Mechow village church

Mechow village church, on the south side (right outer wall) you can see the bricked up lay gate

The Mechow village church is a Protestant church in Mechow , a district of the Feldberger Seenlandschaft municipality in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . The building, which was built entirely from field stones towards the end of the 13th century, can be assigned to the late Romanesque era and is of particular importance due to its size and unusual construction; it is not dedicated to any particular saint .

history

In the area around today's Mechow, the Slavic Redarian tribe settled after the Great Migration . With the assumption of office of Norbert von Xanten , the founder of the Premonstratensian Order , who had succeeded in occupying the vacant bishopric in Havelberg , the Christian missionary work of the Slavs was further intensified after the Wendekreuzzug in 1147. At that time, Mechow was under the secular rule of the Ascanians , who gave it to the Premonstratensians of the Broda Monastery , a branch of the Havelberg Premonstratensian Monastery , in 1271 . In 1290 it came to the Wanzka Cistercian convent . Since the settlers and locators could not afford to build a church on their own, the professional and mobile construction huts of the Cistercians or Premonstratensians with their special technical expertise were probably used for planning and execution.

description

The Mechow village church consists exclusively of hewn field stones from the area. It stands on a raised area, which is bordered as a cemetery by a dry stone wall with a round arch portal and pedestrian gate. Its thick foundation walls, which are up to two meters thick in the tower, are remarkable. The masonry consists of two shells, the space between them consists of mortar residues, stone chips and unprocessed field stones. The dimensions inside the nave are 6.65 × 10.35 m, in the choir 5 × 6.65 m and inside the tower 2.35 × 5.75 m at floor level. The ceiling height in the ship is 5.50 m.

Access was initially through two gates in the nave, the priest's gate, which is still there today, but it was enlarged at the end of the 19th century and provided with a Gothic reveal made of bricks, and the lay gate, which has been walled up since 1897. In the same year, as part of a comprehensive renovation of the entire church, the round-arched entrance on the west side of the approximately 15-meter-high tower made of brick, as well as the window reveals, were added. At the same time, a staircase was also built as a new access for the upper floors of the tower. The so-called “Jungfernstube” is located on the first floor of the tower, which was only accessible through a wall opening in the attic of the nave. This room should provide protection for women and children in uncertain times. It is said that nuns from the Wanzka monastery were also housed there. There are two bells in the bell chamber; one dates from 1484, the other was cast in 1539 by Hinrich Witte from Neubrandenburg.

Floor plan of the nave in Mechow (from Georg Krüger, 1925)

Section through the tower of the village church Mechow from the south (from Georg Krüger, 1925)

The interior of the church has been kept simple since the penultimate major renovation in 1897. The equipment consists of a Grüneberg organ on the west gallery from 1915 with the production number 722. The altar table has a cross top, as well as a pulpit with crate and the commemorative plaques for those who died in the war in 1914/1918 and 1939/1945. There is a wall frieze surrounding the building below the beamed ceiling and in the rectangular choir.

source

Erich Goetsch: Mechow: on the history of a small rural settlement in the municipality of Feldberger Seenlandschaft . Self-published, Selm-Cappenberg 2004, OCLC 254985966 ( krajinazaskolou.sk - excerpts).

literature

Ernst Badstübner , Ulf Böttcher: Field stone churches of the Middle Ages in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Hinstorff, Rostock 2002, ISBN 3-356-00942-7 .
Clemens Bergstedt: A fortress tower in the face of the enemy. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-931836-48-7 .
Günther Binding , Matthias Untermann : Small art history of medieval order architecture. 3rd, supplemented edition. Theiss, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 3-8062-1563-4 .

Web links

Commons : Dorfkirche Mechow - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Literature about the village church Mechow in the state bibliography MV
For the history of the Mechow Church on krajinazaskolou.sk with the script by Erich Goetsch
Mechow Church / Feldberger Seenlandschaft community on heimat.de
Church Mechow on mecklenburgische-seenplatte.de

Individual evidence

↑ Gerd Baier, Horst Ende, Brigitte Oltmanns, Wolfgang Rechlin: The architectural and art monuments in the GDR. Neubrandenburg district. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1982, p. 244 .
↑ Georg Krüger-Haye : The art and historical monuments of the Free State of Mecklenburg-Strelitz Volume 1, Neubrandenburg 1925, p. 125 f. ( Digitized version of the University of Rostock )

53.269987 13.382753Coordinates: 53 ° 16 '12 " N , 13 ° 22' 57.9" E

[1] Gerd Baier, Horst Ende, Brigitte Oltmanns, Wolfgang Rechlin: The architectural and art monuments in the GDR. Neubrandenburg district. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1982, p. 244 .

[2] Georg Krüger-Haye : The art and historical monuments of the Free State of Mecklenburg-Strelitz Volume 1, Neubrandenburg 1925, p. 125 f. ( Digitized version of the University of Rostock )