Village church Alt-Lönnewitz

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Entrance portal of the Alt-Lönnewitz church ruins on the south side

The ruin of the former village church Alt-Lönnewitz is a monument in Lönnewitz in southern Brandenburg , part of the Mühlberg district of Koßdorf in the Elbe-Elster district .

The ruin is located in a wooded area north of today's federal highway 183 . The area once belonged to the location of the disappeared village of Alt-Lönnewitz. There the church and the adjoining cemetery stood south of the property, which is no longer in existence, in a park between trees.

The church, which dates back to the 13th century, was originally taxable for the church in Altbelgern and later became a branch church of Schmerkendorf . The church suffered severe damage during the Thirty Years' War and was only rebuilt from 1682 by the Lönnewitz liege lord Dam von Weltewitz. After the Second World War , the site was once again destroyed and the place of worship was finally abandoned as a result of years of military closure. The sparse remains of the church are among the last structural traces of the former village of Alt-Lönnewitz.

Building description and history

North side
North-east side inside the church ruins

middle Ages

The old Lönnewitz church, which dates from the 13th century, was made of bricks and lawn iron stone . The nave had a continuous gable roof and pointed arched windows that can still be seen in the remains of the wall today .

The village of Lönnewitz was originally taxable to the church in Altbelgern , whose patron was the Nimbschen monastery . Old Belgians, however, soon lost their importance. In 1529 Lönnewitz , who had eleven Hufner , came to Parochie Schmerkendorf . The Nimbschen monastery was dissolved in 1536, the year after the death of the last abbess Margaretha von Haubitz. The Reformation had already found its way into the region at that time . The introduction of the new teaching was completed in the Liebenwerda office , to which Lönnewitz was administratively assigned, towards the middle of the 16th century.

The church suffered severe damage during the Thirty Years' War . Among other things, troops of the Swedish general Johan Banér camped from January to early summer 1637 in Torgau, just a few kilometers to the west . They roamed the adjacent Elbe-Elster area , plundered the places and set them on fire. Lönnewitz was also almost razed to the ground. The tower on the west side of the church collapsed and the interior was largely destroyed. More than thirty years after the end of the war, the church lay desolate. For this reason, preaching took place at times in the house of Herr von Weltewitz.

Reconstruction after the Thirty Years War

Under the Lönnewitz feudal lord Dam von Weltewitz, the church was rebuilt from 1682 with simple furnishings. To the right of the altar stood the liege's church seat in a bay window . Shortly before his death in 1712, Dam von Weltewitz divided the town into Alt- and Neu-Lönnewitz. Therefore, another church chair was built on the left side of the altar for the Neu-Lönnewitz manor owners. Other pieces of equipment of the church were an altar cover donated by the feudal lord in 1682 and another altar cover donated by the later heirs with the year 1741 embroidered on it. The coat of arms of the noble von Weltewitz family was attached to the altar, the choir and the pew.

The steeple was not restored. As a replacement, a wooden frame was erected on the south side of the church, on which the bronze bell donated by Barbara Maria von Hackin in 1721 from the Dresden bell foundry Weinhold was hung. Most of the church's altarpieces were abducted during and after the Thirty Years War. However, a brass font from the time of its creation has been preserved. The Schmerkendorf local researcher and teacher Friedrich Stoy described further items of equipment in an essay published in 1925. At that time there is said to have been a pewter bowl from 1732 and a candlestick from 1794 in the church . The pulpit bore the von Weltewitz coat of arms and the year 1741. The wooden church door bore the initials of Dam von Weltewitz and the year 1688 ("D v. W. 1688").

The church served as a burial place for the feudal lords. Below the choir, under a sandstone slab, was the grave of a von Weltewitz who died in 1601 and on the west side of the church were the tombstones of another Weltewitz who died in 1632 and his wife, as well as other graves of this noble family.

Another piece of equipment in the Alt-Lönnewitz Church was a life-size portrait of a Frau von Weltewitz from 1649, which existed until the early 1930s and originally hung in the Alt-Lönnewitz manor house. According to legend, this so-called white woman walked as a ghost through the rooms of the old manor house.

Destruction and abandonment of the church after the Second World War

View of the church ruins from the southeast

Towards the end of the Second World War , Lönnewitz and the Falkenberg-Lönnewitz airfield there were captured by the Red Army at the end of April 1945 . About 300 meters south of the airfield and north of today's main road, a fence was erected so that a large part of the village of Alt-Lönnewitz was henceforth in a restricted military area . The residents could no longer get on their land and their houses. The church was also located within the restricted area, which ultimately led to its decline. Due to the temporary lifting of the restricted area, there was temporary hope of repopulating the village. It was broken up when the old Lönnewitz residents were finally resettled in 1947. The buildings were used by the Red Army and most of them soon fell into disrepair. The Alt-Lönnewitz Church was also badly affected. The year 1948 is considered to be the unofficial end of the village. A large part of the old location of Alt-Lönnewitz was finally declared a restricted area that year.

After the restricted area border of the airfield had been relocated some distance behind the trunk road (today's federal road), the residents used the ruins of the former village to extract building material from it. The church was not spared either. Some inventory was saved from the church in the course of the resettlement in 1947, despite the previous looting. The bell and some sacred objects such as a pewter communion chalice and a communion jug from 1842 were brought to the Schmerkendorf mother church .

The church was later finally abandoned. Parts of the church were used in the early 1960s to rebuild the Hohen Thekla church in Leipzig, which had been badly damaged by arson.

State of construction of the monument

Memorial stone in memory of Alt-Lönnewitz

Only a few remains of the wall overgrown with ivy remain from the medieval church building . Above ground, they are among the last structural traces of the village of Alt-Lönnewitz. The area of ​​the church and the former cemetery is now almost completely forested and overgrown by thickets. Almost nothing can be seen of the park and the cemetery, which used to be surrounded by a wall. After the end of the war, Walter Tennert, resident of Lönnewitz, who had just returned home from Soviet captivity , was buried there as the last to die.

The few remains of the church have now been placed under monument protection. Inside the ruins, a memorial stone with the dates "1251–1948" reminds of the village of Alt-Lönnewitz.

literature

  • Friedrich Stoy : Lönnewitz . In: The Black Magpie . No. 295/296 , 1925.
  • M. Karl Fitzkow : The little church to Lönnewitz . In: The Black Magpie . No. 473 , 1934.

Periodicals

Web links

Commons : Dorfkirche Alt Lönnewitz  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c database of the Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and State Archaeological Museum ; accessed November 11, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h M. Karl Fitzkow : The little church in Lönnewitz . In: The Black Magpie . No. 473 , 1934 (free local history supplement to the Liebenwerdaer Kreisblatt ).
  3. ↑ a b c d e Günther Bogus: Altlönnewitz - a disappeared village in the home calendar for the old district of Bad Liebenwerda , the Mückenberger Ländchen, outskirts on Schraden and Uebigau-Falkenberg . Ed .: Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Heimatkunde eV Bad Liebenwerda. No. 57 . Gräser Verlag Großenhain, Bad Liebenwerda 2007, ISBN 3-932913-00-0 , p. 140-144 .
  4. ↑ Lange: Old Belgians once . In: The Black Magpie . No. 424 , 1931 (free local history supplement to the Liebenwerdaer Kreisblatt ).
  5. ↑ M. Mühlhaus: From the oldest history of our homeland . In: The Black Magpie . No. 564 , 1939 (free local history supplement to the Liebenwerdaer Kreisblatt ).
  6. ↑ Ulrich Grober: Blood and Tulips . In: The time . No. 10 . Hamburg March 1, 2007, p. 96 ( zeit.de [accessed on November 11, 2016]).
  7. ^ Heinrich Nebelsieck : News for the local chronicles . In: The Black Magpie . No. 199 , 1913 (free local history supplement to the Liebenwerdaer Kreisblatt ).
  8. ^ A b Sybille Gramlich / Irmelin Küttner: District Elbe-Elster Part 1: The city of Herzberg / Elster and the offices of Falkenberg / Uebigau, Herzberg, Schlieben and Schönewalde , p. 298, ISBN 978-3-88462-152-3 .
  9. ^ Friedrich Stoy : Lönnewitz . In: The Black Magpie . No. 295/296 , 1925 (free local history supplement to the Liebenwerdaer Kreisblatt ).
  10. ↑ The portrait of the “White Woman” was in relatively poor condition at the beginning of the 1930s and in need of restoration, so it was probably removed at that time. The Liebenwerda district museum tried to get the picture into its possession.
  11. ↑ Annerose and Gerhard Kulpe: Open Monument Day (PDF) in: Community letter October - November 2015 of the Evangelical Lutheran St. Matthew Church Community in Leipzig Northeast, p. 16; accessed November 11, 2016.
  12. ↑ Margit Maul: More from the history of the Hohen Thekla church (PDF) in the December 2012 - January 2013 community letter of the Evangelical Lutheran Matthäuskirchgemeinde Leipzig Nordost, p. 16; accessed November 11, 2016.
  13. ↑ As of 2016.
  14. ↑ The local history series Die Schwarze Elster was originally a free supplement to the Liebenwerdaer Kreisblatt, which has since been discontinued .

Coordinates: 51 ° 32 '35 "  N , 13 ° 13' 50.1"  E