Preussnitz village church

Apse and free-standing belfry

West gable

The Protestant village church Preussnitz is a Romanesque stone church in the Preussnitz district of Bad Belzig in the Potsdam-Mittelmark district in Brandenburg . It belongs to the parish of St. Marien / Hoher Fläming Bad Belzig in the church district Mittelmark-Brandenburg of the Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia and can be visited after registration.

History and architecture

Location and building description

The church stands at the southern entrance to the village at the entrance from the main road behind a striking old linden tree and is surrounded by a stone wall with the surrounding cemetery. To the north is the wide village green with further linden trees.

The late Romanesque church shows a remarkably careful ashlar stone in the choir area , which, like the apse and the lower layers of the nave, dates from the first construction phase in the 2nd quarter of the 13th century. The completion followed in the second construction phase in the 2nd third of the 13th century, so that the windows have "almost Gothic proportions" according to Engeser / Stehr. In the years 1429/1430 a comprehensive renovation was probably carried out, as a dendrochronological determination of the wooden choir roof revealed this dating. In 1967 the western gable received a new masonry.

Most of the arched windows are still in their original shape and size. The parish and priest portal, like the inner apse arch and the triumphal arch, are rounded . The half-conical roof of the apse is covered with plain tiles , while the choir and nave are closed by gable roofs with interlocking tiles. All roof pads were renewed in 1990.

The leaning tower of Preussnitz

Instead of a steeple, the church had a western gable tower , which fell victim to the Thirty Years' War . It was probably only at the beginning of the 18th century that it was replaced by a three-sided lattice tower with a massive west wall. This tower, however, caused considerable concern for the parish from the start and had to be repaired several times. The church treasury contains the first repair invoices from 1753, others followed at short intervals. In addition, the tower gave the impression that it was crooked, as the tip of the roof turret only sat on the truss. It went down in local history as the leaning tower of Preussnitz . An official report from 1869 did nothing to change this visual impression. The report stated that "the tower made of half-timbered construction is not crooked, it just looks crooked." (Quote according to Mehlhardt 1976)

At the beginning of the 1960s, the roof tower was finally in disrepair. The community could not afford a new building, so they decided to demolish it, which took place in 1963. Instead of a tower, the Preussnitzer erected a free-standing and open natural stone bell chair at the entrance to the cemetery, which they covered with a small gable roof. The bell in this bell stand dates from 1481.

Furnishing

The rare, restored metal fittings on the portal door come from the late Gothic period and show leaf ornaments , dragon heads, a rooster and a horse or a donkey. The baroque interior includes a simple altar with a wooden top from 1711, a simple wooden pulpit and a wooden baptism on a tripod. The organ on the west gallery has a simple front and dates from 1860. It was built by the master organ builder Wilhelm Baer from Niemegk . In 1991 the Potsdam organ building company Alexander Schuke extensively restored the organ. (Pfannenstiel 1991) The interior was painted after renovation work between 1982 and 1987. The parapets of the horseshoe gallery have dark red shelves; the color continues in the choir stalls and parsonage .

literature

Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments. Brandenburg. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-422-03123-4 , p. 937.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

↑ Information on the pages of the support group for old churches in Brandenburg. Retrieved July 6, 2020 .
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Theo Engeser and Konstanze Stehr online The article is based entirely on information from Engeser / Stehr; the information from Mehlhardt (1977), Pfannenstiel (1991) and Pfeifer (1997) are also taken from here.

52.131374 12.629754Coordinates: 52 ° 7 ′ 52.9 ″ N , 12 ° 37 ′ 47.1 ″ E

[1] Information on the pages of the support group for old churches in Brandenburg. Retrieved July 6, 2020 .

[Engeser-2] Theo Engeser and Konstanze Stehr online The article is based entirely on information from Engeser / Stehr; the information from Mehlhardt (1977), Pfannenstiel (1991) and Pfeifer (1997) are also taken from here.