Kappel

 Crossing Bavaria toward the Czech border in  the summer of 1990    I had already feasted on a number of the usual Baroque churches with two tower facade and dome. Suddenly in open country, between the Fichtel Gebirge and the Bohmerwald,  I was confronted by a large circular object with turrets almost like rockets. I had read that this church was unusual but this something else. I had to include it in my blog series but my memory of the interior is a blank. In writing this I have come across the wonderful article by Pius Bieri. 

It was originally a  pilgrimage chapel founded as an offshoot of the nearby Cistercian abbey of Waldsassen in the Middle Ages. The Hussite Wars and Thirty Years War were not kind to it but eventually in 1669 the Cistercians were back at Waldsassen. The existing chapel (only dating from 1648)was felt too small for the pilgrimages that were taking place so  a new building was commissioned from Georg Dientzenhofer in 1684 . The foundation stone was laid the next year and the building completed in 1689, the same year as Georg Dientzenhofer died.  It was the first of many individual buildings by the Dientzenhofer family. It symbolises the Holy Trinity by having three towers, and three apse like segments focussing on an altar : in effect it is an equilateral triangle within a circle formed by a low surrounding covered aisle. I find this hard to describe! The plan below will help. 

The original design was modified after a major fire which  had started in a nearby inn in 1880. The result was a change in the roof angle and the towers being made taller so they are more like minarets.

The ceilings of the apses had frescos, restored in 1934-40. I have no memory of the interior. It is good to read the organ stuck on a column like a swallow's nest was to be restored 2018/19. Maybe I will come back one day and dare to ask to play it!

The effect of the building seems to me a merger of Eastern, Slavic and Gothic : simple and striking.