Friedhofskapelle Sankt Maria

Friedhofskapelle Sankt Maria stands in Krumbach, Swabia, as a Catholic cemetery chapel dedicated to Saint Mary. Its late-eighteenth-century design shows early classical influences. Until the twentieth century, the chapel stood outside town, which gave it the description of a field chapel.

The Westfriedhof opened in 1733 after the cemetery beside Saint Michael’s parish church became too small. A first small chapel appeared that year or in 1734, commemorating a reported miraculous healing near a statue. The healing quickly made the site a pilgrimage destination, while Niederraunau opposed its development for nearly forty years. An enlargement completed in 1774 is attributed either to Johann Martin Kraemer or Kaspar Radmiller, and restoration followed in 1977.

Jakob Fröschle painted the choir frescoes, while Konrad Huber created the nave ceiling fresco showing the Adoration of the Shepherds. A Madonna from around 1480, made by an artist of the Ulm School, once stood near the healing site. The gray-marble high altar dates from 1848 and carries neo-baroque angels with a neo-Gothic crucifix. The 1779 pews remain another tangible detail of the chapel’s history.