St. Johannes Baptist: Oberstdorf’s Neo-Gothic Parish Church
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page17 sections
History
St. Johannes Baptist is the Roman Catholic parish church of Oberstdorf, Germany. Rebuilt in the Neo-Gothic style between 1866 and 1872, it incorporates parts of an older church whose history was shaped by medieval foundations, Baroque alterations, fire, reconstruction, and repeated wartime bell losses. Its principal patron is John the Baptist, the biblical prophet associated with baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River.
Medieval foundations and Gothic rebuilding
One foundation tradition places a church at Oberstdorf as early as 991. Another holds that a Romanesque church was consecrated in February 1141 by Walther I, Bishop of Augsburg. That church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and John the Evangelist, the apostle traditionally associated with the Gospel of John.
By 1419, the building had been rebuilt in the Gothic style, an architectural tradition characterized by pointed arches and related forms. At that time it also received Saint Agnes of Rome as an additional patron. Agnes was an early Christian martyr. The church was progressively given a Baroque character from 1644, when new furnishings and a marble floor were introduced. The nave ceiling was plastered in 1715, and a new two-storey gallery was installed in 1764.
Fire and nineteenth-century reconstruction
A major fire in 1865 destroyed most of the church. The exterior walls and bell tower survived, allowing the reconstruction to retain parts of the earlier structure. Work began in 1866 according to plans by Freiherr Georg von Stengel, with financial support from the Bavarian state. The surviving tower and nave walls were incorporated into the new building, while the walls were raised and the nave was extended eastward by one bay.
The reconstruction was carried out by the Hindelang master carpenter Josef Blanz and the master mason Johann Baptist Kaufmann. A new choir with a polygonal termination was added, and Bishop Pankratius von Dinkel of Augsburg reconsecrated the church in 1872. Most of the earlier Baroque furnishings had been lost in the fire. The rebuilt interior therefore received Neo-Gothic furnishings, paid for by donations and supplemented by older figures and paintings that survived the blaze or were acquired later.
Organs and the history of the bells
The church’s 1745 organ, made by Balthasar Freiwiß of Aitrang, was also destroyed in the fire. Joseph Bohl of Augsburg supplied a replacement for the rebuilt church, installing an instrument with 22 stops, two manuals, and a pedal. The present organ was built by Josef Zeilhuber the Elder in 1934 with pneumatic cone chests. An electrically controlled enclosed remote division was added behind the high altar in 1936. Its design combines Late Romanticism, the Alsatian organ reform, and organ-movement Neo-Baroque.
The parish church lost its bells three times in roughly eighty years. Before the fire, the collection included a large bell dating from 1478 and recast by Gregor Löffler of Innsbruck in 1559, or in 1550 according to the parish, together with bells dated 1658, 1678, and 1723. Their recorded weights ranged from 160 to 2,855 pounds, approximately 89.6 to 1,598.8 kilograms.
After the 1865 fire, the Bavarian district government ordered the bell remains to be excavated. The recovered metal was stored temporarily in the partly surviving church entrance, but it was stolen on 18 June 1865. The theft was never solved, and the parish became involved in a two-year legal and financial dispute over the metal.
Theodor Wolfart of Kempten received the contract for four replacement bells in 1865. He exchanged the recovered metal against the price of the new bells and also obtained bronze from five obsolete cannons. The bells were cast in a musical sequence chosen as B minor rather than the more expensive B-flat minor alternative. They first sounded on Christmas night in 1866 and weighed 2,399, 1,503, 1,030, and 493 kilograms.
During the First World War, a conflict fought from 1914 to 1918, the three smaller 1866 bells were removed in 1917 for the armaments industry and melted down at a smelting works in Kall in the Eifel. Two of the four angel heads from the crown of one bell survived and are preserved in the Oberstdorf local-history museum. The large bell remained in the tower.
Preparations for a replacement began in 1919. Georg Wolfart of Lauingen, Theodor Wolfart’s son, received an order for a bell weighing 1,448 kilograms in 1922. Material shortages, strikes, and inflation delayed the work. The bell was delivered on 8 December 1922, and its final cost reached 267,252 marks. Three further bells were consecrated on 27 June 1924, creating a five-bell ensemble composed of the 1866 bell, the 1922 bell, and the three bells cast in 1924.
On 21 April 1942, during the Second World War, a conflict fought from 1939 to 1945, the four smaller bells were removed for the armaments industry. A steel replacement was used during the remaining war years, but its tone was considered unsuitable and it was left in the belfry. After the currency reform, the Kuhn-Wolfart company of Lauingen cast replacement bells. One bell weighing 16.6 hundredweight and tuned to F was consecrated on 25 September 1949, followed by two more, weighing 1,320 and 460 kilograms, on 21 May 1950.
In 2020, an anonymous donation enabled the casting and consecration of the Peace Bell, restoring a bell that had been missing since 1942. The large bell, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, remains the oldest bell in the tower and was cast in 1866 from metal recovered after the fire. The postwar bells include the Marian Bell, inscribed “Ave Maria” and commemorating those killed in both world wars, the John Bell dedicated to John the Baptist, and the smallest, the Angel Bell.
Cemetery and memorial history
The historic cemetery beside the church ceased to be used for burials in 1951. It remains the burial place of many long-established Oberstdorf families. Along its southern edge, beside the spa park, is the Indulgence Way of the Cross, an open devotional route associated with a former tradition granting an indulgence for prayer. In Catholic theology, an indulgence is the remission of temporal punishment associated with sins whose guilt has already been forgiven.
The Soul Chapel was built in the late fifteenth century. It received an eternal light in 1504, was later used as an ossuary, and was called the “Chapel of the Dead” around 1550. The chapel survived the 1865 fire and stands on the old disused cemetery west of the parish church. Since 1931 it has served as a war memorial chapel. Fourteen plaques commemorate 289 fallen and 87 missing members of the community by name. Since 1992, it has also commemorated Father Rupert Mayer, who preached in Oberstdorf several times during his lifetime.
Remains
St. Johannes Baptist is organized as a Neo-Gothic nave church whose rebuilt walls incorporate the older nave fabric and bell tower. The earlier walls were raised, the nave was lengthened eastward by one bay, and a new choir with a polygonal end was added. The surviving tower remains integrated with the rebuilt church. Inside, the main furnishings are arranged around the choir, the high altar, two side altars, the pulpit, the organ gallery, and a group of medieval and later sculptures.
Choir and principal altars
High altar
The high altar is a winged altarpiece, meaning that hinged panels can be opened or closed according to the liturgical season. Its open central shrine presents the Resurrection of Christ. The blessing Christ rises from the tomb amid clouds while carrying a victory banner. Four guards in Roman uniform stand or sit nearby, asleep or looking upward in alarm.
The ornamental crest above the altarpiece shows the Augsburg diocesan patrons Saint Ulrich and Saint Afra, with the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan between them. The inner wings contain reliefs of the women at the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene meeting the risen Christ, Christ meeting two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and Thomas touching Christ’s side wound. When the wings are closed, they display Christ praying in Gethsemane in a painting by Johann von Schraudolph. The shrine is flanked by the Apostles Peter and Paul, while the lower section, or predella, contains the tabernacle between painted images of the twelve Apostles. A tabernacle is the cabinet used for reserving consecrated Eucharistic elements.
The stone altar table contains a Holy Sepulchre that could be closed by a wooden relief of the Last Supper. That relief is now mounted on the wooden people’s altar, while the sepulchre is covered by antependia, the decorated front panels of an altar.
Choir furnishings
The choir contains a baptismal font decorated with Gothic tracery, a patterned form of carved ornament associated with medieval architecture. Paintings from 1899 on the right choir wall show the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child giving the Rosary to Saint Dominic and two angels venerating an opened tabernacle. They commemorate the Rosary Brotherhood and the Brotherhood of the Most Holy Sacrament.
In front of the choir screen stands the “Beautiful Woman of Oberstdorf,” a Madonna and Child made in Ulm around 1430 in the Soft Style, a refined and flowing form of the International Gothic style popular in central Europe around 1400. The sculpture formerly stood in the crest of the right side altar.
Side altars
Two side altars at the eastern wall of the nave resemble the high altar. The right altar shows Mary and Joseph adoring the Christ Child in a manger-like setting. Its inner wings continue the scene with reliefs of shepherds and peasants adoring the child and the Annunciation to the shepherds. The closed wings show the Annunciation to Mary by the Archangel Gabriel, flanked by two angels. Its crest now contains an eighteenth-century sculpture of Saint Wendelin, who is venerated in Central Europe as a patron of herders and livestock.
The left side altar depicts the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Mary and the Apostles receive the Spirit, represented by tongues of fire and the dove of the Holy Spirit. Its closed wings show the twelve-year-old Jesus discussing with scholars in the Temple, and its crest contains a figure of Saint Henry II, the eleventh-century German king and Holy Roman Emperor.
Nave, gallery, and artworks
Pulpit and organ
The oak pulpit has Gothic finials and tracery, with figures and reliefs highlighted by metal leaf. Its basket presents Christ giving Peter the shepherd’s staff, Christ and Peter on the Sea of Galilee, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Parable of the Sower. The tall sounding board has two levels. The lower one represents the four Doctors of the Church, early Christian theologians whose teachings hold particular authority in Catholic tradition, while the upper level shows Christ as teacher.
The present organ has three manuals and pedal, with couplers linking the manuals and pedal. Its playing aids include two free combinations, individual controls for reed registers, cancelers, a tutti control, windchest and mixture cancelers, an automatic piano pedal, remote-work control, manual cancelers, coupler controls, and swell pedals for the registers, the second and third manuals, and the remote division.
Sculpture and paintings
A sculpture of Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child, dating from about 1340, stands in front of the right side altar. It formerly stood in a wayside shrine in the Trettach Valley and was probably made by an artist from the circle of Heinrich of Constance. Other nave sculptures represent Saint Stephen from the late fifteenth century, Nicholas of Myra from the fifteenth century, Leonard from the sixteenth century, and Magnus from the eighteenth century. A sculpture of the Scourged Christ stands beneath the organ gallery.
Also beneath the gallery hangs The Adoration of the Shepherds by Anton Raphael Mengs, dated 1751 and purchased by the municipality in 1954. The large Stations of the Cross paintings date from the sixteenth century and were made by Johann Baptist Herz after Netherlandish models.
Exterior additions
Between 1972 and 1974, the outer sides of the church doors were faced with repoussé copper reliefs by Willi Veit. Repoussé is a technique in which metal is shaped by hammering it from the reverse side. Since 1962, the bricked-up central window of the polygonal choir termination has displayed a Crucifixion scene by Lothar Schwink. A statue of Saint John Nepomuk stands in front of the west side. Nepomuk was a fourteenth-century Bohemian martyr traditionally associated with the protection of the confessional seal and with bridges.
Cemetery structures and Soul Chapel
Indulgence Way of the Cross
The Indulgence Way of the Cross forms an open arcade passage along the southern edge of the cemetery. Its six shallow arches contain fourteen Stations of the Cross, creating a distinct devotional structure beside the churchyard.
Soul Chapel
The Soul Chapel contains Renaissance wall paintings and wooden figures from the mid-sixteenth century, arranged in niches along its north wall. Its central painting was commissioned by Pastor Johannes Frey during the Thirty Years’ War, the major European religious and political conflict fought mainly from 1618 to 1648.
The lower part of the north wall depicts Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, with Judas’s betrayal suggested in the background. Pointed-arch niches contain John the Baptist and Saint Agnes with the Lamb. Above them is an over-life-size carved figure of the Archangel Michael in a dalmatic, a loose, wide-sleeved liturgical vestment. Michael is shown as a guide of souls, leading a praying soul toward heaven beneath the protection of his garment.
The side frescoes complete a Passion cycle. The left side shows Judas being bribed by the high priest, while the right side depicts the Last Supper. Two prominent soldier figures by Bernhard Bleeker guard the chapel. At the center stands a Pieta made in the early 1940s by Hermine Goossens and Johanna Biehler, accompanied by the words, “See whether your pain is equal to mine.” A wooden stele and a statue by Michael Vogler commemorate Rupert Mayer.
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