“Bird of Paradise, Pelican and Pyramid” is the motto this Sunday, March 5th, at 6 p.m. in the St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in Hohenbrunn. With a voyage of discovery through the church, surrounded by festive organ music, the congregation starts the “celebratory year 300 years of Baroque”, in which the church becomes the center of a variety of events.
The reason for this is the consecration of the three baroque altars in August 1723. From 1670 onwards, the church was redesigned from the late Gothic predecessor to a baroque hall church with a drawn-in polygonal choir. At the first appointment, Sabine Blöchinger, who studied German and is the wife of the local church curator, explains the animal images in ten stucco cartouches on the ceiling of the vaulted nave. Among other things, butterflies, pyramids, birds of paradise and a pelican are emblazoned there.
The pelican represents Jesus Christ and sacrifice.
(Photo: private)
While the pelican is known to symbolize Christ and his sacrifice because it was once thought to have chopped open its chest to feed its young, one wonders what the birds-of-paradise have to do with St. Stephen.
During the church tour, the significance of the diving bird, for example, is explained.
(Photo: private)
The Latin inscription above the picture only reveals it as a catchphrase. Blöchinger says it should leave space for the clergy to interpret this and the other images. She has found more detailed explanations of the inscriptions in emblem books. For example, to a bird dipping its head in the water with the motto “mersus emergam”, in German: “I will emerge submerged”. It is the image of the person who has fallen into hardship and suffering and does not lose hope of emerging from it again – supported by faith.
Cantor Alfred Haran frames the evening full of explanations with solemn organ music, with which one can devote oneself to the baroque emblems in the church.
Bird of paradise, pelican and pyramid. The baroque emblems in St. Stephanus Hohenbrunn, Sunday, March 5th, at 6 p.m. in the Stephanuskirche, Taufkirchener Str. 1, Hohenbrunn.