history

a few years ago, i took a trip with my parents to eastern europe. we visited budapest, hungry; krakow, poland; and prague, czech republic. the last leg of our journey was then spent in munich, germany. we stayed with friends of my dad, volker & su. we were able to spend some time in the village of pipping, which is a little ways outside of munich. through some connections of volker's dad, horst, we got a tour of the church in pipping from a history professor who gave us a lot of background into the town. who knows whether this is where our ancestors are from, but it was still fun! here are the notes i took about it... it's a little long, so feel free to skip to the pictures!

The Village of Pipping was founded in 1325. There was an average of 50 people living there, on the river Wurm. The land was sold to a duke, Sigmund. Sigmund established 3 churches, 1 km apart, in the 1400's. Also established was the village/town of Blutenburg ("like blossoms"). Sigmund had a house built here, just outside the village of Pipping.

This specific church was established for the poor village of Pipping. The purpose of building the church was because the villagers could not afford to go on a pilgrimage to Austria where St. Wolfgang was buried to visit his grave. Once the church was built here, they could worship. The town of Pipping was made up of mostly farmers who were poor. None of them had their own full section of land to farm on, but split a section of land between several families. Fathers would pass down their section of land to their oldest son. Because the portions of land were so small already, they would not be split between all the sons. The younger children would have to move out of Pipping because there was no hope for their future. Thus, the rest of the children in the family would relocate to other parts of Europe or to the States.

The church building is 500 years old. It has the original main structure with a wooden beam ceiling (constructed without using nails). The bell tower burned about 250 years ago, and was reconstructed; however everything else is original. There are frescoes in the alter area that were painted by Jon Polock, who also the guy who painted the frescoes in the Frouenkirk in Munich. Because of the duke's connections, he was able to get a famous Polish painter and also a renound archetect & builder, both of whom went on to build the Frouenkirk. St . Wolfgang's in Pipping was one of Polock's first works, thus his proportions are not always accurate.

To create the frescoes, the stone walls were first painted with a coat of chalk. While the chalk was wet, the frescoes were painted. When the paint and chalk dried, it created very permanent paintings. This method was pivotal in the preservation of the frescoes.

A few hundred years later, the people in the church decided that the "style" changed' and they didn't like the frescoes anymore. They painted over them, and left the walls plain white. About 150 years after that, they removed the paint and found the frescoes in wonderful condition.

The balcony is original, however the organ was put in about 50 or 60 years ago. It had to be made special due to the structure of the church. The original church door remains in place, and they still lock it with the original, very large key. There's no heat in the church as the design did not lend itself well to this modern addition.

The outside of the church is white. The outside is indeed white, however recently the caretakers have discovered that underneath the outside layer of paint are original frescoes that also were painted over. Thus far, only a few test sections have been restored, but the church doesn't have any money to do further restorations.