Baienfurt: Mariä Himmelfahrt

1925 – 1927

Architect: Otto Linder

Kirchstraße 8, Baienfurt, Germany

The Catholic parish church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built from 1925 to 1927 according to designs by the Stuttgart architect Otto Linder.

Expressionism

The reinforced concrete building with parabolic vault is an outstanding example of Expressionist church architecture of the 1920s in Germany, especially due to the well-preserved interior painting by Alois Schenk, which is characterized by blue color.

Otto Linder

Architect Otto Linder, born in 1891 in Weißenstein near Göppingen, attended the Staatliche Höhere Bauschule Stuttgart and the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart, where he studied under Paul Bonatz and Ernst Fiechter.

From 1920 and 1971, Linder worked as a self-employed architect, primarily from Stuttgart.

Church Building

The floor plan shows a three-nave longitudinal building laid out in a west-east direction, an indicated transept and a slightly projecting entrance hall.

On the staggered structure with its high stepped hipped roof, the west facade with its large parabolic portal niche stands out first.

The narrow, high rectangular windows are grouped into staggered groups of three.

With their framing in reddish ocher and their elongated reveals and lintels, the windows structure the plastered facade with its horizontal incised lines.

Interior

Inside, the church forms an expressionist Gesamtkunstwerk, from the lighting to the painterly decoration by Alois Schenk.

Five parabolic arches on elongated consoles connect the main nave with the side aisles.

The blue wall surfaces lighten to gray in the side aisles, at the gallery and in the area of the side altars and change to violet in the choir.

In 1927 the high altar with tabernacle was made in the workshop of Theodor Schnell the Younger in Ravensburg.

Organ

Today’s organ built by Reiser from Biberach from 1988 is a replacement for the lost predecessor instrument from the same company from 1934.