Weltenburg

All the guide books seem to carry photos of this ancienkt Benedictine foundation, with its amazing river setting and Asam church. While staying in Regensburg in September 1989 I just had to get there somehow. No car, it had to be bus or train. The latter was good until I came out at Kelheim station. In those days there dont seem to have been signs, particularly to the nearby pleasure cruise boats that take you up the river. Therefore I stepped out along roads with only a vague idea that I was going in the right direction. When I eventually reached my goal I found it was full of locals visiting the restaurant and drinking the lovely beer. The church was amazing and so were the two glasses of dark Kloster Weltenburg. I was positively jet propelled on my walk back to the station. I dont remember the river situation.

This time in 2019 we would get the boat from Kelheim. It was so convenient from the station and so easy. It is a fantastic gorge and the arrival is unforgettable. The beer was equally good this time, washing down a formidable lunch.

This Benedictine foundation goes right back to the time of St Boniface in 760. The abbey was badly damaged in the Thirty Years War but had begun to recover by 1714. The Asam Brothers produced one of their greatest Gesamtkundswerk here. This concept of uniting architecture, sculpture, painting and decoration is very much a Baroque characteristic. The church was built 1717-1721. The exterior facade in the monastic courtyard appears rather like a heavily altered Roman triumphal arch.

 

Architecturally the church comprises three rectangles with the largest in the centre. Each of these contains an oval which therefore produces a west entrance hall, central rotunda and eastern sanctuary with an absidal extension behind the high altar. There is a single tower : the only part of the previous church building retained.

Over the central rotunda there is a high cylindrical drum with a dome-like roof. The interior is dark because there are no windows except for the facade and apse. The secret is above the rotunda. Upon entry we are in another mysterious dark world with radiance ahead toward the astounding St George and the Dragon  and an unearthly radiance from above. We are looking through an open cupola up to the fresco high above and there are 12 small hidden windows in between. 

As at Rohr the altar is the focal point and behind it rises a great structure like a triumphal arch with St George  coming out of it in a blaze of mysterious light. It is a great tour de force. This statue is just about unique in German Baroque.it seems to join together late Gothic with Bernini’s theatrical grandeur. Perhaps the Asams saw Marcus Aurelius statue in Rome - although they will have known it as Constantine! Whereas Bernini was about showing Papal power the Asams were about the fervour and optimism of the local people.

The pediment is broken by a stucco figure of the Mary’s Assumption and, painted on the curved vault above Christ, waits to receive her into Heaven.Stucco angles give her roses and a sceptre. Cf Bernini’s apotheosis of St Andrew in San Andrea in Quirinale in Rome. A small hidden window behind sends light into the choir past Mary. All this has been summed up  as “persuasion through realistic illusion”.

The fresco in the dome is the coronation of The Virgin Mary before the Holy Trinity and amonst the Church Triumphant.St George is being welcomed too with a laurel links to statue, and King David to the coronation below. CD Asam himself is a painted stucco figure looking down from a support in the church.