Antoniterkirche (Frankfurt am Main)

Antoniterkirche and monastery in the Töngesgasse from the south, reconstruction by Carl Theodor Reiffenstein

The Antoniterkirche and the associated monastery in Frankfurt am Main existed from 1236 until the secularization of 1802. From 1723 a new baroque building on the site also served as a Capuchin Church . The art-historically significant monastery complex stood in the Töngesgasse ( Antonius → Tönges) named after it in Frankfurt's old town and was demolished in June 1803. Today the Konstabler car park, inaugurated in 1959, is located on the site .

history

Church of the Antonites

In 1236, the Antoniterkloster in Roßdorf , founded a year earlier, was given a courtyard in front of the Romanesque Staufen wall near the Bornheim gate from the Frankfurt citizen Bresto . With the donation, the religious also received Frankfurt citizenship.

They built a farmyard on the site and around 1430 a small Gothic hall church with a simple roof turret . According to the older city plans, it only had a four-bay nave and a choir with a 3/8 end and attached buttresses . From the inside, the headstone of an Antonite Preceptor , whose name is unknown, died in 1693 through the Frankfurt city chronicler Achilles Augustus von Lersner ; an inventory list from 1717 also named two altars, a tabernacle , a sacrament cupboard in the wall, a pulpit and two confessionals. The main building to the north of the church, probably used as a monastery, owned such. B. also the Roman stepped gable and hit the Staufen wall.

In contrast to Roßdorf and Höchst am Main , there was no hospital in Frankfurt - the Antonites had made it their main task to treat and care for those suffering from the Antonius fire - but the Frankfurt branch mainly served to buy and sell goods for the order during the Frankfurt masses . As a result, only a few religious lived in the Antonite monastery. The street in which the monastery was located was soon called Antonitergasse . In the course of time this name was corrupted to the Töngesgasse , which is still in use today .

At the beginning of the 15th century, an unknown master, probably from Madern Gerthener's school , created the relief above the entrance to the church . It showed the visit of Saint Anthony to the hermit Paul of Thebes in the desert. It was later regarded as the artistically most important ornament of the small church and is now in the Historical Museum . Matthias Grünewald , who visited the monastery several times, may have been inspired by this to depict him for the Isenheim Altarpiece.

The Antoniterkirche on the Merian engraving from 1628

In 1441 the Antonites moved their Roßdorf convent to Höchst. From then on, the clergy there also provided services in the Antoniterkloster in Frankfurt, which remained in their possession even after the introduction of the Reformation in 1533, and to which the interior furnishings were left. In the evangelical imperial city, however, the monastery no longer played a role. It was mostly empty and gradually fell into disrepair.

During the Thirty Years' War the Jesuits tried to gain a foothold in Frankfurt. They acquired the Antoniterhof and the church, but soon had to leave the city on the intervention of the Frankfurt Council. The Capuchins were more successful . On April 23, 1628, under imperial pressure, the council had to allow seven friars to move into the monastery. After the city was occupied by Swedish troops, the council decided on June 13, 1633 to expel the hated Capuchins. A few years later the council returned the monastery to the Antonites, who, however, had to undertake not to hold any public services.

City fire and a new beginning among the Capuchins

The new baroque building, 1802

Layout of the facility, 1803

The Great Christian Fire in June 1719 destroyed almost the entire district between Zeil and Schnurgasse and also severely affected the Antoniterkloster. The Antonites thereupon sold the ruins to the Capuchins with imperial permission in 1723, who thus had a branch in Frankfurt again after almost a hundred years. With the tacit approval of the council, they began to rebuild the church and monastery. The Archbishop of Mainz, Lothar Franz von Schönborn, was able to inaugurate the new building as early as 1725 .

The small baroque church was not built on the foundations of the previous Gothic building, but was swiveled 90 degrees counter-clockwise. The choir of the new building therefore faces north, the southern end of the nave with the main entrance was exactly at the level of the street edge of Töngesgasse. In 1729 the church received a high altar donated by Count Archbishop Schönborn and created by the sculptor Cornelius Andreas Donett . Its artistic quality, like that of the side and side altars as well as the ten large passion paintings by contemporaries such as B. the art historian Heinrich Sebastian Hüsgen praised as of "very good taste". Pieces obtained show clear influences of the dissolving of the massive Baroque Regency .

In 1802, the entire building complex fell to the city during the secularization , but the city had no interest in it and had it auctioned for demolition in June 1803. City architect Johann Georg Christian Hess built several spacious neo-classical tenement houses on the property . Some of the furnishings came to other Frankfurt churches, some of which can still be seen today, such as a confessional in the Leonhard Church or a crucifix belonging to the high altar in the choir of the cathedral .

After the buildings were destroyed in World War II - by the first heavy air raid on the old town on October 4, 1943 - and the rubble had been cleared in the early 1950s, the site lay fallow for several years. In the late 1950s, the architects Meid and Romeick built the September 15, 1959 as the second Frankfurt car park was inaugurated park constable with 750 parking spaces.

The Capuchins returned to Frankfurt in 1899 with the new building of the Antoniuskirche in the south west end . In 1917 they took over the Church of Our Lady , located just west of the former Antonite monastery , where a Capuchin monastery is still located today.

literature

• Hans Lohne: Frankfurt around 1850. Based on watercolors and descriptions by Carl Theodor Reiffenstein and the painterly plan by Friedrich Wilhelm Delkeskamp. Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1967, ISBN 3-7829-0015-4 .
• Rudolf Jung, Carl Wolff: The architectural monuments in Frankfurt am Main - Volume 1, Church buildings. Self-published / Völcker, Frankfurt am Main 1896.
• Fried Lübbecke: The face of the city. Based on Frankfurt plans by Faber, Merian and Delkeskamp 1552–1864. Waldemar Kramer publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1952.
• Hans Pehl, Hans-Otto Schembs (ed.): Churches and chapels in old Frankfurt. Verlag Josef Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-7820-0508-2 .

Web links

Commons : Antoniterkirche (Frankfurt)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 49 ″  N , 8 ° 41 ′ 5.8 ″  E