Ovale & Blicke: Dominikus Zimmermanns Wallfahrtskirche in Steinhausen

The book explains how architectural techniques were deliberately

used to achieve the greatest possible impact on the viewer. The essays in this work captivate with their meticulous research and in-depth analysis, making them a pleasure to read for architects, architecture critics and advanced students.

Dominikus Zimmermann’s pilgrimage church of Our Lady and parish

church of St Peter and Paul in Steinhausen, built between 1728

and 1733, is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable creations of

Upper-Swabian Baroque architecture. Architectural history has devoted

considerable space to it, and yet there are important aspects

that have remained unnoticed and unexamined.

The first question that arises is that of the ovals on which the

building is based, whereby two different versions need to be examined:

the design drawing that the architect presented to his abbot

client and the completed building, which could be analyzed in detail

for the first time thanks to a recently created precise measurement.

In both cases, the result shows ambitious oval constructions that

deviate from the usual practice, as well as two fundamentally different

geometric approaches.

The second complex deals with peculiarities of perception. Here,

one must accord the Steinhausen church a prominent position.

Zimmermann designs the path into and through the church interior

as a sequence of stations, each characterized by different expectations

of what is to come – by illusory images of space that the viewer

creates in his imagination based on what he can perceive from

his respective vantage point. These images follow one another as

one walks through the church, they change, expectations are in a

state of constant metamorphosis, until finally the image of the last

station coincides with reality.

A concluding chapter is devoted to the question of whether, and

if so, to what extent Zimmermann’s Steinhausen spatial artwork can

be said to have a dialectical constitution of architecture, and which

dialectically related moments prove to be constitutive of a unity.