Apollonia Chapel (Fraulautern)
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The Apollonia Chapel is a late Gothic cemetery chapel in the old cemetery in the Fraulautern district of the district town of Saarlouis .
history
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The Apollonia Chapel, built by Fraulautern as a parish church in 1540 (at that time initially parish church of St. Trinitatis ) is one of the oldest buildings in the town. As the population grew, more space was needed to accommodate all churchgoers in the church. In 1739 , a larger church was built at the former women's convent , the Fraulautern Abbey (today's elementary school in the old monastery ), which was then the parish church of Fraulautern from 1814 .
The St. Trinity Chapel has not served as a parish church since then and was renamed St. Apollonia in honor of Apollonia von Greßlich , whose family generously financed the construction of the church in 1540 . The new monastery church was then named after the name of the previous parish church St. Trinitatis and the latter was dedicated to the cemetery chapel of the old cemetery . In order to clearly delimit the catchment area of the Fraulautern Abbey and that of the St. Trinity Church at that time , the parish of Kirchhofen was founded with the latter .
At that time, this was a district of Fraulautern and the mother church of several parishes until 1808.
In 1884 it was decided to build a new parish church, the foundation stone was laid in 1893, the consecration took place in 1895. The monastery church was demolished due to dilapidation .
On December 1, 1944, air raids destroyed large parts of Fraulautern, including the parish church and Apollonia chapel, with the tower still standing today . The current parish church of the village, the Church of the Holy Trinity , the cornerstone of which was laid in 1949, bears its dedication. On November 8, 1953, the foundation stone was laid for the reconstruction of the Apollonia Chapel, which was inaugurated on April 11, 1954.
Location and surroundings
The Apollonia Chapel is located at the entrance of the Old Cemetery , in the direction of Lebacher Straße, in the center of Fraulautern . It is only about 100 meters away from the Fraulautern parish church of the Holy Trinity .
building
The main difference between the chapel, which was largely destroyed in World War II, and the present-day chapel is that the interior of the rebuilt chapel has no pillars. In addition, there is a straight ceiling supported by dark wood instead of the significantly lower vault from the pre-war period. The windows are smaller and there are three in each side wall in the nave. Another five windows can be found in the chancel. All of them were designed by the Mainz artist Alois Plum , who later, in 1979/1980, also designed the windows of the parish church. Before the war there was a roof in the area of the crucifix and the graves in front of the tower, which was not used during the reconstruction.
The original floor plan of the chapel was retained during the reconstruction.
Tower and bell
The chapel has extremely thick masonry, especially in the originally preserved area of the tower. The tower is about 10 meters high, has been standing since 1540 and was almost completely preserved during the war. For this tower, the Otto bell foundry from Hemelingen / Bremen cast a bell with the strike tone a ′ ′ and a weight of 80 kg in 1930. This bell hangs today in the miners' memorial from 1990. In front of the tower there are graves of former pastors von Fraulautern, as well as other memorial plaques and a large crucifix.
Today there is a bell at the top of the tower , which is rung by hand through a rope. After the chapel was rebuilt in 1954, it was cast by the Saarlouiser bell foundry in Saarlouis-Fraulautern, which was founded by Karl (III) Otto from the Otto bell foundry in Bremen-Hemelingen and Alois Riewer from Saarland in 1953. The bell rings on it ′ ′; it weighs 24 kg and has a diameter of 240 mm.
When the chapel was destroyed in the bombing of 1944, the previous bell cracked through the tower, which otherwise remained almost intact. This bell dates from 1930. After the reconstruction it was not found at first, later it was discovered that it was damaged by a crack so that it was no longer suitable for ringing.
Today this bell hangs on a memorial of the miners from 1990, which initially stands in front of St. Joseph and since 2017 in front of the Holy Trinity .
Others
In 2004 a fire was set in the chapel, which had been open all day, and a large part of the interior and furnishings were destroyed. At the altar, a small piece of bone of Saint Apollonia is placed in the walls as a relic . In the interior there is a large painting depicting the crucifixion of Jesus. On the left of the altar there is a statue of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus in her arms, on the right a statue of St. Apollonia with pliers and tooth, directly above the relic. Another existing statue is that of Padre Pio , with dates of birth and death. If you leave the chapel, in the nave opposite the altar you will find a statue of John Nepomuk , mounted high on the wall. On the outside of the chapel there is a walled stone with the dates of the two world wars in memory of their victims, as well as the dates of the construction, destruction and reconstruction of the chapel. There is also a stone memorial with Mary and the crucified Jesus in the direction of the cemetery .
In summer, the chapel is mainly used as a cemetery chapel for death offices and is made available to the Pater Pio community.
Traditionally, on December 23rd at 5:00 p.m., a Christian mountain mass , with miners' association and sermon on the mount , held by the Saarland Prime Minister , is celebrated in the church.
On the name day of St. Apollonia, February 9, a solemn high mass is also held annually in the chapel.
organ
Instead of a large pipe organ , a harmonium serves as a musical accompaniment to church services. The instrument comes from the Emil Müller Harmonium Factory and was probably made between 1900 and 1930. In addition to five registers (registers 2, 4 and 5 are attenuations through flap systems), the player has two coupling points and other playing aids available. The instrument also has two so-called knee registers , with which the player can select a tutti (left knee) and a forte (right knee). As usual for a harmonium, the keyboard is divided into two halves: the bass on the left and the treble on the right . These two halves partly (3 + 6 are continuous) have separate registers, comparable to the separately available registers on a two-manual organ .
The disposition is as follows:
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- Playing aids : Coupling : Forte (bass), Forte (treble), Tutti (knee register), Forte (knee register), bass coupler , treble coupler
If the treble coupler is selected, the treble is coupled one octave upwards, if the bass coupler is selected the bass is coupled one octave downwards.
literature
- Saarforschungsgemeinschaft (ed.): The art monuments of the Ottweiler and Saarlouis districts, edited by Walter Zimmermann, 2nd, unchanged edition from 1934, Saarbrücken 1976, pp. 188–191.
Web links
- Website of the parish Fraulautern "www.3faltigkeit-fraulautern.de"
- Website of the village of Fraulautern "www.fraulautern.net"
Coordinates: 49 ° 19 ′ 35.7 " N , 6 ° 45 ′ 53.8" E
Individual evidence
- ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto bells - family and company history of the bell foundry dynasty Otto . Self-published, Essen 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063109-2 , p. 588, here especially 536 .
- ↑ Gerhard Reinhold: Church bells - Christian world cultural heritage, illustrated using the example of the bell founder Otto, Hemelingen / Bremen . Nijmegen / NL 2019, p. 556, here in particular p. 496 , urn : nbn: nl: ui: 22-2066 / 204770 (doctoral thesis at Radboud University Nijmegen).
- ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto bells . 2019, p. 567 .