Monastery Church of St. Peter and Paul Oberalteich

The monastery church of St. Peter and Paul in Oberaltaich is a former Benedictine church and is located on the European pilgrimage route Via Nova. The first monastery was founded in 731 by Duke Odilo of Bavaria and Saint Pirmin. The new church was built between 1622 and 1630. The baroque high altar dates from 1693 and shows the crucifixion of St. Peter and above the beheading of St. Paul. From 1726 to 1731 the interior was redesigned for the “1000th anniversary”. The monastery was abolished in 1803 and the church has been used as a parish church ever since.
The church is open during the day, but can only be admired from behind through an iron grille. Guided tours are available upon request at the parish office.

Monastery Church of St. Peter and PaulThe first church building, which was part of the Oberaltaich Abbey, founded around 1102, was consecrated in 1129 and was a three-aisled Romanesque basilica without a transept, with a flat roof inside.At the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, the medieval monastery church was demolished in 1621 and rebuilt from 1622 to 1630 - using the two western towers again. This was done under Abbot Veit Höser, who was also responsible for the planning, while the construction management was in the hands of the Graubünden master mason Ulrich Walchner. The church was consecrated in 1630 in the presence of Emperor Ferdinand II and Elector Maximilian I.In 1632, the church and monastery were plundered and devastated by a Swedish army led by Bernhard von Weimar.
The current baroque church complex is a three-aisled hall church with a five-bay floor plan, surrounded by galleries on all sides. The unusual spatial form without excluding an actual choir building is further articulated by the fact that a two-storey chapel extension with a three-quarter circular floor plan is attached to the church building on all four sides. The vaulting of the church space is achieved by an unarticulated groin vault in the central nave, groin vaults in the side aisles and lancet vaults in the galleries.
The principal piece of the church furnishings is the baroque high altar from 1693 with its six-columned structure, the altarpiece of which with the crucifixion of St. Peter by Johann Georg Knappich could be lowered by a mechanism on holidays in favor of the stage-like staging of the handing over of the keys to Peter, which was created around 1730. In the south-west corner of the church is the tomb of the founders of Counts Friedrich and Aswin von Bogen with a red marble cover plate from 1418, and in the northern Albertus Chapel is the high grave of Blessed Albert with a red marble cover plate from 1395.
In 1727-1730, Abbot Dominicus II. Perger had the abbey church, built in 1630, refurbished on the occasion of the monastery's upcoming millennium celebrations. Joseph Anton Merz from Straubing carried out the extensive fresco work on the vaults according to the prelate's precise instructions, which are among the top achievements of southern German ceiling painting.Source: Excerpts from wikipedia.de

The monastery was founded around 1100 by the Regensburg cathedral provost Count Friedrich von Bogen. After his death, his uncle Count Aswin completed the foundation and endowed it with many gifts. Monastic tradition also tells of a previous monastery, founded by Duke Odilo in 731, which was destroyed in the Hungarian storms in 907.The first abbot, Egino, came from the Benedictine Abbey of Niederaltaich. The Niederaltaich monastery provided the abbots until 1175. The Regensburg cathedral provosts held the bailiwick until 1148, then the Counts of Bogen and from 1242 the Wittelsbachs.After a fire destroyed the buildings in 1245, a new monastery with a three-aisled Romanesque basilica was built under Abbot Poppo in 1256. In 1261, the young Swabian knight Albertus von Zollern-Haigerloch († 1311) entered the monastery. He founded the Oberalteich Scribe School, whose illuminated manuscripts are now in the Munich State Library.