St Stephan’s Church in Mainz is one of the city’s oldest, built at the summit of the city’s highest hill. Its history is varied, but not unlike that of many other churches—except that none of the others is full of the rich and varied blue light of windows by Marc Chagall and his collaborators.
Chagall, Jewish and born in what is now Belarus, and a refugee from the German occupation of France, created the Mainz windows based on Old Testament themes as a gesture toward German-Jewish reconciliation. The collaboration grew out of Chagall’s friendship with Klaus Mayer, pastor of St Stephan’s. Mayer’s father was Jewish, and fled the country; Mayer himself survived in a monastery until the war’s end.
The windows are not all Chagall; he worked on them for ten years before his death in 1985; the nine main windows behind and flanking the altar are his main group. The remaining windows that continue the blue theme were completed by Chagall’s protege and colleague Charles Marq.
The windows by Marq capture the feel set by Chagall, and some include figures and themes from Chagall’s sketches, but do not include any of the Biblical characters and scenes in Chagall’s. Marq described them as ‘deliberately more modest.’
 
 
 
 
The details in the major windows are easily recognizably in Chagall’s signature style, but one large window is markedly different.
 
 
St Stephan’s has benefited beyond the beauty of the windows; the church has become a major visitor attraction in the city, and has published a sizable variety of cards, posters and books showing the windows; they’re on sale at a volunteer table in the church. The four details images above are from cards I bought there.
Side-by-side below, two round windows in the church. One is by Chagall and Marq; the other is the only window in the church not by Chagall and Marq. It was made in 1961 by E. Jacobus Klonk, a third-generation German glass artist.
  
St Stephan’s is also a venue for religious and other music events; a group was rehearsing under the giant hanging organ pipes while I was there.
Outside the church, the restored cloister, destroyed in World War II, and a door carved with symbols of many local trades.
