The Buxheim choir stalls are high baroque choir stalls created by Ignaz Waibl between 1687 and 1691 in the monastery church of St. Maria in Buxheim in Upper Swabia. Following the dissolution of the charterhouse in the course of secularization, it came into the possession of the count in 1803. Count Hugo Waldbott von Bassenheim had it auctioned off in Munich in 1883. When the chair came under the hammer again in 1886, the director of the Bank of England bought it at auction and donated it to the Sisters of St. Saviour's Hospital in London, England, who took it with them when the hospital was moved to Hythe in the county of Kent. When the hospital in Kent was dissolved, the choir stalls were bought back by the county of Swabia in 1980 for 450,000 pounds sterling, which is roughly equivalent to a price of 1.05 million euros. It was extensively restored between 1980 and 1994 and has since been returned to its original location in the former charterhouse in Buxheim.
The stalls are horseshoe-shaped and originally consisted of 36 stalls, 31 of which are still preserved. The main part of the rich figurative decoration is formed by the statues of the founders of religious orders in the backs of the seats, the dorsals, with the emphasis on orders of hermits. The cornice is dominated by sculptures of the twelve apostles.
History
Previous history The predecessor of Ignaz Waibl's choir stalls was relatively simple in design, comparable to the stalls that can still be seen in the former Christgarten Charterhouse. There is no evidence of pre-baroque stalls.Edmund Melzl: Die Chorgestühle der ehemaligen Reichskartause Buxheim. In: Das Buxheimer Chorgestühl. p. 205. As part of the renovation of the Charterhouse church, the then Prior Johannes Bilstein commissioned the construction of new choir stalls, which began in 1687. Bilstein was one of the most important priors in Buxheim. He was born in Cologne around 1626 and made his profession in Danzig on July 22, 1648, where he initially worked as a vicar. Before becoming prior in Buxheim in 1678, he was head of the Charterhouse in Schnals in Tyrol (1661–1670) and the Charterhouse Karthaus near Danzig (1670–1678). At the same time, he became acquainted with numerous charterhouses as a visitator and visitator. In addition to the Lower German province, he also traveled to the Upper German province, to Austria and Bohemia and to the Spanish provinces of Catalonia and Castile. Inspired by the impressions he had gathered on his many travels, he had a choir stall made in Danzig, which became an extremely artistic masterpiece of interior architecture. The stalls, completed in 1677, are carved from oak wood and have a wealth of figures and ornamentation never before seen in Kartausen. In addition to Italian influences, the stalls of the canons' monastery in Sitten in Switzerland are worth mentioning, where Bilstein had admired the cheeks with plant decoration and angel heads and had them similarly realized in Gdansk.Marion Harder-Merkelbach: Kartausenchorgestühle im deutschsprachigen Raum vom Mittelalter bis zum ausgehenden Barock. In: Das Buxheimer Chorgestühl. p. 150–151. The Buxheim choir stalls are therefore the second stalls to have been made under the direction of Johannes Bilstein. Similarities with the Gdansk stalls cannot be overlooked.S. Wartena: Die Süddeutschen Chorgestühle von der Renaissance bis zum Klassizismus. 2008, p. 410.
Creation of the choir stalls by Ignaz Waibl The prior commissioned the Tyrolean sculptor Ignaz Waibl to sculpt the new choir stalls and Master Peter from Memmingen to do the carpentry work. This master appears in the monastery archives as Master Peter, the carpenter from the town, but is not listed in any of the surviving Memmingen archives. It is therefore assumed that the master carpenter came from a village not far from the town of Memmingen. It is not known why Bilstein chose Ignaz Waibl. Whether the designs for the choir stalls were made by Waibl himself can only be assumed; the iconographic program was specified by the Carthusians.
The sculptor set up a workshop for himself and his assistants in the Charterhouse. Due to varying quality, research assumes that there were around five to seven figure carvers and several journeymen who were responsible for the foliage.Edmund Melzl: Ignaz Waibl. In: Das Buxheimer Chorgestühl. p. 160. Johann Georg Dettelbacher from Ochsenfurt is the only one of them whose name has been confirmed.Yearbook of Bavarian monument preservation, p. 73. Prior Bilstein's manual mentions the names of two other sculptors, Joseph and Johannes, who are not known in detail. Privately and professionally, Waibl was associated with the Tyrolean sculptor Andreas Etschmann. It is conceivable that the two worked together first in Buxheim and then in Rot an der Rot.Yearbook of Bavarian monument preservation, p. 72. The start of the work can be dated to the fall of 1687 on the basis of invoices.Stephan Zobel: Zu Konstruktion und Restaurierung des Buxheimer Chorgestühls. In: Das Buxheimer Chorgestühl. p. 241. In the previous years, Prior Petrus von Schneit had already felled around 200 oak trees in the monastery's own forests and had the wood stored. The fact that seasoned wood was used for the stalls is particularly evident from the shrinkage cracks, which were cut out during processing and have not changed since.
The first two stalls were completed in February 1688 and were paid for on February 11 with 121 guilders. The name Ignaz Waibl appears on the invoice in connection with the choir stalls for the first time in the Buxheim archives. Master carpenter Peter was paid 80 guilders for the two chairs, and further chairs were paid to him in July and November 1689. The invoice in November states that the carpenters worked on the 15 chairs for one year and eight months. Ignaz Waibl was paid 730 guilders for this work. The stalls with 36 stalls, 15 each on the north and south sides of the choir and 6 on the west side in front of the cloister chancel, were completed in 1691. Waibl received the final payment in May, and in October of the same year he carved the portal of the stalls, which earned him a further 75 guilders. Master carpenter Peter also received the final payment in 1691. In the same year, master locksmith Georg Eberhard the Younger from Memmingen made the lock, the fittings and the door hinges for the portal and was paid 60 guilders for his work. On April 17, Johann Friedrich Sichelbein was paid 7 guilders and 12 kreuzer for gilding and setting the hinges.
The celebrant's seat, also known as the prior's chair, which was intended for the celebrating priest, was made by Ignaz Waibl between 1699 and 1700. The seat was placed on the south side of the choir stalls.
Reconstruction after the baroqueization of the church
The baroque remodeling of the church necessitated the first change to the choir stalls. Johann Baptist and Dominikus Zimmermann were commissioned to baroqueize the entire monastery church. The stalls had to be dismantled and stored in 1709 for the renovation work. The gothic cloister baptistery was moved around 2.4 meters to the east, which resulted in a shortening of the priest's choir and thus the choir stalls. During the reconstruction, a total of five stalls and the associated lecterns were removed, the north side was reduced to twelve stalls and the south side to thirteen. As a result, the symmetry in the architectural structure of the dorsal fields between the north and south sides was lost, which is still present in the choir stalls in Ittingen Charterhouse, which is a successor to the Buxheim stalls.Edmund Melzl: Die Chorgestühle der ehemaligen Reichskartause Buxheim. In: Das Buxheimer Chorgestühl. p. 206. Nothing is known about the sculptures on these five stalls.
Before the renovation, the monks had to descend two steps to enter the priests' choir. This height difference of around 27 centimetres was removed during the baroqueization by lowering the cloister.Edmund Melzl: Die Chorgestühle der ehemaligen Reichskartause Buxheim. In: Das Buxheimer Chorgestühl. p. 206–207. The portal had to be lowered by the same amount, which led to the loss of the harmonious connection between the portal and the stalls created by Waibl. Nothing is known about further alterations, but it can be assumed that only minor repairs were made to the stalls at a later date.
Change of ownership through secularization, auctions and donations
Due to secularization, Buxheim came into the possession of Count Maximilian von Ostein in 1803, who initially tolerated the Carthusians. After his death in 1809, the former Imperial Charterhouse became the property of the Counts Waldbott von Bassenheim. They dissolved the convent in April 1812. With the death of Count Friedrich Karl Waldbott von Bassenheim, the church became a crypt church in 1830.Edmund Melzl: Die Chorgestühle der ehemaligen Reichskartause Buxheim. In: Das Buxheimer Chorgestühl. p. 207. As his son Count Hugo Philipp Waldbott cultivated a lavish lifestyle, he began to sell off the charterhouse property from 1850. The first plans to sell the choir stalls are documented for the year 1882. Count Hugo Philipp offered it for sale to the Bavarian Trade Museum in Nuremberg. The people in charge there asked for photographs of the stalls. Count Hugo Philipp had several photographs taken and sent them to the museum. A sale did not materialize.
The Count's entire estate was seized by the court on May 2, 1883. This meant that a forced sale was imminent, which would also have affected the stalls in the priests' choir. To prevent this, Count Hugo Philipp decided to auction off almost all of the former monastery property that could be sold. In addition to the stalls of the priests' choir, the stalls of the brothers' choir, the library with its 16,680 books, altars, paintings and silver objects were offered for sale. The items arrived in Munich on June 23, 1883. The auction of the choir stalls took place on September 14, 1883, but at 42,100 marks, the proceeds were nowhere near what had been hoped for. The celebrant's seat remained in the church. Only the seating furniture of the celebrant's seat, the so-called Hockerl, went under the hammer for 700 marks.Neue Augsburger Zeitung, No. 219, Thursday, September 20, 1883, p. 2. As a digital copy, retrieved on March 18, 2024. The choir stalls were sold to the Dutch dealership Gebrüder Adelaar in Amsterdam and initially went to Brussels. Investigations into where it had been kept were unsuccessful. It is possible that the choir stalls were intended for an exhibition in Amsterdam.Georg Simnacher: Die Rettung und glückliche Rückführung des Buxheimer Chorgestühls für den Bezirk Schwaben. In: Das Buxheimer Chorgestühl. p. 131. A photograph of the stalls was taken in February/March 1886, which the Archbishop's Museum in Utrecht sent to the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in 1938. There is no archival evidence of an installation in Holland.
The chair reappeared in London in 1886. In August of the same year, it was offered in The Times as an auction item at Bonhams. On September 1, 1886, Edward Howley Palmer, the director of the Bank of England, bought the choir stalls at auction for 3500 pounds and donated them to the Sisters of St. Saviour's Hospital in London, who had them painted with black lacquer. They then placed 18 of the 31 stalls in the chapel of their hospital in a horseshoe shape, 7 stalls on each of the long walls and 2 stalls next to the portal on the west wall.Edmund Melzl: Die Chorgestühle der ehemaligen Reichskartause Buxheim. In: Das Buxheimer Chorgestühl. p. 210–211. The rest of the stalls were taken apart, sawn up, adapted and used as desks, chairs or wall paneling. Completion was celebrated on November 1, 1888. The convent in London used the choir stalls in this chapel for 75 years.
New building in Hythe