St. Michael Church

The west-facing church is a gallery basilica with a four-bay nave, indicated transept arms, and an apsidal choir. Above it stands the choir tower with the bells. The crossing is vaulted by a flat dome on the inside and bears a roof turret on the outside. The portal side to the east is designed as a representative show facade modeled after Roman Baroque.

The organ was built in 1959 by the organ building company Johannes Klais Orgelbau. In 1996, it was expanded and re-intonated by the same organ building company, so that the organ now has 35 stops on three manuals and pedal. Its disposition is:

Couplers: I/P, II/P, III/P, I/II, III/II, III/I Playing aids: 2 free combinations, 1 free pedal combination; Setzer 8x8, sequencer; individual reed stop cancellers

The original bells were lost in the Second World War. St. Michael only had a single bell (tone f²) from the 16th century. For decades, this alone rang for the prayer and worship times of the seminary community. Only in 2013 was the set of bells completed again under Regens Herbert Baumann and supplemented by three new bells from the Perner foundry in Passau. They bear the names of the three Apostles of Franconia, Kilian, Kolonat, and Totnan, and ring in the tones c², e-flat², and g².

The iconography of the figural decoration in alabaster stucco, created by Heinrich Gerhard Bücker from 1988 onwards, follows the visions of the Revelation of John, the last book of the Bible. At the center of attention is a 6 m high figure of Christ according to the description in Rev 1:12–20. In the apse vault above, the Lamb of God with the book with seven seals is depicted (Rev 5:6–12), surrounded by the twelve gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, from which twelve men emerge with gestures of adoration. On the archways, the names of the twelve tribes of Israel are written in Hebrew, and on the thresholds, the names of the twelve apostles are written in Greek (Rev 21:10–14). In the center of the dome is the Hebrew name of God, the Tetragrammaton, in the triangle of the Trinity and the circle of perfection. It is surrounded by twelve men sitting on thrones and carrying harps. In the four pendentives below are the four evangelist symbols. The depiction combines Rev 4:1–11 with Rev 15:2–3. The number of 24 elders results from the sum of the twelve in the dome and the twelve in the apse. The ceiling vault of the nave bears three oval pictorial medallions measuring 4.2 × 5.2 m. From back to front, they show

the ominous apocalyptic riders (Rev 6:1–8); the seven angels with the seven trumpets (Rev 8); the apocalyptic woman and Michael's victory over the dragon (Rev 12).