Old Cathedral (Alter Dom), Hitler's Confirmation
The baroque Jesuit church that served as Linz Cathedral from 1785 to 1909, where a sullen fifteen year old Adolf Hitler was confirmed on Whit Sunday 1904. Its organ loft is where Anton Bruckner, later exploited as the regime's house composer, played for thirteen years.
Sobre este lugar
The Alter Dom, or Ignatiuskirche, was built by the Jesuits between 1669 and 1678 to plans attributed to Pietro Francesco Carlone, and it became the cathedral of the new Diocese of Linz in 1785. On Whit Sunday, 22 May 1904, Adolf Hitler was confirmed here, sponsored by Emanuel Lugert, a former customs colleague of his father. Lugert later recalled a morose, stubborn boy who had every word dragged out of him and ran off to play the moment the family reached Leonding, and said he had never sponsored such an ungrateful confirmand. Inside, the single luminous nave holds a marble high altar of 1681 to 1683, choir stalls from Garsten monastery and the Bruckner organ, rebuilt to Anton Bruckner's wishes during his tenure as cathedral organist from 1855 to 1868. That connection is the darker thread of this stop: Hitler turned Bruckner into a cult figure of the regime, from the 1937 Walhalla ceremony in Regensburg to a planned Bruckner concert hall in the Fuehrerstadt Linz and the Reichs Bruckner Orchester of 1942, and German radio played Bruckner's Seventh before announcing his death in May 1945.
Datos clave
- 1904 year — Adolf Hitler was confirmed here on Whit Sunday, 22 May 1904, aged fifteen
- 13 years — Anton Bruckner served as cathedral organist in this church from 1855 to 1868
- 124 years — The former Jesuit church was the cathedral of the Diocese of Linz from 1785 to 1909
📍 Domgasse 3, 4020, Linz