Peter Thumb


Peter Thumb was an Austrian architect and master builder. He was a member of the Vorarlberg School and is best known for his Rococo architecture, mainly in Southern Germany. His family came from Bezau, Vorarlberg, in the westernmost part of Austria, and he was active in Baden, the Black Forest, Alsace, Upper Swabia, on and around Lake Constance, and in Switzerland. Outstanding examples of his work include the pilgrimage church at Birnau on Lake Constance and the monastery library at the Abbey of Saint Gall, Saint Gallen, Switzerland.

Life

Peter Thumb was born in Bezau on 18 December 1681, a son of the Vorarlberg master builder Michael Thumb. He first went to work for the stonemason Michael Berbig in Au, then worked for his later father-in-law, the master builder Franz Beer and was member of the Auer Zunft. His first major works were the St. Mauritius Abbey Church in Alsace and the church and library of the St. Peter Monastery in the Black Forest. In 1725 he was granted citizenship in Constance, Germany, and in 1737 he became a member of the city's Grand Council.
After St. Peter, Thumb abandoned the traditional Vorarlberg wall pier scheme of church construction. As in the pilgrimage church of Birnau, Thumb made use of two architectural devices in Mengen, Germany. Firstly, he added a continuous gallery connected to the organ gallery halfway up the wall. Secondly, he created space for two side altars with two arched cantilevers in the fourth nave axis. For the project "Mengen" in 2003 in the Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe numerous floor plans and elevations were made accessible, unknown up until then.
The pilgrimage church Birnau, which he built in 1747-1750 for the Salem Monastery, is considered his masterpiece. Thumb created solid architecture, in combination with Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer's playful figurative decoration and Gottfried Bernhard Göz's ceiling frescoes. With its majestic, picturesque location on Lake Constance, Birnau is one of the main sights on the Upper Swabian Baroque Route.
Thumb’s Abbey Library of St. Gall is one of the most important Baroque libraries. Together with the entire monastery complex of the Fürstabtei St. Gallen, it enjoys the status of World Cultural Heritage site. The east facade and other parts of the monastery church in St. Gall were built by Johann Michael Beer von Bildstein, presumably according to designs by Peter Thumb.
Thumb died in Konstanz on 4 March 1766.

Impact and acclaim

Streets have been named after Thumb in Freiburg im Breisgau, St. Peter, Friedenweiler, Rust, Waldkirch, Cologne, Konstanz, Hilzingen, Singen, Waldshut-Tiengen, Weingarten, and Bregenz. The parish church in Schwerzen is said to have been built after his model. The steeple of the Assumption Conventual Church, from 1722-23, is also attributed to him.
Thumb's works include: