When Strasbourg and Alsace-Lorraine were annexed by the new German Empire in 1871, Germany invested quite a bit of effort and significant money into an attempt to make Strasbourg a truly German city.
That included expanding the city across its river and canals into new districts that were built in German styles and contained German institutions. Included in that was a large new campus for the newly-renamed Kaiser Wilhelm University. It also included new churches for the intended German-speaking population of the new neighborhoods.
Two of the most prominent of those were the new St Peter the Younger, built as a Lutheran church for the army garrison, and St Maurice, a Catholic parish that served both the military and the university. Both were given very visible sites, facing long avenues. The new rulers wanted to both impress their new subjects and to make clear who was steering the ship.
If the exterior of Saint Maurice seem a bit intimidating, the interiors project warmth, in part because of the extensive red carpeting and the gold tones of the altar fixtures against the neutral tones of the vault and columns.
In any case, a visit to Saint Maurice on a late summer day carried no trace of the traumas of the past and the changing hands between German and France twice in the last century. Perhaps that is because, whatever its original status as an emblem of empire, it has now defined itself, in signs and its website, as a ‘European parish,’ suited to Strasbourg’s role as one of Europe’s capitals and seat of the European Parliament.
