Old church tower (Gruiten)
The old church tower is the tower of the former Roman Catholic parish church Alt St. Nikolaus von Gruiten , a district of Haans ( Mettmann district ) in North Rhine-Westphalia .
history
Alt St. Nikolaus was built in the second half of the 11th century and was called capella in the liber valoris around 1300 . The church is one of the earliest Romanesque buildings in the Bergisches Land. The small church was dominated by its tower, which took up the full width of the single- nave , two-bay nave and was walled with it in a bond with no dividing line in the side view. A narrower choir bay was attached to the nave, which was followed by a semicircular apse.
The old church was laid down in 1894 except for the Romanesque tower. It had already been replaced in 1877-79 by the neo-Romanesque church of Neu St. Nikolaus further east in the village. The lower parts of the tower are made of coal sandstone and have an upper floor made of tuff stone, which has two double windows on each side, framed by large round arched panels, with a central column and cube capital.
The old Nikolauskirche was isolated above the village of Gruiten. The road leading past the church was not built until the 19th century. In fact, the place of worship was not built by residents, but by strangers. The name of the fortification on the southern edge of the cemetery as the “Welschenmauer” is evidence of them. These "Welschen" were (southern European) long-distance trade merchants who were on the Strata Coloniensis 700 m away , the most important early long-distance road to the north, and who had set up a base in Gruiten under the patronage of Nikolaus von Myra . This patron saint of seafarers and merchants guaranteed the protection of the church in a network of relay stations that provided the caravans with accommodation, food and also spiritual support from their own priests.
The earliest evidence of this extraordinary position of the Gruiten Church is the early register of taxes in the liber Valoris from 1308, which goes back to older sources and shows a contribution quantum for the Nikolauskirche that, compared to the Haan Church, was more than eleven times the due there . Accordingly, the financially powerful merchants could afford to build their church in Gruiten, in contrast to the Haan church, “in one go”. Such a construction project would never have been possible for the inhabitants of the comparatively poor and small village of Gruiten in a very short time.
Only the change in the trade routes since the beginning of the 15th century changed the function of the Nikolauskirche near Gruiten. It suffered the fate of many other Nikolauskirchen outside the villages and towns, which gradually became burial churches or, as the settlement area expanded, became parish churches.
The age of the old Nikolauskirche near Gruiten is occasionally disputed by local historians. It can be countered by the fact that the Gruitener Kaufmannskirche, located south of the Wenaswald, corresponded with the Nikolauskapelle on Werdener Markt. The latter was the next relay station located at the northern exit of the Wenas forest between Gruiten and Werden. The Werden counterpart was consecrated in 1047 and it cannot be assumed that its counterpart was built more than 150 years later. In scientific research, when determining the age of individual St. Nicholas' churches, it is emphasized that, given the generally sparse evidence of the merchant churches, one must always assume that the early highways were opened up by a well-ordered and well thought-out system. With a secure knowledge of individual elements in this system, conclusions can also be drawn about the age of the other bases.
Overall, the tower of the Old Nicholas Church is a nationally significant testimony to the early cooperative organization of European long-distance trade in the 11th century, which had placed itself under the protection of the church with the patronage of St. Nicholas.
As part of the renovation of the tower in 2015, Felix Droese designed a window in the chapel there with motifs from the life of St. Nicholas.
literature
- Clemen, Paul: The art monuments of the Rhine province, Volume 3: The art monuments of the cities of Barmen, Elberfeld, Remscheid and the districts of Lennep, Mettmann, Solingen , Düsseldorf 1894.
- Dehio, Georg: Handbook of the German art monuments. North Rhine-Westphalia , Volume 1: Rhineland, Munich 2005.
- Jürgen Brand (Ed.): 940 years of St. Nicholas at Gruiten . Mettmann 2015, ISBN 978-3-00-048765-1
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 13 ′ 38.4 " N , 7 ° 0 ′ 26.4" E