Maria am Gestade Church

Maria am Gestade is a Gothic Roman Catholic church located beside the Danube Canal in Vienna’s first district, Innere Stadt.It was the Danube boatmen’s traditional church.The name stems from the church’s original placement on the high bank of an uncontrolled branch of the Danube.Maria am Gestade, along with the Peterskirche and the Ruprechtskirche, is one of Vienna’s oldest churches.

Architecture

The church’s most notable feature is the 56 m (180 ft) high open work tower, which was erected in Gothic scrollwork in 1419-1428. It may be seen from a long way and is represented on the city’s earliest photographs.

The choir, which was built at the same time as the tower about 1330, has two high gothic panels (1460). The windows feature surviving mediaeval stained glass shards.

The nave, which is narrower than the choir owing to space constraints. The nave is somewhat twisted due to the Danube arm’s passage. Construction began around 1400, and Duke Albrecht III is claimed to have been the constructor.

Michael Knab built the choir and tower, as well as the (later amended) layout for St. Stephen’s cathedral’s towers, and was replaced by Peter Prachatitz, another great builder.

The church contains three porticos, each with reliefs and sculptures. The choir entrance depicts a Virgin of Mercy and a Coronation of the Virgin, both dated from circa 1350, as determined from the Middle Portal, which depicts realistic angels playing musical instruments.

Canopies crown reliefs of the two Saint Johns (Baptist and Evangelist) from around 1410 on the main doorway on the west face, in a style also visible at Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral, as well as a range of sculptures and mosaic ornamentation from the twentieth century.

An Annunciation in the church nave dates from around 1360 and is credited to the Meister der Minoritenwerkstatt, whose work may also be seen at Vienna’s Minoritenkirche. The Virgin’s partial detachment from the wall and the spatial freedom of the movements are seen to make this an essential High Gothic transitional piece.

The pulpit is a Gothic Revival building added in 1820 during the church’s reconstruction to recreate its medieval aspect.The wooden construction was attached to the massive medieval pillar between the nave and the choir, with a bridge linking it to the entryway carved into the northern wall. The colors are olive and gold, with blind tracery ornamentation on the railing and back wall. The abat-voix is capped with a pinnacled baldachin and a figure of Christ as Salvator Mundi. The former pulpit was built in the same location in 1727 in the Baroque style.

History

There was formerly a chapel on the location of today’s church, which is supposed to have been erected in the 9th century, however this cannot be verified conclusively.It was referenced for the first time indirectly in 1137 (in the context of the prehistory of the construction of Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Church as one of the churches of the then parish of St. Peter), and specifically in a document from 1200. The property’s ownership was obscure – it was passed back and forth between the Schottenstift, Viennese bourgeois families, and the bishop of Passau.

The Lords of Greif controlled the church from 1302, and had the chancel renovated between 1330 and 1355, most likely as a family burial site.The church was eventually taken up by the bishops of Passau, who retained it even after Vienna was declared a bishopric in 1469.

After falling into ruin during the 18th century, the church was on the verge of being destroyed and was used as a magazine and horse stable.It was rededicated in 1812 and thereafter passed to the Redemptorist Order.The Gothic choir windows were transported to Laxenburg and put in the Franzensburg.The church was repaired in 1900 and again around 1930, primarily affecting the gateway figures.

The church now serves as a place of worship for Vienna’s Czech and Slovak communities.

Vienna, Austria