The Son of God Smashes Windows - Thomaskirche
On New Year's night 2019-2020, a man smashed twenty-five windows of Bach's famous Leipzig church with paving stones, including four irreplaceable nineteenth-century stained-glass panels. The attacker walked calmly into a police station hours later and told officers the church was hiding documents proving he was the Son of God.
About this place
The Thomaskirche has been at the heart of Leipzig's musical life for eight hundred years, and within its Gothic nave Johann Sebastian Bach composed and performed some of the greatest sacred music ever written. But in the final nights of 2019, this revered landmark became the target of a compulsive campaign of destruction. On the morning of 28 December, stones shattered three windows. Four days later, on New Year's night, the attacker returned with small paving stones and systematically destroyed around twenty-five panes along the facade and the parish house next door, smashing four nineteenth-century stained-glass windows above the Mendelssohn Portal and an Art Nouveau panel of the Thomashaus. The total damage came to roughly eighteen thousand euros. When police and the church were still reeling, a fake online claim of responsibility pointed them in entirely the wrong direction. Then a fifty-five-year-old Leipzig man calmly walked into the city-centre police station and confessed. His reason: the church, he said, was hiding documents that proved he was the Son of God. He was taken to a psychiatric hospital rather than to court.
Key facts
- 25 windows smashed — About twenty-five panes were destroyed in a single attack on New Year's night 2019-2020, including four nineteenth-century stained-glass windows above the Mendelssohn Portal.
- 18000 euros in damage — The total repair bill for both attacks in late December 2019 and New Year 2020 came to roughly eighteen thousand euros.
- 1936 year — The Nazis demolished the original Mendelssohn monument outside this church on 9 November 1936; the replica standing today was unveiled only in 2008.