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Our Host Church
The Reformed and Lutheran Churches where the VCC holds worship
and Sunday school, are two of the oldest surviving examples of
Protestant church architecture in Vienna.
Church History
The ecclesiastical history of the Lutheran Church goes back to
1582 when Elizabeth, daughter of the Emperor Maximillian II, founded
the church of the St. Mary, Queen of Angels cloister on the sites.
Two hundred years later, in 1722, the convent was closed and the
Protestant communities gained much of the property - the A. B.
(Lutheran) community obtained the convent church and the H. B.
(Reformed) community some land on which the current building was
founded.
In 1783, after Emperor Joseph II had issued the Toleration Patent
(1781), permitting freedom of public worship to Protestants and
Greek Orthodox, the current building was begun. Designed by Imperial
architect Gothlieb Nigellie (1744-1812) to conform to the limited
freedom of the Edict, it was separated from the street by a walled
garden, the windows had to look like ordinary house windows, and
there could be no steeple.
The building was
renovated
in 1887, when a change of law allowed the building to look like a
church.
The
sanctuary was turned 180° and the steeple,
which we use as a symbol of the VCC, was built during this time. The
pulpit and communion table in the sanctuary came from
the
Church on Leopoldsberg when the Cloister there was closed. Changes since then have included modern
lighting, redecoration in the style of the Florentine Renaissance, a
new organ in 1974, and in 1997, solar energy panels on the roof.
Click here to
visit the webpage of our host church (in German)
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