the Italian sculptor Domenico Ferretti and dated 1759. Stucco is used here not only for surface ornament but also for the modelling of the altar structures and figures.
The northern Founder’s Altar shows Count Fugger kneeling in almost fully modelled form and holding a model of the church, while Saint Thekla places a hand on his shoulder. The southern Foundation Altar depicts the count’s tomb with a pall, an obelisk, and numerous funerary emblems. Ferretti’s painted signatures were renewed or supplemented in 1897 or later.
A pair of stucco pulpits occupies the front ends of the nave’s curved walls. Their baskets and sounding boards carry rocaille cartouches, putti, and pilaster-like bands. Putti crown wooden figures of Moses on the north pulpit and Saint Thekla on the other.
Votive painting and organ
Among the eighteenth-century oil paintings is a votive image in the choir showing the alleged hemorrhage that affected the founder in 1755. Count Fugger is portrayed bleeding in a forest beneath a rocaille cartouche bearing the inscription “EX VOTO / Joseph Maria Graf Fugger / von Wöllenburg / den 2:ten August 1755.” The image preserves the event associated with the vow that led to the church’s foundation.
The organ case bears a medallion with the founder’s initials and the date 1763. Its decoration includes lambrequins, rocaille ornament, and a cartouche carrying the count’s coat of arms. The mechanical slider-chest organ was made by Johann Andreas Stein. In this system, sliders admit air to selected ranks of pipes through mechanically operated keys and stop controls. The instrument is described as the only surviving organ by this organ and piano builder.
Bell tower
Three bells from the eighteenth century hang in the church tower. Together with the tower’s copper hood and the surviving organ case, they form part of the church’s eighteenth-century architectural and liturgical furnishings.
