Stone cross

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Stone cross from Kvitsøy, Norway
Stone cross in Weißig near Dresden

Stone cross is the name for a stone cross . Stone crosses come in various forms in all parts of the world. Common types are field crosses in Europe, stone crosses in cemeteries, memorial crosses and altar crosses in churches. The crosses can be made of sandstone , granite , limestone or other types of stone. They were mostly carved from a block.

Stone hall crosses

Regional forms

In the form of a Celtic cross , up to 6.7 meters high, mostly made of sandstone or granite, since the 8th century, in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Isle of Man

In the form of a small Celtic cross with a long shaft, up to 5.5 meters high, mostly made of sandstone, in England and Scotland

  • Scandinavian floor cross

Mostly in the form of a Latin cross, up to 3.7 meters high, mostly made of granite or basalt, in Norway, Sweden

  • Central European field cross

In the form of a Latin or Byzantine cross, usually 80 to 120 centimeters high and 40 to 60 centimeters wide, mostly made of granite, in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Poland

An enlarged variant of the stone cross with elements of a wayside shrine

Central European stone hall crosses

For most of the stone crosses, the reason for their erection is unknown. Myths and legends entwine around some of them.

Atonement crosses and memorial crosses

Commemorative crosses were often set up for people who had suddenly died as a result of murder, manslaughter or an accident. The passers-by should say an intercessory prayer for their souls, as the deceased could not receive any sacraments. The cross was usually erected by the perpetrator or his relatives. Upper Palatinate and Saxon atonement agreements have been preserved, in which the setting of an atonement cross was expressly agreed.

Weather crosses

Weather or hail crosses may have been set up to protect against bad weather. However, this interpretation is uncertain, there is no clear written evidence for it. Possibly the name was derived from a dialect for atonement crosses ( bet > remember ).

Hussite crosses, Swedish crosses, French crosses

In the vernacular, the stone crosses have regionally different names that go back to historical tragic events. There are "Hussite crosses" along the Bohemian Forest , and "Swedish crosses" in the northern Upper Palatinate . In several legends it is said that Swedes are buried under these monuments. In the west one also speaks of "French crosses". Most of these crosses were made long before these events, it is likely to be later reinterpretations, or superimposed commemoration of massacres and battles near these crosses, or buried victims. Some of the crosses could also be early plague crosses .

Boundaries and landmarks

It is possible that some crosses were erected as boundary signs , directional signs ( wayside crosses ) or free stones . The delimitation of the “twice broken pasture” of the Seligental monastery was indicated by stone crosses with the symbol of a shepherd's shovel in the head part. Six of these stone crosses were still standing in the 1930s. The last of these crosses was saved from destruction by being erected at the St. Sebastian Church in Seckach in the Neckar-Odenwald district .

Judgment and oath crosses

Some of the old crosses could go back to old forms of jurisdiction, such as oath crosses on which contracts were sealed.

Memorial crosses about the construction of medieval traffic routes

In Zittau it was testified in writing in 1392 that a cross was erected as a thank you for a charitable foundation of a Kuttenberg citizen for the repair of a mountain road to Gabel . A cross from the 12th century has been preserved near Novgorod, reminding of the construction of a canal.

Stone floor crosses in Germany

Stone cross in the Upper Palatinate

The small monuments are located along old roads and crossroads, on trees and forest edges, on hills or on municipal and old rulership boundaries. They are particularly common in the Upper Palatinate and Central Germany , with the basalt crosses occurring almost exclusively in the Eifel .

Many of these stone witnesses of a bygone era have disappeared through carelessness, ignorance, or willful destruction. As Rainer H. Schmeissner writes in his monograph Steinkreuze in der Oberpfalz , published in 1977 , there are still over 300 of them in the Upper Palatinate alone. There were 400 copies there at the turn of the previous century, almost twice as many as in Lower and Upper Bavaria combined.

The inventories published by the State Museum for Prehistory in Dresden between 1977 and 1980 show that Saxony had 436 stone crosses and cross stones.

The Main-Tauber district has the highest population in Baden-Württemberg . Due to the natural landscape of the district, in which the agricultural structure was preserved without the densification of settlement and industry, well over 100 crosses were counted there in 1968. In Bonfeld in the district of Heilbronn , an atonement cross from the 16th century has been preserved in the Bonfeld Palace Park, which was located on the former long-distance connection between Wimpfen and Eppingen.

Status

Often the roughly hewn crosses are already in a badly weathered condition. Some have a drawing scratched on them, but rarely do they have an inscription.

In addition to weathering, willful or negligent damage, damage to stone crosses also comes from popular belief. An old stone spell says that a piece of stone chopped off a stone cross and thrown into running water averts sorcery and misfortune. By scraping stone crosses, so-called stone cross flour was obtained, which was also believed to have magical power.

Plague cross on a plague cemetery near Leiberg
Stone cross in Kleinwolmsdorf, Saxony, near Dresden (carved sword )

Occurrence

Special stone crosses (selection)

Stone cross nests

A so-called stone cross nest is when there are several stone crosses together at a location.

See also

literature

  • Friedrich Bernhard Störzner : What the homeland tells . Publishing Arwed shrub, Leipzig 1904. ( Digitalisat the SLUB Dresden )
  • Gustav Kuhfahl: The old stone crosses in Saxony . Dresden 1928 and 1936. ( digitized version )
  • Heinz Köber: The old stone crosses and atonement stones of Thuringia . Erfurt 1960.
  • Gerhard Ost: Old stone crosses in the districts of Jena, Stadtroda and Eisenberg. Jena 1962.
  • Ada Paul: Stone crosses and cross stones in Austria. Horn 1975.
  • Heinz Deubler, Richard artist, Gerhard Ost: Stone field monuments in East Thuringia (Gera district) . Gera n.d. (1977).
  • Quietzsch Müller: Stone crosses and cross stones in Saxony I Inv. District Dresden . Berlin 1977.
  • Rainer H. Schmeissner: Stone crosses in the Upper Palatinate . Regensburg 1977.
  • Heinrich Riebeling: Stone crosses and cross stones in Hessen. Werner Noltemeyer Verlag, Dossenheim / Heidelberg 1977, ISBN 3-88172-005-7 .
  • Hans-J. Wendt: Stone crosses and cross stones in Saxony II Inv. District Karl-Marx-Stadt . Berlin 1979.
  • Harald Quietzsch: Stone crosses and cross stones in Saxony III Inv. District Leipzig . Berlin 1980.
  • Dietrich Neuber, Günter Wetzel: Stone crosses and cross stones. Inventory of the Cottbus district. (= Past and present of the Cottbus district. Special issue ). Cottbus 1980.
  • Horst Torke: Old stone crosses between Dresden, Pirna and Saxon Switzerland . Pirna 1983.
  • Karl Dill: Field monuments in the district of Kulmbach . Kulmbach 1984.
  • Frank Störzner: Stone crosses in Thuringia. Catalog district Erfurt. (= Weimar monographs on prehistory and early history. 10). Weimar 1984.
  • Karl Bedal: mysterious, sunken, forgotten, invisible. But measured exactly . Hof 1986.
  • Baumann Müller: Cross stones and stone crosses in Lower Saxony, Bremen and Hamburg . Hamelin 1988.
  • Frank Störzner: Stone crosses in Thuringia. Catalog districts Gera – Suhl. (= Weimar monographs on prehistory and early history. 21). Weimar 1988.
  • Ada Paul: Stone crosses and cross stones in Austria (addendum). Regensburg 1988.
  • Walter Saal : Stone crosses and cross stones in the Halle district. Landesmuseum f. Prehistory, Halle 1989, ISBN 3-910010-01-6 .
  • Horst Torke: Stone witnesses to history in the Saxon Switzerland district . Pirna 1998, ISBN 3-932460-09-X .
  • Eva Maria Kraiss, Marion Reuter, Bernhard Losch: ... and killed each other for a piece of bread. Atonement crosses in the districts of Schwäbisch Hall and Hohenlohe. a photo documentation. Künzelsau 2000, ISBN 3-934350-31-3 .
  • Kurt Müller-Veltin: Middle Rhine stone crosses made of basalt lava. 2., revised. and exp. Edition. Cologne: Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Landscape Protection 2001, ISBN 3-88094-570-5 .

Web links

Commons : Stone crosses  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Mordstein  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Murder Cross  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Murder column  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Schwedenkreuz  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Atonement stone  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Atonement cross  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Wetterkreuz  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the Battle of Rotensol from 6th to 9th In July 1790, the imperial troops of Archduke Charles of Austria were defeated by French troops under General Moreau. The village of Rotensol, then with 150 inhabitants, was completely destroyed. A soldiers' mass grave, marked by a small stone cross and a memorial plaque, commemorates this event., See Amalie Heck: Schicksalswege Baden History. Upper Rhine roads, regional traffic routes and lines of defense in their significance for the regional historical development. Badenia Verlag, Karlsruhe 1996, ISBN 3-7617-0331-7 , p. 79.
  2. ↑ Bernhard Losch writes: "Popular tradition is [...] impartial and uncomplicated with [the] crosses."
  3. ↑ a b Bernhard Losch: Stone crosses in Baden-Württemberg. Commission publisher Konrad Theiss, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-8062-0754-2 .
  4. ↑ Gebhard Schmitt: The old stone crosses on the Seckacher district. Only one specimen is reminiscent of the former pasture border. In: Our country. Home calendar for Neckar Valley, Odenwald, building land and Kraichgau. 2015. Verlag Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, Heidelberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-936866-57-5 , pp. 171–174.
  5. ↑ Hans-Heinz Hartmann: Historical network of paths, forgotten cultural monuments of our homeland. In: Our country. Home calendar for Neckar Valley, Odenwald, building land and Kraichgau. 2015. Verlag Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, Heidelberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-936866-57-5 , pp. 103-106.
  6. ^ Hans-Heinz Hartmann: Witnesses to medieval customs. In: Schwaben & Franken, local history supplement of the Heilbronner Voice. Volume 42, No. 4, June 1996.
  7. ↑ J. Rünemann: grooves and cups on religious monuments. In: Bulletin of the International Society for the History of Pharmacy. No. 29, 1977.
  8. ↑ locations. In: suehnekreuz.de. Retrieved May 22, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Stone witnesses in the landscape - Franconian news. In: fnweb.de. Retrieved May 22, 2020 .