Parish Church of St. Alban

General information:

The patronage goes back to the Diocese of Basel, whose Bishop Burkard of Fenis-Neuchatel was chamberlain of the Bishop of Mainz before 1072, where the grave of St. Alban is found.

Apart from the tower, nothing else in the Catholic church dates back to the Middle Ages when St. Bernhard of Clairvaux preached the crusade. Noblemen whose residence was next to the parish church ruled from 1250 as reeves of the Benedictine monastery St. Trudpert in Münstertal. From 1325 it was Schnewelin of Landeck, from 1600 the lords of Schauenburg and from 1660 to 1806 the lords of Pfirt. All of these families used the church as a burial ground. During the 30-Year War, the church was destroyed by Swedish troops down to the tower base. The restoration was already completed in 1650, whereby the Abbot of St. Trudpert had to pay for the chancel and high altar. The current high altar from 1765/66 is already the third one and was decorated in detail in, for the time, very valuable shades of blue by the famous decorative painter Schmadel of Bregenz.

The fact that the church has been retained up until now is almost a miracle. On Palm Sunday 2002 a huge fire broke out due to children lighting candles, which caused both high altar side panels to be destroyed. Both were donations from the well-known Krozinger business family, Litschgi. They were painted in 1765 by the wife of the rich ironworks owner, Johann Franz Anton von Litschgi, Maria Catharina Antonia née von Morphy, an Irish noblewoman orginating from Colmar. The main panel showed a magnificent portrait of Mary ascending to heaven, carried on a cloud and surrounded by angels. The lower part depicted apostles who had gathered around the empty grave. Fortunately, Dr. Bernd-Matthias Kremer from the archiepiscopal ordinariate was able to find a worthy substitute.