St. Dorothea, Wenceslaus and Stanislaus (Breslau)
The Church of St. Dorothea , Wenzel and Stanislaus , formerly known as St. Dorothea or Dorotheenkirche for short , is a Gothic sacred building from the 14th century that is subordinate to the Catholic Church . It stands on Ulica Świdnicka (German Schweidnitzer Straße ) in the Wroclaw district of Stare Miasto ( Old Town ), near the opera .
Architecture and equipment
The brick building originally erected as a monastery church dates from the second half of the 14th century. In 1381 the single-nave choir was completed, in 1401 the three-nave nave. The total length is 83 m. The Sacred Heart Chapel was built in 1680.
The fabric of the original building has suffered over the centuries. The Dorotheenkirche was damaged several times, stood empty for decades or was abandoned to decay if it was used for another purpose, but was repeatedly restored. In 1448 part of the church collapsed. The monastery complex, which was vacant from 1534, and its church were used by the council as an arsenal until 1610 and destroyed in a major fire in 1686. During the Seven Years' War , the rebuilt church served as a prison camp and after secularization it was part of the royal Prussian inquisitorial (remand prison) housed in the monastery buildings .
The interior of the church was redesigned and decorated in the Baroque style in the course of the reconstruction that began in the same year after the great fire of 1686 . The baroque high altar from 1710 shows pictures of St. Dorothea and the vision of St. Francis . There are also two wooden sculptures in the church from 1700. They depict John the Baptist and the Evangelist John . Both are believed to have been made by the sculptor Georg Leonhard Weber from Schweidnitz . The wooden choir stalls show pictures from the life of St. Francis. The grave monument of Baron Gottfried von Spätgen dates from 1753 and was designed by the sculptor Franz Joseph Mangoldt in the Rococo style.
history
After the two devastating wildfires of 1342 and 1344, King Charles I , of Bohemia (later Emperor Charles IV.) In the course of reconstruction of the standing time under Bohemian sovereignty city beyond the Ohle invest in the south of Wroclaw a new district. In 1351 he signed a 1354 from Pope Innocent VI. confirmed Foundation certificate for there to be a founding monastery and a church . He appointed the Bohemian national saints Wenceslaus , Stanislaus of Cracow and Dorothea of Caesarea as church patrons . The name Dorotheenkirche soon gained acceptance among the people.
The monastery and the church were initially used by the Augustinian order . In 1530 the monks moved out and were replaced by the Franciscans. In the course of the Reformation and the falling number of monks, the building was handed over to the city on October 20, 1534, which then used it as a warehouse.
In the years that followed, attempts were made to set up a Jesuit college in the church, but this failed due to a lack of staff. In 1613, Emperor Matthias returned the church to the Minorites . In February 1615 they moved into the house of God. In 1810 the church was secularized and the Minorite monastery was closed.
The monastery complex was occupied by the royal inquisitorial office in 1817. In 1852 the buildings were demolished. Today the Hotel Monopol stands here .
The church was only slightly damaged during the Battle of Wroclaw . Most recently, 7,400 people belonged to the community. The last German pastor was Alfons Härtel.
Web links
literature
- Klaus Klöppel: Breslau - Lower Silesia and its millennial capital. Trescher Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-89794-256-1 , pp. 83-84
- Adalbero Kunzelmann OSA: History of the German Augustinian Hermits . Third part: The Bavarian province up to the end of the Middle Ages - Breslau , Augustinus-Verlag Würzburg, 1972, p. 54ff - digitized
- Friedrich August Nösselt: Breslau and its surroundings: description of everything worth knowing for locals and friends , Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn Breslau, 1833, p. 105ff - digitized
- Chrysogonus Reisch : History of the monastery and the church of St. Dorothea in Breslau , Breslau, Verlag von Görlich and Coch (Rudolf Sprick), 1908 - digitized
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 51 ° 6 ′ 23 ″ N , 17 ° 1 ′ 50 ″ E