It should not come as a surprise to find a significant number of religious art works by German-Americans in Ohio. The state attracted large numbers of nineteenth century Catholic immigrants from Germany. Many of the German-speaking Catholics, together with their Protestant and Jewish counterparts, brought with them some money and special skills. They were able to settle in Ohio's farmlands as well as in urban areas. In both places the German Catholics began to erect a great number of churches beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century. Almost all of them were constructed of the red brick that is popular in Ohio. Their Gothic appearance had been a familiar building style in the old country.[1]

    The city of Cincinnati witnessed the most rapid population growth due to German immigration. The city's German district was called Over-the-Rhine, an area of more than two hundred acres. On the west and south, its borders were defined by the Miami-Erie Canal, completed in 1832.  McMicken Avenue and Reading Road delineated the German neighborhood on the north and east. The canal had been called "the Rhine" because one entered the German area after crossing it. It divided the district from the English-speaking areas of Cincinnati.[2]

    In 1851 a visitor from Germany wrote a report from Cincinnati for the Katholische Kirchenzeitung of New York: "Most remarkable of all things in the city are the many beautiful Catholic churches, which fill the Catholic traveler with joy and exultation. The beautiful churches are built from German money and were founded quickly one after the other. They show clearly what Catholic zeal can do".[3]

    The Croatian-born missionary Father Joseph Kundek had been instrumental in building Holy Trinity church for the Cincinnati German Catholics as early as 1834. It was the first national parish for Germans in the western United States. Holy Trinity soon became too small to accommodate the growing congregation, and other churches quickly followed. In the twentieth century Holy Trinity had to make room for urban development, but still standing today is St. Mary's church at 13th and Clay streets. It bears the inscription Sankt Marienkirche and the date 1841 on the medallion of its triangular brick pediment. It is now known as Old St. Mary's and offers one German mass each Sunday morning. Wilhelm Lamprecht's murals in the church have recently been restored.

    Franciscan friars arrived in Cincinnati from their native Austrian Tyrol in 1844. Theirs was the first German monastic establishment in the city. Due to conflicts with the Tyrolese provincial superiors and a forced separation from them, the American friars founded an independent Province of the Franciscan Order in 1858.[4] In 1862 the newly established Covington Altar Building Stock Company, under the direction of Benedictine lay brother Cosmas Wolf, decorated the Franciscans' church of St. Francis Seraph in Cincinnati. The church still stands at the corner of Vine and Liberty streets and has undergone a series of changes since its consecration in 1859, which make it a textbook example of the fate of so many nineteenth century German-American religious edifices.

    St. Francis Seraph church was built in Romanesque style with twin towers and three round-arched portals on the west façade (Figure 37).  The architect was not German, but he drew up his plans from a sketch prepared by a member of the Tyrolese Franciscan Province.[5] In the interior Cosmas Wolf designed, built, and installed three altars. Johann Schmitt painted the images of the four Doctors of the Western church - St. Augustine, St. Gregory, St. Ambrose, and St. Jerome - on gold leaf background over the high altar. Only one of the four paintings survives today (Figure 38). The sanctuary's original wealth of colorful paintings and statuary has yielded to an austere, whitewashed appearance. Fortunately the church still displays a unique painting of St. Francis in Glory with a fascinating background history: The original composition of St. Francis in Glory was created by the painter Gebhard Flatz, who lived from 1800 until 1881 in Germany and Austria. Flatz was a student of the Nazarene artist Friedrich Overbeck and was commissioned to paint St. Francis' ascent to heaven for the Franciscan church at Schwaz in the Austrian Tyrol. The Cincinnati Franciscan friars asked Casper Jele, a student of Flatz from Innsbruck, to come to Ohio to install a copy of his teacher's composition in their new church of St. Francis Seraph. [6] (Figure 39). St. Francis in Glory depicts the saint kneeling on a cloud with arms outstretched in prayer, surrounded by four angels in flight. Seated in the heavenly realm above him are Christ and his mother, the Virgin Mary. Below are four Franciscan saints, and in the background is the medieval town of Assisi. It is quite a thrill to discover the painting by a student of the German Nazarene artist Friedrich Overbeck in a Cincinnati church, although strictly speaking this work is a recreation of the original. Again it affirms the close relationship between nineteenth century German masters and their German-American followers.