Karl Franzens University, Graz

 
AUSTRIA, 1985, 4th centenary of the University and its special cancel, Scott 1299

The Jesuit college of Graz, located in the capital of the Province of Steiermark (Styria), been founded in 1578, was already possessed of a theological and philosophical school. On 1 January 1585 by joint efforts of the pope, emperor, and Archduke Karl II of Inner Austria it was raised to the status of a University. The first scholastic year began in 1586. This institution of Graz was the Jesuits' center of activity in their labors for the reclaiming of Steiermark to Catholicity. The Jesuits ran the University until the Society was suppressed in 1773, when the state assumed its management, though most of the imperial officials who administrated the university and its library were former Jesuits. The Jesuit library was combined with those of other colleges, but about 2,500 books contained in the University Library of Graz still bear the characteristic shelf marks of the Jesuits. In 1782, it was reduced to an academy or lyceum, but in 1827, it was again elevated to the status of university by Emperor Francis I and called the Karl Franzens University of Graz after its two founders .More

The University of Innsbruck, &
The Canisianum, Innsbruck

 
AUSTRIA, 1970, The 300th anniversary of the University of Innsbruck and its FDI cancel, Scott 863
USA, 2006, a personalized stamp featuring the signature tower of the Canisianum
and the mountains north of Innsbruck, the Nordkette.

The history of the University of Innsbruck starts about 100 years before its official foundation in 1669, when in 1562 a Jesuit school/college was established in Innsbruck, today the "Akademisches Gymnasium Innsbruck". Emperor Leopold I used this Jesuit school as a foundation to establish a university on 15 October 1669. Eight years later in 1677, the founding certificate was issued, which mentioned four faculties. In 1782 this was reduced to a mere lyceum (as were other Universities in the Austrian Empire), but by this time the Jesuits had been suppressed and any relation to the school severed. The school was reestablished as the University of Innsbruck in 1826 by Emperor Franz I. The university is therefore named after both of its founding fathers with the official title of: "Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck" (Universitas Leopoldino-Franciscea).

In 2006 Richard Wall commissioned a personalized stamp on behalf of the American alumni of the Jesuit school in Innsbruck, the Canisianum, a seminary named in honor of St. Peter Canisius. The National Socialists forced the school to close in 1938 and it did not reopen until 1945. Its roots go back to 1569 when the Nikolaihaus, founded by Fr. Nikolaus de Lanoy, SJ, served as a residence for poor students at the Jesuit College. When Kaiser Leopold I founded the University of Innsbruck in 1669, the Nikolaihaus became a residence for theology students at the University. Even after the Suppression the house continued under the leadership of a former Jesuit. In 1857 the restored Catholic Theological Faculty was entrusted to the Jesuits and the Nikolaihaus once more became a residence for theological students. In 1910/11 it achieved independence and moved to new quarters. Since 2006 the Collegium Canisianum has received a new mission as an International Theological College for postgraduate, specialist and continuing education purposes. Also featured on the stamp is the motto of the school: Cor Unum et Anima Una (One Heart and One Soul). More

The Jesuit Churches & Retreat House, St. Andrä im Lavanttal

   
AUSTRIA, 2010, personalized stamp for Stamp Day of St. Andrä im Lavanttal Showing both the parish church and that of Maria-Loreto
AUSTRIA, 1989, this 17th century map shows the twin towers of the parish church, Scott 1462
SLOVENIA, 2009, the anniversary of the transfer of the seat of the Diocese of Levant from St. Andrä to Maribor, Scott 806
AUSTRIA, November 2011, personalized stamp featuring the former Jesuit Retreat House, Schloss Kolleg

St. Andrä im Lavanttal had been the seat of the Prince-Bishops of Lavant from 1225 to 1859, when the see was transferred to Marburg, now Maribor in Slovenia, by the Bishop of Levant, Blessed Anton Martin Slomšek (seen above). In connection with the transfer, he also reorganized the diocese of Lavant. This was both an historical, pastoral and national accomplishment. By these moves Slomšek managed to include in his diocese about 200,000 Slovenes who before belonged to the diocese of Graz and who would have been lost to German influ  ence. He left St. Andrä in August and later that year the Jesuits moved into the former bishop's residence there and opened a novitiate and later a tertianship. This was where Fr. Karl Rahner, SJ, famous Jesuit theologian, made his tertianship. The Jesuits also took over the twin-towered Baroque church of Maria-Loreto dating from 1697 and the parish church, which goes back to the ninth century. Only in 1969 did the novitiate move to Germany, and the Jesuits moved out of the former bishop's residence to open a Retreat House (Schloss Kolleg) outside of town. The building serves today as a residence for the elderly under the name Elizabeth House.

The Aloisianum, Linz

  
AUSTRIA, personalized stamp, Scott 1943
AUSTRIA, 2009, personalized stamp on Stamp Day
AUSTRIA, 2010, personalized stamp on Stamp Day
each stamp shows Maximilian's Church and the Freinberg tower of St. Aloysius Jesuit College

In Austria as elsewhere one can order stamps, valid for regular postal service, with personally chosen images and text. The personalized stamps above show St. Aloysius Jesuit College (Jesuitenkollegium Aloisianum) on the Freinberg near Linz, Austria. You can see Maximilian's Church (Maximilianskirchlein) and the Freinberg tower which houses part of the school. Archduke Maximilian of the House of Habsburg-Este, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, donated the church and the tower to the Jesuits of the Austrian province in 1837. It was the first residence of Austrian Jesuits after their readmission into Austria and was used as a philosophate for Jesuit scholastics until the Revolution of 1848.

Beginning in 1851 the Jesuits ran a minor seminary here to encourage clerical and missionary vocations. The school outgrew the tower and the same Archduke Maximilian soon had a large boarding school built, which can be discerned to the right of the tower. The school closed in 1897 with the founding of the Petrinum, a diocesan seminary. It reopened in 1912 as the Collegium Aloysianum, but was adversely affected by the World War, the use of the building as a military hospital, and the economic and social problems following the war. In spite of that, it was in some ways the Golden Age of the school. In the 1920s and 1930s large numbers graduated and chose the clerical life or joined religious communities. About 50 joined the Jesuits, and many of these went to the Jesuits missions in China and Brazil. The school was closed by the National Socialists in 1938, but was returned to the Jesuits in 1946 and in 1950 opened as a high school for the third time. Today, after many changes in structure, it is a private Catholic school dedicated to Christian education, but without Jesuit teachers.

1976, Meter stamp from the Aloysianum

St. Ignatius Church, Linz 

 
Exterior and Interior of St. Ignatius church

  
AUSTRIA, 2006, a special show cancel, featuring the Old Cathedral or St. Ignatius Church, one time a Jesuit Church
AUSTRIA, 2007, on a postal card honoring the Lentos Art Museum both stamp and cancel show the twin towers of St. Ignatius Church

The Old Cathedral in the Town Hall District of Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, was originally a Jesuit church. It was called St. Ignatius Church until 1909 when the new Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was finished; since then it has been known as the Old Cathedral. The church was built between 1669 and 1678 according to drawings by the Italian architect Pietro Francesco Carlone. From the Suppression of the Jesuits in 1773 until 1785 when the Diocese of Linz was established the church remained empty. Ernest Johann Nepomuk Graf von Herberstein, the first bishop of the new diocese of Linz, chose the Church of St. Ignatius as his cathedral, instead of the town parish church, which had been earmarked for this purpose. It served as the cathedral of Linz from 1785 to 1909, when it was return to the Jesuit order. It is still the largest Baroque church in the city. It features the "Bruckner Organ" adapted especially according to the wishes of Anton Bruckner, who was cathedral organist here from 1855 to 1868. More

   
AUSTRIA, 2008, a personalized stamp features Jakob Alt's painting of the main square of Linz (1839)
with the twin towers of St. Ignatius Church in the distant center
AUSTRIA, 2008, a personalized stamp for Stamp Day 14 May 2008, showing the same towers in the distance.
AUSTRIA, March 2011, featuring the Old Cathedral

  
AUSTRIA, 2009, to the left a personalized stamp featuring St. Ignatius Church and the Trinity Column in Linz's Main Square and
in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Linz Philatelic Association
AUSTRIA, 2009, personalized stamp marking 100 years since Jesuits have returned to the Old Cathedral
AUSTRIA, 2010, personalized stamp for stamp day

 
AUSTRIA, 2009, personalized stamp marking the new equipment for the Pöstlingberg railway up the landmark mountain of Linz and special cancel

  
AUSTRIA, 2009, a postal card showing the twin towers of St. Ignatius more clearly and the Trinity Column.
The imprint on the card and the special cancel to the right commemorate both the Philatelic Association anniversary
and the naming of Linz by the European Union as a European Capital of Culture for the year 2009.

  
AUSTRIA, 2009, Religious art in Austria showing the Baroque baptismal font in the Old Cathedral, Linz and its FDI cancel

The Parish Church, Linz

AUSTRIA, a personalized stamp in honor of stamp day 4 August 2008
featuring the Parish church of Linz, and in the background the towers of St. Ignatius Church

The Stadtpfarrkirche “Maria Himmelfahrt” (Parish Church of Our Lady's Assumption), one of the oldest churches in Linz, has Romanesque and Gothic origins, still evident, for example, in the structure of the tower. The 13th century basilica was rebuilt in the Baroque style in the 17th century and was inaugurated in 1656. The heart and entrails of Emperor Friedrich III are interred in an urn in the choir. This personalized stamp shows the church, just a block away from the Church of St. Ignatius (the Old Cathedral). When the first two Jesuits, one of them Fr. Georg Scherer, SJ, arrived in Linz in the year 1600, they settled in a former Franciscan friary and ran their ministry from this church. Until the Church of St. Ignatius was finished in 1679 there was a connecting passageway between the Jesuit college and the parish church. But even after St. Ignatius Church was completed the Jesuits continued to work in the parish church for more than a century until the Suppression in 1773.

In 1472 Dominicans from Krems founded a church and monastery in Steyr, both of which were destroyed in the city fire of 1522. In 1559 the people of the town asked the Emperor Ferdinand I to permit the reconstruction of the church and monastery for use as a Protestant school. Permission was granted but the rights of the Dominicans to the place were reserved. As part of the Counterreformation the church was returned to the Dominicans on 10 November 1624 , and monastery on 12 February 1625. The church was redone in Baroque style between 1642 and 1647. In 1785 in the course of the reforms of Emperor Joseph II the monastery was close. During the Napoleonic Wars (1800-1809), the church was used as a barn. On 26 April 1865 the Bishop of Linz, Franz Josef Rudigier handed it over to the Society of Jesus for the pastoral work they had begun in Steyr. No rooms were available in the monastery, and so the first Jesuits had to live in the former choir room behind the main altar. But they moved to the monastery in 1911 and have been there ever since. The latest restoration of the church (inside and out) took place from 1975 to 1978. More

The Jesuits arrived in Steyr in upper Austria in 1632 when Kaiser Ferdinand II granted them 11 houses. At first they worked in the old civil hospital church (at the lower left of the stamp). In 1634 they opened a college (gymnasium), and in 1635 built St. Michael Church (upper right of stamp). A few years before the suppression the church was redone in baroque style and a fresco of three archangels was painted on the front of the church at the top. After the Suppression (1773) the church became a parish church, and when the Jesuits returned to Steyr in 1865, they were given the former Dominican Church, the Marienkirche, just a few minutes from St. Michael's.

Monastery of Traunkirchen

  
Emergency money (Notgeld) issued by Traunkirchen in 1920
featuring the Jesuit monastery, Fishermen's pulpit and Corpus Christi procession

The monastery of Trunseo (the old name of Traunkirchen) appears to have been in existence by the year 632. In 1020 Benedictine nuns from Salzburg came to Traunkirchen on a scenic peninsula on the west edge of Lake Traunsee to found the oldest nuns' monastery of upper Austria. Two big fires in 1327 and 1632 destroyed the old monastery. In 1622 Emperor Ferdinand II, by papal consent, conveyed the monastery to the Jesuits of Passau. It served as a residence for the Jesuits from the mid-17th century for the next 150 years. After the second fire in 1632 extensive rebuilding took place.

The abbey church, now the parish church administered by secular clergy, was rebuilt with a lavish Baroque interior (see photo above). Its star attraction is its Fischerkanzel (Fishermen's pulpit), carved in 1753 by an unknown artist. It features a fabulous gilded fishing boat, with James and John at either end pulling in the miraculous draught of fishes, and giant sea monsters swimming around in the cascade of silver sea water beneath. The pulpit is topped by a statue of St. Francis Xavier, accompanied by cherubs and a golden lobster (recalling the crustacean who retrieved a crucifix he had lost at sea). The high altarpiece shows the Coronation of Our Lady between Saints Peter and Paul and the Jesuits St. John Francis Regis and St. Francis Borgia. The right side altar shows an altarpiece of St. Ignatius, the small right side altar images of St. Aloysius and St. Stanislaus; the crypt chapel an altarpiece of St. Francis Xavier. Unusual painted tapestries, depicting yet more Jesuit saints, line the chancel of the church. Lake processions are still held on Lake Traunsee reminiscent of the magnificent Corpus Christi processions introduced in Traunkirchen in 1632 by the Jesuits. The order lost possession of the place when it was suppressed in 1773. Today, the buildings are used for secular purposes, though the cemetery and church are still maintained. While Traunkirchen rarely rates a mention in the tourist guide books, the church is well worth a visit. Mag. Wilhelm Remeš, a strong and longtime collaborator of this website, has written an article on The Work of the Jesuits in Traunkirchen.

Kollegium Kalksburg, Vienna

1988-1991, Meter stamps for Kollegium Kalsburg, a Jesuit secondary school in Vienna. More

St. Barbara Church, Vienna

  
UKRAINE, 2005, Ukrainian Churches outside of Ukraine, stamp and label, Scott 617
AUSTRIA, Christmas 2007. The icon of the Birth of Christ is from the Church of St. Barbara, Scott 2127
AUSTRIA, 2011, The Federation of Austrian Philatelist Societies' 90th birthday, Scott 2127 appears under the holder's right thumb

In 1773, after the Suppression of the Jesuits, the Church of St. Barbara in Vienna, Austria was given to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church by Empress Maria Theresa. Prior to that time it was run by the Jesuits along with the adjoining St. Barbara residence for students at the Jesuit University. The Jesuits arrived in Vienna in 1551 and in 1554 moved into the Carmel Cloister Am Hof. Their college opened in 1560 and St. Stanislaus Kostka, SJ attended the school four years later. St. Barbara was patroness of the boarding students, the school sodality, and figured in a significant vision of St. Stanislaus. In 1654 a new boarding school was erected adjacent to St. Barbara Church in the Inner City just a block or so northeast of the Jesuitenkirche and the old university. The facade of the Church shown on the stamp is how it was renewed in 1852; the label shows the altarpiece of the church with St. Barbara and the features of the Empress Maria Theresa. More

  
UKRAINE, FDI cancel featuring angel, issued at Kiev
UKRAINE, FDI cancel featuring altarpiece of St. Barbara Church
AUSTRIA, FDI special show cancel featuring altarpiece of St. Barbara Church

The Theresianum Academy, Vienna

AUSTRIA, 1996, the 250th anniversary of the Theresianum, Scott 1695

On February 24, 1746 Empress Maria Theresa arranged to transfer her imperial summer residence, the Favorita, to the Society of Jesus for the establishment of an elite school for the education of the children of nobles — the Theresianum. She was the school's founder and under her patronage its economic sponsorship was secured and its curriculum was established. The Jesuits introduced a new system including Mathematics, History, Architecture, Geography, Political Science, Modern Languages, as well as Dancing, Horseback Riding and Fencing. Its graduates were destined for the diplomatic corps or other public service. Such a school was also called a knight academy (Ritterakademie). The Jesuits ran it until the Suppression in 1773; the faculty included Jesuit priests: Johann Nepomuk Cosmas Michael Denis, George Pray, and Franz Xavier Freiherr von Wulfen. After the Suppression some former Jesuits continued to teach there. It was dissolved by Joseph II, but reestablished in 1797 by Emperor Franz II. As it celebrated its 250th anniversary in 1996, the school had over 600 students.

AUSTRIA, 1996, FDI cancel for the 250th anniversary of the Theresianum

The University Church, Vienna

A sketch of the church and school buildings

   
The photograph at the top shows the church facade with the Academy to the left.
AUSTRIA, 1973, the centenary of a worldwide meteorological association with the church facade on the right, Scott 950
AUSTRIA, 1964, the Vienna International Philatelic Exhibition (WIPA 1965) issue showed views of Vienna including one to the East
showing the towers of the University Church between the dome of St. Peter and the church and spire of St. Stephen, Scott B308
AUSTRIA, 2010, a similar view, honoring the Vienna city center as a UNESCO World Heritage site, Scott 2286
AUSTRIA, 2011, The Federation of Austrian Philatelist Societies' 90th birthday, Scott 2286 appears under the "62"

 
AUSTRIA, 2010, The two towers of the church are seen more clearly on the card below immediately under the FDI cancel, Scott 2286
SLOVAKIA, 2011,Opening Day of Austrian Philatelists 2011, the twin towers are on the horizon at the right [issue number 202 CDV 192/11]

The central feature of the above 1973 stamp, based on a painting by Bernardo Bellotto, called Canaletto (1720-90), is the facade of the old university at Dr. Ignaz Seipel Place. It had been the seat of the Academy of Sciences since 1857. To its right is the baroque Jesuit University church dating from 1630, which the Jesuits left at the time of the Suppression. The Jesuits had been in Vienna since 1551. In 1623 they integrated their college into the University of Vienna (founded in 1365) and took over the philosophy and theology faculties. Part of their reconstruction of buildings at this time was to erect the University church in place of the former chapel. The Emperor broke ground for college and church the following year, and the church was dedicated to Saints Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier who had recently been canonized. From 1703 to 1705 it was remodeled by Br. Andrea Pozzo, SJ who added two new towers and frescos inside; the remodeled church was then dedicated to the Assumption of Mary. The state took it over at the time of the Suppression and has recently renovated it. More - More

NEXT