Griechisch-katholische St.-Barbara-Kirche

The Barbara Church is the main church of the Greek Catholic Church in Austria, as well as the parish church of the Ukrainian Uniate Church, a German-speaking Greek Catholic community and central parish church for the other Byzantine believers of Austria. It is located on Postgasse in Vienna’s 1st district, Inner City.

A chapel dedicated to Saint Barbara was first mentioned here in 1573 as part of the Vienna Jesuit Convent. 1652-1654 the Konvikt and chapel were rebuilt in the Baroque style. After the Jesuit order was abolished in 1773, Maria Theresa gave the building to the Greek Catholic Church as a seminary under the name Barbareum. Since several countries of the monarchy, especially Galicia, had numerous believers in the Uniate Church, priestly training was to be transferred to Vienna and decisively improved. This resulted in 1784 in the first unified Ukrainian parish outside of Ukraine. In 1842 there were plans to demolish the church, which had been free until then, in order to build a new main post office building in its place and to move the Greek-Catholic community to St. Johann Nepomuk on Praterstrasse. But then it was decided to integrate the church into the new main post office building and to give it a new facade.

In the years 1852-1892 it served again as the official place of worship for the Greek Catholic Central Seminary. In the 1930s there were again plans to relocate the church in order to be able to redesign the main post office building. With the annexation of Austria to the German Reich in 1938, however, these plans were dropped again. On January 15, 1945, the church was badly damaged by air raids. It was renovated after the war by the postal administration that owned the building, so the parish did not incur any expense. In the 20th century the church underwent several renovations, in 1962 agallery extension . An internationally recognized Ukrainian church choir, which has already made several recordings, works at the church. In 1979, Austrian Post issued a special Christmas stamp depicting the birth of Christ based on a painting by Moses Subotić from 1775 from the Church of St. Barbara.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarakirche_(Wien)

Photo: Gerd Eichmann