For centuries, Horní Heršpice (Ober Gerspitz in German) belonged to the parish in nearby Komárov. After the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War, it was resettled by a predominantly German-speaking population. The agricultural village was not one of the largest in the vicinity of Brno, but together with Černovice and Komárov it formed a significant part of Brno’s German-speaking island. The construction of a church could thus be seen as a matter of national honour and an expression of national identity, even though the neighbouring church in Komárov was not far away and the local parish did not have to contend with as many believers as, for example, Zábrdovice, which also included the rapidly growing villages of Židenice and Husovice, where new parishes with spacious churches were founded at the time. A fund for the construction of a church in Horní Heršpice was established as early as 1890, and in 1908 the newly appointed parish priest of Komárov, Franz Kelbl, organized the creation of a building committee. The fund soon managed to collect a sufficient amount to finance the church’s construction. A chapel dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary had stood on today’s Sokolova Street in Heršpice since 1811, but the site chosen for the new church was a donated plot on the southern edge of the village. Local teacher Karl Gerlich suggested assigning the drafting of the building plans to the prominent Brno architect Ferdinand Hrach, a professor at the German Technical University who was involved in a number of German associations. Hrach, who later also worked as a preservationist for the state monument authority and helped to renovate a number of church buildings, designed numerous official buildings in Brno, including the Provincial Chamber (Landhaus, B096) and the German technical school (B100). Nevertheless, the church in Heršpice is his only religious building, one that in terms of architectural style deviates somewhat from his usual work deeply rooted in late historicism.
Construction was carried out in 1911–1912 by the building contractor Anton Negrle of Komárov, and the church was officially consecrated on 27 October 1912 in the presence of Bishop Paul von Huyn, numerous representatives from German associations and members of the Redemptorist order.
The Heršpice church consists of one nave, a pentagonal apse, a hint of a transept and a rectangular tower on the north side of the nave. In terms of architectural style, it shows an affinity to eclectic late historicism, with Gothic elements in the ground plan but Baroque (with late Art Nouveau influences) in its formal vocabulary. The simply shaped gables and the tower’s unconventional roof bring to mind the Heimatstil typical of German-speaking areas at the time. Hrach intended the church to be the central building of the newly laid-out square, surrounded by houses with gables referencing the rules of this architectural movement, but his idea did not come to fruition. Inside, the nave has a flat coffered ceiling and Art Nouveau decoration, with an essentially Art Nouveau main altar with a relief depicting the titular saint among children and young people. Renovations carried out in 1978–1980 largely failed to respect the facades’ geometric Art Nouveau character.
The church’s dedication to Clement Maria Hofbauer (1751–1820), a native of the South Moravian (but linguistically German) town of Tasovice, is also worth a mention. Hofbauer was a member of the then-new Redemptorist order, and he helped to spread its ideas, which are founded on pastoral care, missionary work and the general spread of the Catholic faith, from Italy to Central Europe. anonized in 1909, he was made the patron saint of Vienna, Warsaw and the Brno diocese. Although he felt himself to be German, he had Czech roots on his father’s side, spoke Czech and founded a church in Vienna for the city’s Slavic (especially Czech) minority. The decision to dedicate a new church to him in a multiethnic village with a German-speaking majority may also reflect efforts at calming ethnic tensions in Brno’s suburbs.
Matěj Kruntorád
