Dreikönigskirche (Dresden)

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The Dreikönigskirche, view from Königstrasse

The Dreikönigskirche in Dresden is a sacred building in the Inner New Town . It is the center of a parish and is also used as a venue under the name House of the Church . A church building on the site was first mentioned in the early 15th century. After its extensive destruction in World War II , the Dreikönigskirche was not rebuilt until the late 1980s. From 1990 to 1993 it served as the seat of the Saxon state parliament . The church and the Rebecca fountain in front of it are cultural monuments of the city of Dresden .

Location

The Dreikönigskirche, seen here from Brühl's Terrace , clearly towers over the buildings in its surroundings.

The Dreikönigskirche is located in the Innere Neustadt district on the main street . Its floor plan is a roughly 60 × 30 m rectangle. The 87.5 m high tower is roughly in the center of the triangle between log house - Albertplatz - Japanese palace and is the dominant feature of the district, visible from afar. The street that runs around the building is called An der Dreikönigskirche . On the west side of the church there is a small forecourt facing Königstraße , the rest of the area is densely built up. A few steps away from the church is the Kügelgenhaus - Museum of Dresden Romanticism .

history

Previous building

View of the oldest Church of the Three Kings

Probably in 1404 was the first time a church in the then independent rechtselbischen city Altendresden from which the new town emerged, built. This Gothic building consisted of a flat-roofed nave , which was crowned by two pointed roof turrets, and was located about 200 m south of the current location and thus much closer to Neustädter Markt , the center of Altendresden at that time. It was named after its altarpiece as To the Magi . It was first mentioned in 1421, when the feudal and patronage rights over the Dreikönigskirche were handed over to the Augustinian monastery in Altendresden after the death of Pastor Johann Stüblinger , which until then had held its services in the Erasmi Chapel at the White Gate . The Hussites destroyed the first Epiphany church as early as 1429 , but soon afterwards it was rebuilt and, between 1514 and 1520, it was converted into a three-aisled Gothic hall church with a choir.

The Altendresdner city fire of 1685 destroyed the Dreikönigskirche again. Three years later, the master mason Johann Benedikt Knöffel, the father of the architect Johann Christoph Knöffel , and the master carpenter Andreas Voigt completed the now three-aisled church for worship . It received a tower by 1730 . However, since Altendresden was to be transformed into the baroque New Royal City according to the plans of August the Strong , the Elector had the entire church demolished as one of many buildings in 1731/1732 because it stood in the way of the planned central boulevard, today's main street.

Baroque new building

Baroque new building, still without a tower
The main street crossing Albertplatz in 1905, on the right the Dreikönigskirche

From 1732 to 1739 the Dreikönigskirche was rebuilt again according to plans by Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann . It was built on the west side of the main street, aligned exactly with the street and thus fitted into the new part of the city, so it is not geosted . At this place, a little north of the original location of the church, the Altendresdner Friedhof had previously been located, which was now moved to the north (today's Inner Neustädter Friedhof ). George Bähr , the builder of the Dresden Frauenkirche , was entrusted with the design of the interior of the church and, after Pöppelmann's death, was in charge of the construction from 1734 onwards. The board- lined, trough-shaped vault goes back to Bähr . Bähr's brother-in-law, council carpenter Johann George Schmidt , and council mason Johann Gottfried Fehre carried out the late baroque construction.

Thomae altar, inscription: Agne immaculate, sponse sanguinum fac simus virgines probæ agnum sequentes!

On Michaelmas Day , September 29, 1739, Superintendent Valentin Ernst Löscher inaugurated the church with a service. Johann Benjamin Thomae created his main work for this, a valuable sandstone baroque altar " with the foolish and wise virgins before Jesus Christ", which is framed by the evangelists Johannes and Matthäus . Unusually, it is not on the east, but on the west side, since according to the electoral general plan, access to the church should be from the main street through the main gate in the central projectile of the east portal. This break in tradition was quite controversial between the church and the architects; a comparable case on the other side of the Elbe in Dresden is the Catholic Court Church . The portal of the west facade with its segmented gable and a cartouche comes from the previous building and is the work of Johann Friedrich Jentzsch from the year 1712. The church consists of a main aisle and a transept with an organ and side galleries . The basement is made of cuboids, the facades are structured by high double windows and coupled pilasters . Zacharias Hildebrandt created his last organ in the Dreikönigskirche in 1757. It had 38 registers and was destroyed in 1945.

Rebuilding and destruction

The plans for the tower of the Dreikönigskirche, which were added from 1854 to 1857, come from Karl Moritz Haenel and Frommherz Lobegott Marx . These were created as part of a "competition", based on which the architect Woldemar Hermann had drafted plans. The tower is 87.5 m high, made of sandstone and is decorated on the outside with several sculptures such as the four evangelists and the three wise men. The tower, which is open all year round, was built in the neo-baroque style in order to be able to integrate it as well as possible into the existing baroque parts. Around the same phase, namely around 1858, a market fountain was set up as an ornament on the western forecourt in the middle of the new tower. Also in the 19th century, the original gable roof of the church was replaced by a mansard roof already planned by George Bähr , and a gallery was also dismantled. Under the direction of the Dresden architect Rudolph Kolbe , the Dreikönigskirche was renovated in 1933 and 1934 in order to restore its original baroque appearance.

During the air raids on Dresden on February 13, 1945, the church burned down completely and largely collapsed. The outer walls and the tower were preserved. After the rubble had been cleared in the post-war years, services were again celebrated in the tower chapel . Contrary to all objections from the preservationists, it was temporarily planned to completely remove the remains of the church as part of the conversion of the main street into a socialist boulevard . Some old town buildings have long enjoyed a higher priority.

reconstruction

In the 1970s, more attention was also paid to Dresden Neustadt. The main street was redesigned into a pedestrian thoroughfare between 1974 and 1979 . The final decision to rebuild the destroyed Dreikönigskirche was made in 1977. Aided by the special building program of the Evangelical Church in Germany , the foundation stone was laid on October 31, 1984 on the sacred building, which had been in ruins for almost four decades. The original external forms have largely been preserved or restored. Inside, however, a completely different room layout was created. Only a third of the pre-war space is available for church services. The valuable baroque altar , which was badly damaged in the Second World War , was erected again , which now in its broken form serves as a memorial against the war. The Dreikönigskirche was consecrated on September 9, 1990 and finally completed in 1991.

Dresden Dance of Death

In the final phase of the reconstruction, the Dresden Dance of Death, an important Renaissance work of art, was installed opposite the altar under the organ gallery. This is a stone relief created by Christoph Walther I around 1534 , which shows 27 figures in four groups, including 24 human figures and three death figures. It is 12.50 m long and 1.20 m high. Initially the wall frieze was on the facade of the Georgentor on the third floor, but was damaged in the great castle fire in 1701 . After its restoration, the Dresden Dance of Death temporarily found a new place in the Altendresdner Friedhof from 1705. When the baroque Dreikönigskirche was built here from 1732, it was moved to the Inner Neustädter Friedhof. In the course of the reconstruction of the Dreikönigskirche, it was decided to show the dance of death in a prominent place in the church - where it was before the building of the church at the beginning of the 18th century.

use

View across the main street to the entrance of the church

Parish church

After the reconstruction, the Dreikönigskirche became the full center of the parish of the same name. It is also the oldest and most important parish church in the parish of Dresden- Neustadt , in which the Dreikönigskirchgemeinde merged with three other Evangelical Lutheran parishes in Neustadt in 1999 . These are the Martin Luther parish , the Sankt Petri and the Sankt Pauli parishes, all of which arose around 1900 from the too large Epiphany parish. By reducing the size of the church during the reconstruction, the number of places was decimated from around 3000 to 460.

House of the Church

The Dreikönigskirche is a sacred multi-purpose building and, in addition to the church, houses several modern event rooms , some of which can also be flexibly connected to one another. These include a large ballroom and a small hall that can accommodate around 500 people. The ten conference rooms are mainly used for lectures, meetings, courses, concerts and exhibitions.

On October 27, 1990, the constituent meeting of the Saxon State Parliament took place in the ballroom . Until the completion of the current state parliament building on the Neue Terrasse in October 1993, the members of parliament met in the house of the church for their monthly meetings. In the dining room of the house of the church is the multi-part ceramic wall donated by the state parliament . Give us today our daily bread .

organ

The organ of the Dreikönigskirche was built in 1992 by the organ building company Hermann Eule Bautzen . The instrument has 36 stops on two manuals and a pedal , slider drawer and mechanical play and stop action .

I Hauptwerk C – g 3
1. Drone 16 ′
2. Principal 8th'
3. Reed flute 8th'
4th Quintad 8th'
5. octave 4 ′
6th Reed flute 4 ′
7th Fifth 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
8th. octave 2 ′
9. Cornett V (from f 0 ) 8th'
10. Mixture IV 2 ′
11. Cimbel III 2 ⁄ 3 ′
12. Trumpet 8th'
Channel tremulant
II Swell C – g 3
13. Dumped 16 ′
14th Principal 8th'
15th Viol di Gamba 8th'
16. Dumped 8th'
17th Unda maris 8th'
18th octave 4 ′
19th Pointed flute 4 ′
20th Nasat 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
21st octave 2 ′
22nd third 1 3 ⁄ 5  ′
23. Fifth 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
24. Sifflöt 1'
25th Mixture IV 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
26th Trumpet 8th'
27. Vox humana 8th'
Channel tremulant
Pedal C – f 1
28. Principal bass 16 ′
29 Sub bass 16 ′
30th Octave bass 8th'
31. Gemshorn bass 8th'
32. octave 4 ′
33. mixture 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
34. Trombone bass 16 ′
35. Trumpet bass 8th'
36. Clarin bass 4 ′

Bells

There are three bells in the tower of the Dreikönigskirche . Together they result in a three-part A flat major bell (as 0 –c 1 –es 1 ). The three original bronze bells were melted in 1945 in the city fire caused by the air raids. In 1973 the Apolda company Schilling re-cast the bells, which Apolda's master bell founder Peter Schilling and his wife Margarete Schilling had designed, using the recovered original bronze . They have the typical Schilling four-handle crowns. The consecration finally took place in 1977. The bells hang next to each other on cranked steel yokes in a steel bell cage .

  • Bell 1: nominal as °, inscription "It is the goodness of the Lord that we are not over", the hour strikes
  • Bell 2: nominal c ′, inscription "His mercy has no end", noon bells
  • Bell 3: nominal es ′, inscription »Your loyalty is great«

  • Steel belfry with bells 1 (middle) and 2 (right)

  • Bell 1 (as °)

  • Bell 2 (c ′)

  • Bell 3 (es ′)

Below is a data overview of the bell:

No. Casting date Caster diameter Dimensions Chime
1 1973 Bell foundry S. Schilling 1822 mm 3500 kg as °
2 1973 Bell foundry S. Schilling 1423 mm 1650 kg c´
3 1973 Bell foundry S. Schilling 1188 mm 938 kg it

Clergy

Source:

literature

  • Jürgen Helfricht : Dresden and its churches. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-374-02261-8 .
  • Fritz Rauda: The old Dreikönigskirche and its replacement buildings. In: Scientific supplement to the Dresdner Anzeiger from April 26 and May 3, 1932.
  • E. Sulze: The Dreikönigskirche in Dresden-Neustadt. Dresden 1889.
  • City Lexicon Dresden A – Z. Verlag der Kunst Dresden, 1995, ISBN 3-364-00300-9 .
  • M. Wörner, G. Lupfer, J. Paul, B. Sterra: Architectural Guide Dresden. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1997.
  • Rainer Thümmel: Bells in Saxony. Sound between heaven and earth. Edited by the Evangelical Regional Church Office of Saxony . With a foreword by Jochen Bohl and photographs by Klaus-Peter Meißner. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-374-02871-9 , p. 288.

Web links

Commons : Dreikönigskirche  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Martin Bernhard Lindau: History of the royal capital and residence city of Dresden. 2nd improved edition, Dresden 1885, Vol. I, p. 59 ; Kathrin Francik, Ulla Heise: 1756 Dresden - On the trail of myth. Asisi's monumental 360 ° panorama of the baroque era in Dresden. Asisi Visual Culture GmbH, 2nd edition [Berlin] 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-029599-7 , p. 85.
  2. ↑ George Bähr's Dreikönigskirche restored. In: The beautiful Saxony. Monthly for Saxon culture, economy and traffic. 1934, accessed on January 30, 2020 (German).
  3. ↑ Owl organ of the Dreikönigskirche. Retrieved April 11, 2014.
  4. ^ Rainer Thümmel : Bells in Saxony . Sound between heaven and earth. Ed .: Evangelical Regional Church Office of Saxony . 2nd, updated and supplemented edition. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2015, ISBN 978-3-374-02871-9 , pp. 288 (With a foreword by Jochen Bohl and photographs by Klaus-Peter Meißner).
  5. ^ Parish register of Saxony - 1st parish office of the Dreikönigskirche Dresden from 1539

Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 39.7 "  N , 13 ° 44 ′ 34.7"  E