Towards the end of the Thirty Years' War, the two shepherd boys Hans Popp and Hans Steinmetz built a small chapel made of wood and clay on the Rosswiese in the north of Freystadt. There they put up a picture of the Virgin Mary given to them by Sarah Frank. Because of the large number of pilgrims, construction began soon after on a stone chapel in which a carved miraculous image was placed. The consecration took place in 1670. An expansion of the church planned to accommodate large numbers of pilgrims was abandoned in favor of a new building, not least because of construction defects. The builder was the local landlord Ferdinand Lorenz Franz Xaver Count Tilly, whose family (descendants of General Tilly) had been enfeoffed with rich benefices in the Upper Palatinate, which was conquered by Bavaria.
In the years 1700 to 1710, a central building was built according to the plans of Giovanni Antonio Viscardi, which is covered by a dome with a lantern and surrounded by four small corner towers. The stucco work on the baroque church was done by Pietro Francesco Appiani. Hans Georg Asam created the frescoes from the Life of Mary with the support of his sons Cosmas Damian and Egid Quirin. The consecration was carried out by Eichstätter Auxiliary Bishop Johann Adam Nieberlein on August 3, 1710.[2]
Next to the church, a Franciscan monastery was built between 1712 and 1714 according to plans by the Franciscan brother and architect Philipp Plank to oversee pilgrimages. Even before the Reformation, the order maintained a monastery on the nearby Möningerberg.
The design of the Freystädter Maria Hilf Church is considered to be one of the models for the Dresden Frauenkirche.[3]
In 1802 the monastery was dissolved due to secularization in Bavaria. The church was supposed to be demolished, but was preserved following the intervention of Baron von Griesenbeck, who had found the grave of one of his ancestors in the church. In 1835 the Franciscans also returned. The church had suffered greatly from damage and dilapidation and therefore only partially shows its original condition, especially in terms of furnishings. The high altar dates from the 1950s.
Source: Wikipedia
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