Meticulous fiddling

The now-desecrated former hospital church of the Holy Spirit has been given back its historic stained glass windows. The art treasures, which had been stored unnoticed in the church's attic for decades, were rediscovered in 2006.

With the help of donors and lovers of the late 19th-century paintings, the restorers and glass painters of the Bavarian Court Glass Painters were able to restore the windows with loving precision and reinstall them in the spring of 2014.The stained glass windows date from 1886. They come from the workshop of the Scherer brothers. Some of the design drawings and colour sketches still exist in the Scherer archive in Dinkelscherben.

During a renovation in the 20th century, the windows were replaced with clear hexagonal glazing. When the stained glass was discovered in the attic, it was in a desolate state: the boxes stacked on top of each other contained countless tiny fragments mixed with large amounts of plaster and building rubble - a real challenge for the team led by graduate conservator Hanna Pohle.

The workshop workers painstakingly reassembled the glass fragments and glued them together. They retouched the glued joints and filled in the missing areas with stained glass. They reinforced and completed the lead netting. In this way, as much of the original substance as possible was preserved. The finished panels framed the stained glass and were finally mounted in front of isothermal external protective glazing.