Good neighbors: Architecture and confession in Augsburg\u27s Lutheran Church of Holy Cross, 1525–1661

The Reformation and Confessionalization processes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced not just theological and doctrinal changes to Christianity, but also physical and symbolic transformations of sacred Christian buildings and spaces. As various sects claimed churches and other religious properties as their own, they altered both the meaning and the physical layout of buildings to conform to new ritual needs. In biconfessional Augsburg, the physical proximity of Lutherans and Catholics further complicated the changing relationship between church and confession. This study looks at the Lutheran Church of Holy Cross in Augsburg from its founding in 1525 through its reconstruction in the mid-seventeenth century. Created out of a public preaching house on monastery grounds, the Lutheran church stood next to a Catholic Priory church, with which it shared an enclosed churchyard. Over the course of the sixteenth century, the Lutheran and Catholic churches developed a standard of “good neighborliness” which allowed them to alter their churches, share space, and coexist in peace, if not mutual tolerance. The 1629 Edict of Restitution led to the demolition of the Lutheran church, but the Treaty of Westphalia, along with generous donations from Lutherans far away, allowed for its reconstruction. The curious architecture of the new church was the product of political negotiation between Catholic and Lutheran interests, the unusual shape of the Lutheran church ground, and local aesthetic tastes. The case of Holy Cross reveals the importance of the church to the religious identity of Lutherans, both the Augsburgers who worshipped in the building and foreign donors who funded it. The religious identity of Holy Cross Lutherans proves to be local, political, and very tied to physical place. This project also reveals that political cooperation, or “good neighborliness,” managed to mediate confessional divisions and intolerance. The exile of the Lutheran Holy Cross pastor, builder and chief fundraiser, Thomas Hopfer, confirms the ascendancy of neighborliness over narrow confessional interests in postwar Augsburg