Pfarrkirche hl. Jakobus der Ältere, Lichtenegg

The Catholic parish church of St James the Elder stands on a slight rise west of the main road in the centre of Lichtenegg, a village in the Wiener Neustadt district of Lower Austria. It is a Roman Catholic church dedicated to St James the Elder and belongs to the Kirchschlag deanery within the Vienna archdiocese. The former fortified church is listed as a historic monument.

The first parish is mentioned around 1250, and the vicar Ulrich is recorded in 1282. Conflicts over church tithes were reported in 1336, and Emperor Frederick III tried without success between 1444 and 1446 to settle a tithe dispute for the St George church in Wiener Neustadt, which lasted until 1817. The churchyard served as a cemetery until 1828. The first church building dates from before 1282, with the choir square built in the first half of the 13th century and retaining a Romanesque pointing mortar with trowel marks. The nave core also dates from the first half of the 13th century, and the choir wall paintings were created around 1400.

The church is a massive, essentially Romanesque fortified complex with a squat square tower and a roughly square churchyard partly surrounded by defensive walls. Inside, the high altar from 1745 is a curved columned retable with a projecting pair of columns, a broken entablature and side doors with large angel figures. The central painting of St James the Elder is by Josef Keßler from 1881, and the altarpiece above shows St John of Nepomuk with two angels. Flanking statues represent Florian and Donatus, while the side statues are John the Evangelist and Anthony of Padua. The baroque copy of the Madonna of Grace came from Vienna-Döbling, and the organ with ten stops dates from 1895 and was built by Albert Mauracher.