St. Paul im Lavanttal#

St. Paul im Lavanttal, Carinthia, market town in the district of Wolfsberg, alt. 412 m, pop. 3,682, area 47.30 km2, situated at the confluence of the Granitz stream and the Lavant river. - Forestry authority and secondary school sponsored by the local abbey; building firms, tool manufacturing, paper processing, tourism (primarily day-tourists). - On the Burgstallkogel mountain near St. Margarethen, a shrine to the Celtic god Mars Latobius was found. Monks from the German monastery Hirsau moved to the Benedictine abbey founded in 1091 (formerly a castle belonging to the Sponheim family); double-towered Romanesque/early Gothic pillared basilica (11th -13th century, rebuilt after a fire in 1367), Romanesque tympanum with relief on the south portal (rebuilt 1617/1618, some parts still Romanesque), half-columns with Romanesque capitals (around 1190-1220), under the high altar is a crypt housing the coffins of 13 members of the house of Habsburg, extensive wall and vault paintings (by the brothers M. and F. Pacher, et al., donor fresco by Thomas v. Villach, 1493), three Gothic panel paintings (around 1460), Baroque high altar (1705), numerous gravestones decorated with coats of arms (14th -17th century). Winter and summer refectories with stuccoed ceilings and frescoes; the monastery's art collection, housed in three halls with beautiful coffered ceilings (around 1620), contains paintings of German, Dutch and Italian masters from the 15th -19th centuries, 16 works by M. J. Schmidt, over 200 illuminated manuscripts (5th -15th centuries), arts and crafts (e.g. ivory relief, around 900), Romanesque bell chasuble (12th century), sacred objects from the Middle Ages and the modern era, copper etchings, as well as some 11,000 prints and drawings; the monastery's library contains some 55,000 volumes, over 500 incunabula (up to 1520) and many early printing books, and well as 2,200 manuscripts. The monastery played an important role in the history of the church in Carinthia during the Middle Ages and was dissolved from 1787-1809 and 1940-45. In 1809 monks from St. Blasien in Germany's Black Forest region took the monastery over, bringing art treasures and coffins of early members of the house of Habsburg with them. In the 20th century the artist S. Lobisser lived in Sankt Paul im Lavanttal, where he also had his studio.

Literature#