Village church

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dorfkirche is the art-historical and folkloric name for the cult building of a village community; Church and state administrative categories do not use this term. Decisive for the definition of art history and folklore is not the rank of the church (parish, mother or subsidiary church, chapel), but the design based on the essence of the village way of life. It is usually of medieval to early modern origin and is often the center of the village's settlement . Not all churches in the country are therefore village churches; Apart from monastery and pilgrimage churches, most of the rural churches of the later modern period can only be described as such with restrictions.

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

Dating, architectural styles and forms of jewelry

Village churches are often the oldest structurally preserved evidence of the settlement of a landscape. If you look at the times of origin, you can partially understand the paths of Christianization, for example on the Romanesque Road in Saxony-Anhalt.

Beginning in the Romanesque period , the spatial and design development of the village church was linked to the development of the village and the agricultural production conditions in general, and to regional upswings and crises in particular. At all times, village churches have been rebuilt and expanded.

Since written sources on the building history of a village church are only available in exceptional cases, attempts to date them are associated with considerable problems .

Building design: building material and floor plan types

Floor plan types according to style epochs (problematic)
Floor plan types according to economic expenditure, which also requires an earlier construction period

At least for the new federal states, mainly due to the archaeological finds in Niederlausitz, it is now assumed that wooden churches were first built by the new settlers in the areas of the high medieval state development in Germania Slavica .

Only after a gap of 20 to 30 years, i.e. about a generation, were the wooden churches replaced by stone buildings, above all to save the considerable construction costs, because the freshly cleared fields first needed a run-up to full yield. The material that was available on site was used. So today one can distinguish between the field stone churches and the brick village churches . The choice of building material and the type of floor plan was also heavily dependent on the economic performance of the village, which is primarily a result of the size of the district and the quality of the soil (harvest yield). The brick is obviously the more expensive building material compared to the field stone. Therefore encounter z. In Brandenburg, for example, brick village churches are not only found on the sandy soils of the Havelland valley with few boulders, but also in the monastery's own villages (e.g. the villages around Dobrilugk monastery ). Because of the construction costs, not a few villages in the Middle Ages remained without a stone church, but had to be content with wooden or half-timbered churches .

In the absence of written sources on the building process, building materials and the type of floor plan are usually used as criteria for dating. A process-like course is assumed: from carefully squared field stone to simply split, unquared boulder (brick buildings are mostly younger), from the multi-tiered floor plan to simple hall. These criteria are fitted into the common style epochs. But already has Bachmann noted that the four Dorfkirchen- floor plans " complete system ", " square choir church ", " choir tower " and " apse hall " within the same epoch, namely the " late Roman ", occur. In the meantime, however, the stylistic terms are problematized.

If you group the floor plan types according to their cost (careful squaring and multiple staggered floor plans are more expensive, especially a ship-wide tower), a (not stylistically oriented) course over time can be seen here as well: builders who have enough income to buy the most expensive type to be achieved are also those who are the first to be able to replace the wooden structures. From the point of view of the “economic factor” in village church building, it becomes clear that the square choir is not a process-like apse church reduced by the apse , but evidently appears at the same time (cf. Bachmann). It is undisputed that village churches with uneven boulders or mixed masonry (lower cost) were not built until the late Middle Ages.

Extensions (sacristies, halls of the dead, tombs)

In the vast majority of cases, the sacristies are not part of the church's first stone structure, but were often added in the Middle Ages. Crypts were mostly created in the late Middle Ages and in the early modern period, the halls of the dead in modern times.

The village church movement

At the beginning of the 20th century, the so-called German village church movement emerged due to extensive changes in the countryside. An important representative of this movement was Hans von Lüpke , who from 1907 published the magazine “Die Dorfkirche, Illustrated Monthly for the Care of Religious Life in Local and Popular Form”. The subtitle indicates the content orientation of the movement.

List of known examples

Denmark

Typical Danish village church, white plastered (Sandby)

Germany

Netherlands

Austria

In Austria the village churches are consistently the Catholic parish churches and branch churches, many small hamlets in the country have only one local chapel. Today's Protestant churches are almost without exception secondary.

The lists see category: Roman Catholic Dean's Office (Austria)

Poland

The Pomeranian village churches (here: Iwięcino / Eventin) are similar to the Mecklenburg ones.

Russia

Sweden

Switzerland

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Dorfkirche  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article Dorfkirche (by Erich Bachmann) in: Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte , Volume 4, Stuttgart 1958, pp. 245-274 ( online ).
  2. ^ Ulrich Waack: Village church building and economy. About the connection between the structural form of medieval village churches on the Barnim and settlement features. In: Churches of the Middle Ages in Brandenburg and Berlin. Archeology and building research. Edited by Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation, Petersberg 2007, pp. 26–37; the same: church building and economy. On the relationship between the structural features of medieval village churches on the Barnim and its economic and settlement history , Berlin 2009.
  3. ^ Erich Bachmann: Art landscapes in the Romanesque small church building in Germany. In: Journal of the German Association for Art Research, Vol. 8, 1941, pp. 159–172.
  4. ↑ Robert Suckale : The uselessness of the common stylistic terms and ideas of development. Using the example of French Gothic architecture of the 12th and 13th centuries. In: Friedrich Möbius / Helga Sciurie (ed.): Style and epoch. Periodization questions, Dresden 1989, pp. 231–250: “That the equation Romanesque = round arch, Gothic = pointed arch is not correct, has long been known and should be part of everyone's reliable knowledge.” (P. 232)
  5. ↑ To this day, the settlement concept of the village is tied to an existing infrastructure such as a church or inn, cf. for example Statistics Austria (ed.): Ortverzeichnis 2001. Wien 2005, joint introduction to the Länderbände, p. 20 (e.g. Tyrol ; pdf, 3.2 MB, statistik.at)

literature

  • Siegfried Scharfe: German village churches , Königstein / Leipzig 1941.
  • Erich Bachmann: Artistic landscapes in the Romanesque small church building in Germany. In: Journal of the German Association for Art Research, Vol. 8, 1941, pp. 159–172.
  • Erich Bachmann: Dorfkirche In: Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte , Volume 4, Stuttgart 1958, pp. 245-274 ( online ).
  • Florian Monheim , Hans Müller: Dorfkirchen in Eastern Germany , Cologne 1991. ISBN 3-7701-2801-X
  • Markus Agthe: Archaeological investigations and historical building observations on churches in Lower Lusatia and the neighboring Elbe-Elster area. In: Insights. Archaeological contributions for the south of the state of Brandenburg 2002 (= work reports on the preservation of soil monuments in Brandenburg 12), Wünsdorf 2003, pp. 217–288.
  • Ulrich Waack: Building types of medieval village churches in Berlin and the Mittelmark. In: Bernd Janowski / Dirk Schumann (ed.): Dorfkirchen. Contributions to architecture, furnishings and preservation of monuments, Lukas Verlag Berlin (Churches in Rural Areas Volume 3), Berlin 2004, pp. 121-138, ISBN 3-936872-21-X .
  • Christofer Herrmann: Who built and financed the rural parish churches in medieval Prussia? In: Church in the village. Their significance for the cultural development of rural society in “Prussia”, 13. – 18. Century (exhibition catalog), Berlin 2002, pp. 49–56.
  • Matthias Friske : Medieval churches in western Fläming and Vorflaming , Lukas Verlag Berlin (churches in rural areas, vol. 5), Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86732-004-7 .
  • Peter Findeisen and Dirk Höhne: The village churches in Halle (monument sites - monument values ​​vol. 3). State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt - State Museum for Prehistory, Halle 2006, ISBN 3-939414-00-X .
  • Bernd Janowski / Dirk Schumann (eds.): Dorfkirchen. Contributions to architecture, furnishings and preservation of monuments , Lukas Verlag Berlin (Churches in Rural Areas Volume 3), Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936872-21-X
  • Rainer Müller: Medieval village churches in Thuringia , Erfurt 2001, ISBN 3-910166-49-0 .
  • Wolfgang Schenkluhn (Ed.): The medieval village church in the new federal states I. Research status, research perspectives, problems of use (= Hallesche Contributions to Art History 3), Halle 2001, ISSN  1439-6408 .
  • Wolfgang Schenkluhn (Ed.): The medieval village church in the new federal states II. Function, form, meaning (= Hallesche Contributions to Art History 8), Halle 2006, ISBN 3-86010-867-0 .
  • Medieval churches in Brandenburg and Berlin. Archeology and building research. Edited by Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation, Petersberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-86568-254-3 .
  • Norbert Buske / Gerd Baier: Village churches in the regional church Greifswald , Berlin 1984
  • Tilo Schöfbeck: Village churches in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , in: Wolfgang Schenkluhn (Hrsg.): The medieval village church in the new federal states. Research status, research perspectives, problems of use (= Hallesche Contributions to Art History 3), Halle 2001, pp. 27–32.
  • Ulrich Waack: Church building and economy. On the relationship between the structural features of medieval village churches on the Barnim and its economic and settlement history , Berlin 2009.
  • Series Churches in Rural Areas published by Lukas Verlag, Berlin