Votivkirche

The Votivkirche (English: Votive Church) is a neo-Gothic style church on Vienna’s Ringstraße. Following Emperor Franz Joseph’s attempted murder in 1853, the Emperor’s brother Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian launched a campaign to build a cathedral to thank God for preserving the Emperor’s life. Construction funds were sought from around the Empire. On the silver jubilee of Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth, the church was dedicated in 1879.

Architecture

The Votivkirche has the typical form of a Gothic cathedral :

a façade with two slimline towers and three gabled portals with archivolts and a gallery with statues above the portals,
central portal twice as wide as the side portals
a rose window, crowned by the roof gable of the nave
belfries and a transept spire
buttresses, abutments and flying buttresses

The interior is divided into a nave and two aisles, which are connected by a transept. The transept is the same height as the nave, but the aisles are only half as tall and half as broad. The transept side chapels are equally tall and broad as the aisles. An ambulatory with apsidioles and a Lady chapel surround the choir.

The proportions, organization, spaciousness, and stylistic coherence of all the parts combine to form a harmonic whole in this towering church.

The Emperor window, which was provided by the City of Vienna, showed the Emperor’s deliverance from murder by Maximilian Graf O’Donnell von Tyrconnell, but this original topic was lost when the windows were destroyed during World War II. The City of Vienna repaired the replacement window in 1964, however it was updated to reflect the changing times. The exact moment of the Emperor’s rescue was lost, and the replacement, while largely similar to the original concept, took on a less monarchical and more religious tone.

Main altar

With its gold retable and exquisite ciborium, this stunning altar draws attention. The ciborium was inspired by instances in Italian Gothic cathedrals such as the Basilica of St. John Lateran and the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, both in Rome.

Panels with glass mosaic inlay work adorn the marble altar. Six alabaster columns support the structure.

Above the altar, a golden retable supports the tabernacle, which is flanked by enameled panels showing two Old Testament scenes: the Sacrifice of Isaac and Joseph’s dream. A crucifix hangs in a nook above the tabernacle. Angels and saints are shown in niches encircling the tabernacle. There are statues of the patron saints of the church, Charles Borromeo, and the founder, Maximilian of Lorch, on the left side, and Hilary of Poitiers and Bernard of Clairvaux on the right side.

Four huge red granite columns support the ciborium. It opens into four pointed arches that are capped with gables and flanked by pinnacles with saint sculptures in their niches. The cross vault is painted with allegorical images of the four cardinal virtues, while the boss depicts the Holy Spirit as a dove. A mosaic depicting the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as the Immaculate Conception, treading on a serpent may be found in the front spandrel. Pope Pius IX gave this as a gift. Christ appears in the spire at the top of the ciborium, flanked by four angels.

Transept

The transept’s four side chapels are as tall and broad as the aisles: the Rosary chapel, the Chapel of the Cross, the Bishops’ chapel, and the baptistry. They create side aisles in the transept, creating the unusual appearance that it is made up of three aisles. Each of these four transept chapels has four saint sculptures on its wall pillars. The famous polychrome Antwerp altar in Late-Gothic style (about 1530) was in the Rosary chapel until 1986, when it was moved to the Museum. In the baptistry is the Renaissance tomb of Nicholas, Graf von Salm (defender of Vienna during the Turkish siege in 1529). Emperor Ferdinand I established it as a sign of gratitude.

Pulpit

The hexagonal Neo-Gothic pulpit is supported by six marble pillars. The front panels depict a preaching Christ in the center, surrounded on both sides by the Church Fathers: Saint Augustine, Saint Gregory, Saint Jerome, and Saint Ambrose. These half-reliefs are set into sunken medaillons on a golden mosaic backdrop. The wooden soundboard is supported by four pillars, with a spire topped by a figure of John the Baptist. And, just as the sculptor of the Stephansdom has been depicted behind the pulpit of that church, Viktor Tilgner has depicted the architect of the Votivkirche, Heinrich Ferstel, beneath this pulpit.

Votivpark

The urban park around the church is known as Votivpark, and it is divided from the nearby Sigmund Freud Park by a roadway (Straße des achten Mai), both of which are located near the University of Vienna’s Main Building (Hauptgebäude).

History

In April 1854, an architectural competition was held to choose the church plans. 75 ideas were submitted from the Austrian Empire, German territories, England, and France. Originally, the intention was to include the nearby Allgemeines Krankenhaus and build a campus modeled after Oxford and Cambridge University.

Another concept was to build a national cathedral for the entire empire. However, because to rising expenses and a shifting political landscape, this proposal had to be scaled back. The panel chose the idea of Heinrich von Ferstel (1828-1883), who was just 26 years old at the time. He chose the neo-Gothic design for the church, drawing primarily on the architecture of Gothic French cathedrals. Many people mistake this church for an authentic Gothic church because of this notion. The Votivkirche, on the other hand, is not a servile replica of a French Gothic cathedral, but rather represents a fresh and distinct design idea. Furthermore, unlike medieval cathedrals, the Votivkirche was created by a single architect who oversaw the whole building, rather than by numerous generations.

Construction began in 1856, and it was consecrated on April 24, 1879, to commemorate the royal couple’s silver jubilee.

The chapel was one of the earliest structures constructed on the Ringstraße. Because the city walls were still in place at the time, the church had no natural parishioners. It was intended as a garrison church at the time, servicing the numerous troops who had arrived in Vienna following the 1848 Revolution. The church is not exactly on the street, but rather along a big plaza in front of it (today Sigmund Freud Park). The Votivkirche, like the Stephansdom, is composed of white sandstone and so must be continually restored and protected from air pollution and acid rain, which tend to color and degrade the fragile stone.

After being severely damaged during WWII, the church has undergone substantial restorations.

Because its architectural style is quite similar to that of the Stephansdom, travelers sometimes confuse it for it, in part because both cathedrals have patterned tiling on their roofs. In truth, the two churches are almost 700 years apart in age.

The Gedächtniskirche in Speyer, Germany, the Cathedral of Saint Helena in Helena, Montana, USA, and the Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk in Ostend, Belgium have all been inspired by this church’s design.

Vienna, Austria