St. Moritz Church

A magnificent church from the Imperial era

The Moritzkirche in Zwickau is a three-nave central-plan church built in the typical style of Late Historicism, in which Neo-Gothic and Neo-Romanesque elements are fused into a single architectural whole. The entire structure is covered with relief-like brick ornamentation, featuring alternating red unglazed bricks with green and brown glazed bricks. In total, the church features 116 different brick profiles. The western gable wall is flanked by two octagonal towers with conical roofs. Large rose windows are located above the main portal and in the side aisles. The chancel, located on the east side, is adjoined by a ring of five smaller chapels. Rising above the central main dome is the 71-meter-high crossing tower with a pyramidal roof and square corner towers. 

The interior of the church is predominantly in the Neo-Gothic style. In the approximately 20-meter-high central space, no supporting columns obstruct the view of the altar area. Thus, from nearly every one of the 1,000 seats, there is an unobstructed view of the altar and pulpit—a feature that, in addition to the church’s excellent acoustics, makes it ideally suited for concerts. The altar, pulpit, and lectern, the base of the baptismal font, and the pews are all uniformly crafted from oak. Like the exterior of the church, the interior walls are clad in red brick, interspersed with smooth, colorfully painted surfaces. The vaulted ceiling, the choir loft, and the galleries are adorned with colorful ornamental paintings. Both the side aisle galleries and the organ loft on the west side rest on squat columns with Corinthian capitals. 

The church is named after Saint Mauritius, a Christian martyr of the third century who later became the patron saint of the city of Zwickau. The Mauritius window above the main portal bears witness to him, presenting the viewer with a fair-skinned Mauritius—in contrast to the sculpture above the entrance to Zwickau City Hall. 

The historical roots of St. Maurice Church trace back to a Church of St. Mary consecrated in 1118, which stood not far from the present-day church near Osterweihstraße and Hölderlinstraße. The name Zwiccowe appears for the first time in the foundation charter of this oldest church in the Zwickau area—the earliest documented mention of Zwickau. In 1212, the church was then first mentioned in a document as St. Moritz Church. 

When, in the late 19th century, the old St. Moritz Church had become too small for the congregation of the burgeoning Nordvorstadt neighborhood, the decision was made to build a new, larger church. Based on the award-winning design by Berlin architect Jürgen Kröger, Zwickau master builder Wilhelm Junghanns constructed the new St. Moritz Church, which was consecrated on the first Sunday of Advent in 1893. The old St. Moritz Church was demolished the following year.