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Churches & chapels

Parish Church Deutschnofen

Place: Deutschnofen

The parish church of Deutschnofen is an impressive Gothic structure from the 15th century with a beautiful sandstone siding. The inscription in the choir vault gives us details about the time of its construction: On July 5, 1455, Pastor Johannes Steel laid the cornerstone. Under the inscription, we can see the coat of arms of the Trient diocese (an eagle) and next to it, the coat of arms of then bishop Georg Hack (the scrawny twig). The last emblem was chosen as a coat of arms for the municipality of Deutschnofen.

We can see from the differences in the foundational structure and the sandstone siding that construction of this church was done in separate phases. It was only completed in 1498 and dedicated on September 16 of the same year. Imagine the church without the sacristy on the northeast corner and the organ loft and its staircase and you have the original form of the building. The interior aspect of the church was greatly improved by the last renovation efforts in the summer of 1975. The new neo-Gothic altars date back to the year 1900 and the new organ was added in 1976.

The four old relief panels on the main altar are among the most noteworthy pieces of art: They depict the birth of Christ, the worship by the Magi, Jesus in the temple, and the death of Mary. The panels come from a famous large polyptych altar, which Master Hans von Judenburg made in 1420 for the parish church of Bozen. The paintings depicting the visitation of Mary on the wall of the choir loft have the same origin. The main figures on the main altar – Mary of the Holy Rosary and the two patron saints of the church – are beautiful artworks by the Innsbruck sculptor Dominikus Trenkwalder dating back to about 1900. The relief figures of St. Barbara and St. Katherina and the relief panel of the visitation of Mary, which can also be found on the walls of the choir, date back to about 1500. The sandstone pulpit from the 16th century is mentioned in Karl Atz' "Kunstgeschichte von Tirol und Vorarlberg (Art History of Tyrol and Vorarlberg)" as one of the most beautiful pulpits of this type in the entire country. Old relief ornaments of the Rosary secrets are inserted into the neo-Gothic structure of the Rosary altar; Franz Unterberger created the altar painting. At Christmas, this altar is decorated with the gorgeous crèche figures of Haider: Franz Haider, whose crèche figures and saints' statues can be found all over the entire Reggelberg area, lived in Petersberg for a while. Most of the bell tower is much older than the church that we see today. It comes from the time where Romanesque architecture was popular; you can make out two rows of vaulted round-arch windows in the interior, which had later been walled in. The tower used to belong to the old parish church of St. Benedikt, which was mentioned on a certificate of 1265. The dome that we see today was added in 1793 after a lightning bolt struck and extensively damaged the tower and church roof. Here is another distinctive feature of the church: The prie-dieu (prayer chairs) have brass panels, some of which have a rune-like inscription stating the name of the chair owner; these symbols stand for the old house and farm emblems of Deutschnofen. Every farm used such an emblem to mark tools, cereal bags, wooden logs and other items that they sold on the market. The outer wall of the church also displays many such emblems, painted with hematite and partly blurred by wind and rain. The impressive war memorial (1967) on the northern cemetery wall was sculpted by South Tyrolean Martin Rainer, who was awarded the Walther-von-der-Vogelweide prize in 1976.

People from Deutschnofen have the following story to tell about the construction of the parish church: The big new parish church ended up being much more expensive than they had previously assumed. The Deutschnofen community ran out of funds when the church was only half completed. Strangely enough, they were so embarrassed that they asked the neighboring municipality of Fleims for help. It has to be said (and this is proven) that the two municipalities were involved in wicked border disputes at the time.

The Fleims citizens were ready to help out, but they dictated conditions that took advantage of the miserable situation of the Deutschnofen people. They requested that Deutschnofen gave them a lot of estates, forests, mountain pastures as collateral and they also demanded that Deutschnofen would swear to give back the gold on a certain day (St. Lucy's Day before the chiming of the bells). If they could not meet the deadline, the Fleims people would retain all the collateral in addition to the gold to be repaid. The Deutschnofen people agreed because they really wanted their church completed. But the loan ended up being really costly. When the year of the payback came, the Deutschnofen community was barely able to collect the gold. As a precaution, they went on their way to Fleims on the day before St. Lucy's Day, so they would not miss the deadline. They had just passed the Joch, when night fell. They stayed overnight at a guesthouse and were planning to cover the last leg of the journey at daybreak. The Fleims people heard of this and they were unhappy that they would now have to give back the entire collateral. They were so greedy that they played a dirty trick on their neighbors. Instead of chiming the bell at 2 pm on St. Lucy's Day (like they usually did), they chimed the bell a 2 am. That's how simple it was. The Deutschnofen people were still at the guesthouse and could not get to Fleims in time to deliver the gold. The Fleims people, on the other hand, had a win-win situation: They received their gold back and held on all the collateral, including the forests and pastureland.

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