“Did you hear about the church that moved?” That’s not quite the story of Sankt Georg in Augsburg. However, its history is full of change. Sankt Georg stands as a testament to Augsburg’s rich religious past.
Sankt Georg began as a chapel around 1070. Bishop Embrico established it for two cathedral canons. This small community cared for the chapel. In 1135, Bishop Walter I and the Augsburg Cathedral Chapter founded a monastery here for Augustinian canons. Sankt Georg may have been the first monastery for Augustinian canons in Bavaria.
The church expanded and was consecrated in 1142. The base of the tower and a Romanesque knot pillar remain from this time. Sankt Georg gained the right to freely elect its protector in the mid-12th century. The monastery took over pastoral care in the rapidly growing suburb west of the cathedral district. They got their own parish in 1180. By the early 14th century, Sankt Georg stood inside the city walls near the Fischertor.
Around 1290, the canons built St. Michael’s Chapel for the parish next to their monastery church. The Romanesque church was replaced by a late Gothic three-aisled new building. This happened from 1490 to 1506. Burkhart Engelberg, the builder of the Ulrich Basilica, likely influenced its style. The Herwarth family added a burial chapel to Sankt Georg. This chapel was completed in 1506.
In 1525, the Georgenstift had to give St. Michael’s Chapel to the Protestants. In 1534, the Augsburg Council banned Catholic Mass in Sankt Georg. The canons went into exile from 1537 to 1548. They stayed at Guggenberg Castle near Schwabmünchen. In 1630, the provost’s office destroyed the Michael’s Chapel. Protestants had used it for a hundred years.
The Swedish occupation from 1632 to 1635 and fires in 1640 and 1660 burdened the monastery. Economically it struggled to develop since the Middle Ages. However, Sankt Georg recovered under energetic provosts. From 1680 to 1705, Johann Georg Mozart renovated the monastery in Baroque style. From 1693, the provosts of Sankt Georg also wore pontifical vestments.
In 1802, the Imperial City of Augsburg secularized the monastery. At this time, twelve canons lived in the monastery. They remained there initially. When the Kingdom of Bavaria took over Augsburg in 1806, Sankt Georg became a French military hospital. Until 1883, the Bavarian army used the monastery building as a hospital and barracks.
The parish bought back the former monastery buildings in 1901. In 1944, air raids destroyed the monastery. Since 1955, the parish center of Sankt Georg stands in its place. The old monastery church has served the parish since 1808. The church space was completely redesigned in the neo-Gothic style in 1880. Thomas Wechs rebuilt it in the 1950s. This returned some of the 17th-century features. The Herwarth family’s burial chapel holds the Baroque cross altar by Ignaz W. Verhelst. It features a crucifix from around 1510 by Loy Hering. The former high altarpiece showing the glorification of Mary from 1627 by Matthias Kager, is also preserved.
Today Sankt Georg is a parish church. It reflects centuries of Augsburg’s religious and architectural evolution. The church’s journey from a small chapel to its current form shows its importance.