At the end of the 19th century, Vienna decided its huge Central Cemetery needed a new and more formal plan; the winner was the young architect Max Hegele. At 27, Hegele was a generation younger than the older architects who judged the competition, including Otto Wagner, one of Hegele’s major influences.
It was a big commission: a monumental two-towered formal gate, two funeral halls (one of which serves today as a funeral museum) just inside the gate, and at the end of a long formal axis, one of the most beautiful Art Nouveau churches anywhere.
In front of the church, at the end of the walk from the entrance, is a circular crypt set aside for presidents of the Austrian republic.
The exterior’s massive forms blend classical ‘church’ shapes with details from the period, 1905-11, when the building was constructed; the gates and funeral halls had already been completed.
The doors open into a lobby of impressive height, focused on a massive stained glass piece depicting scenes from the life of St Charles Borromeo, an Italian bishop who was active both in reforming the Catholic Church and in the Counter-Reformation against the rise of Protestantism. Doorways off the lobby lead to stairways to the galleries and organ loft.
Once inside the sanctuary itself, there are repeated curving forms, not only in the arched altar area, but in the galleries that surround the essentially round church. Art Nouveau decorative touches abound, while the religious art is a mixture of modernist and more traditional paintings.
Large clear glass windows in the upper part of the dome make the church quite bright, even without the lights turned on.
The church has often been referred to as the Karl Lueger Memorial Church, because Lueger, Mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910, is buried beneath the altar. Lueger was a major figure in the modernizing of Vienna and creating many of its social services, but he was also a virulent anti-semite whose writings were later admired by Hitler.
Vienna has an uneasy relationship with his memory. While there is no longer a section of the Ringstrasse named for him, there is still a statue of him at Stubenplatz—and it is always covered with graffiti and paint splotches; locals say there is a tacit agreement that no one will be punished for defacing it.
The young architect did a splendid job of designing the church!