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The German states, isolated from the community of European culture by the ravages of the Thirty Years' War and held back by the Reformation and the conflicts arising from it, did not join the general cultural movement again until the eve of the 18th century. In the Catholic south Prague, Vienna and Dresden were the centres of artistic rebirth which, about the middle of the century, assumed one of its most extreme forms in the Southern Bavarian pilgrimage church at Wies, the masterpiece of Dominikus Zimmermann. It combines a profusion of foliage forms and a great feeling for light with the vibrant colour of the paintings by Dominikus' brother Johann Baptist.
Most "Bavarian" of all the stucco-workers from Wessobrunn, the architect and sculptor Zimmermann spent his whole life building rural churches, and died in Wies. This pilgrimage church and the one at Steinhausen are his masterpieces, achieving a poetic rendering of space and responding to a popular demand for enchantment and religious euphoria.
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