Jesuits, Franciscans, Premonstratensians, Carmelites, Servites, Capuchins, Ursulines. Visitors to Innsbruck usually walk past many monasteries without realising it. The Jesuits were probably the most politically influential order in the history of the city. The "Soldaten Christi" were founded by the former nobleman and officer Ignatius of Loyola (1491 - 1556). Loyola was a moral reformer. Unlike Luther, he wanted to change the church, but not without the Pope as its head. The Jesuits focussed on better training for the clergy and higher moral standards based on Christian roots in everyday church life.

Through skilful structures, discipline and organisation, adopted from the military, the Order grew rapidly and managed to establish a special relationship with the Habsburgs during the Counter-Reformation. Many members of the dynasty can be recognised in their rule and actions as having been influenced by the order from which they received their education. Jesuits such as Bartholomew Viller or Wilhelm Lamormaini were politically influential as confessors and advisors to the Habsburgs in the early modern period. It is no coincidence that the Jesuits are still the adversaries of the Freemasons in countless conspiracy theories and novels and are regarded by many as the modern-day equivalent of the James Bond villain.

A keen supporter of the Jesuits in Tyrol was the Tyrolean prince and later Emperor Ferdinand I. Like Ignatius of Loyola, he had grown up in Spain. He had just as many difficulties with the customs of the Germans and the non-existent Reformation movement in Spain as he did with the language. The Tyrolean population, on the other hand, were alienated from their sovereign, who, with his foreign court, could easily be mistaken for an occupying power. A connecting element between the two worlds was the Roman Church, especially the Jesuits.

The Jesuits were very open to research, knowledge gathering and education and wanted to learn to understand the world in terms of Christian creation. This made them a hip antithesis to both the dusty existing orders and the Protestants. Faith and empiricism combined to form a kind of pre-modern science that attempted to explain nature and physics. Ferdinand II's collection at Ambras Castle bears witness to the thirst for research of the time, as do the alchemical experiments carried out by Emperor Matthias.

The Jesuits recognised that great political influence could be gained through the education system. Not only aristocrats, priests and politicians, but also civil servants were educated in schools and colleges. Protestant countries and cities had begun to German schoolsacademies and grammar schools. In Catholic countries, it was the ecclesiastical orders that founded schools and universities.

The Jesuits founded the Latin school in Innsbruck, from which the university would later emerge. The new school had a major impact on the city's development. The intelligentsia was educated here, enabling Innsbruck's rise as an administrative and economic centre. Under Joseph II, many ecclesiastical orders were disempowered and expropriated, including the Jesuits, whom he had little love for. The University of Innsbruck was downgraded to a lyceum under him in 1781. They were not reappointed to Innsbruck until 1838. In addition to professorships at the university, they were also in charge of the Theresianum, a grammar school for the aristocracy.

For all their love of science, mysticism returned to everyday church life under the Jesuits. Passion plays, Easter sepulchres, processions and feast days were intended to soften the strict principles of the faith with drama and spectacle.

The Jesuit order, fully committed to popular belief, was also highly motivated when it came to persecuting witches and people of other faiths. In the then recently discovered New World in America and Asia, the Jesuits were eager to proselytise the local pagan population. St Francis Xavier, one of Ignatius of Loyola's first companions, died on a missionary journey in China. In a side chapel of the Jesuit church in Innsbruck, this Soldaten Christi an altar was consecrated.

One of the most important Jesuit theologians was Petrus Canisius (1521 - 1597). The educated cleric quickly rose through the ranks of the newly founded Jesuit order and was installed by Emperor Ferdinand as one of the most important ecclesiastical politicians in the empire.

During his travels across Europe, Petrus Canisius also spent some time in Innsbruck and was instrumental in the establishment of the Jesuit order. He was both a confessor to the aristocracy and a churchman for the masses, reaching out to the rural population while travelling through the villages of Tyrol. He recognised that Latin was not the language to immunise peasants, farmhands and maids against Protestantism. With his catechism, Petrus Canisius wrote an important German-language collection of ideas in the Catholic struggle against the Protestant Reformation, which was translated into all languages and was long regarded as a guide for the Catholic Church.

Today, Karl-Rahner-Platz is not only home to the Jesuit Church, but also the Faculty of Theology at the University of Innsbruck. In Saggen, the Collegium Canisianum belongs to the Jesuits.

In the climate of the 1930s, the NSDAP also grew and prospered in Tyrol. The first local branch of the NSDAP in Innsbruck was founded in 1923. With "Der Nationalsozialist - Combat Gazette for Tyrol and Vorarlberg" published its own weekly newspaper. While the National Socialists were only able to win 2.8% of the vote in their first municipal council election in 1921, this figure had already risen to 41% by the 1933 elections. Nine mandataries, including the later mayor Egon Denz and the Gauleiter of Tyrol Franz Hofer, were elected to the municipal council.

Not only Hitler's election as Reich Chancellor in Germany, but also campaigns and manifestations in Innsbruck helped the party, which had been banned in Austria since 1934, to achieve this result. It was not unusual for these manifestations to lead to outbreaks of violence in Austria during the interwar period. When the annexation of Austria to Germany took place in March 1938, a majority of almost 99% in Innsbruck also voted in favour. Even before Federal Chancellor Schuschnigg gave his last speech to the people before handing over power to the National Socialists with the words "God bless Austria" had closed on 11 March 1938, the National Socialists were already gathering in the city centre to celebrate the invasion of the German troops. The swastika flag was hoisted at the Tyrolean Landhaus, then still in Maria-Theresienstraße.

On 12 March, the people of Innsbruck gave the German military a frenetic welcome. A short time later, Adolf Hitler visited Innsbruck in person to be celebrated by the crowd. Archive photos show a euphoric crowd awaiting the Führer, the promise of salvation. After the economic hardship of the interwar period, the economic crisis and the governments under Dollfuß and Schuschnigg, people were tired and wanted change. What kind of change was initially less important than the change itself. "Showing them up there", that was Hitler's promise. The Wehrmacht and industry offered young people a perspective, even those who could do little with the ideology of National Socialism in and of itself. Unlike today, democracy was not something that anyone could have become accustomed to in the short period characterised by political extremes between the monarchy in 1918 and the elimination of parliament under Dollfuß in 1933. There is no need to abolish something that does not actually exist in the minds of the population.

Tyrol and Vorarlberg were combined into a Reichsgau with Innsbruck as its capital. There was no armed resistance, as the left in Tyrol was not strong enough. There were isolated instances of unorganised subversive behaviour by the Catholic population, especially in some rural communities around Innsbruck, and it was only very late that organised resistance was able to gain a foothold in Innsbruck.

However, the regime under Hofer and Gestapo chief Werner Hilliges did a great job of suppression. In Catholic Tyrol, the Church was the biggest obstacle. During National Socialism, the Catholic Church was systematically combated. Catholic schools were converted, youth organisations banned and monasteries closed. Particularly stubborn priests such as Otto Neururer were sent to concentration camps. Local politicians such as the later Innsbruck mayors Anton Melzer and Franz Greiter also had to flee or were arrested. To summarise the violence and crimes committed against the Jewish population, the clergy, political suspects, civilians and prisoners of war would go beyond the scope of this book.

The Gestapo was located in what is now the Provincial Building Directorate at Herrengasse 1. Suspects were severely abused here and sometimes beaten to death with fists. In 1941, the Reichenau labour camp was set up in Rossau near the Innsbruck building yard. Suspects of all kinds were kept here for forced labour in shabby barracks. Over 130 people died in this camp consisting of 20 barracks due to illness, the poor conditions, labour accidents or executions.

Prisoners were also forced to work at the Messerschmitt factory in the village of Kematen, 10 kilometres from Innsbruck. These included political prisoners, Russian prisoners of war and Jews. The forced labour included, among other things, the construction of the South Tyrolean settlements in the final phase or the tunnels to protect against air raids in the south of Innsbruck. Disabled people and those deemed unacceptable by the system, such as homosexuals, were forcibly sterilised in the Innsbruck clinic. The psychiatric clinic in Hall was involved in Nazi crimes against disabled people.

The abundance of churches, chapels, crucifixes and murals in public spaces has a peculiar effect on many visitors to Innsbruck from other countries. Not only places of worship, but also many private homes are decorated with depictions of the Holy Family or biblical scenes. The Christian faith and its institutions have characterised everyday life throughout Europe for centuries. Innsbruck, as the residence city of the strictly Catholic Habsburgs and capital of the self-proclaimed Holy Land of Tyrol, was particularly favoured when it came to the decoration of ecclesiastical buildings. The dimensions of the churches alone are gigantic by the standards of the past. In the 16th century, the town with its population of just under 5,000 had several churches that outshone every other building in terms of splendour and size, including the palaces of the aristocracy. Wilten Monastery was a huge complex in the centre of a small farming village that was grouped around it. The spatial dimensions of the places of worship reflect their importance in the political and social structure.

For many Innsbruck residents, the church was not only a moral authority, but also a secular landlord. The Bishop of Brixen was formally on an equal footing with the sovereign. The peasants worked on the bishop's estates in the same way as they worked for a secular prince on his estates. This gave them tax and legal sovereignty over many people. The ecclesiastical landowners were not regarded as less strict, but even as particularly demanding towards their subjects. At the same time, it was also the clergy in Innsbruck who were largely responsible for social welfare, nursing, care for the poor and orphans, feeding and education. The influence of the church extended into the material world in much the same way as the state does today with its tax office, police, education system and labour office. What democracy, parliament and the market economy are to us today, the Bible and pastors were to the people of past centuries: a reality that maintained order. To believe that all churchmen were cynical men of power who exploited their uneducated subjects is not correct. The majority of both the clergy and the nobility were pious and godly, albeit in a way that is difficult to understand from today's perspective.

Unlike today, religion was by no means a private matter. Violations of religion and morals were tried in secular courts and severely penalised. The charge for misconduct was heresy, which encompassed a wide range of offences. Sodomy, i.e. any sexual act that did not serve procreation, sorcery, witchcraft, blasphemy - in short, any deviation from the right belief in God - could be punished with burning. Burning was intended to purify the condemned and destroy them and their sinful behaviour once and for all in order to eradicate evil from the community.

For a long time, the church regulated the everyday social fabric of people down to the smallest details of daily life. Church bells determined people's schedules. Their sound called people to work, to church services or signalled the death of a member of the congregation. People were able to distinguish between individual bell sounds and their meaning. Sundays and public holidays structured the time. Fasting days regulated the diet. Family life, sexuality and individual behaviour had to be guided by the morals laid down by the church. The salvation of the soul in the next life was more important to many people than happiness on earth, as this was in any case predetermined by the events of time and divine will. Purgatory, the last judgement and the torments of hell were a reality and also frightened and disciplined adults.

While Innsbruck's bourgeoisie had been at least gently kissed awake by the ideas of the Enlightenment after the Napoleonic Wars, the majority of people in the surrounding communities remained attached to the mixture of conservative Catholicism and superstitious popular piety.

Faith and the church still have a firm place in the everyday lives of Innsbruck residents, albeit often unnoticed. The resignations from the church in recent decades have put a dent in the official number of members and leisure events are better attended than Sunday masses. However, the Roman Catholic Church still has a lot of ground in and around Innsbruck, even outside the walls of the respective monasteries and educational centres. A number of schools in and around Innsbruck are also under the influence of conservative forces and the church. And anyone who always enjoys a public holiday, pecks one Easter egg after another or lights a candle on the Christmas tree does not have to be a Christian to act in the name of Jesus disguised as tradition.