Reminder list

Maria Brünnlein’s Pilgrimage Church

1684 an inhabitant of Wemding came back from Rome bringing a miraculous image of Our Lady with him. Today it is to be found on the Grace Altar. The constantly growing number of pilgrims made it necessary to abandon the first crape built in 1692 on the “Schillerbrünnl” spring and to replace it with a new building. Today’s rococo church has been built between 1748 and 1782 on a project by Franz Joseph Roth, architect of the Order of the Teutonic Knights.

The church was decorated with elegant stuccos (1752-1754) and frescos under the direction of Johann Baptist Zimmermann. The heart of the church is the Grace Altar by Johann Joseph Mayr with the miraculous image of Our Lady (1755): it is the sole altar with water gushing from a spring in the world. The mensa (flat surface of the altar) with the spring was designed in 1953 by the local sculptor Ernst Steinacker.

This church is one of the most visited places of pilgrimage in Bavaria. Therefore, Pope John Paul II granted it the status of “basilica minor” in 1998.