Trinity Church (Görlitz)

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Trinity Church
Dreifaltigkeitskirche Goerlitz.jpg

Start of building: 1234
Inauguration: August 21, 1245
Location: 51 ° 9 '19.3 "  N , 14 ° 59' 19.3"  E Coordinates: 51 ° 9 '19.3 "  N , 14 ° 59' 19.3"  E
Address: Klosterplatz 21
Goerlitz
Saxony , Germany
Purpose: evangelical church
Local community: Evangelical inner city community of Görlitz
Regional Church : Evangelical Church Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia

The Dreifaltigkeitskirche is a Protestant church in Görlitz . It was built between 1234 and 1245 as the monastery church of the Franciscan monastery on today's Obermarkt . In 1564 the monastery was converted into a grammar school, the church served as a school and from 1712 as a parochial church.

history

Around 1200 the city of Görlitz was laid out in the area between Lunitz, Neisse, today's Elisabethplatz and Brüderstraße . Back then, in front of the city walls, in 1234 the Franciscans began building the monastery and the church outside the city gates . The land is donated by the Wirsynge family. Since the Franciscans usually built their monasteries within the city walls, it is possible that the expansion of the city complex was already intended at that time. On August 21, 1245, the Monday after the Assumption of Mary (August 15), Bishop Konrad von Meissen consecrated the church in honor of the Virgin Mary and Saint Francis of Assisi . From now on, the celebration of the church consecration (fair) will always take place on the Monday after August 18th - at the same time the beginning of the Görlitz fair market until the 20th century.

In 1458 the provincial chapter of the Saxon Franciscan Province ( Saxonia ), to which the monastery belonged, decided to set up a particular course in Görlitz , in which 8 to 10 brothers, from "two vorstendliche and voluptuous reading masters [...] to gote, discipline and honesty of the order ”should be trained. As a result, the convent's library grew from 77 books in the mid-14th century to over 300 by the end of the 15th century. After being relocated during World War II, the holdings are now almost completely preserved in the Wroclaw University Library .

Choir
Main nave
Panorama of the Barbara Chapel

In the middle of the 15th century, the so-called observance movement gained influence in the Franciscan Order , which worked towards a reform of religious life towards stricter observance of the rules of the order. Despite a preaching trip by Johannes Capistranus , which also took him to the Görlitz Franciscan Convent at the turn of the year 1452/3, the Observants, unlike in Bohemia, where they enjoy the support of the Bohemian king and Görlitz sovereign Vladislav II , cannot prevail. Also at the insistence of the city council, the monastery is indeed reformed in 1462, but remains committed to the moderate poverty direction the Martinianischen Constitutions , a "Observanzbewegung outside the Observance" which, after a mediation attempt of Pope Martin V in 1430 many monasteries of the Franciscan Province Saxonia connect .

The City Council of Görlitz is also intensively involved in the redesign of monastery life in the spirit of the Franciscans' vow of poverty. On the one hand, he was concerned with the quality of the monastic pastoral care, and on the other, with his influence on the monastery property , which he managed through his right to appoint the office of procurator for the purposes of the monastery and the donors. Specifically, it was hoped that the proportion of monastery property administered by the council would increase, since the reform not only imposed personal poverty on the friars, but also on the convents. In general, it is true of the Franciscans, through their rejection of property and monetary transactions, that they were largely dependent on the citizenship and the councils of the cities in which they settled, which undoubtedly also applies to the Görlitz Convention. This dependency came in handy for the citizens of Görlitz in the "beer dispute" with the pastor of Görlitz's main church, Johannes Behem. When the council forbade the latter from serving imported beer in 1488, Behem unceremoniously placed the city with the interdict . Only in the monastery, for which the order of the secular priest did not apply, and in the Holy Cross Chapel , where the Meißner bishop obtained an exceptional permit for 1490 and 1491, the citizens of Görlitz were now able to attend church services. Incidentally, the dispute was finally settled only in 1501 with Behem's resignation.

In 1498 a long-standing dispute broke out between the Provincial Minister of the Franciscans, Johannes Heymstede, and the city council over the question of who should make the visitation in the monastery after it had joined the Martinian reform movement . While the provincial minister demanded that the convent be subordinated to the custodian of the custody Goldberg , the council insisted on the visitator regiminis visiting the Martinian Franciscan monasteries of Görlitz, Zwickau, Leipzig and Schweidnitz . With the threat of otherwise joining the monastery to the observance movement, and with the involvement of Cardinal Protector Giuliano della Rovere , the council finally prevailed. On July 28, 1498 Heymstede had to appoint the Schweidnitzer reading master Benedikt von Löwenberg to visit Görlitz and Schweidnitz. The convents of Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt ad Oder, Gransee, Wittenberg, Zerbst and Zwickau are also subordinated to this until 1503. As late as 1508 there were warnings from the council to Heymstede's successor, Ludwig Henning , that the council could not vouch for the discipline of the order if he wished to subordinate the Görlitz monastery to the custody. Henning then assures in a letter that he will not do anything that could be harmful to spiritual discipline.

In 1510 the situation changed again when della Rovere, now elected Pope Julius II, ordered each Franciscan convent to either join the conventuals or the observants. The council now endeavored to prevent the monastery from joining the observance movement. Corresponding negotiations were held between Henning and the custodians Goldberg and Breslau as early as 1511. The council then prevents the Görlitz Franciscans from participating in the provincial chapter. At the same time he asked the Czech King and the Father General of the Franciscans Philip de Bagnacavallo to intervene. In fact, the latter confirms the status quo again. In the disputes with the Franciscans, too, the great influence that the council was able to exert not only on the monastery but also on all levels of the religious organization is again evident.

Right at the beginning of the Reformation - the first Lutheran sermons in Görlitz are documented for the year 1521 - the Franciscans began to leave the monastery in Görlitz, so that in 1563 Urban von Weißbach was the last of them to hand over the monastery to the city. He did so on the condition that the council set up a school in the buildings, which the council did in 1565. In 1568, the evangelical school priest Melchior Scheffler gave the first evangelical sermon in the sacred building that is now used as a school church. In 1712 the church was finally given its own parish and was consecrated to the Holy Trinity in 1715, after three years of renovation .

Building history

The original monk's church was a simple hall church. It thus corresponded to the efforts of the Franciscans to meet their vow of poverty externally. Thus, according to the order rule valid in the 13th century, the church of a Franciscan convent could not be higher than 30 feet, the other monastery buildings not higher than 20 feet. The churches should also have no bell tower and, apart from the choir, no colored windows, and stone should also be avoided when building the monastery. In the 14th century the Franciscans turned to a more representative building method, which is also reflected in the construction activities at the Görlitz Franciscan Monastery.

The baroque high altar

Between 1371 and 1381 the late Romanesque apse was enlarged by the Gothic choir and the bell tower, also known as the “monk”, was added. Incidentally, his clock is still seven minutes ahead to this day. This peculiarity comes from the Middle Ages, the aim was to ensure that the city guard always started their duty on time. The choir is the oldest Gothic building in Görlitz. The oldest Görlitz tombstone in the Barbara Chapel also dates from this time. This itself was only built between 1450 and 1470. The vaulting of the originally flat-roofed nave was possibly carried out by Conrad Pflüger , who in 1490 signed a contract with the city council on his appointment as city architect.

The altar of Mary
The organ

Assuming that the city expansion was already decided at the start of construction, the monastery complex - it originally extended over the monastery square to the city wall, approximately at the level of today's Elisabethplatz - within the city walls, as well as on the main traffic axis of medieval Görlitz. The monastery is also laid out in the immediate vicinity of the artisan and poor neighborhoods, with a view to the social classes to which the Franciscans paid special attention. All of this is typical of Franciscan monasteries.

The interior of the church is dominated today by the baroque high altar, in front of which there are still the benches of the friars. During the renovation from 1712 to 1715, the actual jewel of the church, the late Gothic St. Mary's altar, which today adorns the St. Barbara Chapel, had to give way to the new altar. The winged altar was made between 1510 and 1520 and shows Mary open in the midst of a cycle of Christmas pictures and closed a passion cycle. In 1670 the church received a pulpit decorated with depictions of the apostles on the north wall.

Furnishing

  • Sculpture "Christ at Rest"
  • Entombment group, 1493 by Hans Olmützer
  • Baroque high altar by Caspar Gottlob von Rodewitz
  • late Gothic winged altar "Goldene Maria". After its restoration in September 2001, on the day of the open monument, it was made accessible to the public again and can therefore be seen completely and fully functional for the first time in 20 years.
  • Choir stalls from 1484 with a chronical inscription on the history of the Görlitz Franciscan monastery. The parts of the choir stalls, which have been lost since 1945, have been in the Poznan Cathedral since the 1950s , where they are set up and used in the presbytery.
  • The organ of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche was rebuilt in 1955 by Eule Orgelbau in the old case by Julius Röhle (1910) with parts by Ladegast (1873). The instrument has 28 sounding registers on two manuals and a pedal.

literature

  • Ferdinand Doelle : The reform movement under the visitor regiminis of the Saxon order province. In: Franciscan Studies 3 (1916).
  • Ferdinand Doelle: Reform activity of provincial Ludwig Henning in the Saxon Franciscan province (1507–1515) . In: Franciscan Studies Supplement 3. Münster 1915.
  • Dieter Berg (Ed.): Management and Minoritas. Life pictures of the Saxon Franciscan provincials from the 13th to the 20th century. In: Saxonia Franciscana Supplement 1 . Kevelaer 2003.
  • Ingo Ulpts: City and mendicant orders . In: Wissenschaft und Weishei t 58.1 (1995), pp. 223-260.
  • Begging Churches In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages Volume 1.
  • Kai Wenzel: The late medieval furnishings of the Görlitz Franciscan Church , in: Annegret Gehrmann, Dirk Schumann, Marius Winzeler (ed.): The mendicant orders in the two Lausitzes. History - architecture - art. Berlin 2017, pp. 297–322.

Web links

Commons : Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Görlitz)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ OrganIndex , accessed on July 18, 2018