a beautiful church!
The church dedicated to Saint Oswald was probably built in the 12th century as a medium-sized late Romanesque church and later rebuilt in the Gothic style. It was first mentioned in a document in 1342 as a branch church of the parish in Haslach. The church was damaged by the town fires in 1371, 1704 and 1851. In essence, however, it still corresponds to the wall pillar church with galleries built between 1675 and 1690, the plans for which were by Kaspar Zuccalli. The builders were Antonio Riva and Lorenzo Sciascia, who, like Zuccalli, came from the Graubünden school. The reconstruction of the church, which was damaged by the town fire in 1704, again followed Sciascia's plans. The high altar, completed in 1732, was made by the Munich sculptor Joseph Poschenrieder according to a design by the electoral court cabinet maker Wenzel Mirowsky. It replaced an altar built by Johann Wolfgang Dersch in 1715, which was dismantled and sold to Halfing, where it can still be seen today in the Church of the Assumption of Mary; Dersch built a smaller version of this altar for St. Vitus and Anna in Ettendorf.
Building: The church has a tower with an onion dome and a two-storey facade from the 19th century. The interior of St. Oswald is a late Baroque 17th century wall pillar room with galleries and a recessed choir. The interior has seven bays. The shallow side rooms have chapels and galleries above them and are vaulted by transverse barrel vaults. There are strikingly flat double pilasters on the fronts of the wall pillars. The upper edge of the gallery parapet is below the capital zone of the pilasters. The strikingly well-proportioned hall is closed off by a barrel vault, which is divided by transverse arches. A triumphal arch in the form of a round-arch arcade leads from the community hall to the choir and acts as a form of dignity that defines the space. All vaults are decorated with rich neo-baroque stucco.
Furnishings: The furnishings include nine altars, seven of which date from the first half of the 18th century. The rest of the furnishings are mostly from 1852/55. The mighty high altar, restored in 1855, with the base, four-columned main floor and side figures of St. Rupert and the Virgin Mary, is essentially the same as the altar made in 1732.
Bells: A six-part bronze bell ringing system hangs in the tower of the parish church. Five of the bells were cast in 1947 (bell 1: 1948) by Karl Czudnochowsky, Erding. The smallest bell survived the confiscations of the two world wars unscathed. It was cast in 1852 by the Reichenhall branch of the Salzburg bell foundry Oberascher. The bells have the following dates
St. Oswald parish church before the town fire of 1851
Only after many unsuccessful attempts did the town of Traunstein succeed in having the parish seat moved from Haslach to St. Oswald in the town by ministerial resolution on December 20, 1850. The town fire of 1851 destroyed the roof structure of the tower and the choir vault. The interior of the church had already been restored in 1855. In 1885, the western part of the church with the main portal and the tower were built in their current form according to plans by the royal district architect Moritz von Horstig. The Traunstein church painter and local historian Max Fürst created new frescoes in the late Nazarene style between 1904 and 1909. Parts of the furnishings and the neo-baroque stucco are also largely more recent. During the renovation in 1967, the four baldachins at the corners of the porch were removed and, according to the renewed liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, the choir stalls, pulpit and lectern were removed.
On July 8, 1951, Joseph Ratzinger celebrated his first mass in St. Oswald with his brother Georg Ratzinger. After his retirement as Pope, he donated his papal pectoral cross to the church, which was stolen from there on June 19, 2023.[2]
Renovation work began in St. Oswald in August 2018.[3]