Bible verses on half-timbered houses

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Prov 14.26  LUT at a house in Osterwieck, dated 1579.

Bible verses on half-timbered houses belong to the group of house sayings and are a form of facade decoration through decorative writing.

Regional distribution

Most of the houses with Bible verses were built during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. They are mainly found in northern Germany, because the wide sill beam common in half-timbered construction was suitable for being filled with longer texts. The city's half-timbered houses came under plaster in the 18th century, so that Bible inscriptions from the 18th and 19th centuries usually come from rural areas.

A second regional focus of Bible texts on wooden inscriptions is the Swiss canton of Bern . The farmers there, of the Reformed denomination, had become prosperous in the 18th century and cultivated a "word piety, word mysticism and saying wisdom", which led to psalm verses being attached to the farmhouses. The houses are not built in half-timbered but in block construction.

Outside the German-speaking area, August Andrae found biblical inscriptions in Denmark (Danish, Low German and Latin) at the beginning of the 20th century, which he compared with the inscriptions in Goslar and Hanover in terms of their execution and preferred verses.

Einbeck, Neuer Markt 35, dated 1611: Ps 127,1; Ps 121.8; Jn 11.25; Isa 43,1; Ps 106.1; Ps 37: 4-5

layout

"Through their design, the inscriptions can be given a high decorative rank, above all through their frieze-like attachment on the threshold, but also through the flourishes and bows that became particularly popular in the Baroque and emphasize the beginning and end of an inscription." A rare variant the combination of the biblical text with illustrative symbols (crossbow, arrows, heart, saw), as can be seen in Osterwieck (Mittelstr. 20 and 26).

Selection of texts

The short Psalm 127 has a special position because it is a house blessing. It has been quoted very often, sometimes in full. Verses from the wisdom Psalm 37 are also very common . In addition to the Book of Psalms , the house inscriptions were often chosen from the Book of Proverbs and Jesus Sirach . Verses were taken from the New Testament that were known as core passages , such as Joh 3,16  LUT or Rom 8,31  LUT .

languages

German and Latin

Even in the Low German-speaking area, verses were often quoted in the early New High German version of Luther's Bible. In addition, however, the Vulgate remained in force.

Hebrew

In the city of Hildesheim there was, in addition to German and Latin scriptures, a house (Judenstrasse 13) with the Hebrew text of Ps 127.1  LUT .

A Hebrew inscription, dated 1811, was discovered on a wooden archway when a house in Großenmarpe was demolished ; it begins with a quote from Dtn 28,6  LUT . The same Hebrew Bible verse ברוך אתה בבאך וברוך אתה בצאתך is on an archway with a Hebrew-German inscription, dated 1758, in Schrötmar , Schloßstr. 19th

French

In northern Hesse's Huguenot villages, it was local carpenters who opened the half-timbered houses that are common in the region at the beginning of the 18th century (the Huguenots were used to stone construction from their places of origin). The application of inscriptions corresponded to the wishes of the refugees; According to their piety, these resorted to Old Testament Bible verses, some in French. The inscriptions show no particular coloring from Occitan , but a decreasing command of French orthography .

Examples:

place Street text Wording of the inscription language date Remarks
Schöneberg Bremerstr. 19th Ps 127,1  LUT ON A BEAU MAISON BATIR SI LE SEIGNEUR N'Y MET LE MAIN: NON CE N'EST QUE BATIR EN VAIN French; different from the wording of Olivier's Bible 1710 Rhymed paraphrase
Hombressen Waldstrasse 6th Ps 127,1  LUT , Mt 24,42  LUT MEISON BATIR SI LE SEIGNEUR NI MET SA MY CELA MET QUIE BATIR AN VEIN VEILLONS DONC CAR NOUS NE SAVONS PAS QUANT LE SEIGNEUR VIENDRA French; numerous orthographic abnormalities 1721

Contemporary historical backgrounds

The cities of the northern Harz region, which turned to the Reformation early on, have biblical house inscriptions in particularly large numbers, Braunschweig (before the war losses), Osterwieck and Goslar stand out. These quotations from the Bible can be interpreted as an appropriation of the Lutheran reform program by the builder, i.e. as a primary source of the history of the Reformation. In the background stood the conflict between the cities and Duke Heinrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (see also: Stadtbrand von Einbeck 1540 ).

The slogan Verbum Domini manet in aeternum (“The word of the Lord remains in eternity”) was the motto of the Saxon elector and the Protestant imperial estates. This sentence can be found twice in the Bible: 1 Petr 1.25  VUL ; Isa 40.8  VUL . The entourage of Philip of Hesse and Johann of Saxony rode into Speyer in uniform clothes in 1526 , with the embroidered initials VDMIAE on the cuffs, which impressed the contemporaries. Both the abbreviation and the Latin sentence often appear on houses in the first years of the Reformation and represent a corresponding positioning of the client. Examples: Osterwieck, Schulzenstr. 8 (1534) and Kapellenstr. 1 (1537, identified here as a quote from Isa 40), Hann. Münden , Lange Str. 85-87 (1540, in German); Einbeck , Tiedexer Str. 20 / 20a (1556).

Two houses in Braunschweig, Hinter Brüdern 5/6 (war loss) and Fallersleberstr. 15 (loss of war, bar with inscription in the city museum), were built in 1531 shortly after the introduction of the Reformation in the city; here "detailed quotations from the Luther Bible were chosen as inscriptions with care."

Duderstadt, Westertorstr. 22nd

In Duderstadt , the Reformation was introduced in 1559, but continued in the 1570s there by the Jesuits supported the Counter-Reformation one. This led some homeowners to have Lutheran statements posted on the facades of their homes. The most obvious is the inscription on the Westertorstrasse house. 22/24: THE HOLY CHRIST OF GOD'S SON VND THE WORLD'S HEALER IS BORN IS VNS ZV GVTE MAN WHO WE WERE LOST IN SVNDEN ANNO 1600 // ROM 4 BUT WHO DOES NOT DO WORKS, BUT WHO MAKES THE GODLESS JUSTICE HOST HIS GLAVBE CALCULATED ZVR JUSTICE NB . “As a house inscription, this biblical passage is rather unusual and points ... to a decidedly Protestant builder who can be expected to have a high level of education. Because of the space on the first floor, the inscription ... is particularly focused on by the beholder. "

A traumatic event such as the city fire of Osnabrück (1613) was thematized in the house inscriptions and also led to the choice of biblical passages such as Isa 54,8  LUT or Hi 1,21  LUT , which were felt to be suitable for dealing with accidents.

reception

Since biblical inscriptions are a form in which the Bible is present in public spaces, they can become the subject of a sermon or a series of sermons. In connection with the anniversary of the Reformation , there were themed tours in some cities where the historical biblical inscriptions were explained.

Web links

Commons : Bible verses on half-timbered houses  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christine Wulf: The inscriptions of the city of Hameln. In: German inscriptions online. Retrieved June 2, 2018 .
  2. ^ House sayings: a tradition of reformed areas. (PDF) Retrieved June 2, 2018 .
  3. ^ A b G. Ulrich Großmann: Half-timbered in Germany . 2006, p. 81 .
  4. ↑ Christine Magin: The inscriptions of the city of Goslar. In: German inscriptions online. Retrieved May 2, 2018 .
  5. ^ August Andrae: House inscriptions . 1906, p. 184 (According to Andraes, this verse has "experienced an enormous spread"; he mentions houses in Bremen and Hanover).
  6. ↑ a b Ingrid Henze: The inscriptions of the city of Helmstedt. Retrieved May 2, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Christine Wulf: The inscriptions of the city of Hildesheim. Retrieved June 2, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Elfriede Drefenstedt: A Hebrew house inscription in Großenmarpe. Retrieved June 2, 2018 .
  9. ^ Heinrich Stiewe: Living and everyday culture of rural Jews in Ostwestfalen-Lippe . In: Manfred Keller, Jens Murken (Hrsg.): Jewish diversity between Ruhr and Weser . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-12334-3 , pp. 127 .
  10. ^ Alfred Rauhaus : Brief ecclesiastical studies: Reformed churches from inside and outside . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-525-63374-8 , pp. 68 .
  11. ^ Anja Overbeck: Folk language documents as evidence of language contact and language change . In: Anja Overbeck, Wolfgang Schweickard, Harald Völker (Eds.): Lexicon, Varietät, Philology: Romance Studies. Günter Holtus on his 65th birthday . De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-026228-5 , pp. 194-197 .
  12. ↑ Klaus Thiele: On the social history of the Protestant town and church building in Osterwieck of the 16th century. Retrieved on June 3, 2018 : "Characteristic for the Osterwieck framework are the 22 psalm verses on 14 houses."
  13. ↑ Klais Thiele: The word became city. (PDF) p. 3 , accessed on June 1, 2018 .
  14. ^ Klaus Thiele: The word became city. (PDF) p. 13 , accessed on June 1, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Jan Martin Lies: Between War and Peace . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, p. 49-50 .
  16. ^ Klaus Thiele: The word became city. (PDF) pp. 9–12 , accessed on June 1, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Sabine Wehking: The inscriptions of the city of Braunschweig from 1529 to 1671. Retrieved on June 2, 2018 .
  18. ^ Klaus Thiele: The word became city. (PDF) pp. 20–21 , accessed on June 1, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Göttingen District No. 241, Duderstadt, Westertorstr. 22/24. In: German inscriptions online. Retrieved June 1, 2018 .
  20. ↑ Sabine Wehking: The inscriptions of the city of Osnabrück. In: German inscriptions online. Retrieved June 2, 2018 .
  21. ↑ God's houses: What Osnabrück house inscriptions tell about faith. (PDF) (No longer available online.) In: Ev. Reformed community of Osnabrück. 2011, formerly in the original ; accessed on June 2, 2018 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.reformiert.de  
  22. ↑ Biblical inscriptions on the wall. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. March 5, 2003, accessed on June 3, 2018 (event organized by the Evangelical Church Community of Burscheid).
  23. ↑ Talking houses (Osterwieck). In: Luther Experience. Retrieved June 2, 2018 .
  24. ↑ Talking houses - contemporary witnesses of the Reformation. In: City of Duderstadt. Retrieved June 2, 2018 .