George's Chapel (Bonn)
The Georgskapelle in the old cemetery in Bonn was built in the 13th century. The Romanesque building with early Gothic construction elements was originally part of the Ramersdorf Order of the Teutonic Order and served the convent members as a prayer room and for church services. The chapel was decorated with monumental medieval vault and wall paintings. In the 19th century a fire broke out in the buildings, which also affected the chapel. After the fire, the owner at that time intended to demolish the chapel. But she could be saved and the Old Cemetery translocated be. The paintings were destroyed in the process. Some of them have survived as reproductions. The rescue of the chapel is considered a spectacular monument preservation event in the Rhineland in the middle of the 19th century.
history
The chapel was built around 1230 as part of the Ramersdorf commander's building complex. As a result of secularization , the Kommende came into private hands in 1807. The chapel fell into disrepair and suffered fire damage in 1842, with the roof being completely destroyed. Therefore the chapel was supposed to be demolished in 1844. In 1846/1847 it was moved to the cemetery in what is now the center of Bonn on the initiative of the Royal Building Inspector Johann Claudius von Lassaulx .
The art historian Sabine G. Cremer described the process of relocating the chapel in her work The Ramersdorfer Chapel - An Example of Rhenish Preservation of Monuments in the First Half of the 19th Century . The following remarks in this chapter are based on Cremer's study.
In 1844, two years after the fire, the new owner of the Ramersdorfer Kommende, Joseph zu Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck , planned to rebuild the entire facility. The chapel stood in the way of these plans and he decided to have it demolished. Johann Claudius von Lassaulx found out about this project “through a friend of old art”. He turned to the owner to point out the "special value of the building" and got the demolition to be postponed.
Lassaulx turned to the public with a report on the planned demolition of the chapel in the Kölner Domblatt . He had already made building recordings of the chapel and made a cost estimate for 1200 thalers for the necessary restoration. To advertise it, he brought out a lithograph that contained a map, a site plan of the former commander, a floor plan of the chapel and various architectural detailed studies, an interior view as well as a cross and a longitudinal section of the chapel. Lassaulx did not take the tower with him, as most of it had already been demolished.
Prominent contemporaries such as the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV campaigned for the preservation of the chapel. Even so, the owner continued to insist on demolition. Lassaulx finally suggested moving it to the cemetery on Bornheimer Strasse, today's Old Cemetery in Bonn. Prince zu Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck agreed to this project. Both the authorities and the population welcomed the project. Above all, Lord Mayor Karl Edmund Joseph Oppenhoff and the then curator of the University of Bonn , Moritz von Bethmann-Hollweg, advocated this. The cemetery on Bornheimer Strasse did not have its own cemetery chapel until then.
Lassaulx made a cost estimate for 2800 thalers. The city had major problems with funding, which threatened to fail the project. A fundraising campaign was carried out among the people of Bonn. The city council then approved an amount of 300 thalers for the relocation of the chapel.
In the autumn of 1845 there was a further delay when medieval wall paintings were discovered in the Ramersdorf chapel. During a visit to the chapel, Lord Mayor Oppenhoff noticed the outlines of translucent paintings on the vault. Rain had penetrated through the damaged roof, so that the limescale had come off in some places. The mayor turned to the academic drawing teacher Nicolaus Christian Hohe and Gottfried Kinkel because he could not judge the value of these paintings . During a visit, both agreed that “an exact copy would be in the interest of art history”. Due to the lack of time and the tense financial situation, the mayor commissioned Christian Hohe to uncover and copy the paintings. In the course of the work, Hohe discovered more paintings on the walls. After completing the copies, von Bethmann-Hollweg presented the drawings to the Prussian king and the general director of the Royal Museums in Berlin, Ignaz von Olfers . They were included in the art collection of the Royal Museums in Berlin.
At the same time as the discovery of the medieval paintings, Minister of Culture Johann Albrecht Friedrich von Eichhorn made the last attempt in September 1845 to keep the chapel in its original location. The Prince of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Dyck refused this again, claiming that negotiations with the city had been concluded. Instead, he urged the transfer to be carried out as soon as possible. The project threatened to fail for lack of money. Through the mediation of Ignaz von Olfers, von Bethmann-Hollweg received a "gift of grace" of 1200 thalers from the king, which finally made the relocation possible.
In October 1846 the demolition in Ramersdorf was completed, the reconstruction as a cemetery chapel on the old cemetery in Bonn lasted until December 1847. Its inauguration took place on November 11, 1850.
use
The chapel served the convent of the Ramersdorfer Kommende, which consisted of knights, priests and half-brothers. The 12 convent members met there for worship and common prayer. They sat across from each other. This is indicated by columns on consoles and services in the interior of the chapel, which support the vaulted ribs . The stalls for the members of the convent were probably located underneath. The three altars of the chapel suggest a relatively large number of priestly friars who belonged to the medieval convent.
Until the repeal of the Kommende in 1807, the chapel on St. George's Day was beyond its normal purpose the destination of processions from the parishes of Küdinghoven and Oberkassel . The pastor of Küdinghoven held a high mass in the chapel that day. The coming party rewarded his efforts with two Malter rye. In exceptional cases, the Bonn official carried out a wedding in “the illustrious Teutonic Order Chapel in Ramersdorf”.
After the move to the old cemetery, the building fulfills the functions of a cemetery chapel; music events are also held there on rare occasions.
architecture
The chapel was built as a three-aisled hall structure with a three-apse closure . It is 14.20 m long and 7.70 m wide. In late Romanesque and early Gothic church buildings in Germany there is no comparable architectural solution. The numerous shaft rings point to the French early Gothic, for example in the cathedral of Laon . In contrast, the window shapes "are entirely in the tradition of the late Romanesque of the Rhine-Maas region".
The building
Originally the wall surfaces of the chapel were made entirely of tuff , after the move to the old cemetery it was mixed with greywacke and sandstone . The architectural parts are made of sandstone.
The outer walls of the chapel have narrow pilaster strips on all edges and end at the top with a nasal arched frieze on old tuff consoles . The eaves with "a strong Romanesque profile" had to be renewed because of the fire damage suffered during the relocation.
Each long side has three four-pass windows . In each of the side choirs there is a narrow, arched window, the central choir has three of them. A small, open wooden roof turret with a wrought iron cross is attached to the slate roof .
The portal with a horizontal lintel is no longer on the south side, but since the relocation on the west side of the chapel. A new inscription above the portal reads: SACELLUM RAMERSDORPIO HUC TRANSLATUM 1847. Above there is a quadruple window and a round arched niche, which surrounds a renewed sandstone slab with a cross in the medallion. The gable is crowned by an old stone cross, underneath is a renewed stone eagle.
The chapel had a tower on the south side close to the side choir , the lower part of which was built at the same time as the chapel. This is indicated by a side wall of the chapel, which originally also belonged to the tower. A picture from 1700 shows a door in the tower that led to the sacristy . From this another door led into the interior of the chapel. The main entrance to the chapel was also on the south wall.
The interior
The interior is supported by four free-standing, slender columns, the base of which is a wide, lobed corner leaf . The columns are divided in the middle by three-part shaft rings . The capitals of the two eastern columns still clearly show the knobs that are customary in the “transition style” . The western columns have early Gothic oblique leaves.
The belt arches and vault ribs rise above the eight-sided cover plates . On the outer walls, the columns correspond to bundles of three services each with simple chalice capitals on consoles 1.80 meters high. The consoles end with a knob, under which a simple flat pilaster forms the continuation. On the west wall, the two belts sit on simple consoles.
The windows inside the shape of a shamrock with deep down solid sill . The old flooring consists of red and gray bricks with white stars. In the middle of the room there is a large gray Teutonic Cross with a white border.
Changes in the course of the relocation
In addition to the non-restoration of the tower and the insertion of the portal on the former west side of the chapel, the chapel on the old cemetery was oriented south-west, in contrast to the original orientation of the building to the east. Another change affects the six windows in the nave . In the description of the building in Ramersdorf von Lassaulx 1845, there was only one quatrefoil window in the western wall of the time. There were arched windows in the nave. Historical pictures from the 17th and 18th centuries confirm this. These windows must have replaced the original quatrefoil windows in the course of the 16th century. In Lassaulx's lithograph from 1845, the original shape of the window in the nave is reconstructed. This design was restored when the chapel was built in the old cemetery. In 1845, according to Lassaulx, there were two Gothic pointed arch windows in the two apses on both sides . After the reconstruction, they were replaced by two arched windows that correspond to the shape of the window in the main apse. Georg Meistermann created today's glazing .
When evaluating the changes during the relocation, Sabine Cremer comes to the conclusion that they are to be seen as “a reconstruction of the original state of Romanesque architecture”, “as it was in line with the ideas of the 19th century”.
Facility
In 1804 or 1805, the Ramersdorfer Kommende also looted the chapel. A recording from November 29, 1805 names three altars as the remaining inventory of the chapel: the high altar with a painting and the two side altars with the figures of Mary and Joseph. There were also five chasubles , including one made of "flowered leather", "an old Schilderey de passione Domini" and a curtain made of gilded leather.
The current arrangement of the cemetery chapel consists of three stone altars and chairs.
Vault and wall paintings
At the beginning of the 14th century and around 1330, the Ramersdorfer Kommende had their chapel decorated with ornamental and figurative vaults and wall paintings. When the building was transferred to the Old Cemetery, these “art-historically extremely important wall paintings” inside the chapel were destroyed and thus lost.
Replicas of the paintings have been preserved by the Bonn painter Christian Hohe . In 1845 he made reproductions of most of the 65 pictures in the Ramersdorfer Chapel. After removing the whitewashing that was probably done in the Baroque era , he created outline breaks and sketches, some of which were colored. On this basis, he created fine drawings on his desk, mostly in the form of watercolors .
Christian Hohe received 200 thalers from the fund for the relocation of the chapel for his work. He received another 65 thalers from the budget of the Berlin museum administration.
The first pauses and sketches remained in his private collection as the basis for later watercolors. The whereabouts of Hohes final drawings, which were formerly in the collection of the Berlin museums, is questionable. Most of the sketches and watercolors that have survived, three outline pauses and a second series of final drawings are now in the graphics collection of the LVR Office for the Preservation of Monuments in the Rhineland .
Image of salvation history
Paul Clemen concluded from Hohes reproductions that the interior had "one of the strangest early Gothic decorations" in light and soft tones. The vault and wall paintings of the chapel convey the story of salvation : in the choir the childhood story of Jesus, in the nave, individual images of saints, in front of the side choirs the Resurrection and Ascension , in the middle yoke the coronation of Mary, the patroness of the Teutonic Order between music-making angels, in the western yoke of the nave and in the neighboring caps the Last Judgment . In the row of the depicted saints was St. George . He was the patron saint of the chapel and, as a "knightly" saint, special veneration for the friars.
Reproductions by Christian Hohe
High work as a copyist of the vault and wall paintings of the Ramersdorf Chapel was largely praised and recognized in the 19th century. Carl Schnaase , who was familiar with the original paintings, spoke in the Kölner Domblatt on December 27, 1846 of "highly successful reproductions" which "from now on will form a document of art history" and "must replace the originals in the future". In a further article in the Annales archéologiques he described the copies as very exact. In his book on the history of the visual arts, however, he later expressed himself more critically and wrote in a comment: “The traces and copies of Hohe in Bonn [...] are as such very appreciable, but they do not give the light and flowing character of painting completely again ”.
Publications
For the first time a reproduction made by Christian Hohe was made as a lithograph in Gottfried Kinkels Vom Rhein in 1847 . Life, Art and Poetry published. In doing so, Hohe combined elements of the monumental paintings that were not to be found in the chapel. Gottfried Kinkel pointed this out in an accompanying text when he wrote that "in order to fill the space, the figures around the main group had to be arranged very differently than they are in reality".
Ernst aus'm Weerth , first director of the Provincial Museum Bonn, now the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn , from 1876 to 1883 was responsible for the dissemination of High Work . In 1880, twelve years after the Great Death, wall paintings of the Christian Middle Ages appeared in the Rhineland . A year before Hohes Tod, in 1867, Ernst aus'm Weerth commissioned him to create all the templates for the illustrations. The unfinished work was completed by the architect A. Lambris. More than 20 years later, Ernst aus'm Weerth's Die Wandmalereien in the Chapel of the Teutonic Order in Ramersdorf appeared in 1901 with lithographs exclusively based on models by Christian Hohe.
The following pictures are taken from this book:
Painting in the vaulted fields
Coronation of Mary
Saint Catherine with sword and wheel
Introduction of the blessed into the kingdom of heaven
Bliss
Mural
Bishop blessing
The holy Salome or the evangelist John ?
Descent from the Cross
Example of monument preservation in the 19th century
The arguments put forward by the monument protection department today against relocations would have been justified in the case of St. George's Chapel in Bonn's Old Cemetery. The building was preserved and individual medieval architectural elements were even restored, but the chapel was torn out of its original surroundings and placed in a new context. Even if it was possible to reproduce the vault and wall paintings, the originals were destroyed because the technical procedures for a possible removal and reassembly were not yet in place. If art historians today still speak of the fact that the relocation of St. George's Chapel was recognized as the "most spectacular event in the Rhenish preservation of monuments of the 1840s", this is due to the temporal circumstances. Preservation of monuments in today's sense was in its infancy. There was no legal basis, so that the new owner of the Ramersdorfer Kommende could have demolished the chapel without further ado. It is thanks to the commitment of individuals that this did not happen.
Monument protection today
The old cemetery with the tombs and buildings such as the George Chapel is a listed building and is in the list of gem. Section 3 DSchG NRW registered monuments, ground monuments, movable monuments and monument areas of the city of Bonn in the list of monuments.
literature
- Irmgard Achter: The wall paintings of the chapel of the Teutonic Order Commander Ramersdorf. In: Herrschaft, Hochgericht and Parish Küdinghoven. Chronicle of the Ennertorte. I. Bonn 1958.
- Johann Claudius von Lassaulx : The church to Ramersdorf near Obercassel on the Rhine. In: Kölner Domblatt 2. 1845.
- Paul Clemen : The art monuments of the city and the district of Bonn. Düsseldorf 1905.
- Sabine Gertrud Cremer: The Ramersdorfer Chapel. An example of Rhenish preservation of monuments in the first half of the 19th century. In: Bonner Geschichtsblätter. Vol. 47/48, 1998, pp. 253-268.
- Sabine Gertrud Cremer: Nicolaus Christian Hohe (1798–1868). University drawing teacher in Bonn (Bonn studies on art history. Vol. 16). Munster 2001.
- Heinrich Neu : The Teutonic Order Coming Ramersdorf - History of a Rhenish House of the Teutonic Knight Order. Bonn 1961.
- Ernst aus'm Weerth (ed.): The wall paintings in the chapel of the Teutonic Order in Ramersdorf. Bonn 1901.
Web links
swell
- ↑ Sabine G. Cremer: The Ramersdorfer Chapel - An example of Rhenish preservation of monuments in the first half of the 19th century. P. 256.
- ^ Johann Claudius von Lassaulx: The church in Ramersdorf near Bonn. P. 9.
- ↑ cit. in: Sabine G. Cremer: The Ramersdorfer Chapel - An example of Rhenish preservation of monuments in the first half of the 19th century. P. 260.
- ↑ Christian Schüller: Die Deutschordenskommende Ramersdorf - Notes on their building history and their fate in the 19th and 20th centuries. P. 13.
- ↑ Heinrich Neu: Die Deutschordenskommende Ramersdorf - History of a Rhenish house of the Teutonic Knight Order. P. 81.
- ↑ from the copulation book of the parish Küdinghoven, quoted in. in: Heinrich Neu: The Teutonic Order Coming Ramersdorf - History of a Rhenish House of the Teutonic Knight Order. P. 81.
- ^ Johann Claudius von Lassaulx: The church in Ramersdorf near Obercassel on the Rhine.
- ↑ Sabine G. Cremer: The Ramersdorfer Chapel - An example of Rhenish preservation of monuments in the first half of the 19th century. P. 255.
- ^ A b Paul Clemen: The art monuments of the city and the district of Bonn. P. 421.
- ^ Johann Claudius von Lassaulx: The chapel of Ramersdorf. P. 91.
- ↑ Sabine G. Cremer: The Ramersdorfer Chapel - An example of Rhenish preservation of monuments in the first half of the 19th century. P. 266.
- ↑ Heinrich Neu: The history of the Teutonic Order Commander Ramersdorf. P. 147.
- ^ A b Paul Clemen: The art monuments of the city and the district of Bonn. P. 423.
- ^ Sabine G. Cremer: Nicolaus Christian Hohe (1798–1868) - University drawing teacher in Bonn. P. 160 ff.
- ^ Sabine G. Cremer: Nicolaus Christian Hohe (1798–1868) - University drawing teacher in Bonn. P. 157.
- ^ Sabine Gertrud Cremer: Nicolaus Christian Hohe (1798–1868). University drawing teacher in Bonn . S. 344 .
- ^ Sabine G. Cremer: Nicolaus Christian Hohe (1798–1868) - University drawing teacher in Bonn. Pp. 296-301, W.-No. 7.1 to 7.6, 7.9–7.14, 7.16.
- ^ Sabine G. Cremer: Nicolaus Christian Hohe (1798–1868) - University drawing teacher in Bonn. Pp. 163, 164.
- ↑ cit. in Sabine G. Cremer: Nicolaus Christian Hohe (1798–1868) - university drawing teacher in Bonn. P. 165.
- ↑ Sabine G. Cremer: The Ramersdorfer Chapel - An example of Rhenish preservation of monuments in the first half of the 19th century. P. 267.
- ↑ List of acc. § 3 DSchG NW registered monuments, ground monuments, movable monuments and monument areas of the city of Bonn in the list of monuments. (PDF; 2.1 MB) In: bonn.de. City of Bonn, Lower Monument Authority, March 15, 2019, p. 4 , accessed on March 10, 2020 .
Coordinates: 50 ° 44 ′ 8.1 ″ N , 7 ° 5 ′ 29.1 ″ E