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Building Number 4 in the printed brochure
"Historic Buildings in Münchberg".

The sign is to the right of the entry.

This Baroque church is a hall building with four axes and five eighth termination windows with cross ridge vaults and curved windows. With its high hip roof, its light façade and its single storey placement, with an onion shaped tower it is the oldest building in the city of Münchberg. It was erected in the years 1746 and 1747 in place of a dilapidated chapel built in 1556.

Of note is the south portal flanked by pilasters and crowned by explosive gables, also the sprung granite frames of the three other entry doors.

This house of worship with the meaningful name “To Heavens Gate” has a hard and eventful history behind it. It was misused as quarters for Croatians and Ponders and as a military storage depot between 1759 and 1817 and subsequently had to be extensively renovated. In the years 1850, 1861, 1888, 1926, 1968 and 1993 extensive renovation work was done.

Although in this church the frescoes that are characteristic of the Baroque era are missing, and the interior space is excessively plain and simple, the unique stucco ceiling with its filigreed decorations points to this time, just as the choir lofts and the pulpit altar from the year 1751.

The two choir lofts, supported on their front sides by 12 wooden columns, surround the nave on three sides. Their balustrades are made of small wooden columns, all unique, which, differing in strength and form from each other, give testimony to the art of craftsmanship.

In the middle of the choir stand the already mentioned pulpit altar with four spiral columns and the pulpit in the middle, directly over the altar table. The pulpit is decorated with the portraits of the four evangelists and their symbols. Behind the pulpit, almost in the first floor of the altar, is a small room, which probably originally served as the sacristy. On the pulpit cover is the risen Christ. The altar is crowned by a golden aureole with the eye of God as the center point. Overhead heaven opens up, with a curtain hanging over the whole, under which small angel heads look out. Two large angelic figures to the left and the right, one with an arrow filled quiver, the other with a golden wreath are probably meant to point to the last day.

The epitaph on the south wall of the choir memorializes the superintendant Johann Adam Roth, the builder of the church. Across the way on the choir is the Neustetter tomb, a monument made of sandstone 3 meters high and 2.5 meters wide. This oldest artistic monument of the parish, that already had its place in the previous church, comes from the year 1590 and is a memorial to the Margrave Kostner to Münchberg, Hans Neustetter and his family.

So the church leads us “To Heaven’s Gate” on the paths of the past. It also invites us to reflection on the present and steers our vision to the future.

On the path around the church you see the gravestones of Ludwig Zapf and on the church’s north face old epitaphs from the 17th and 18th centuries. You can find more about these five tomb slabs at the project page of the MünchBürger.