Hall monument

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Field chapel near Windischletten in Upper Franconia

A hall monument is a monument on paths, in the forest and in the hallway . Religious landmarks in the form of wayside crosses , wayside shrines and small field chapels are to be distinguished from secular land monuments such as boundary stones , milestones and atonement crosses . As historical cultural landscape selemente, land monuments give evidence of human activity of an ideal, spiritual and material nature, which as such are significant for the history of humans in a certain place. They shape the old peasant cultural landscapes and remind of the piety and disposition of the population. In addition to personal fates and tragedies, the small monuments also reflect profound events such as wars, famines , diseases and natural disasters.

Origin and function

Religious landmarks

Religious landmarks (field crosses, wayside shrines, field chapels) were mostly erected by private individuals for a variety of reasons. They have the function of reminding, remembering and warding off evil. In addition, they serve as protection and act as a sign of blessing. In addition to giving thanks for rescue, recovery from serious illness or returning home from war, the fulfillment of a vow was often the reason for the erection of a hall monument.

Wayside shrines

→ Main article: wayside shrine

Torture column between Greuth and Stiebarlimbach

Wayside shrines are outdoor religious landmarks, mostly erected on public paths. These small religious monuments are an expression of the deep piety of previous generations. The wayside shrine is divided into a pillar or a column as a vertical element and a religious image as a crown or in the form of a niche. The content of the picture is predominantly characterized by religious motifs and marks pilgrimage routes mainly in Franconia.

In Bavaria and Austria there are Marterl reminding of an accident with a happy or unfortunate outcome. The dramatic story was mostly explained with inscriptions and pictures. Pillars of torture are already known from the Middle Ages.

The small monuments are in Bavaria and Austria next as torture , shrine , Mater pillars and statues called.

Field chapels

→ Main article: chapel

Field chapels represent church buildings with a lower ecclesiastical rank apart from places and residential buildings. The chapel can only be used for private worship but not for public worship .

The landscape is enhanced by the installation of field chapels. For hikers, the locations are mostly suitable resting places and pictorial motifs. The sacred gems have different stylistic forms and are visually hardly distinguishable from small churches. Field chapels were erected for vows and thanks for surviving wars, diseases, famines and natural disasters (such as avalanches , mudslides and floods ).

Field crosses

Religious inscriptions on field crosses also contain requests for God's blessing of the fields to protect against bad harvests and famine . Some of these field crosses go back to pagan traditions and have been converted into a Christian form.

Wayside crosses

Way crosses were erected at the former intersection of two paths as early as the Middle Ages. At that time, crossroads were considered eerie places due to raids. In order to ban the influence of evil forces, wayside crosses were set up.

Death boards

→ Main article: Death Board

To commemorate the dead , death boards were placed in the landscape in the Altbaierischen area, especially in the Bavarian Forest and Upper Palatinate Forest . The dead were laid out on these boards until the burial and then the boards with the life data of the deceased and memorial messages were set up on the side of the road.

Secular land monuments

Atonement crosses / atonement stones / stone cross / cross stone

→ Main article: Atonement Cross

Stone cross in the Upper Palatinate

The history of the old atonement crosses goes back to the Middle Ages. The archaic shape of the stone crosses already indicates the function as part of the medieval punishment. In order to atone for murder and manslaughter, the inconspicuous crosses had to be erected at the scene of the incident by the perpetrator after an official verdict. In addition to disc crosses and cross steles, cross stones were often used.

Murder sacrifice stones were erected in the form of cross stones for unknown perpetrators of a murder victim.

Stone crosses and cross stones were also set as collective memorial stones for mass burials.

Border stone with coat of arms of the Fürstenberg Princely House (1767)

Landmarks

→ Main article: Landmark

Landmarks are markings of the boundary points of a parcel boundary . The stone evidence of historical borders shows the political and cultural developments of cultural landscapes over several centuries - often valid up to the present day - in a comprehensible way. The processed stones have a rectangular, triangular or round plan, whereby the height is usually greater than the width.

Fraischsteine represent a special form of boundary stone .

Milestones

→ Main article: Mileage stones

Historic milestone from the second half of the 19th century in the district of Südliche Weinstrasse , Rhineland-Palatinate

In the 19th century, milestones were often set up along trade routes to indicate the distance to larger cities. The stones were often erected at regular intervals on the edge of roads.

The forerunners of the milestones are the so-called milestones or post milestones . The post milestones were set up on German territory in the 18th and 19th centuries. The stones varied in shape, size, texture and lettering. The milestones were initially systematically created for Swiss Post. They were used to determine the amount of the costs for passenger transport and to regulate the parcel and cash port. The metric system of units was introduced in Germany from 1872 , after which the milestones were partially implemented and supplemented with kilometers.

distribution

Due to the veneration of saints and images , certain types of land monuments such as For example, wayside crosses, wayside shrines and corridor chapels are much more common in Catholic areas than in Protestant areas. After the Reformation, because the Protestants distanced themselves from religious sculptures, hardly any field crosses or wayside shrines were erected in the Protestant areas. In Lower Franconia and Upper Franconia , the denominational character of places can be recognized by the fact that the cultural landscape is equipped with religious landmarks. Religious landmarks are therefore less common in northern Germany than in southern Germany, Austria and South Tyrol.

Research and research communities

Since the 1960s, cross stones and stone crosses as well as monuments formally related to them have been researched by the German stone cross research as field monuments among the small monuments, to which tombs such as steles are also included. This is made up as follows:

  • The Working Group on Monument Research (AGD) in Lower Saxony set itself the task of taking care of the recording, preservation, maintenance and clarification of the social context that led to the establishment and installation of the small and field monuments. Its seat is in Trebur and its series of publications Das Kleindenkmal (material collection: stone crosses and cross stones, hunting and forest monuments). The old and newer literature on the research area is published here. The latest research results are discussed in regular conferences every two years.
  • The older research association Deutsche Steinkreuzforschung (founded in 1932) performs the same tasks as the AGD. In addition, wayside shrines and historical boundary signs are recorded; H. Monuments that are particularly interesting in terms of legal and religious history. This is originally a citizens' initiative that deals with the land monuments in the Franconian and Upper Palatinate region.
  • The AFO (working group for field and small monument research in the Upper Palatinate e.V.) takes on the same tasks as the AGD e. V. for the Upper Palatinate area. Since 1978 one volume of the series Contributions to Field and Small Monument Research in the Upper Palatinate (BFO) has been published.
  • Since 1982 regular conferences "East Bavarian annual conference of field and small monument researchers".
  • In addition, the International Stone Cross Research Working Group (ISF) has been formed, in which groups of scientists, hobby and lay researchers perceive the comparable recordings and document them in the Stone Cross Research series .
  • Finally, the Archaeological and Folklore Working Group Dieburg e. V. (AVA ... Dieburg e.V.) called. This is an association for urban and local history research that was founded in 1970 by citizens. With their association they support the local conservation of monuments and the tasks of this working group are comparable to those of the AGD. It publishes two series.

literature

  • Friedrich Karl Azzola : On the nomenclature of stone land monuments and early gravestone forms. In: Das Steinkreuz 21, 1965, No. 2, pp. 14-16
  • Friedrich K. Azzola: On the iconography of the cross on small monuments of the high and late Middle Ages in the German-speaking area. In: H. Zimmermann (Ed.): German inscriptions. Symposium for medieval and modern epigraphy, Worms 1996, Mainz 1987, pp. 9–41, (on Cross-Slabs )
  • Heinz Köber: The old stone crosses and atonement stones of Thuringia. In: Contributions to History 5, Erfurt 1960
  • Werner Müller, Günther EH Baumann: Cross stones and stone crosses in Lower Saxony, Bremen and Hamburg. Existing and lost legal monuments and memorial stones. (= Research on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony 5), Hanover 1988
  • Helga Wäß: Form and Perception of Central German Memory Sculpture in the 14th Century. Tenea, Bristol et al. a. 2006, ISBN 3-86504-159-0
    • Volume 1 A contribution to medieval grave monuments, epitaphs and curiosities in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, North Hesse, East Westphalia and South Lower Saxony.
    • Volume 2 Catalog of selected objects from the High Middle Ages to the beginning of the 15th century  - picture examples listed according to location, recorded around 1000 monuments, including hall and small monuments, some with images
  • Walpurga Oppeker, Hans Georg Mössner, Franz Stürmer: Guide to the small and field monument database for Lower Austria and Salzburg (Version 2/2012), pp. 1–85. Online version from October 23, 2018, published by the LEADER cooperation project "Signs of our cultural landscape" at www.kleindenkmal.at .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f g h i Historical cultural landscape elements in Bavaria. In: Bavarian State Office for the Environment (Hrsg.): Heimatpflege in Bayern. Series of publications by the Bavarian State Association for Homeland Care . 1st edition. tape 4 , 2013, ISBN 978-3-931754-54-9 , pp. 70-71 .
  2. ^ Walter Pötzl: Crosses, wayside shrines and field chapels . Ed .: Heimatverein for the district of Augsburg. tape 14 . Augsburg 1996, ISBN 978-3-925549-10-6 , pp. 5 .
  3. ^ A b Alfred Pohler: Field monuments: wayside shrines, martyrs, small chapels and crosses - pearls in the cultural landscapes of the Alpine region . Berenkamp, ​​2002, ISBN 978-3-85093-160-1 , pp. 7 .
  4. a b c Signs of our cultural landscape. (PDF) BHW Niederösterreich, February 2012, accessed on November 20, 2018 .
  5. a b c Walter Pötzl: Crosses, wayside shrines and field chapels . Ed .: Heimatverein for the district of Augsburg. tape 14 . Augsburg 1996, ISBN 978-3-925549-10-6 , pp. 20 .
  6. Walpurga Oppeker, Leopold Schlager et al .: Small and hallway monuments as witnesses of religious and secular culture: contributions to the Lower Austrian small and hallway monument research . Ed .: Walpurga Oppeker. Contributions to the church history of Lower Austria, volume 20 . Diocesan Archives St. Pölten, St. Pölten 2018, ISBN 978-3-901863-58-5 , p. 9-10 .
  7. Alfred Pohler: Field monuments: wayside shrines, Marterln, small chapels and crosses - pearls in the cultural landscapes of the Alpine region . Berenkamp, ​​2002, ISBN 978-3-85093-160-1 , pp. 11 .
  8. Wäß 2006, vol. 1, p. 425 ff.
  9. Daniel Wojtucki: "... put a stone crew seat in the place, because the death blows ..." Silesian atonement treaties from the 14th to the 16th century. Sven Gerth, accessed September 2, 2018 .
  10. differentiated in detail in: Wäß 2006, p. 224 ff.
  11. detailed differentiated in: Wäß 2006, p. 227 ff.
  12. Wäß 2006, Vol. 1, p. 430
  13. Wäß 2006, Vol. 1, p. 431
  14. Historical boundary stones from the Lower Kahlgrund. (PDF) Archäologisches Spessart-Projekt eV, accessed on September 2, 2018 .
  15. ^ Karl Bedal: Rätselhaftes - Frankenpost Verlag, Hof 1986
  16. Landmarks. Hessenpark Open Air Museum, accessed on November 18, 2018 .
  17. What are milestones and what do they look like? Research Group Milestones eV, accessed on November 18, 2018 .