Churches

Churches

St. Peter's Church, Munich, and the Alter Peter

St. Peter's is the oldest parish church of Munich, standing on the Petersbergl between the Marienplatz and the Viktualienmarkt in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. Its 91-metre tower, the Alter Peter, was rebuilt after the fire of 1327, capped after a lightning strike in 1607, and restored after the bombing of 1945.

Type
Parish church
Dedication
Saint Peter
Rite
Roman
Diocese
Archdiocese of Munich and Freising
Built
12th century, rebuilt after 1327, rededicated 1368

The Petersbergl before the city

St. Peter's stands on the Petersbergl, the only rise of any size inside Munich's old town, with the Marienplatz to the north-west and the Viktualienmarkt to the south-east. The English Wikipedia article records a church here before Munich was founded as a city in 1158, with monks living around it in the eighth century. The German article is more cautious. A square chamber found under the north side of the choir was once dated before the city's founding, but is now thought to be a ducal toll station of about 1158.

The oldest church building that can be proved was a three-aisled Romanesque basilica with a pair of west towers, which the parish dates to before 1180. It was extended around 1220 to 1230, and the church is first named in a document of 1225 or 1226 as ecclesia sancti Petri Muonichen. From 1278 it was replaced by a larger Gothic basilica, which Bishop Emicho of Freising consecrated on 17 May 1294.

Fire, rebuilding and the tower

On 14 February 1327 a fire destroyed almost a third of Munich. The east choir of St. Peter's burned down to its outer walls and the two towers burned out, though the nave was saved. In the rebuilding the nave was lengthened by two bays, and side chapels were built between the buttresses, most of them endowed by patrician families as burial places. Bishop Paul of Freising consecrated the new high choir in 1365 or 1368, and the sources differ on the year.

Between about 1380 and 1386 the two burnt-out west towers were cut down and a single tower was built between the stumps, carrying what the parish describes as the city's first public clock. Lightning destroyed its two pointed spires on 24 July 1607, and the present top with its open lantern was designed by Heinrich Schön the Elder and finished in 1621. The tower is 91 metres high to the tip of its cross. A viewing gallery at 56 metres is reached by 306 steps past a chamber of eight bells, the largest cast in 1958 for the city's 800th anniversary. The parish says the view reaches the Alps, 100 kilometres away, in Föhn weather.

The Baroque choir and the high altar

The Gothic choir was pulled down from 1630 to make way for a Baroque choir of three apses, which was vaulted in 1636 in the middle of the Thirty Years' War. Hans Heiß then remodelled the nave, encasing the octagonal piers and adding the organ gallery, and finished in 1654. In the eighteenth century the choir was redone from 1730 and the nave from 1752 to 1756, with stucco and ceiling frescoes by Johann Baptist Zimmermann showing scenes from the life of Peter.

The high altar was built between 1730 and 1734 to a design by Nikolaus Gottfried Stuber, modelled on Bernini's Cathedra Petri in Rome, with sculpture by Egid Quirin Asam and Johann Georg Greiff. At its centre sits a gilded late Gothic figure of Saint Peter by Erasmus Grasser, the only piece kept from the earlier Gothic altar, flanked by four Church Fathers that Asam carved in wood in 1732. The figure wears a removable tiara, and by parish tradition it is taken off when a pope dies and put back when his successor is installed. In a chapel on the north side the Liborius altar carries relics venerated as those of Saint Munditia, an early martyr from Rome, in a black shrine with silver ornament made by Franz Keßler in 1677.

Destruction in 1945 and the church today

Bombs hit the tower top on 15 April 1944, a choir wall fell on 17 December 1944, and on 25 February 1945 two high-explosive bombs brought down the whole nave vault. Only the burnt-out stump of the tower and the outer walls of the choir were left standing, and many of the artworks survived because they had been moved to safety during the war. The ruin had been released for demolition and the blasting holes drilled when, on the initiative of the parish priests Max Stritter and Max Zistl, Cardinal Michael Faulhaber saved the church. Rebuilding began in 1946, paid for by donations from Munich citizens and from abroad, including Cincinnati in the United States.

The cross was set back on the tower on 8 September 1951, and Cardinal Joseph Wendel consecrated the rebuilt high altar on 27 June 1954, when the outer form of the church was complete. The interior took longer, under Rudolf Esterer and Erwin Schleich, and ended in 2000 when Hermenegild Peiker finished repainting Zimmermann's nave ceiling. St. Peter's is now the oldest parish church in Munich, in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, and keeps 29 June as its patronal feast. Mass is still celebrated at the high altar facing east, the Sunday parish Mass is celebrated in Latin, and the tower is open to visitors for an adult admission of five euros.

Read at its patronal feast

Sources

Further reading

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