Wigbertikirche, Roman Catholic parish church in Erfurt, Germany.
St Wigbert's Church is a Roman Catholic subsidiary church in Erfurt's old town, built in its present form between 1409 and 1473. Its 1409 tower once carried a lived-in fire watchman's post, and the late Gothic interior holds a winged altar brought from St Walpurgis in Großengottern in 1996. Windows on the theme of "departures" were installed during the renovation completed in 2004.
A parish existed here from the mid-10th century; the present late Gothic church was consecrated in 1473, and its tower dates from 1409. St Wigbert's was contested between Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation and has been Catholic since 1606, except when it served as a Protestant garrison church during the Swedish period of the Thirty Years' War. From 1651 to 1822 it was also the monastery church of the Augustinian Hermits.
The patron is Saint Wigbert, a companion of Boniface, the founder of the diocese; his feast day is 13 August. Since 1996 the church has housed the Gothic winged altar from St Walpurgis' Church in Großengottern, a piece to look for inside.
The Second World War air-raid shelter in the courtyard has been open to the public again since 2005; it is reached from the inner courtyard rather than the street. The church stands next to the site of the Barfüßerkirche, destroyed by an aerial mine on 25 November 1944. The interior was rearranged in the 1950s and 1990s, and a thorough renovation of the building began in 2003.
The tower dates from 1409 and was converted into a fire watchtower in 1563; it remained inhabited for that purpose until 1878. The fire watchers lived in the tower, which makes it one of Erfurt's former residential watch posts rather than a purely military structure.
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