Kummerow village church
The village church in Kummerow in the Mecklenburg Lake District in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is a historic church building, the current shape and furnishings of which essentially go back to a renovation in the 18th century.
history
The church, originally consecrated to St. Nicholas , was founded in 1222 and is the oldest church on Lake Kummerower . The oldest part of the church, the base of the eastern half of the hall building, is made of granite ashlars and is likely to come from the original building. The church was then later expanded to the west, whereby the present-day building, which was mainly made of bricks, was built without a tower in the pre-Reformation period. The church patronage lay with the local rulers, the Maltzahn family , whose coat of arms can often be found inside the church on grave slabs, stained glass and patron s boxes. Presumably the destruction of the Thirty Years' War led to a comprehensive renovation of the church under Axel Albrecht Moltzan in the 18th century , which in addition to its half-timbered tower on the west gable , the reduced portals and windows and its baroque furnishings, also received the plastered facade. The renovations were completed in 1750. The Grüneberg organ was completed in 1854, the organ prospectus in 1855. The church chronicle was lost in the Second World War , so that historical details about the building are largely in the dark. In the second half of the 20th century, the church was renovated on various occasions under conservation aspects, with the organ once again receiving authentic tin pipes, the historical glass paintings smuggled to Lübeck for renovation in 1987/88 and missing parts of the furnishings being reconstructed from preserved fragments.
description
architecture
The church is a plastered, rectangular hall building with an attached, rectangular lattice tower with a baroque hood. In the interior of the hall, the altar area faces east, while an organ loft has been drawn in to the west , through which access to the tower is also made. A patronage box is built into the south wall of the hall building . A sacristy attached to the north was probably part of the original building, long served as the Maltzahn family burial place, was a morgue after 1960 and has served as a boiler room since 1993.
Furnishing
The wooden pulpit altar has a built-in pulpit . The altar, which is divided into more strict forms in the middle, is adorned with an ornate frame made of acanthus leaves . The altar is crowned by a figure of Jesus, which was reconstructed in the late 20th century by Eckard Labs from the only remaining feet of a historical figure.
The patronage box forms a superstructure of the stalls resting on posts on the south wall. The parapet of the lodge and the staircase leading up from the west are richly decorated with allegorical paintings. The box, which is higher than the pulpit, is glazed. Like the altar, the box is adorned with an acanthus top, in the middle of which the alliance coat of arms of the Maltzahn and von Plessen families is emblazoned.
The stained glass, which is now grouped together in a window in the south wall at the entrance to the patron s lodge, dates from around 1600 and, before the renovation, had fallen victim to the ravages of time and the vandalism of the village youth. They were restored from swept up broken pieces in 1987/88 by a restorer in Lübeck and are now provided with an additional protective window. The motifs mainly show the Maltzahn family coat of arms.
The organ gallery in the west shows numerous other allegorical paintings on its parapet. The church organ is a Grüneberg organ. It was made in 1854 by the organ builder Grüneberg in Stettin and is the second instrument he made (Opus 2).
There are two bells in the tower of the church. The bronze bell was cast by Schünemann in Demmin in 1837 and bears the inscription For God's honor I call you here when suffering and pain move the heart . The cast iron bell with the inscription Be happy in hope, patient in tribulation, stop praying! came from the Apolda bell foundry in 1960 .
Allegorical painting on the gallery parapet
Stained glass
Belfry
On the south wall is the grave slab of Jost Maltzahn from the 16th century with a large family coat of arms, on the west wall there are the grave slabs of his widow Ilse Hahn († 1575) and his son Hartwig Maltzahn († 1591), each of whom was the deceased show life-size half-sculptures surrounded by coats of arms. A special feature of these grave slabs, as well as the baroque relief depiction of a crucifixion scene on the south wall, is that they are made of sandstone , which Kummerow does not have and which had to be procured from Sweden.
The pre-Reformation holy water font on the west wall still indistinctly shows a St. Andrew's cross .
Grave slab Ilse Hahn († 1575)
Grave slab Hartwig Maltzahn († 1591)
Holy water font
literature
- Christa Heinke: Church leader of the Evang. Kummerow parish , Kummerow 2006
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 46 ′ 7 " N , 12 ° 50 ′ 23.5" E