St. Stephen's Church (Calbe)

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West portal of the church
St. Stephani in the cityscape

The St. Stephen's Church is the symbol of Calbe . With its two 57 m high twin towers, it is one of the largest churches in the Salzland district .

First church buildings

An early St. Stephen's Church was probably built in the 10th century in connection with the donation of the royal court to the new Archdiocese of Magdeburg as an archiepiscopal representative building on the site of the choir of today's hall church. The hypothesis of the founding of St. Stephen's Church by Halberstadt Archbishop Hildegrim around 820 can hardly be maintained according to recent findings. Some remains of an Ottonian or Romanesque basilica are preserved in the east building ( choir ) at a depth of 1.6 m. Traces of fire on the found remains of the wall suggest that the church was destroyed in a conflagration, perhaps during the Welfen - Staufer Wars. This was followed by an early Gothic sandstone basilica, which was later changed to the High Gothic style and part of which has been preserved as the rectangular choir of the current church.

St. Stephen Church Calbe was in the Middle Ages , the central church of a archdeaconry of 40 churches whose revenue to the archbishop's cathedral chapter Magdeburg flowed. Archbishop Konrad II donated the St. Stephen's Church in Calbe to the nearby monastery “God's grace” in 1268 with all spiritual and secular rights. The church patronage increased Archbishop Burchard III. In 1323 to an incorporation , whereby the Calber Church became part of the monastery - with the consequences that only canons of this monastery were allowed to be pastors of the city church and the Premonstratensians played a decisive role in the fate of the parish in the middle of the growing city. At the end of the 15th century this led to disputes between the citizens fighting for urban independence and the monastery administration.

Hall church "St. Stephani "

Calbe church square (engraving around 1850)

Efforts to change and enlarge the church can be seen since the 14th century, until it was finally decided in the 15th century to build a spacious late-Gothic hall church - mainly made of rubble - which was completed in 1495, taking account of the increased population . The towers and the nave are made of quarry stone, the corners and portals are made of sandstone . The oldest part of the current building is the choir annex to which the main nave was added in the 15th century. The two parts do not form a structural unit.

The total height of the towers including the pommel is 57.3 meters. The nave is 29.2 meters long , the central nave is 9.7 meters and the side aisles are each 4.5 meters wide. The height of the central nave is 13.7 meters, that of the side aisles 13.6 meters. The outside of the hall church has a total length of 58.2 m. Including the buttresses and the chapel extension, it is 32 meters wide.

The tracery of the Gothic windows indicates the use of older, high-Gothic parts of the building. The considerable main portal with the two pointed arch doors was subsequently added to the tower house that had been started earlier. The tower keeper lived in the south tower, a municipal employee who was also responsible for the fire watch . A beam for his freight elevator can still be seen.

There has been a connecting passage between the two towers with a later, small baroque tower since the 16th century.

The sandstone wreaths with symbolic human and demon figures above the south doors, which tell religious moral stories, are already badly weathered.

Loggerhead gargoyles (chimeras)

Loggerhead gargoyles (chimeras) on the south side

14 chimeras or “sky guardians” (without water drainage function) sit on the buttresses to ward off evil forces, the majority of which are caricatures of contemporaries in addition to demonic figures .

The chimeras at St. Stephen's Church can be divided into 3 groups: 2 mythical creatures ( chimeras in the narrower sense), 4 animals and 8 people. The human representations form 4 subgroups. These are: 2 naked people, 2 fashion fools, 3 church people and a Jew with the Jewish pig . While the mythical creatures and animals are supposed to ward off evil in symbolized form, most of the human figures are to be understood as caricatures of personal weaknesses and vices, of human sinfulness.

Hatred and contempt for Jews are evident in the St. Stephen's Church in Calbe as well as in several other churches at that time. One of the chimera mockery depicts a Jew who kisses a pig's bottom (Judensau). Another sculpture shows a fat paunch that has overeating. The fact that a nun (or Beguine ?) (See fig.) And two monastery or monastery brothers were included in the caricature group shows how much the decline of monastic culture had penetrated the general consciousness. The Lutheran Reformation was imminent.

  • Female satan figure

  • Spiritual "sister" who hides her body

  • "Sneaky" fashion fanatic

Evangelical town church

Archbishop Albrecht V had in 1541 at the Estates parliament in Castle Calbe still assured his subjects no freedom of religion, but after his flight in the spring of 1541 to Mainz broke all dams, and on June 11, 1542 (Sunday after Corpus Christi) took place in the St. Stephen's Church the first Protestant service was held in Calbe. The legal successor to the Premonstratensian monastery, which was secularized in 1569 , was the now Protestant cathedral monastery of Magdeburg . This left the city council responsible for the city church “St. Stephani ”, whose pastors were from now on appointed superintendents and church and school inspectors for the Calbe office and, since 1685, also for the Aken and Wanzleben offices .

Furnishing

From the cleaning and restoration actions after the introduction of the Reformation in Calbe (1542) as well as the years 1866 and 1966, the interior of the church has been preserved:

Since the altarpiece, the galleries and the stalls that were once there were quite rotten after two centuries, they were removed in the 19th century.

Also worth seeing inside are:

  • The keystones with symbols that crown the costal arches,
  • a removed bell from 1586,
  • an altar shrine from 1464, which had escaped the Protestant " iconoclasm ",
  • Stone epitaphs , which were dedicated to patricians , nobles and clergy,
  • and a painted wooden epitaph from the Lemmer family from 1654,
  • neo-Gothic stalls in the choir room ,
  • Painting from the 19th century with depictions of Martin Luther and the superintendent Friedrich August Scheele ,
  • Glass window from the second half of the 19th century. in neo-Gothic style,
  • a section from a stained glass window that no longer exists, with a detail from a nave window donated in 1892/1893

and

  • a glass concrete window by Christof Grüger in the "Winter Church", the southern extension of the choir.

A “new”, ie used, organ is currently being installed in St. Stephani , which was built by the organ builder Ernst Röver ( Barmen ). The instrument was available as a rental instrument in the Wuppertal town hall from 1899 to 1921. In 1921 Röver sold the instrument to the parish of St. Martini in Halberstadt and placed it in the historical prospectus from 1596. After the Second World War the - romantically arranged and voiced - instrument was changed and “baroque” according to the sound ideals emerging at the time. The instrument has 44 registers on three manuals and a pedal . A large part of the historical pipe material (previously around 2,500 pipes ) has been preserved. In 2012 the instrument was dismantled in Halberstadt and stored in St. Stephani. It is now being gradually restored and reconstructed to its original romantic state.

Renovation work in the present

In 1992, 1994, 1998/99 and 2006 extensive renovation work was carried out on the church building with the help of considerable donations from the people of Calbens and their friends, which have not yet been completed.

Wrangel Chapel

Wrangel chapel portal with sundial and crucifix
Wrangel Chapel

The Wrangel Chapel is on the south side . The keystone of the Wrangel Chapel vault, like the coat of arms above the door, indicates the year 1495. Simon Hake (later spelling: Hacke) was the founder of the chapel. There is a presumption that the term Wrangel Chapel derives from the door and that it was originally called Prangel door, which means something like stick (= bar) door. But it is more likely that the name is derived from the Swedish general Carl Gustav Wrangel , whose wife Anna Margareta Wrangel Countess von Salmis comes from Calbe. Parts of the Swedish army made several visits to Calbe in the 1630s and 1640s, and it can be assumed that General Wrangel generously furnished the Hake Chapel at the church where his beautiful wife was baptized. As a result, the chapel extension was remembered in the collective memory of the residents as the “Wrangel” chapel.

Above the door of the Wrangel Chapel there is a sundial , the coat of arms of Archbishop Ernst II of Saxony and an old sandstone crucifix that may still come from the Romanesque or early Gothic basilica . This part of the church, the portal of the chapel - and only this one - is made of bricks , making it the southernmost monument of north German brick Gothic in Europe.

The Wrangel Chapel later served as a mortuary, and the gravedigger lived on the upper floor. The library and archive of the church were also temporarily housed on this upper floor.

swell

Adapted from and partially quoted from: Dieter H. Steinmetz, Looking for historical traces - A city tour in Calbe an der Saale.

Selected literature

  • Chronicles of German Cities, (series of publications since 1862), vol. 27.
  • Der Kreis Calbe - Ein Heimatbuch, ed. von Wickel, Werner / Thinius, Otto, Leipzig 1937.
  • Dietrich, Max, Calbenser Resting Places , (Calbe) 1894.
  • The same, Unser Heimat - Heimatkunde der Stadt Calbe , (Calbe) 1909.
  • Erbe, Michael, Studies on the Development of the Lower Church System in Eastern Saxony from the 8th to the 12th Century , Göttingen 1969.
  • Hävecker, Johann Heinrich, Chronica and description of the towns of Calbe, Acken and Wantzleben as well as the Closter of God's grace ... , Halberstadt 1720.
  • Heiber, Fritz, The cultural and natural monuments of the Schönebeck district , (Calbe) 1967.
  • Herrfurth, Klaus, The gargoyles at the Stephanikirche , part 1–4, in: “Calbenser Blatt” 8–11 / 1991.
  • The same, The Wrangel Chapel at the Stephani Church - Part 2: The Chapel and the Swedish General , in "Schönebecker Volksstimme" from May 29, 1998.
  • The same, The Wrangel Chapel at the Stephani Church - Part 3: From the morgue with gravedigger to the church entrance with toilet , in: "Schönebecker Volksstimme" from August 20, 1998.
  • The same, royal court and merchant settlement of the city of Calbe an der Saale, in: Castles and Palaces in Saxony-Anhalt (communications from the Saxony-Anhalt regional group of the German Castle Association) , issue 12
  • Hertel, Gustav, History of the City of Calbe on the Saale , Berlin / Leipzig 1904.
  • Hertel, Gustav / Sommer, Gustav, descriptive representation of the older architectural and art monuments of the Calbe district, Halle 1885 (= descriptive representation of the older architectural and art monuments of the province of Saxony and adjacent areas , 10).
  • Kinderling, Johann Friedrich August, A description of the town of Calbe a. S. in the years 1796-1799 (Kinderling's manuscript) , published by Max Dietrich, Calbe 1908.
  • Reccius, Adolf, contributions to the early medieval history of our area, in: Our home (entertainment supplement) , Stadt- und Landbote Calbe from January 31, 1925.
  • The same, Chronik der Heimat (documented news about the history of the district town of Calbe and its immediate surroundings) , Calbe / Saale 1936.
  • Rocke, Gotthelf Moritz, history and description of the town of Calbe an der Saale, (Calbe) 1874.
  • Schymiczek, Regina EG, Over your walls Jerusalem, I have ordered watchmen ... On the development of the gargoyle shapes at Cologne Cathedral (= European university publications . Series XXVIII: Art History; Vol. 402) , Bern / Frankfurt a. M. 2004.
  • City book Calbe, in: Landesarchiv Magdeburg, Cop. 406 b.
  • Steinmetz, Dieter Horst, A man with a spherical belly adorns the Stephani Church in the city of Saale , in: “Schönebecker Volksstimme” from June 6, 2006.
  • The same, tower stories , in: “Calbenser Blatt” 6/2006.
  • The same, sky guardian at St. Stephen's Church in Calbe (gargoyles and chimeras in the medieval world of imagination) , in: ibid. 9, 10, 12/2006 and 2/2007.
  • The same, In search of historical traces - A city tour in Calbe an der Saale , URL: http://histrundgangcalbe.herobo.com/ Station 5.
  • The same, from the royal court Caluo 936 to the district town of Calbe 1919 - history of a central German city from the beginnings to the foundation of the Weimar Republic, Magdeburg / Calbe / S. 2010.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ More information about the history of the Röver organ on the website of the community organ project

Web links

Commons : St. Stephen's Church  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 54 ′ 13.3 "  N , 11 ° 46 ′ 31.7"  E