Evangelical parish church St. Pankratius (Hamm-Mark)

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Coordinates: 51 ° 40 '58.9 "  N , 7 ° 51' 8.8"  E

The Protestant parish church of St. Pankratius is located in the Mark district of the city of Hamm . It belongs to the parish of Mark-Westtünnen. The church was built around 1000 AD as a separate church of the Oberhof Mark (also called Schultenhof), which dates back to the time of the Saxon rule and on whose site it was built. The Oberhof's possessions included u. a. the later castle hill, which passed to Friedrich von Berg-Altena together with the upper courtyard in 1170 . Friedrich had a fortress built there for his son Adolf I von der Mark , the Mark Castle . The Oberhof and the church were also connected to this. The Pankratiuskirche was originally the own church of the Counts of the Mark . St. Pankratius has been a listed building since 1985.

Ev. Parish Church of St. Pankratius (Hamm) .JPG

prehistory

St. Pancras

The church is dedicated to St. Pancras , one of the ice saints . Legend has it that he was the son of a wealthy Phrygian who died in his youth. As an orphan he traveled to Rome with his uncle Dionysius . There he is said to have been accepted into the church by Pope Cornelius (year of death: 253). After his uncle died, he was captured and brought before the emperor, who tried to dissuade him from his belief. When Pancratius resisted this attempt, he was beheaded on the Via Aurelia on Diocletian's orders. The veneration of the saint began in Westphalia after 985. This year his relics were transported from Rome to Ghent . Pankratius was especially venerated by knights who asked for his protection on their crusades. This is probably the reason why the Counts of the Mark chose him as their patron saint.

The Mark

The area between Lippe , Geithe and Ahse served the surrounding farmers as pastureland and was therefore briefly called the Mark - Mark in the sense of a field mark . Around the area were individual farms, which owned cattle that were herded to graze in the marrow. The farmsteads bordered further south on the closed villages of the Hellweg . In this way, two fundamentally different forms of settlement developed. The individual farms were scattered across the country without being a uniform distance from one another. They were each surrounded by garden land, pasture, arable land and / or meadow. To protect against grazing cattle or game, the individual farmsteads were secured with hedges and fences. Only the smaller part of the land was privately owned by the settlers. The lion's share was available as the so-called common mark to all neighboring farmers and was used collectively for pasture, fattening, timber and other purposes.

In the course of time the population grew so that the land that had passed into private ownership was no longer sufficient to meet the food needs. Since the brand land still abundant in this region offered itself as a site for new settlement, the pastureland at Geithe and Ahse was segregated for the settlement of new farmers. These did not belong to one of the neighboring rural communities, but formed their own association ( Markgenossenschaft ), which exercised all the rights and obligations of a peasantry in the associated village mark. This particularly included the land order and the use of the brand. The new community called itself the farmers Mark  - after the area on which the new community had settled.

In the sixth century, the region was littered with individual farms on which free farmers lived. In this century the Saxons broke into Westphalia and subjected the region to their rule. The local population was not killed or expelled, for example to settle new colonists. The Saxons even allowed the peasants to live on their farms according to their traditional customs and rights. The Saxon conquerors benefited from this approach by building castles from which they ruled; the rural residents were forced to serve the lords of the castle and to pay taxes.

The Schultenhof

Several farms that belonged to one master and were located close to one another were combined into a general association and placed under an administrator, the so-called Schulten . This was responsible for ensuring compliance with the duties of the population towards their master.

The farmsteads in the Mark peasantry had passed into the possession of a Saxon nobleman. This subordinated them and some other farms in the neighborhood to a main or upper courtyard . This, together with the associated reasons and the people who lived there, was briefly called Hof zur Mark .

The farms in the Mark and the adjacent areas have been preserved to the present day. The Schultenhof, however, was later closed. Goods registers that were created at the end of the Middle Ages on the orders of the sovereign government provide information on the original size and state of construction of the property. In 1595 the associated pieces were measured by a sworn land surveyor in the presence of the rent master zu Hamm and a notary. A century later, in 1696, three farmers and several citizens from Hamm visited the site. The buildings had already been demolished at this time, but the delegation was able to inspect the former location of the Schultenhof in a cow camp. The farm comprised a large number of arable fields, meadows and pastures. From there the rights to use the trademark, the logging and the mast were exercised in a neighboring forest. The land was mostly poor and not very productive.

Four Kotten belonged to the Schultenhof. Their owners were obliged to pay taxes as well as manual and clamping services to a reasonable extent . The farms that were assigned to the Hof zum Mark had to deliver part of the harvested fruit or the sowing of each piece. Depending on the productivity, it is the third or fourth part of the harvest. However, it was the principle that the home , so the farmer needed to make anything from his garden, his linen, vetch and lentil country and out of the fire.

The farmers were also obliged to do horse and body service on the Schultenhof. To do this, they had to appear in a fixed order and do the required work manually or with the help of their teams.

Later the private economy was given up. Instead, the plots were leased individually. This made the services at the Oberhof or Schultenhof in the Mark farmers superfluous. They were replaced by the compulsory kötten and farmers with an annual fee. After the court constitution fell into disrepair towards the end of the Middle Ages, the remaining taxes were handed over to the lordly rentier in Hamm.

During the 19th century, these were also gradually replaced on the basis of the law on the regulation of landlord-rural conditions. This removed the remnants of the original legal and economic relationships.

Christianization under the Franks

In the eighth century, the Frankish ruler Charlemagne began his campaigns against the Saxons. These had invaded the Franconian border area several times in order to subjugate this country as well. Punitive expeditions to Westphalia did not have the desired effect. In order to be safe from the restless neighbor, Karl made the decision to destroy the enemy and conquer their lands. The decades of fighting came to an end in 804 with the conquest of Westphalia by Charles' troops. Most of the Saxon nobility were slain, executed or fled. The rest of them submitted to Frankish rule. Charlemagne let the Saxon goods move in and gave them away to his followers or to the church.

Charles's triumphal march paved the way for the Christianization of Westphalia, which is evident in the establishment of the diocese of Münster by Liudger immediately after the end of the armed conflicts. In addition to the castles of the Franks, monasteries and churches were also increasingly emerging in Westphalia. These were established by the landlords of the clerical and secular class on their fron or upper courts. They were therefore called Fronhof churches or own churches because they were owned by their builder.

Like all properties in the south of the Hammer area, the Pankratius Church was under the sovereignty of the Archbishop of Cologne, while the relationship between the later County of Mark and the diocese or prince-bishopric of Münster was characterized by rivalries and conflicts of interest.

St. Pankratius own church

The owner of Hof zur Mark (one of the noblemen of Rüdenberg , whose allod was the Oberhof) had his own church built. The church was built around the year 1000 on the grounds of the Schultenhof. It is not completely clear whether the church was consecrated to Saint Pancras from the beginning or whether it had a different patron, such as Saint Martin. It is conceivable that the Counts of Altena only brought their saint here with them later .

The church and farm came into the possession of the Counts of Altena in the 12th century. The new rulers were also the governors of the Kappenberg premonitorial monastery , which the Counts of Kappenberg, who were related to the Counts of Altena, had founded in 1122. Count Engelbert I. von der Mark gave the monastery the Pankratius Church in 1254 with all rights and information. He justified this explicitly with the fact that his ancestors were buried there.

Archbishop Konrad of Cologne confirmed the donation a few months later. When a dispute arose towards the end of the 13th century about ownership of the church, Pope Nicholas IV declared in a document dated December 13, 1291 that the church had been legitimately left to the Kappenberg monastery by Count Engelbert as its patron.

As was customary in the Middle Ages, the church was also used for defensive purposes. It was used as a refuge for local residents during wartime. For this reason it was surrounded by a moat and rampart and also had a cemetery assigned to it. In the case of approaching enemies, the rural population and their belongings could withdraw behind the protective systems. Some of them were used there to defend the area.

The tower of the castle was built as a high, stone keep for defensive purposes in accordance with its importance. When the enemy got to the cemetery, the defenders could retreat there. After the construction of Mark Castle , however, the high tower appeared to the residents of the castle complex as a threat to their own security. There was a risk that advancing attackers would take possession of the tower and, from there, attack the nearby castle or install scouts to observe them.

As part of the conflict with the bishops of Münster in the first half of the 13th century, Count Eberhard managed to have the keep demolished and replaced with a lower tower in 1251. To compensate, he gave the church a courtyard for feasts.

This occurrence clearly shows that the church was built before the castle. Had the castle been built first, the lords of the castle would have made sure that the church was built in a more distant location, so that the castle would have been out of range.

History and description of the building

The Pankratiuskirche was originally the house church of the Oberhof Mark. This went to Friedrich von Berg-Altena around 1170 , who had Mark Castle built on the castle hill belonging to the Oberhof estate in 1198 . St. Pankratius can therefore also be seen as the own church of the city founder of Hamm, Friedrich's son Count Adolf I von der Mark .

As a separate church of the Counts von der Mark, St. Pankratius was also the mother church of Hamm, the city that Count Adolf I von der Mark had founded in 1226 as a successor settlement to Nienbrügge , which was razed in 1225 . The town church of Hamm, the Pauluskirche built around 1275 (then consecrated to Saints Laurentius and Georg), was not separated from the Pankratiuskirche until 1337. The Archbishop of Cologne decreed to "compensate" (or rather, to smooth the waves) that St. George's Church had to give the Marker village church two four-pound candles made of good wax every year for Christmas. These should then be lit on the altar in the market and illuminate the interior of the church during the main mass.

Building parts

The parish church is now lined with the former cemetery and a number of older half-timbered houses. At first glance, the exterior facade appears modest and is indistinguishable from simple village churches of a similar design. The tower of the church and a single-nave, flat-roofed hall building were probably built in the 12th century and are still in the original wall connection. This makes them an example of a simple hall church from the early Middle Ages that has become rare today.

The projecting transept has a choir closed on three sides. The nave, on the other hand, is a little lower. This architectural style proves the function of the church as a separate church of the Märkischen counts. However, the single-nave nave and the two-storey tower, around 1.20 meters thick, must also be taken into account, which appears to have been shifted slightly to the south from the axis of the building. Both are designed as a composite and walled up accordingly. This points to a Romanesque church building, as it was more common at the presumed time the church was built - around the year 1100 - in the area of ​​the Hellweg. The structure is made of sandstone with a greenish color. Such building material was regularly used in churches from this period. It comes from quarries on the northern edge of the Haarstrang in the region around today's Anröchte and Neuengeseke. In 1989 the masonry was covered with a whitewashed slurry plaster. It should be protected against harmful weather influences. In its original, uncut and only roughly jointed form, the masonry, which has presumably only recently been exposed, was relatively unprotected from the weather; further destruction of the old quarry stone masonry, which was interspersed with a lot of mortar, was to be stopped in this way.

The traditions of the region know that the tower served as a refuge in times of crisis, which also corresponds to the structural conditions. Until the 19th century, the tower had no level access. Its interior was only accessible from the church with a ladder to the upper floor. From the gallery you can still see the one square meter former wall opening. In 1251, the Brandenburg ruler, Engelbert I, gave the church a courtyard in Schmehausen as compensation for the upper floor of the tower, which the Count had had fears removed, the men of the Bishop of Münster, who were feuding with the Mark, could attack or spy on Mark Castle from here . A wooden floor was placed in a makeshift manner, which gradually became rotten and had to be replaced by slate-clad brick masonry in the 18th century. The current bell storey was bricked up in 1735. At first it consisted only of bricks, the slate facing was added in 1909. Master Bernhard Stuniken crowned the steep helmet in 1736 with a weather vane in the shape of an angel blowing a trumpet. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that a portal was broken into the tower, thus opening a new entrance to the church. As part of this work, the old entrances on the north and south sides were bricked up and the north wall of the nave in the upper area was renewed. They were provided with two larger, gothic windows. The wooden lid in the form of a coffin lid that was introduced at that time has been covered by a wooden staircase underneath since the 1970s. The tower had to be restored in 2002. The work was completed in December. The tower has been covered since then. The angel was also repaired in this context.

The previously small, low arch opening to the transept and choir was enlarged in the second half of the 19th century. The part, which is now widely opened for the church service, has been added. This results from a date carved into the north wall of the crossing (MCCCXLII, 1342). The expansion is probably related to the parish of St. George's Church in Hamm, today's St. Paul's Church, in 1337, and goes back to the sovereign rulers, who at that time still resided at Burg Mark. It is questionable whether there was even a chapel at the castle at that time; Only in 1442, after the rise of the Counts of the Mark to the Dukes of Cleves and their move to the Lower Rhine, is there talk of the consecration of an Antonius chapel at Mark Castle. The older nave is considerably surmounted by the Gothic transept with a square choir yoke and subsequent choir closure on three sides of a hexagon. The high vaulted zone corresponds to the hall type that was often built in the Hellweg area in the 14th century. The St. Viktor Church in Herringen also shows this architectural style.

Interior

Although the external appearance of the church is rather simple, it is of some art historical importance. This is less due to the exterior facade than to the interior of the church. There you can find wall paintings, especially in the choir, which were discovered in 1908/09 during restoration work. Presumably they were made by the same workshop that made the choir windows of the Wiesenkirche in Soest and date to the second half of the 14th century.

In the Gustav-Lübcke-Museum zu Hamm there are still gresaille remains and fragments of an angel playing music, which belonged to the original glazing of the windows of the choir and transept. Apart from these few relics, nothing has survived from the originally installed windows. Today's colored glazing from the 1950s was designed by the artist Hilde Ferber from Treysa. You can see scenic representations of the creation story and the life of Jesus.

The windows were originally intended to be placed in the choir. However, there are frescoes there that were almost certainly made in the 14th century. They did not belong to the original furnishings of the church, but they are still very old. Their degree of conservation is also remarkable. The extent and completeness of the painted sermon are unique in Westphalia. The windows of Hilde Ferber have therefore been moved to the transept.

There is a depiction of the Last Judgment on the vault of the end of the choir. The middle vault area shows the Mandorla Christ as the judge of the world with palm and sword on the rainbow. There are three angels at his feet. They blow the trumpets. In the spandrels the risen in their graves, which are arranged in strips, raise their hands pleadingly.

The so-called sacrament niche has been embedded in the north wall of the choir yoke since the 15th century and can be closed by a wrought iron grille. In the course of this work, an apostle figure in the wall painting was destroyed. Today only her shoulders and head can be seen. Next to this niche is a wooden wall cabinet from the 14th century, which was used to store the altar device. It is bordered by a pear and throat and shows a colored relief head of Christ in the tympanum. Inside there is a representation of scattered flowers on a red background. The door of the closet is covered with iron straps and shows on its inside the image of Christ, who is surrounded by flowers and blessing, also on a red background.

In addition, a number of tombs have been preserved in the choir. The best known is the grave of Lieutenant General Karl Friedrich von Wolffersdorff († 1781), who commanded the city for many years.

The organ in the north transept, on the other hand, is more recent. It is a work of the Ott company from Göttingen , which it delivered in 1976 as a replacement for the earlier organ built in 1868. Since it was larger than the organ previously installed, space had to be created for it first. The west gallery, dating from the beginning of the 19th century, was removed from the north transept. Your parapet was then erected on the west wall of the south transept.

The oldest piece of equipment in the church is the baptismal font made of Baumberger sandstone, which must be dated to the middle of the 13th century. The old font was placed in the middle of the transept in 1976, where it is still located today.

In the so-called triumphal arch - located between the transept and the choir - a life-size figure of Christ hangs on a cross above the box altar with a reredos on it. The late Gothic crucifix, a somewhat rough Flemish carving, was made towards the end of the 15th century or the beginning of the 16th century. It comes from Kentrop Monastery and was brought here in 1830. In 1909 it was freed from a disfiguring paint job.

A wall painting with four scenes from the life of Pankratius can be found on the east wall of the south transept. They are marked with the inscription PASSO SANCTI PANCRATI SALUTARIS . However, it is not the original painting, which is about a meter lower, but rather a copy. The original work had to make way for a heating opening that has now been closed again. The painting visualizes the martyrdom of St. Pancras. It depicts the baptism of fourteen-year-old Pancratius by Bishop Marcellinus , his condemnation of the accused because of his Christian faith, his beheading before Emperor Diocletian, who had failed in his attempt to get him to withdraw, and the bedding of the body in the coffin.

Parish

The parish of Mark had two pastoral care districts since 1964. The first is named after the parish hall and kindergarten, the Paul-Gerhardt-Haus. For the second pastoral care district in the eastern area - Friedrich von Bodelschwingh-Haus Hamm-Osten - the building of the same name was built later.

In 2007 the two places of worship were reduced to one. Since then, there have been no church services in the Friedrich-von-Bodelschwingh-Haus.

Pastor

  • 1713–1727: Friedrich Rüdiger Gummersbach († 1727)
  • 1728–1756: Johann Diedrich Möllenhoff († 1756)
  • 1809–1852: Gottlieb Zimmermann († 1854)
  • 1853–1868: Karl Niemann († 1895)
  • 1868–1901: August Siemsen († 1910)
  • 1902–1939: Paul Wittmann († 1949)
  • Paul Mustroph
  • Werner Dierksen
  • Horst Heuermann
  • Hans-Martin Thimme
  • Andreas Mueller
  • 2003–2013: Alfred Grote
  • from 2013: Jörg Rudolph
  • from February 1, 2017: Elisabeth Pakull

The pastor at the Pankratius Church is Jörg Rudolph, the pastor at the Bodelschwingh House is Klaus Martin Pothmann.

Church music

The Ev. Parish of Mark-Westtünnen is particularly dedicated to church music. In August 2000 Heiko Held took over the office of church musician of the Ev. Parish Mark by former cantor Gerhard Wilkening. Held is organist and responsible for public relations in the field of church music. The Marker church choir consists of around 60 singers. Heike Niebuhr has been in charge of it since January 2019. In 2017, the soprano Takako Oishi was hired to train the choir. The trombone choirs in the districts of Mark (founded in 1913), directed by Georg Turwitt and Westtünnen, directed by Henning Voss, are used around 100 times a year in church services, devotions, concerts and birthday serenades. With the reduction to just one place of worship in 2005, the two church choirs were united under the direction of Werner Granz until 2012. The Cantate'86 choir, youth choir and young choir in the Friedrich-von-Bodelschwingh-Haus, performance choir in the ChorVerband NRW 2007 and concert choir in the ChorVerband NRW 2009, under the direction of Werner Granz, play a key role in the cultural life of the city of Hamm through its big Christmas concert enriched The flute group “flauti di mark” is led by Elke Zerbe. The Westphalian Baroque Chamber Orchestra (WBKO) celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015. Dominika Lenz is in charge of the orchestra.

day care center

A day-care center has been one of the constant services offered by the parish since 1945. The community library is located in the basement of the youth center.

literature

  • Friedrich Wilhelm Jerrentrup : Pankratius Church and castle complex in Hamm-Mark. Münster 1982 (Westfälische Kunststätten 18).
  • Paul Wittmann: On the history of the Protestant parish of Mark , Bielefeld 1949.
  • Josef Lappe : Hamm in the Middle Ages and in modern times, The Burg zur Mark. In: 700 Years of the City of Hamm, commemorative publication to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the city. Werl 1973.
  • Georg Eggenstein, Ellen Schwinzer: Traces of Time. The beginnings of the city of Hamm. Hamm / Bönen 2002.

Web links

Commons : Evangelical Parish Church of St. Pankratius  - Collection of images, videos and audio files