Eleven Thousand Virgins Church
The Church of the Protection of St. Josef ( Polish: Kościół Opieki św. Józefa ; once dedicated to the eleven thousand virgins of St. Ursula as the Eleven Thousand Virgin Church ) was built in Wroclaw between 1820 and 1823 by the classicist builder Carl Ferdinand Langhans .
location
The church building is located in the northern part of the city center, the former Elbingviertel . It is located at today's ul. Ołbińska 1 (formerly Elbingstrasse 1).
history
Prehistory and previous buildings
The emergence of the first church is confirmed by a decree of the Wrocław Bishop Wenceslaus of January 7th, 1400 to establish a chapel on the Elbing near the cemetery and the hospital, where female lepers were accommodated for recreation and accommodation.
The chapel became Protestant during the Reformation in 1525. The building thus existed for about 125 years, but became so dilapidated by armed conflicts that it had to be demolished in 1529.
The second building was built in 1546. While the first building was made entirely of stone, the second building is said to have been a wooden structure exposed with stones.
Up to 1725 there were extensions and finally another demolition, which was followed in 1732 by the beginning of a third building over the foundation walls of its predecessor, which lasted until 1806. This resulted from both natural disasters and sieges by Austrian troops, who obviously had their sights on the Protestant church.
When peace returned in 1807, a temporary wooden emergency church was built.
Preliminary drafts for the construction of the new church by the royal building officer Langhans envisaged mixtures of forms and structures of Romanesque, Gothic and Classicist tendencies. Similarities with the Pantheon in Rome, the Karlskirche in Vienna and St. Stephan in Karlsruhe were recognizable. Lack of money ultimately led to the subsequent construction.
Today's central building by Langhans the Younger
The church represents a twelve-sided central building and thus deliberately serves as a preaching church in the evangelical sense. In the center, under a canopy, was the pulpit altar with the gilded figure of Christ, the four evangelists, right and left the paintings of Luther and Melanchthon . The preacher could be seen from all places. The main decoration of the simple, plain church is the dome with a span of 23 m. The dome itself rests on twelve round arches that sit on twelve pillars. In the vestibule of the church there were casts of busts of Luther and Bach .
The three portals are in three fields with rounded arches with three small round windows. The three late Gothic groups of figures of the Niklastor (Nikolaitor), which had been demolished in 1820, were walled in: a late Gothic crucifixion group, the two coats of arms of Bohemia (lion) and Silesia (eagle) by the Wroclaw sculptor Briccius Gausske.
The church is in the countryside, half park, half cemetery. The cemetery itself has been closed since 1869, and Agnes Franz , the poet of the evening song (Schles. Ges. Buch Nr. 595), is buried in it. “How can I sleep peacefully in a dark night when I, oh God and Father, not yours thought? The hustle and bustle of the day scattered my heart; with you, with you there is peace and bliss ... so I sleep in peace without fear ... "
In World War II to 40% damaged, remained the western facade of the church, a low-rise building with two excessively high corner towers on square base, was obtained.
After 1945, the exterior was largely restored and preserved, but changes were made to the interior after Catholicization, which resulted in the altar and pulpit being separated. As Kościół Opieki św. Józefa (Church of the Protection of St. Joseph) it was given to the Discalced Carmelites after it had previously been used as a garrison church.
In the 1970s, the altar in the east was decorated with kneeling angel figures on both sides and in the middle with St. Joseph with the boy Jesus. The pulpit part of the former pulpit altar with the figures described above was moved from the center to the north. In the 1980s, the statue of Joseph on the altar was moved to the left and a new statue of St. Ursula was erected, holding a ship with 11 virgins in her hands.
Organs
The first organ by Abraham Grasse is documented from 1617. Subsequently, Adam Horatio Casparini built a melodious organ with 21 voices in the baroque prospect in 1735 , which fell victim to the demolition of the church in 1806. The work inserted in the Langhans building was created by the Wroclaw organ builder Johann Christian Benjamin Müller in 1825. In 1906, the Sauer Organ Builders expanded the appearance and the layout and adapted it to the spatial conditions of the dome.
Church musician
- 1896–1911 Emil Dercks , (cantor and chief organist)
- 1912–1944 Otto Burkert , (cantor and chief organist)
Church clergy from before 1945
- Ortwin Goldmann, pastor primus and deaf-mute chaplain
- Walther Lierse (1873–1957), pastor primus and city dean
- Georg Blümel († 1948), pastor
- Karl Lillge, pastor
- Ulrich Altmann (1889–1950), pastor and head of the Evangelical Central Office in Silesia
- Ernst Kölln, pastor
- Lothar Steinert († 1948), pastor
- Martin Meißner († 1945), pastor
literature
- Richard Spaeth: The Protestant Parish Church and the Hospital for Eleven Thousand Virgins. Festschrift to celebrate its 500th anniversary. Evangelical bookshop, Wroclaw 1900.
- Ludwig Burgemeister / Günther Grundmann : The art monuments of the city of Breslau, III. Part. Wroclaw 1934.
- Ulrich Bunzel: Origin and Decay of the Evangelical Churches in Wroclaw. Bergstadt Verlag Wilh. Gottl. Korn, Munich 1964.
- Gerhard Scheuermann: Das Breslau-Lexikon, Volume 1. Laumann-Verlag, Dülmen 1994, ISBN 3-87466-157-1 , pp. 259-262.
- Janusz Czerwinski / Mariola Malerek: Breslau and the surrounding area. Laumann-Verlag, Dülmen 1992.
- Gerhard Lierse: Memories of the 11,000 virgins church in Breslau. unpublished typescript, spring 1987.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Manfred Gailus: With heart and mind. V&R unipress GmbH, 2013, ISBN 978-3-847-10173-4 , p. 151 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
Coordinates: 51 ° 7 ′ 17 ″ N , 17 ° 2 ′ 30 ″ E