Parish Church of Bregenz-St. Gebhard

Bregenz-St. Gebhard Roman Catholic parish church is located in the Bregenz district of Vorkloster in the Bregenz district of Rieden in the Bregenz region of Vorarlberg.It is dedicated to St. Gebhard and is part of the Feldkirch diocese’s Bregenz deanery.

Wuhrwaldstraße 24 in Vorkloster, a Bregenz district of Rieden, houses the parish church.The church is located in the South Tyrolean town and was built between 1939 and 1941.

In 1949 and 1950, an emergency church was built on the site of today’s church.The current church, designed by Willibald Braun and his son Wilhelm Braun, was erected between 1956 and 1961.In 1953, a parish vicariate was established.In 1961, the religious edifice was consecrated.In 1983, St. Gebhard became an independent parish.In 2011, Christian Lenz, architects, refurbished the church’s interior.The altar was set on a three-step raised altar island in the nave.The former chancel is now used as a chapel throughout the week.

The church is just a hall with a flat gabled roof.Pilaster strips divide the facade and side walls.The south-east church tower is self-contained.The parish center is located to the west.

The church’s interior is a large hall with a stepped flat ceiling.The walls are made of pilaster strips, and the windows are rectangular.To the right of the doorway is the baptistery, which today serves as a prayer chapel.The sanctuary was transferred to a three-tiered altar island in the nave as part of the reconstruction, and the sanctuary was reorganized as a daily chapel, with the upper portion surrounded by Hubert Berchtold’s triptych “The movable St. Gebhardsbild” (originally intended for the Gebhardsberg courtyard).The pictorial zone of the recessed ceiling represents scenes from St. Gebhard’s life.They were finished in 1961 by Emil Gehrer.

In 1958, Hubert Berchtold painted the glass paintings on the windows of the sanctuary, which is now the daily chapel. These were manufactured by the Tyrolean glass painting workshop.St. Gallus is on the left, while St. Henry is on the right.St. Conrad is shown on the upper right side, with the saintly Heinrich Seuse depicted below.In 1959, Fritz Krcal produced the abstract glass paintings in the nave windows. The three windows above the organ were conceived by Leopold Fetz in 1958 and constructed by the Tiroler Glasmalereianstalt in Innsbruck.