Evangelical town church Kitzingen

The baroque facade of the town church

The Protestant City Church of Kitzingen (also Petrini Church) is a church building in the old town of Kitzingen . With its high tower and its monumental baroque facade, it shapes the cityscape. It is consecrated to John the Baptist , but is usually only called the city church, in contrast to the Catholic St. John's Church. The church is the largest Protestant church in Lower Franconia.

history

The history of the town church is closely linked to that of the town of Kitzingen. The predecessor of today's church was a monastery . Sources reported its existence as early as the 8th century. It was founded as a Benedictine abbey .

Until the Reformation (until 1568)

The Petrini Church in 1692, copper engraving by Johann Paul Codoman

The founder of the monastery was Hadeloga , who belonged to the Mattonen family. A clan foundation set up the monastery to provide for female Franconian nobles. In 745 St. Boniface consecrated the monastery and sent his confidante Thekla to the Franconian city. She should take over the management of the abbey after the death of Abbess Hadeloga. The Benedictine monastery was founded as an imperial monastery and therefore directly subordinate to the Frankish king. It was not until 1007 that the diocese of Bamberg came into being , with diocesan authority remaining with the Würzburg prince-bishop.

In the 12th century, Saint Hedwig von Andechs visited the monastery and was brought up there by the sisters. In 1443, Kitzingen was pledged to the Margrave Albrecht of Brandenburg because the prince-bishopric had amassed large debts. In 1484 the monastery burned down, with the two bell towers, all bells and half of the abbey church going up in flames. The reconstruction was driven by Margarete Truchseß von Baldersheim , who was now in charge of the monastery.

During the German Peasants' War , the church was destroyed again and the inventory stolen by marauding insurgents. Works by Tilman Riemenschneider were also destroyed. After the monastery was consecrated a third time on December 7, 1527, it was closed in 1544. Before that, in the 1620s, Protestant teaching had prevailed in Kitzingen. In 1568 sisters again celebrated services in the monastery church. A noble Protestant women's convent had now moved into the rooms of the monastery .

Until the new building (until 1699)

Interior view: view of the choir room

In 1629 the prince-bishopric of Würzburg received the town of Kitzingen and the monastery back from the Brandenburgers. Began immediately recatholicization one. Many Protestants were expelled. A few years later, during the Thirty Years' War , Swedes occupied the city and reintroduced Lutheran teaching. Only the mercy treaty of Johann Philipp von Schönborn ended the religious wars in 1650 and strengthened the city's dual denomination.

The monastery also suffered from constant persecution. In 1650 it was described as dilapidated and "completely gone". Anna Lerch von Dirmstein , last abbess of the Rupertsberg monastery near Bingen and savior of the relics of St. Hildegard , spent the last years of her life there in exile until her death on September 11, 1660. In 1685, the reconstruction began. Ursulines from Metz took care of the decaying buildings and moved into the rebuilt buildings on June 24, 1693. As Baumeister had Antonio Petrini can win. He tore down the existing buildings and built a new monastery for 85,773 guilders . The consecration took place on August 9, 1699.

Til today

In 1802 the monastery was secularized and the monastery church was profaned . In 1806, the French brought Prussian prisoners of war into the monastery buildings. They were also used as a hospital, model office and warehouse. In 1817 the Protestant community in Kitzingen received the monastery church in exchange for the St. Michaels church in Etwashausen. A school was housed in the other monastery buildings.

In the period that followed, some structural changes were made to the building. In 1891 the church received a new entrance on the nave side and a two-flight staircase. In addition, the arched windows with baroque frames and segmented gable coronations were used. In the last year of the Second World War , on February 23, 1945, several bombs hit the church building. The renovation dragged on until April 2nd, 1950 and was headed by Harald Schlegel.

After the restoration of the monastery church, the building has undergone further renovations up to the present day. In 1977 and 1985 it was again extensively renovated. The Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments classifies the church building under the number D-6-75-141-37 as a monument.

architecture

The church presents itself as an elongated hall with a retracted choir, a mighty portal facade in the southwest and a high tower in the northeast corner between the nave and the choir. The building is unusually oriented to the northeast and is thus almost perpendicular to the axis of its medieval predecessor. The architecture is characterized by the strict, highly baroque style with Italian influence, which is decisive for Antonio Petrini's sacred buildings (cf. e.g. Fährbrück pilgrimage church , tower of the new church in Würzburg ). The typical design language of the builder is particularly evident on the south-west facade. It is structured by strong pilasters and cornices . A central risalit rises above the central portal with profiled Ionic columns on both sides and an openwork segmented gable , which initially ends with a flat triangular gable at the level of the eaves. Above that, another storey of the facade rises, which has no equivalent in these dimensions in the nave roof behind, but rises quite a bit freely above the roof ridge. This false facade increases the powerful visual impression again. It is supported on the sides by volutes and short stone pyramids and ends with a trapezoidal gable, which is crowned by four vases and a cross in the middle. In the niche above the portal there is a figure of the church's patron, Johannes d. Baptist pointing to a lamb at his feet, pointing to Christ, the true Redeemer. While the portal facade is richly designed, there are hardly any structuring elements on the nave and choir facades next to the windows.

The 64 m high tower forms the counterpart to the facade and ensures balance. It consists of a square tower shaft and an octagonal storey with a slate-covered dome and lantern . Instead of a tower cross, the top is formed by a weather vane in the form of a trumpeting angel.

While the nave has a flat roof, the choir, which closes in a five- eighth section, is spanned by a barrel vault with stitch caps. On the north-west side of the choir there are still the nuns' choirs , box-like rooms that were reserved for the abbesses during the services.

Furnishing

The interior of the church has been redesigned and renovated several times and today has a wide, simple interior. There is a double gallery on the north side of the nave. The ceiling of the nave is decorated with stucco.

Hardly a piece has survived from the Catholic period of the church, but the baptismal font has been preserved from the first medieval monastery church. The choir is dominated by the high altar with a mighty wooden crucifix. In the window niches in the choir there are three larger-than-life wooden figures. They symbolize the Christian virtues of faith, love and hope.

Organs

Interior view: View from the choir into the nave

The choir organ on the gallery

The first organ was built by Johann Hoffmann in 1698 . This instrument was sold to the parish of St. Stephan in Würzburg in the course of secularization .

After the purchase of the church by the Protestant parish, the two-manual instrument with 24 registers was first installed, which had been built by an organ builder from Rothenburg for the predecessor church of St. Michael's Church in Etwashausen, where the Protestant parish of Kitzingen initially settled would have. This instrument was replaced in 1884 by a new building from the Steinmeyer (Öttingen) organ building company, which, however, was completely destroyed in the Second World War.

Today's instrument was built by the Steinmeyer organ builder as a "universal organ" from 1951 to 1958 in three stages. The pocket shop instrument has 58 stops on three manuals and pedal . The actions are electro-pneumatic. A special feature is the upper work , which is divided into two parts ( Rückpositiv and Brustwerk).

The choir organ on the lower gallery comes from the organ building company Mann in Marktbreit , the organ has 14 stops on 2 manuals and pedal as well as 4 transmissions .

Disposition of the main organ:

I Hauptwerk C – g ³

Principal

16 ′

Pommer

16 ′

Principal

8th'

Gemshorn

8th'

Reed flute

8th'

Octave

4 ′

Small set

4 ′

Schwiegel

2 ′

Quint

2 ² ⁄ ₃  ′

Cornett V

8th'

Mixture IV-V

1 ¹ ⁄ ₃  ′

Trumpet

16 ′

Trumpet

8th'

Tremulant

II breastwork C – g ³

Principal

8th'

Quintad

8th'

Night horn

4 ′

recorder

2 ′

Sesquialtera II

2 ² ⁄ ₃  ′

Scharff IV

1'

Rohrschalmei

8th'

Tremulant

II Rückpositiv C – g ³

Lovely covered

8th'

Praestant

4 ′

Super octave

2 ′

Quint

1 ¹ ⁄ ₃  ′

Cymbel III

¹ ⁄ ₆ ′

Rankett

16 ′

Tremulant

III Swell C – g ³

Cane-covered

16 ′

Principal

8th'

flute

8th'

Covered

8th'

Salicional

8th'

Ital. Principal

4 ′

Coupling flute

4 ′

Quintad

4 ′

Forest flute

2 ′

Sif flute

1'

Nasard

2 ² ⁄ ₃  ′

third

1 ³ ⁄ ₅  ′

Mixture V-VI

2 ′

bassoon

16 ′

Bright trumpet

8th'

oboe

8th'

Clarine

4 ′

Tremulant

Pedal C – f ¹

Principal bass

16 ′

Violon

16 ′

Sub-bass

16 ′

Covered bass

16 ′

Fifth bass

10 ² ⁄ ₃  ′

Octave bass

8th'

Bass flute

8th'

Gemshorn bass

8th'

Chorale bass

4 ′

Pommer

4 ′

Octave

2 ′

Rauschbass V

2 ² ⁄ ₃  ′

trombone

16 ′

Bass trumpet

8th'

Trumpet

4 ′

Coupling : II / I, III / I, III / II, I / P, II / P, III / P, general coupling
Playing aids : hand register, three free combinations, one free pedal combination, fixed combinations (tutti, pedal tutti) storage (breastwork off, Rückpositiv off, pedal off, single tongues, tongues off), crescendo roller

Bells

In the church tower of the Protestant town church there are a total of five bells in the bell room below the gallery, including the second largest Protestant church bell in Bavaria after the peace bell of the Nuremberg Peace Church. It is the Our Father Bell, which weighs over six tons . It sounds in the tone f sharp ⁰ and was cast in 1962 by Friedrich Wilhelm Schilling in Heidelberg as a replacement for the Hedwig bell delivered in 1939 for armament purposes. During the first attempt at a lift from the outside using a crane, the bell, which was already at the level of the bell chamber, fell to the ground and small pieces broke out. Nevertheless, the bell hardly suffered any loss of sound and was soon able to be wound successfully.

The third and fourth bells were already hanging in the Romanesque predecessor church and survived both the devastation of the Peasants' War and the dissolution of the monastery in the course of the Reformation.

A special feature of this ringing is the large interval jump between our father and the second bell. The Our Father Bell rings every evening as a soloist at 9 p.m.

	volume	Weight (kg)	Diameter (mm)	Caster	year	inscription
Our Father Bell	fis °	6057	2130	FW Schilling	1962	"For the renewal of the Hedwig bell donated by Theodor and Hedwig Deuster in 1912 + Repurchased by the Protestant parish of Kitzingen + For the continuous invocation of the Triune God + Hold"
Second bell	d '	1057	1367	YES Roth	1751	"In 1751 Joh.Adam Roth poured me with my consonants in Würzburg --- To God's glory + --- Got me Joh.Christoph Busch Burg: Wine merchant in Kitzingen also Evangelical Churches Pfleger and Apollonia his married housewife Ein Gebohrne Biebelrietherin ex propus new pour AD 1751 "
Third bell	fis'	950	1240	unmarked	1484
Fourth bell	g sharp '	?	1030	unmarked	1484
Fifth bell	a '	?	920	YES Roth	1751

literature

Hans Bauer: District of Kitzingen. An art and culture guide . Market wide 1993.
Georg Dehio: Handbook of the German art monuments. Bavaria I: Franconia . Munich and Berlin 1999.
Evang. Stadtkirchengemeinde (ed.): Evang. City church Kitzingen . Kitzingen.
Richard Herz: Chronicle of the Evang. Luth. Parish of Kitzingen . Kitzingen 1963.
Harald Knobling: Protestant town church Kitzingen . Regensburg 2005.