Evangelical Church of Berneburg
The Protestant Johanniskirche Berneburg is a listed church building in Berneburg , a district of Sontra in the Werra-Meißner district ( Hesse ).
History and architecture
The church was built on the Kirchberg in 1741/1743 by the Italian and landgrave master builder Giovanni Ghezzy (1677–1746), who planned and implemented numerous buildings and furnishings in northern Hesse. When the church was built, parts of the predecessor church dating from the Middle Ages and consecrated to John the Baptist were used.
The simple hall with a three-sided choir is crowned by a roof tower with a pointed helmet. Three-sided double encircling galleries , its pillars support the ceiling, characterize the room as well as the choir stalls with the centrally behind the altar set pulpit .
Furnishing
The organ was built in 1794 by Johann Wilhelm Schmerbach the Middle (1765–1831), who came from a family of organ builders who worked in Frieda for five generations .
Several gravestones from the 18th and 19th centuries can be found in the floor of the choir. In the central aisle of today's church, such gravestones are used as the floor covering, which come from the much older church, which stood as a pilgrimage church on the Kirchberg, roughly on the site of today's cemetery chapel. Two of the tombstones are of particular interest. In the center aisle there is a report of a child who was shot by a hunter and died of these injuries. Behind the altar there is a crescent moon on a grave slab, about which there are various legends.
The von Biedenfeldt family, who have lived in the village since 1180, donated the oldest Berneburg bells for the original chapel on the Kirchberg (1478). One of the bells, the Ossana bell, still rings today in the Berneburg St. John's Church.
The new - and first - baptismal font of the church, designed by Michael Possinger, was presented to the congregation in a church service on March 12, 2011.
Interesting facts about the church
The farms of Rorenberg, Menglers, Metzlar and Hiebenthal were parish in Berneburg. The villages of Mönch-Hosbach, Heyerode and Hornel were branches of Berneburg. However, the church accounts of Heyerode were filed in Spangenberg, to whose office the village of Heyerode belonged. The pastor of Berneburg was appointed by the Hesse-Rotenburg landgraves and had to give the sermon on Sundays.
In front of the entrance, a notch with an inscription marks the level of the flood that hit the valley in 1864. Seven people and well over 1,000 head of cattle were killed and the place was devastated.
The parish of Berneburg had around 266 parishioners in 2017 and, together with the parishes of Heyerode and Diemerode, forms a parish.
literature
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments , Hessen . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1966
- EM Ledderhose: Contributions to the description of the Papal States of the Hessen-Casselischen Lande , Im Druck und Verlag des Waisenhauses, Cassel 1780
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Archived copy ( memento of the original dated December 2, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c d Archived copy ( memento of the original dated December 2, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Georg Dehio ; Edited by Magnus Backes: Hessen . In: Handbook of German Art Monuments . First volume. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich, Berlin 1966, p. 75 .
- ↑ a b c https://www.sontra.de/verzeichnis/objekt.php?mandat=152309&browser=1
- ↑ Additions to the description of the Papal States of the Hessen-Casselischen Lande , from 1780, p. 241
Coordinates: 51 ° 3 ′ 32 " N , 9 ° 53 ′ 8" E