Eremitenklause Börrstadt
 Eremitenklause Börrstadt with information board |
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| Basic data | |
| place | Börrstadt, Germany |
| Building history | |
| start of building | probably middle ages |
| Building description | |
| Architectural style | Felsenkirche, cave church |
| Furnishing style | elongated rectangular chapel room |
| Construction type | Rock chamber |
| Function and title | |
|
presumably hermitage or church of the lost village of Hanweiler |
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| 49 ° 35 '36.2 " N , 7 ° 54' 45.5" E | |
The Eremitenklause Börrstadt is a chapel carved into the rock , with the remains of an earlier dwelling, at the foot of the Donnersberg , west of the Hahnweilerhof belonging to the municipality of Börrstadt .
Location and description
The hermitage is located about 1 kilometer northwest of the Hahnweilerhof, which emerged from the submerged village of Hanweiler or Heimweiler. It is located on the southern slope of a valley that runs to the east, through which a small stream flows, which rises at the former hermitage.
The facility is built into a rock formation. In front of it is a rectangular room made of rock, measuring around 4 by 3 meters, with no roof. Apparently it had a sloping pent roof made of wood. The access is on the north side of the valley. There was probably an entrance door there in the past. It was probably the hermit's apartment.
In the southern rock face of this open square is the approximately 1.80 m high entrance to the rock chapel behind it. In this wall you can still see clear transverse grooves above the chapel entrance, into which the roof of the anteroom was once inserted. Above this roof level, to the left of the entrance, there is a window opening into the interior, which also received light when the anteroom was roofed.
The oblong, rectangular chapel room, located in the rock, measures around 2.5 by 4 meters and is around 3.0 meters high. There may have been a natural cave here that was expanded by humans. On the ceiling, a groin vault is carved into the rock as an ornament , which apparently dates from the Middle Ages . In front of the inner east wall are the remains of two consoles carved out of the stone. An altar that was oriented to the east and received light from the window opening above on the left is likely to have rested on them. In the south wall, exactly opposite the entrance, there is a deep niche with an arched arch. It may have been used to hold a saint figure. The chapel floor consists of smooth rock, the corners of the wall are designed at right angles.
A spring rises at the hermitage and flows eastwards along the valley. It is set in a small pond next to the chapel. Since 1911, the main part of the spring water, as drinking water, has been piped to the Hahnweiler Hof. Only a small remainder still gets into the stone spring socket and from there forms a brook running to the east.
history
The history of the Börrstadter Klause is largely in the dark. It is documented that as early as 1468 the forest area there was called "Klausenbusch" . Even then, this suggests a long tradition of the hermitage, as the entire forest area was named after it. In the lost village of Hanweiler there was an altar of St. Gangolf in the church , but a Gangolf chapel is also often mentioned, the location of which is unknown. Maybe it was the rock chapel of the hermitage.
In the “History of Börrstadt” , pastor Alfons Hoffmann recorded in 1952 (p. 96) that it was recorded in the church register of Dreisen in 1707 that a Schöffer family lived near the hermitage , their child in the “cellula saxea prope Hanweiler” (rock cell near Hanweiler ) was baptized.
The Börrstadter Klause has also entered the Palatinate Treasury. At the beginning of the 20th century, Friedrich Wilhelm Hebel included the story “Der Stab des Klausner” in his local collection of legends. Folk tradition speaks of two children from the Hahnweiler court who drank from the spring at the local hermitage and to whom an old man appeared, who was reflected in the water of the fountain. It stuck its stick in the ground and a mighty hornbeam grew out of it. The supraregional legend of St. Gangolf is obviously woven into this local legend, who also stuck his staff into the ground and thus caused a spring to spring up. It could be another indication that the hermitage is the old Gangolf chapel from Hanweiler.
The former Börrstadt pastor Joseph Eduard Konrad Bischoff , who as a writer had adopted the pseudonym "Conrad von Bolanden" , had his story "Power of Faith" play about the Börrstadter Klause in the middle of the 19th century and in it fictitiously describes Count Werner III. von Bolanden as the hermit who was penitent there in the 13th century.
gallery
Entrance from outside
Entrance from the inside
Inner east wall with side window opening
Inner east wall with altar remains
Altar arrest, detail shot
Inner west wall
Information sign on the Hahnweiler Hof
literature
- Dieter Krienke: Cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate , Volume 15: Donnersbergkreis , p. 492, Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft Worms, 1998, ISBN 3-88462-153-X
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Winfried MaIer: The judgment of God of St. Gangolf , in: Die Rheinpfalz , local part Kirchheimbolanden, March 13, 2018 (digital view)
- ^ Digital view, Augsburger Postzeitung, 1859, reprinted as a sequel