German and Austrian Stained Glass Windows in Chicago
	Chicago has been a great center of German and Austrian made stained glass. Since the Great Fire of 1871 the studios of Franz Mayer and F.X. Zettler, both of Munich, Germany, and the studios of the Tyroler Glasmalerei Anstalt (TGA) in Innsbruck, Austria began to send representatives to sell their new decorative patterns for churches. These three studios often worked together and their style is interchangeable. From the 1870s to the 1920s, Chicago became the most influential center of Catholic culture in the United States. Unlike that of any other period of history, its stateof- the-art church design included brightly colored windows, often displaying actionpacked scenes from biblical events or episodes from the life of a patron saint. Chicago has a wealth of these national churches, be they German, Irish, Italian or Polish, in almost every city neighborhood, but especially on the north and west sides.
						Today superb examples of windows made in Munich by F.X. Zettler or Franz Mayer can be seen in churches such as Saint Vincent de Paul on Webster, St. Joseph on Orleans, St. Michael in Old Town, St. Michael on the South Side, St. Benedict on Irving Park, and former St. Henry, now the Guardian Angel Croatian Catholic Church at Devon and Ridge. A set of windows depicting the Mysteries of the Rosary and dedicated to Mary, Mother of God, were made by the Tiroler Glasmalerei Anstalt (signed TGA) of Innsbruck, Austria for St. Stanislaus Kostka (1327 N. Noble Street), the mother church of the Poles in the United States. The Munich style lost much of its appeal in the 1920s. Today it is appreciated as a fine expression of German aesthetics and artistic sensitivity in the face of an almost overpowering American competition led by Louis Comfort Tiffany.