The Christuskirche is Salzburg's main Protestant church, built 1863-1866. The fact that it exists at all is the story. In 1731-1732, Archbishop Leopold Anton von Firmian expelled around 20,000 Salzburg Lutherans in winter. The Christuskirche is the long consequence.
The Story
Salzburg was an ecclesiastical principality ruled by archbishops for centuries, and it was not a tolerant one. In 1731-1732, Archbishop Leopold Anton von Firmian ordered the expulsion of the city's entire Protestant population, somewhere around 20,000 people. They were given a matter of weeks to leave in the middle of winter. Many walked to Prussia; Frederick William I of Prussia offered them settlement land. It was one of the largest forced religious expulsions in early modern Central Europe, and it is not a story Salzburg's tourist architecture tends to surface.
Emperor Joseph II's Edict of Toleration in 1781 gradually opened the Habsburg lands to Protestant worship, but it took until 1863 before Salzburg had a Protestant church of its own. The Christuskirche was built that year on Schwarzstrasse, on the right bank, designed by architect Richard von Forster in a restrained neo-Romanesque style. The brick-accented exterior is deliberately measured against the baroque skyline of the Altstadt visible across the river.
The building works as architecture and as counter-history. Salzburg presents as an emphatically Catholic city, and the baroque churches document that self-presentation faithfully. The Christuskirche documents what was systematically removed to make that image clean.
Visiting
- Address: Schwarzstraße 25, 5020 Salzburg
- Hours: Open during daytime hours; Sunday services
- Cost: Free
- Duration: 10-15 minutes
- Getting there: On Schwarzstrasse, right bank of the Salzach; short walk from Mirabell Palace
- Combine with: Mirabell Palace, Residenzplatz
- Official site: christuskirche-salzburg.at