Chapter 90 - Some More Churches

My fascination with old churches continues. After all the ones I've covered, I discovered that I had pictures of a few I haven't yet blogged. Needless to say, they are all Catholic churches. Austria is a Catholic country, and religious holidays are celebrated as national holidays.

We begin with the church here in Klingenbach. It looks starker than many of the village churches because it doesn't have any landscaping around it. The church building is new from 1976, but the church tower was built in 1740.


This Baroque church in Mullendorf, near Eisenstadt, is a beautiful example of Baroque architecture. It dates from the 1600s although I was unable to find the exact date.


This memorial to village soldiers who died in the two world wars is in front of the church.


This is the neo-Gothic Kalasantiner Church in Vienna, built from 1868-1875.


It is called the Pfarrkirche, or Church of the Parish.


It was dedicated to Mary vom Siege (St. Mary the Victorious).


This closeup of the main door shows off the ornate Gothic architecture.


A church on this site in the nearby village of Wulkaprodersdorf was first mentioned in 1337. This early Baroque building was consecrated in 1642.


When compiling a list of churches in Burgenland, the Baroque Bergkirche in Eisenstadt has to be included. The formal name is the Pfarre Eisenstadt Oberberg, which means the Parish Church of Eisenstadt on the Hill. Construction began in 1715.


This bust of the composer Josef Haydn (1732-1809), also known as the Father of Symphony, sits in the courtyard behind the church. Haydn spent decades as court composer at the Schloss Esterhazy two blocks from this church.

When his Esterhazy sponsor eventually died, Haydn was "let go," and he moved to Vienna. After a number of years there, he died during Napoleon's invasion of the city. He could actually hear cannon shortly before he died. With a war going on, he had to be buried in Vienna.

This is the altar in the larger church. Haydn's mausoleum is to the left of the church entrance. In 1820 his remains were brought to the church where it was discovered that he was buried without his skull - a substitute skull was interred with the body. What I want to know is how did they know it wasn't his skull? Distasteful as the thought must be, one would assume that his remains had decomposed after 11 years.

At any rate it was learned that Haydn's skull had been stolen after his first funeral by supporters of Franz Joseph Gall who apparently held the view that mental and emotional characteristics of the individual were established in the cerebral cortex and showed elevations and depressions of the skull. Idiots everywhere, I guess.

A closeup of the altar


The thieves lied and said they didn't know where the skull was, but of course they did. In 1895 the skull turned up at the Museum of the Society of Friends in Vienna where it remained until 1953.


Haydn's skull was finally sent to the mausoleum at the church in 1954 and interred with his body. A weird thing is that they left the substitute skull in the crypt, too. So now Haydn rests with two skulls! How strange is that!


A closeup of the beautiful chapel ceiling


Haydn played this organ in 1772.