Cemetery Church of St. Charles Borromeo (see version )


The Catholic Church at the interdenominational central cemetery is also the largest there, in proportion to the number of buried people.
The foundation stone was laid by the then ruling Christian social mayor
Dr. Karl Lueger (1844 - 1910).

The church was consecrated to St. Karl Borromeo (1538 - 1584), a patron saint of the mayor. He died shortly before completion and the church was then called "Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Gedächtniskirche" (in the vernacular: Lueger Church).
Architect Max Hegele (1873 - 1945, honorary grave cemetery Hadersdorf) was not yet 30 years old when he submitted the design for the church in 1899 and won the competition.
It took a few more years until the construction was started (1908 - 1911). In the years before, the entrance portal and the two laying out halls were built, also according to designs by Max Hegele.

Another Art Nouveau church in Vienna looks very similar to the one at the Central Cemetery (at least at first glance), it was designed by Otto Wagner (1841 - 1918).
He was a generation older and already an established architect in Vienna.

Who now assumes that the younger one has copied from the older one is wrong. It was the other way around. And that is what happened: Otto Wagner sat on the responsible examination committee for the cemetery church, saw the plans, and was obviously very inspired by them, and subsequently designed the Steinhofkirche.
The fact that this church was built earlier than Hegele's was perhaps due to the money that was involved, Steinhof was then still part of Lower Austria.
Diplomatically I would say: the two of them certainly talked to each other and influenced each other.

Tags: Architecture Monochrome Low light Vienna Bnw photography

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