Kaasgrabenkirche

The Kaasgrabenkirche, also known as the Wallfahrtskirche “Mariä Schmerzen”, is a Roman Catholic parish and pilgrimage church in the suburb of Grinzing in the 19th district of Vienna, Döbling.

The land on which the church now stands belonged in the 19th century to a Mr. Kothbauer, an industrial magnate who owned sand pits in the Kaasgraben area.

Kothbauer's success was such that many Heurige in Sievering and Grinzing saw it as a threat to their business and the “pious” enterprise was closed in 1903.

Thereafter, the entrepreneur Stefan Esders, who owned a warehouse in Vienna, bought the property and had the chapel torn down.

The double staircases in front of the church are shaped like a horseshoe and are decorated on the inner wall with stone reliefs carved by Franz Abel and Paul Paintl and depicting the stations of the cross.

Additions to the church's original interior include a modern chapel commemorating the Danube Swabians from Yugoslavia and Hungary.

There is also a plaque commemorating the Catholic Hans Karl von Zessner-Spitzenberg, who was arrested here in 1938 and died a few months after having been interned in the Dachau concentration camp.