Pfarrkirche: Parish Church of the Assumption in Memmelsdorf, Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page23 sections
History
Pfarrkirche is a Roman Catholic church in Memmelsdorf, Germany, dedicated to the Assumption of Mary and serving as the parish church of the Assumption parish. The church stands in the historic center of the village. Its surviving fabric combines a medieval choir tower with a major Baroque rebuilding completed in 1709, followed by later changes to its altars, interior arrangement, and churchyard.
Medieval Origins and Parish Status
A chapel may have stood on the site from the eleventh century, possibly in connection with the neighboring old castle. The first larger church was built around 1300, when Memmelsdorf belonged to the parish of Hallstadt. It was a choir-tower church, meaning that the choir occupied the lower part of the tower. The size of its original nave is unknown.
Memmelsdorf became a parish in 1391. The former filial church, a branch church subordinate to a parish church, then became the parish church. The nave may have been enlarged or rebuilt during this change in status. The eastern choir tower remains the oldest surviving part of the building and preserves elements of this earlier church.
War Damage and Seventeenth-Century Reconstruction
Between 1609 and 1611, the tower was raised by one storey and given a pointed tower hood. The rest of the church was destroyed during the Thirty Years’ War, a seventeenth-century conflict that caused widespread military and political upheaval in central Europe. In 1647 the church was described as burned out.
Reconstruction began in 1650. The south wall was moved farther south to enlarge the interior, and the nave’s central axis consequently no longer aligned with that of the chancel, the part of the church containing the main altar. A high altar installed after the rebuilding was replaced between 1665 and 1667. Its sculptural program is no longer known.
Baroque Expansion
From 1706, the church was remodeled and extended westward under Balthasar Caminata. Leonhard Dientzenhofer is repeatedly named as the designer, although the surviving documentary evidence does not establish this attribution. The work doubled the nave’s length from two window bays to four, replaced the earlier Gothic interior treatment with Baroque forms, and created the formal west facade.
Baroque architecture and art use dynamic forms, rich ornament, theatrical spatial effects, and strong religious imagery. At Pfarrkirche, the remodeling was completed in 1709. A new high altar followed in 1710. Sebastian Degler made its tabernacle, adoring angels, and sculptural program, which represented the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Assumption of Mary, and her Coronation by the Trinity. The Assumption commemorates Mary’s being taken into heavenly glory, while her Coronation represents her exaltation as queen of heaven.
The pulpit was installed in 1713. In 1719, a forebuilding containing a Mount of Olives Chapel and an Entombment Chapel was added in front of the west facade. The remodeled church was not consecrated until 1740, when the auxiliary bishop Franz Joseph Anton von Hahn performed the ceremony. In 1762, two side altars transferred from the earlier church during the 1706 remodeling were replaced with Rococo altars. Rococo is a later decorative style recognized by flowing ornament, asymmetry, and shell-like rocaille motifs.
The churchyard was enlarged in 1772 and enclosed by a new wall. Some stones from the previous wall were reused in its construction. The high altar made in 1710 was replaced in 1796 by a Rococo altar incorporating early Neoclassical elements. Its principal subject remained the Coronation of Mary, now shown in a painted altarpiece rather than a sculptural group. After the altar was declared structurally unsound in 1870, it was replaced in 1874 by a Neo-Romanesque altar, a work in a style reviving forms associated with medieval Romanesque buildings.
Modern Alterations and Protection
The church underwent a fundamental renovation in the early 1960s. In 1964, the Neo-Romanesque high altar was replaced by a Rococo altar from the Poor Clare convent in Bamberg. After the convent was secularized, the altar had stood in a filial church in Mühlendorf, within the municipality of Stegaurach. The former altar painting was extensively restored and inserted into the new altar in 1975.
In 1977, the churchyard wall was moved four metres inward to allow the road to be widened. The angel and saint statues on the wall were replaced by copies, while the originals were transferred to the chapel of Seehof Palace. A separate sacristy was built outside the church in 1984.
A comprehensive interior renovation in 2006 extended the raised chancel approximately two metres into the nave, creating more space around the people’s altar. The altars, pulpit, and organ gallery were restored, and the sculptures and paintings were largely returned to the arrangement associated with the 1706 remodeling. The church is protected as a monument in Bavaria and is included in Bavaria’s register of cultural property protected under the Hague Convention. It bears the International Cultural Property Protection symbol.
Remains
Pfarrkirche is oriented almost exactly eastward, deviating from ideal eastward orientation by less than one degree. It stands at a bend in the main street at the corner of Bahnhofstrasse, opposite the protected Three Crowns Inn. The same street block includes a seventeenth-century protected parish house, the parish office, and a childcare center. The building consists of an eastern choir tower and a rectangular nave with a gabled roof. Its exterior is chiefly sandstone, while the west front presents a formal Baroque composition.
Choir Tower and Nave Exterior
Eastern Choir Tower
The eastern choir tower is divided by cornices into four storeys. Its ground floor contains the one-bay choir. The eastern ground-floor window is the only surviving Gothic pointed-arch window. The two side windows are later Baroque round-arched openings with eared stone frames and clear leaded glazing.
The bell chamber has pointed-arch sound openings fitted with late-Gothic tracery. A clock face with Roman numerals appears on each side of the tower. Above it rises the pointed tower hood, which is surmounted by a cross and rooster and surrounded by four corner turrets. The tower’s heightening and hood belong to the work of 1609 to 1611.
Sandstone Nave
The rectangular nave adjoins the choir tower on the west and measures approximately 12 by 27 metres externally. Each plain sandstone side wall contains four round-arched windows with eared stone frames and clear leaded glazing. A doorway beneath the window in the second bay from the west provides access on both sides of the nave.
Baroque West Front and Forebuilding
West Facade
The west facade rises above the nave’s gabled roof as a formal Baroque composition. Four whitewashed Tuscan pilasters stand against the sandstone wall. The Tuscan order is a simplified classical architectural order with plain columns and capitals. The pilasters support a whitewashed entablature, above which a triangular pediment gives the facade the appearance of a classical temple front.
Niches between the upper pilasters contain a Crucifixion group in the center, a Penitent Peter above the Mount of Olives scene on the right, and a Pietà above the Entombment scene on the left. Beneath the pediment cornice is the coat of arms of Lothar Franz von Schönborn, prince-bishop of Bamberg from 1693 to 1729. A prince-bishop combined the office of diocesan bishop with the secular rule of a territory. A statue of the Archangel Michael occupies a niche in the tympanum, two flame finials stand at the sides of the pediment, and a statue of Mary with the infant Jesus crowns its apex.
The facade sculptures are traditionally attributed to the Bamberg sculptor Johann Caspar Metzner, although only the Penitent Peter is documented as his work. Their arrangement presents a connected program of scenes and figures associated with Christ, Mary, and the Christian community.
Forebuilding Chapels
A single-storey forebuilding projects from the ground floor of the west facade. Its central vaulted passage leads to the main portal, which has an eared stone frame and a triangular pediment. Open arches closed by wrought-iron grilles contain the Mount of Olives group on the right and the Entombment group on the left. Johann Leonhard Gollwitzer made both groups.
The forebuilding therefore combines an entrance passage with two sculptural chapel spaces. Above it, the facade’s niches and pediment continue the religious imagery of the lower groups, while the statue of Mary and the infant Jesus forms the uppermost focus.
Churchyard and External Sacristy
Churchyard Wall and Statues
North of the church, the churchyard contains an eighteenth-century stone statue of the Madonna. The enclosing wall is divided into sections by sandstone pillars. Its main gate has two wrought-iron leaves, while two subsidiary passages have wrought-iron doors.
The wall pillars carry statues of the Apostles Peter and Paul beside the main entrance, the Archangel Michael and a guardian angel beside the subsidiary entrances, and Jesus as Salvator, Mary as Immaculata, and Saints Joseph, John the Baptist, Martin, Wendelin, Otto of Bamberg, and Francis of Assisi. Salvator represents Christ as Savior, while Immaculata refers to Mary as the Immaculate Virgin. Ferdinand Dietz created these figures for the churchyard wall. The present statues are copies of the originals, which were moved to the chapel of Seehof Palace.
Separate Sacristy
The separate sacristy is an octagonal building erected outside the church in 1984. A passage connects it with the former sacristy in the southeast corner of the nave. On the external wall of the new building stand a statue of Christ carrying the cross and two angels, originally from Veitshöchheim.
Interior Architecture
Choir and Former Sacristy
The interior is a single-nave hall church with an unobstructed length of approximately 24 metres and a width of about 10 metres. At the west end, a stairway to the tower on the left and the former sacristy on the right narrow the nave. Behind the chancel arch is the one-bay choir within the lower part of the choir tower. It has a box-shaped plan, a straight termination, and a groin vault formed by the intersection of two barrel vaults.
The former sacristy retains its Gothic rib vault, which is supported by structural ribs. It connects through a passage to the external sacristy. Together, these spaces preserve parts of the church’s medieval arrangement while remaining integrated into the later building.
Nave Ceiling and Gallery
The nave has a flat ceiling decorated with stucco by Johann Jakob Vogel of the Wessobrunn school, a southern German tradition known for elaborate plant-based architectural ornament. Alongside floral decoration, two large painted fields express the church’s dedication. In the rear section, the Apostles surround Mary’s empty sarcophagus. In the front section, the Trinity receives and crowns Mary in heaven.
A wooden gallery supported by four wooden columns extends along the rear wall and continues along the side walls to the side entrances. Two spiral staircases lead to it. Carved figures by Sebastian Degler occupy niches in its balustrade. Beneath the organ are six angels, some holding musical instruments. The sides contain the twelve Apostles, while the front faces show Jesus as Salvator, Paul, John the Baptist, and Elisabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.
Altars and Liturgical Furnishings
High Altar
The high altar stands against the choir’s straight end wall. Its altarpiece, painted by Alois Hauser in the nineteenth-century Nazarene style, depicts the Assumption of Mary and her Coronation by the Trinity. The Nazarene movement sought a spiritually serious, idealized Christian art inspired by earlier Italian and German painting. An Eye of God with a radiating halo symbolizes the Trinity in the upper part of the composition.
Figures of Saint John Nepomuk and Saint Anthony of Padua flank the painting. The tabernacle case, the container for the consecrated Eucharistic host, is decorated with gilded foliage and rocaille ornament. A Lamb rests on a book with seven seals on its roof, referring to the Revelation of John.
Side Altars and Chancel Furnishings
The northern side altar is the Cross Altar. Its retable, the decorated structure behind an altar, contains a framed crucifix rather than a painting. Since the 2006 renovation, the crucifix has represented Divine Help and has been modeled on the Volto Santo of Lucca, a celebrated medieval devotional image of Christ associated with that city. Christ is shown crowned and hanging on the cross in a belted tunic. Mary and the Apostle John flank him, while a pre-1700 Vesper image stands in a case below. A Vesper image shows the dead Christ supported by Mary and corresponds to the Pietà.
The southern side altar is the Apostles’ Altar. Its altarpiece is Johann Anwander’s 1755 painting of the Apostles’ Farewell. Figures of the holy Emperor Henry II and his holy wife Cunigunde flank the painting. Henry II was an eleventh-century Holy Roman Emperor, and Cunigunde was his empress and is also venerated as a saint. A figure of Christ at the Column, modeled on the devotional image at the Wies Church, stands in a case below the painting.
The modern people’s altar and ambo were acquired in 2006 and occupy the portion of the chancel extended into the nave. An ambo is the stand from which biblical readings are proclaimed. The people’s altar is centered on the nave but laterally offset from the high altar, while the ambo stands to its left. The Baroque baptismal font has stood to the right of the people’s altar, in front of the Apostles’ Altar, since 2006.
Pulpit, Stations, and Seating
The pulpit is attached approximately midway along the right-hand nave wall and has gilded carving. Niches in its basket contain the four Evangelists. A gilded relief of Pentecost appears on the rear wall, and the Most Holy Trinity is represented in a radiating halo above the sounding board.
Fourteen paintings by Johann Anwander form the Stations of the Cross along the nave walls. The twelfth station, the Crucifixion of Jesus, is represented by the Cross Altar rather than by a separate painting. The fourteenth painting therefore presents the Finding of the True Cross by Empress Helena as an additional subject.
Sixteen pews stand on each side of the central aisle. Their Baroque ends, decorated with acanthus carving, survive from seating made in 1742. Other sculptures include Mary as Immaculata and Saint Joseph, both probably by Sebastian Degler, together with the Archangel Michael and Saint Anne holding the child Mary.
Organ and Surviving Medieval Furnishing
The organ stands at the rear of the nave on the gallery. Its historicizing case was built in 1856 by the Nuremberg organ builder Augustin Bittner the Younger. Thomas Eichfelder of Bamberg built the current mechanism in 1991. It has 21 stops, mechanical slider chests, two manuals, and a pedal, with couplers II/I, I/P, and II/P. It also includes a Zeisig effect stop and a motor switch labeled “Calcantenruf.”
Only one object from the church’s original furnishings survives, a Gothic image of Mary that was restored after the 1647 fire in 1648. The church’s present furnishings bring together medieval survivals, Baroque and Rococo altars, nineteenth-century painting and organ work, later liturgical additions, and numerous sculptures shaped by the building’s successive renovations.
