Old St. Alexander Church (Wallenhorst)
The Old St. Alexander Church is a Roman Catholic church building in the municipality of Wallenhorst in the district of Osnabrück in Lower Saxony .
The church has Carolingian origins. Their story is connected with the legend De miraculis sancti Alexandri and a miraculous healing during the translation of the relics of the martyr Alexander of Rome († 165) from Rome to Wildeshausen . The church was a station on the Baltic-Westphalian Way of St. James to Santiago de Compostela .
The steeple of the church has a hen instead of a weathercock that is common in churches .
location
The Old St. Alexander Church is located outside of today's center of Wallenhorst, which developed around the new church to the west of Bundesstraße 68 after the construction of the New St. Alexander Church began in 1879 . The Old St. Alexander Church is located east of the main road at Wallenhorster Meyerhof , which together with the Heidemann, Schwalenberg and Brüggemann farms formed the core of the "Old Village". The Hörnschen Hof, which was founded later and was first mentioned in a document in 1223 and was also a Meierhof, was only further north in the direction of Pente.
history
According to legend, the church was founded by Charlemagne after his victory over the Saxon Duke Widukind in the battle on the Witten Felde between Vörden in Dersagau and Engter . Then he had a pagan temple destroyed, built a church in its place and provided the spire with a golden hen as a sign that she should hatch more churches.
Excavations from 1968 revealed that under today's church there are older foundations made from boulders from the 8th century. They enclose an area of 23.5 by 12.5 meters. As legend has it, it may have been a pre-Christian shrine.
Around 800 a hall church with a floor area of 16.35 by 7.10 meters was built, which was partly built on the foundation of the previous building.
On January 3, 851, the Widukind grandson Waltbert stopped with the relics of Alexander, coming from Osnabrück , on the way to Wildeshausen in Wallenhorst. He and his companions probably took up quarters in the Meyerhof. The legend De miraculis sancti Alexandri reports that a miraculous healing took place on this occasion , a blind man named Wetrih was able to see again.
Around the year 1000 the church building was extended by two aisles to form a pillar basilica ; The west building was added around 1100. Further alterations were made to a gallery church in the middle of the 12th century .
In the 14./15. In the 19th century the lower aisle vaults were removed; the church received a uniform roof. A tower was added around 1500. The population used the heavily secured building to store valuable goods in times of war, such as the Thirty Years' War .
During the Reformation, it was initially disputed whether the Church would remain Catholic. In 1624 Fridericus Rötger was pastor of the community. He lived with a woman and had six children with her. During the church visitation of the Vicar General Lucenius in 1624, he doubted Rötger's loyalty to the Catholic Church, but described him as "still Catholic". After the Westphalian peace treaty and the resolutions of the Reichstag in Nuremberg in 1650, it was decided in a "perpetual surrender" ("Capitulatio perpetua osnabrugensis") that in the normal year 1624 the parish was Catholic.
In 1692 the sacristy was added. In the second half of the 18th century the church was structurally changed again and received four larger baroque windows on the south side of the nave. During these renovations, Pastor Friedrich Gosmann had an inscription chiseled over the southern door of the church, which refers to the alleged consecration of the church in 777 by Charlemagne. The church was furnished in baroque style.
In the middle of the 19th century the church was no longer sufficient for the growing community. The community decided to build a neo-Gothic, three-aisled hall church in the vicinity of the Anna Chapel. In 1881 the construction of the New St. Alexander Church was completed; it was consecrated on June 9th that year. This shifted the center of Wallenhorst to the west. The old St. Alexander Church threatened to deteriorate. The inventory was taken to other churches.
The first excavations to research church history were carried out in 1930, others followed in 1950/51. A thorough construction survey began in 1968. In the same year the roof of the tower and the nave were renewed. In 1972/1973 the church was painted white.
From 1976 the interior of the church was restored, the floor was renewed, heating was installed and the tower clock was repaired.
The windows of the chancel were renewed in 2001. They were designed by Albert Bocklage from Vechta.
In 2017 the church organ was extensively restored through donations from the parish.
Furthermore, the church forecourt was redesigned in 2018.
A parking lot has been set up in the immediate vicinity for events.
Furnishing
One of the oldest parts of the furnishings is the grave slab of Pastor Harbertus from 1343. The Romanesque baptismal font of the Old St. Alexander Church is in the New St. Alexander Church. A crucifix from around 1500 hangs in front of the chancel . The work of an artist from the Rhineland, not known by name, originally served as a cemetery cross.
The baroque pulpit with sound cover was installed in 1819 and comes from the Dominican monastery in Osnabrück , which was closed in 1803. The baroque high altar has not been preserved . It was brought to Osnabrück during the Second World War, where it was burned during the bombing of the city. The statue of Thomas Aquinas also came to Wallenhorst from the Dominican monastery . The Pietà was made from linden wood around 1700 and returned to the church in 1984 from the Osnabrück Diocesan Museum. In the choir is the mortuary tablet for Carl Heinrich von Böselager († 1756), who was the landlord of the Wallenhorster Höfe Schwalenberg and Brüggemann. The Böselager family, which came from the Honeberger Böselager line, which died out in 1793 , had the right to bury their relatives in the sacristy .
The interior of the church also includes two paintings in the western transept. The Trinity dates from 1698 , the other painting shows the Jesuit general Francisco de Borja . Man of Sorrows is a work by the Jöllemann family of carvers from Osnabrück . A staircase cut from a tree trunk leads to the clock gallery with the clockwork from the 17th century.
use
There are no regular masses in the Old St. Alexander Church. However, it is used for church services on special occasions, such as weddings or Christmas. In addition, secular events take place such as concerts as part of the “Days of Early Music in the Osnabrück District”, an international music festival in the Osnabrück region.
The Church in Art
Around 1898, Franz Hecker, born in Bersenbrück, painted a “service in the old church at Wallenhorst”. The painting shows worshipers during a mass. In the first row of the bench, women in Sunday attire with hood and shawl sit with children, separated from the men. The Hecker painting is in the Museum of Cultural History in Osnabrück.
literature
- Georg Hemme: The new St. Alexander Church in Wallenhorst . Catholic parish of St. Alexander Wallenhorst (Ed.), Wallenhorst 2002
- Kurt Jünemann, Andreas Albers (arrangement): Alt-St. Alexander Wallenhorst . Working group for the history of the community of Wallenhorst and sponsor of the old church in Wallenhorst e. V. (Ed.), Wallenhorst 2002
- Kaspar Müller: The old St. Alexander Church in Wallenhorst . Publications of the working group for the history of the community of Wallenhorst and for general local history (ed.) Heft 3, Wallenhorst 1976
- Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The old Alexander Church in Wallenhorst , pp. 40–42, in: If stones could talk . Volume IV, Landbuch-Verlag, Hannover 1998, ISBN 3-7842-0558-5
Web links
- The old St. Alexander Church on the side of the municipality of Wallenhorst
- Homepage of the Friends of the Old St. Alexander Church
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 52 ° 21 ′ 20.1 ″ N , 8 ° 0 ′ 58.1 ″ E