Evangelical Church (Drabenderhöhe)
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The Evangelical Church is a church building of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland in Drabenderhöhe , a district of Wiehl in North Rhine-Westphalia .
history
The chapel at Drabenderhöhe was probably built in the 12th or 13th century. Experts date the tower to this time, because the typical round window shapes make it a Romanesque building . Whether it was a branch of the church in Wiehl, which was mentioned as a property of the St. Cassius monastery in Bonn as early as 1131 , cannot be proven, but it is probable. In the Liber valoris of 1308, a tax register of the Archbishops of Cologne, the chapel is not mentioned, but in Homburg and Bergisch documents from the 16th century. Drabenderhöhe, like the surrounding courtyards, is assigned to the Wiehl parish.
The church was mentioned for the first time on August 9, 1353 when knight Heinrich III. von Grafschaft , his son Adolf and his daughter Kunigunde transferred tithe to his son and her brother Heinrich, respectively. The right to tithe was then passed on within the family. Heinrich IV von Grafschaft died childless and his two sisters Kunigunde and Elisabeth inherited the right to tithe. The two, as well as their children, the siblings Heinrich and Konrad von Merode and Heinrich, Heidenreich, Adolf, Gerhard, Johann and Dietrich von Plettenberg sold the tithe on January 21, 1391 to Duke Wilhelm von Berg. It was mentioned that the chapel was in the Homburg region. This sale resulted in a dispute between the two noble houses over geographical affiliation. The Duchy of Berg and Sayn-Wittgenstein claimed the church building.
It was a chapel building that belonged to the mother parish Wiehl . The chapel district included the Homburgic Honschaft Drabenderhöhe with the places Dahl , Drabenderhöhe , Immen , Hahn , the Hähner Mühle, Hillerscheid , Jennecken and Niederhof . Places from the neighboring Bergisch offices of Steinbach and Windeck , such as Anfang, Brächen , Büddelhagen , Obermiebach , Scheidt and Verr , kept to the chapel on the Drabenderhöhe. In the 14th century it was subordinated to the Order of St. John in Marienhagen and was consecrated to John the Baptist .
The order was entrusted with setting up ecclesiastical administrative structures and probably set up the vicarage and thus also the rectory. However, this was not in the village of Drabenderhöhe, but in Pfaffenscheid, which was in the Bergisches Amt Windeck. At that time, the rectory was simply referred to as Wiedenhof. In a general visitation of the order in Marienhagen in 1495 the chapel with the secular clergyman Conradus was mentioned, who probably already lived in Pfaffenscheid. As early as 1582, however, the order no longer provided the vicar, but the Duke of Berg. The reason can probably be seen in the Reformation. The chapel at Drabenderhöhe still owned a leasehold in Niederhof at the beginning of the 16th century. This emerges from a visit report from Drabenderhöher Pastor Jakob Sasse to the ducal commission from 1582. He reports: “The chapel used to be owned by a farm in Niederhoven. A Windecker bailiff Nesselrath took it for 180 guilders. The capital paid for this now brings in 9 guilders, the same as the lease on the farm used to be ”.
The buyer must have been Wilhelm von Nesselrode, who was a bailiff at Windeck from 1514 until his death in 1540. There is a report from 1540 that the Komtur zu Marienhagen had fallen away from the old (Catholic) faith. This is confirmed by the visitation report of his successor Henrich von den Nespen in 1550. He complains that his predecessor had a niece whom he furnished and furnished with a court, and now her husband is coming and legally wants these goods as his own claim and continue to present them to the Lord, contrary to a comparison made, which the blessed Nesselrodt had negotiated. The report closes with the remark that the commander is cohabiting and has children. This farm could have been the leased farm in Niederhof bought by Nesselrode before 1540.
In addition to the leasehold in Niederhof, the ownership of the chapel also included a share in the Hähner Mühle. Pastor Jakob Sasse reported to the Bergische ducal commission in 1582 that the chapel used to have half the grinding mill "In der Hoen", but had been sold by the second predecessor of the then Komtur zu Marienhagen to the windeck rentmaster Pampus.
This confirms the first documentary mention of the Hähner mill in the Homburg mill directory from 1576. There it says: "Mill the Hanen at Jynnicken, Bergische belonged to". The Bergisch member seems to have been Henne Pampus, a noble Bergisch servant who lived from around 1480 to 1554. Between 1518 and 1550, Henne Pampus held the office of rentmaster in the Bergisches Amt Windeck.
Between 1555 and 1563, under the Lutheran pastor Jakob Neuleben, the Reformation was introduced and, with the Siegburg settlement of 1604, became an independent, Reformed parish from 1605 . The old rights of the Johanniter Order have not been recognized since then. The medieval wall paintings were whitewashed in 1613 and the side altars removed. After a fire in 1696 only the Gothic choir and the tower remained. Due to the church fire in 1698, the Weiershagenener Weiershagen Höfe, with the exception of the court and the school Reuschenbach, Bergerhof, Kleebornen, In den Weiden, Zur Hardt and Zur Mühlen, as well as Forst, were assigned to the left of the Wiehl . During the reconstruction in 1697, the tower was raised by one storey and received its current baroque helmet. A simple Gothic-style nave with buttresses attached to the tower. The nave was a two-branch structure with a cross-facing gable roof and a large, steep baroque dome over the Gothic choir. The construction of the church was similar to that of the present one in Marienberghausen . Due to dilapidation, the nave was replaced in 1846 as a classicist new building with a semicircular apse while retaining the tower by a standard design by Friedrich August Stülers and completed in 1847. In 1878 a sacristy and a new organ were installed in the interior of the nave. The interior of the church was redesigned again in 1910 under Pastor Karl Spandau. The built-in sacristy disappeared, the galleries that reached up to the choir were shortened and the apse was separated with a wooden wall. The stoves in the nave disappeared and air heating was installed. Due to a lack of space, the baptismal font from 1846/47 disappeared in the sacristy now located in the apse.
The two keystones from the vault of the church, which was demolished in 1846, were brought to Forst in 1945 and walled up there on stone plinths in a private house on the street. In the 1980s, the two stones were stored at Homburg Castle . When the Heimatstube Drabenderhöhe-Siebenbürgen opened in 1989, the two stones were returned to Drabenderhöhe as an exhibit.
The keystones show the alliance coat of arms of Count Wilhelm Friedrich zu Sayn-Wittgenstein- Homburg (1649 to 1698) and his wife Maria Magdalena (1641 to 1701) and are carved from Lindlar sandstone. The diameter is 52.5 cm. On the side of the coat of arms is the year 1697, on the edge the inscription WILH FRID GZSVWHZHVVN MARIA MAGD GZSVWGGZSVWGZHVN L VCL (Wilhelm Friedrich Graf zu Sayn and Wittgenstein, Herr zu Homburg, Vallendar and Neumagen, Maria Magdalena Countess zu Sayn and Wittgenstein, born Sayn and Wittgenstein, Countess zu Hohenstein and ..), on the other hand the coat of arms of Count Carl Friedrich zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Homburg (1698 to 1723), also made of Lindlar sandstone, with a diameter of 38 cm. On the edge is the inscription CARL FRIEDERIC GZSVWHZHVVN (Carl Friedrich Graf zu Sayn and Wittgenstein, Herr zu Homburg and Vallendar and Neumagen).
In 1833 the five Reformed Homburg parishes united with the Lutheran parishes from the districts of Gummersbach and Waldbröl to form the Aggersynod . This made Drabenderhöhe a united community. Since it was an administrative union, the congregation retained the denomination of a Reformed church. This can be seen in the use of the Heidelberg Catechism .
In 1784 Johann Wilhelm Schöler took over the office of pastor in Drabenderhöhe. He was not satisfied with the domicile in Pfaffenscheid because it was very dilapidated. He applied for a new rectory to be built in the village. The application was rejected by the state executive, without whose consent no municipal funds could be used. The house was repaired again for a few hundred Reichstaler. But according to the church chronicle, Pfaffenscheid was still in poor condition. Thereupon Pastor Schöler, who still owned his own goods in the village, built his own house in 1790, the current pastorate. Since the Wiedenhof was no longer used as a parish seat, the current name Pfaffenscheid was also created. Pfaffenscheid was leased from 1790 until it was sold in 1867. The rectory in the village of Drabenderhöhe was bought by the parish in 1860 from the Schöler family.
During the Second World War, the hall and the tower burned down during the American attack on March 21, 1945. The restoration and inauguration of the hall took place in 1949, the erection of the spire in its old form was completed in 1953. In 1958, the Weiershagenener Höfe, Ohl, Zur Ley and Steeg, and Reuschenbach, to the right of the Wiehl, were also incorporated into the Drabenderhöhe parish. As a result of the influx of refugees after the Second World War, the Protestant residents of the villages of Höllerhof , Hündekausen , Oberbusch , Oberdorf , Leuscherath , Niederbech , Niedermiebach and Wellerscheid, otherwise assigned to the Catholic community of Much, have also belonged to the parish since 1954 . In 2003 the parish had 4,381 registered Protestant members, in 2007 there were still 4,227. Since January 1, 2014 there has been a parish connection between the Protestant parishes of Drabenderhöhe and Marienberghausen. This became necessary because of the decline in parish membership.
Church building
The five-storey Romanesque west tower, which is still preserved today, has been turned from the apse and connected to the nave by a small connecting building. The unadorned tower with an eight-sided, curved hood with a closed lantern consists of grouted, warehouse-like quarry stone masonry with a former western arched door (today dismantled to a window) and simply arched sound openings on the fourth and fifth floor, which was added in 1697. On the north side there is a wall reinforcement set off by a strip of cornice half the width of the wall up to the level of the second floor.
The classicist hall building, made of plastered blocks of houses, is connected to the tower by a small vestibule and has two arched rows of windows in four axes for built-in galleries. A semicircular apis with three now blind window niches has been drawn in on the eastern gable wall.
The 2.30 m wide entrance hall of the tower, which still existed in 1900, was vaulted by a now no longer existing narrow barrel. The arched access to the upper floors is located above in the east wall of the tower and was formerly accessible from the nave, today via a modern wooden staircase in the vestibule. In the flat-roofed hall there is a west gallery, on the side walls between the rows of windows there is a wall recess as a support for the side galleries added back in the 1970s. The apse, which used to be a sacristy, is now open. The current design of the interior of the church was the responsibility of the art and church painter Walter Putfarken from Düsseldorf under the direction of the state curator Dr. Borchers. They were guided by photographs that showed the interior of the church before it was destroyed. The renovation began in 1974 and was completed in 1978. In the upper part of the apse is the large, monumental wall painting "Christ as Judge of the World", including the altar designed by the cabinet maker Helmut Penz and the pulpit, which he also designed. The ceiling of the church is the dominant theme to which all the paintings and designs have to be subordinated. The beamed ceiling favors a strict ornamentation and geometric division of the painterly design. The predominant colors of the church are the white of the walls, the light blue-gray of the church stalls and the galleries, as well as the bright red and blue of the lush ceiling painting. The altar and pulpit are highlighted by a shiny gold. The church has been a memorial since 1982.
organ
The organ was in 1977, built by the company Dahlbüdding that 1982 was extinguished and Georg Hesener intoned . She has two free typesetters and a fixed combination for "Organo Pleno". The manual range is: C-g '' 'and the pedal range C-f'. The stop action is purely electrical, the tone action mechanical. The organ uses slide chests and the wind pressure of the main work and the pedal work is 65 mm WS and that of the Rückpositiv 55 mm WS.
The organ is positioned on the gallery above the entrance to the church and the prospect is directed towards the altar. The gaming table is located directly behind the Rückpositiv , which was installed in the hall at the level of the gallery. The prospectus is made of tin pipes and the case was painted by the community artist.
The predecessor was an organ made by the organ builder Paul Faust . Some registers of the old organ were taken over in the new organ in 1977 (see disposition ).
Disposition
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Couple
- I -> II
- I-> Ped.
- II -> Ped
Remarks
Typesetter
- MR
- A + B (free)
- Zero register
- Organo pleno
Bells
Until the middle of the 19th century there were two bells in the church tower. The small bell from 1509 had the textura inscription “Maria I ask, all bois neither I get annoyed. Johann van Andernach gois me. Anno MCVIX '". Textura is one of the Gothic scripts developed in the Middle Ages, which also shaped late medieval script. At that time the church was still a chapel and a branch of the Johanniterkomturei Marienhagen.
According to the church chronicle, the larger bell was cast by a Claudius from Bonn and adorned the name of the Reformed pastor Christian Klee, who worked in Drabenderhöhe from 1628 until his death in 1668. A well-known bell founder at that time was Claudius Lamiral from Bonn, who made numerous bells in the Cologne, Bonn and Aachen area between 1634 and 1667. The Drabenderhöher bell must have been cast during this time. In 1824 a crack made it unusable and it was poured over. It had the following inscription: "Cast at Gummersbach in 1824 by Johann Rincker and sons - von Leun and Hof - Sim. There, W. Moeller, mayor, JW Schoeler, pastor and JH Dreibholz, church master were."
The larger bell from 1824 cracked in 1855. The resulting crack widened the following year, so that the community decided to purchase three cast steel bells from the cast steel factory of the Bochum Association . The smaller and older bell was also no longer usable because the bow of the crown had been ground down, although according to the church chronicle "its tone was still of excellent quality and beauty". Unfortunately, the parish chronicle does not report anything about the whereabouts of the little bell, but it had served for 348 years.
The old bells rang for the last time on February 8, 1857. The new bells called for the first time on March 1, 1857. The church chronicle further reports: “The same weigh, the largest with the inscription“ Come, for everything is ready! ”2090 pounds, the second 985 pounds, the smallest 654 pounds. They have the tones E, G sharp, B and cost with axles, tenons, bearings, clapper, handle and special 871 thaler, 24 silver groschen. To be able to hang them up, a new bell cage was attached under the old bell cage that carried the previous two. Also this year all tower sound holes were fitted with blinds and the tower was plastered with cement on the outside. A capital of 50 thalers was given to the community for the installation of the bells on the condition that a copy of the Holy Scriptures be given to each bride and groom in the community at the wedding as a testimony that every Christian testifies to this word Housekeeping is to be built up. "
No information is available about the fate of the three bells in the First World War. Presumably they were spared from being melted down, as they were not made of bronze and bells that came from before 1860 were not removed.
Under Pastor Friedrich Liederwald (July 12, 1925 to October 13, 1930), new bells were purchased in 1928 and, under Pastor Adolf Müller (November 30, 1930 to May 10, 1953), devices were given in the 1930s to make them easier to ring. They were designed by the Rincker company from Sinn in Hessen and cast by the Bruderus company from Wetzlar in 1920. The church bells were purchased by the evangelical community in Cologne-Deutz, as new bronze bells were made there.
The old bells were given away. The bell tower in the Weiershagen cemetery, which was inaugurated with the memorial on November 18, 1936, received the big bell. It still rings there at funeral ceremonies. The middle bell was given to the cemetery in Bladersbach and the third was given away to the agricultural school in Vollmerhausen.
During the Second World War, steel bells were not drawn in for melting down in order to use them for the armaments industry. But the devastating attack on March 21, 1945 destroyed the nave and the spire. The bells fell out of the tower, but remained undamaged.
In February 1947 a bell was temporarily hung up. The rededication of the church took place on December 22, 1949 by the superintendent Fach. At Christmas 1950 all three bells were back in the tower. Master Dreibholz made the bell cage, the assembly was carried out by the Rincker company. The spire was not completed until three years later, the topping-out ceremony of which was celebrated with a church service on May 1st.
The three bells from 1920 that are now in the tower have the tones E, G and A. Two of them have inscriptions. On the larger bell it says: "A strong castle is our God". The middle bell is decorated with the inscription: "Preserve us, Lord, by your word". The little bell has no lettering.
When a bell is rung depends on the occasion. All three bells ring at church services and wedding ceremonies. The large and middle bells are used for funeral services. If you hear the big bell on weekdays at 9:00 a.m., a death is indicated in the parish. During the service, the middle bell rings with the prayer of the “Our Father”.
Grave slabs
Two 18th century tombstones are set into the wall on the sides of the entrance. They belonged to the graves of the married couple Jakobus Wülfing and Anna Gertrud von Recklinghausen, who generously donated 100 Reichsthaler to the reconstruction of the church in 1697.
Wülfing was a merchant, wholesaler and tenant of the Leuscherath mill, lived in Unterkaltenbach . He bought the Leuscherather mill in 1694. According to an entry in the Drabenderhöher church book, he was slain. The von Recklinghausen family originally came from Eschweiler. Anna Gertrud's father moved to Oberbergische, was a mountain governor, probably in Kaltenbach and lived in Braunswerth, a former part of Engelskirchen . After the old hammer mill that was located there was demolished, the Ermen and Engels factory was built. Anna Gertrud was buried in the choir in front of the table.
The grave slabs measuring 204 cm × 109 cm are made of limestone and were made in 1706 (Wüfling) and 1704 (von Recklinghausen). There are only minor differences in shape between the two plates. In the upper part are the coats of arms of the two families, in the lower part the writing fields surrounded by tendrils with hourglass and skull. The inscriptions in Latin that are barely legible today read:
Grave plate 1: “Which woman is resting at this point? Is it an influential woman of class? She was born as a child of the Recklinghausen parent line. Who was the husband? That well-known wholesaler Peter Jakob Wülfing, already saddened because he is widowed. Who did she care for as a virgin? The father. What in advanced age? Virtue, faith, justice, especially since they worshiped God. What illness did she die of? Was it because of the birth, or was it from heartbreak, as it were? She was filled with unwavering hope and trust. Such was her worldly life; how will the other be? Where does she rise from, when will she rise from the grave? When the trumpet of God sounds Anna Gertrud von Recklinghausen, b. 9/21/1662 - died 3/3/174 "
Grave slab 2: “The relatives of the very distinguished and honorable man, the very wise Mr. Jakob Wülfing in Leuscherath, a wholesaler with a very good reputation: I had to die, even if piety, love, virtue and faith would forbid it. He would never have died since he was the temple of piety and the chapel of faith. But still, Death killed Wülfing according to divine law and thrown him to the side of his wife. From the day of death the relatives, the father-in-law, the born daughters and the son will be grieved. Alas, death presses us! From then on, however, a serious cause of new grief has been brought into the house. Why do I cry out loud at the violence of death? It is proper to acknowledge the will of God with the highest praise. Wülfing did not die, but he is blessed in divine joy, and it does not happen that he will die. Born 1662 - died 1706 "
A third slab is made of sandstone and is located in the church and has the dimensions 74 cm × 57 cm and was also made in the 18th century. Only the back is visible, which is embedded in a wall in the entrance hall of the church. The inscription reads: "HOS CC 6. Kompt we want to go against the Lord because he had torn us apart, he'll heal us too."
Landmark
The boundary stone made of Drachenfelsstrachyd dates back to 1604 and measures 53 cm × 29 cm × 17 cm. The front bears the Bergisches Löwen and the back the Wittgenstein coat of arms with the number I. The stone is one of the 24 boundary stones that were set to demarcate the Homburg rulership according to the Siegburg comparison. The boundary stone is a copy. On June 27, 1995, a cast was set up in the presence of the then District Administrator Herbert Heidmann. The original was transferred to Homburg Castle and has been a memorial since 1982.
With the Siegburg settlement, Drabenderhöhe finally became the border town between the Duchy of Berg and the Imperial Counties of Homburg. The Duchy of Berg was administratively divided into offices. This led to the fact that the Drabenderhöher districts of Scheidt were in the Windeck district and the beginning in the Steinbach district. With the Reich Deputation Committee in Regensburg in 1806, the old administrative units were dissolved and attached to the Duchy of Berg. The districts of Uckerath / later Siegkreis (municipality Much), Wipperfürth (municipality Engelskirchen) and Homburg / later Gummersbach (municipality Drabenderhöhe) were created. The border was only moved around the place in 1932 at the urging of the residents of Scheidt in favor of the Drabenderhöhe community.
In 1952, the historic boundary stone was returned to its old place during the laying of the church wall. A document was walled in that contained the following text: “The Siegburg settlement of June 12, 1604 and its implementation provisions of November 19, 1604 ended the decades-long border disputes between the Duchy of Berg and the Lordship of Homburg. On March 31, 1605, the Bergisch-Wittgenstein commission, in the presence of a number of young and old subjects on both sides, set the boundary stone No. 1 in front of the church in Drabenderhöhe at the intersection of Brächen-Wellerscheid and Heckberg-Hillershagen (today Hillerscheid). The total of 24 border stones made of dragon rock strachyte by the Cologne master Gerhard Schewen, sculptor and citizen of Cologne, made for two Reichsthalers each, laid the border from Drabenderhöhe (No. 1) via Brächen (No. 2), Niederseßmar (No. 3) Dreiherrenstein called until after Ziegenhardt an der Waldbröl (No. 24). Since the incorporation of the towns of Anfang (from the municipality of Engelskirchen) and Scheidt (from the municipality of Much) into the municipality of Drabenderhöhe in 1932, stone no. 1 is no longer a boundary stone. When the intersection was widened before the last world war, it was initially removed, but because of its historical importance it is now given its new location, close to its original location. The border between stones No. 1 to 24 has remained valid to this day: until 1806 it separated lordship and office Windeck, until 1815 cantons, until 1819 or 1825 districts, until 1932 partly municipalities, partly districts, since 1932 municipalities. Drabenderhöhe, Monday, July 7th, 1952. Name of the communal parish of Seelbach, parish director, name of the Protestant parish Adolf Müller, pastor, name of the Bergisches Geschichtsverein Fritz Rau sen., Windhagen, name of the building craftsman Ewald Heppner. "
literature
- Ruth-Schmitz-Ehmke (arrangement): Handbook of German art monuments , North Rhine-Westphalia, Volume I: Rhineland. Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich / Berlin 1967, p. 63f.
- Edmund Renard: The art monuments of the districts Gummersbach, Waldbroel and Wipperfürth. Düsseldorf 1900, p. 16f.
- Home through the ages. 10 years of the Transylvanian Saxony settlement Drabenderhöhe. Böhlau (on commission), Cologne a. a. 1976, ISBN 3-412-03276-X .
- Parish archive of the Drabenderhöhe parish
- Bergischer Geschichtsverein: Organs in Oberberg churches
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 41 ″ N , 7 ° 27 ′ 12.3 ″ E