Floor cross
A field cross (also way (e) cross ) is a cross at a crossroads, a path or a road, on the edge of the field or in the forest. It can be made of wood, stone or metal. Field crosses are often designed as crucifixes , i.e. with a representation of Christ crucified . They are signs of the Christian faith and there are many reasons for their establishment.
In the Bavarian-speaking area , field crosses, as well as wayside shrines and memorial plaques, are regionally referred to as " Marterl ".
Locations
Field crosses are particularly common in Catholic regions in Germany . They can be erected in exposed places, on hills or at forked paths and shape the landscape. Therefore they are shown on topographic maps . They often serve as waymarks for hikers and pilgrims or mark dangerous places. Crossroads can be points of reference for old pilgrimage routes or processional routes ; The pilgrims met at the holiday cross and the family said goodbye. As a rule, field crosses stand individually in the landscape and are occasionally flanked by two trees, often linden trees.
Memorial crosses and atonement crosses are not always on the way, but often at the remote scene of a crime or the site of an accident. Likewise, some plague crosses mark earlier graves of plague dead and can be located off the beaten track. The custom of setting up an accident cross at places where people have had a fatal accident in road accidents, plane crashes or mine accidents is now widespread worldwide.
There are also summit crosses , peace crosses and Ostland crosses in an exposed position in the landscape, but these are not considered to be field crosses in the narrower sense. Field crosses or wayside shrines are entered on hiking maps for orientation.
history
Many of the crosses are linked to legends that tell a special story about each specimen. However, their exact age and truthfulness are often not verifiable. The oldest stone atonement crosses date from the 13th to 16th centuries, mostly in the form of a simple cross without text, at best with a depiction of the murder tool or a symbol that indicates the profession of the murdered person. According to medieval law, they were drawn up in the fulfillment of atonement agreements between warring parties, with which a blood feud after a murder or manslaughter was to be ended. With the introduction of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (neck court order) by Emperor Charles V in 1533, the private atonement contracts were replaced by an ordinary jurisdiction, whereby the obligation to erect atonement crosses was also dropped.
At the time of the Counter-Reformation from the 16th century onwards, the presence of the Catholic Church was strengthened in public , especially through works of architecture, with the support of the Jesuits . Wayside shrines and wayside crosses were created, the content of which now also included the veneration of Mary . After the Thirty Years' War , Swedish crosses remind of the strains caused by the foreign troops; especially in Austria, Emperor Ferdinand III. In 1650 the erection of “ Stainers or other Creutz and Bett Marter pillars on which streets passes and Wegschaiden” out of gratitude for the conclusion of peace . “Hussite crosses” are reminiscent of the Hussite Wars in Bohemia and parts of Austria. However, it can be assumed that field crosses known as "Swedish cross" or "Hussite cross" do not reliably have this historical origin.
In the Rhineland, many crosses were lost during the French occupation (1794–1814), as crossings were forbidden there in the course of secularization . Only a few crosses could be hidden by the population and thus escaped destruction.
To the Battle of Lorraine belonging Battle of Saarburg remembers to this day the so-called " cross of Saarburg " one in Buhl-Lorraine standing Flurkreuz of the 19th century, the cross was blown off by a grenade in the August 20, 1914, the statue of Christ but stayed upright. It therefore became a popular postcard and flag motif.
Currently Flurkreuz are the monuments to the small monuments counted. In addition to weathering through wind and weather, hallway crosses are also endangered by well-intentioned, but not professional attempts at restoration with unsuitable materials; Changes in the landscape, such as road construction, the designation of building areas or land consolidations , have often led to the loss of land intersections. The historical location of a floor cross is usually associated with a special meaning that is lost when it is moved to a new location.
layout
.JPG)
In some areas, field crosses are largely made of wood (e.g. in the Alpine region). From the small inconspicuous to the crosses made of strong beams, every size is represented. If a wooden cross became rotten or dilapidated over the decades, it was restored or a new one put up on the spot. Therefore, very few wooden hall crosses are really old pieces, but mostly new products based on old models.
As "box crosses", wooden crosses often have a roof and side cladding , which can also have decorations.
In many areas (e.g. in the Rhineland ), field crosses are made of stone and are therefore much more durable, although there may have been wooden crosses in such areas as they were cheaper. In the Eifel there is still a very dense population of field crosses of various types. They consist of the sandstone mined there or the very robust basalt (see also basalt cross ) and have therefore been preserved; In addition, there is evidence of workshops that mainly produced grave and hall crosses. From the 17th to the 19th century, a large number of floor crosses were made there and some were also exported.
The earliest stone crosses were compact in shape and, with their height of about half a meter, smaller than wooden crosses in the corridor. In the 19th century (at least in the Rhineland) significantly larger stone crosses were erected. Many Flurkreuz are actually Crucifixes with a carved or molded in stone Cruzifixus . There are also representations of saints or the iconographic attributes of saints , sometimes in addition to a body of Christ. Arma-Christi crosses show the instruments of suffering around the crucifixion of Jesus Christ , five -wound crosses have symbolic representations of the crucifixion wounds of Christ.
Some wayside crosses have a console with a niche ( exposure niche ) on which the monstrance carried along could be placed during Eucharistic processions ; there the Eucharistic blessing was also given. On some crosses there is an inscription from which you can see why the respective cross was erected and by whom it was donated or created. Some crosses are also former grave crosses that were later reused as floor crosses.
A distinction must be made between stone crosses that are not completely carved in the form of a cross, but that have a raised or carved cross or crucifix. They originated mainly in the 13th to 16th centuries and have similar functions to the stone crosses from this time: they were set up for people who died without receiving the sacraments , or as an atonement for perpetrators of violent crimes.
Types
- Memorial crosses commemorate one or more deceased people, accidents or acts of violence, Floriani crosses in honor of St. Florian , the patron saint of the fire brigade, commemorate fire disasters or firefighters' accidents, and plague crosses commemorate plague epidemics or mark the location of a plague cemetery .
- Crosses for sinners or “gallows crosses” in the form of crosses or wayside shrines stood on the way to places of execution.
- One speaks of a “votive cross” when the cross was founded and erected on the basis of a vow in gratitude after being saved from an emergency such as war, disease, plague or danger to life.
- In Münsterland are many places Hofkreuze to find. They belong to farms and are mostly on public roads near the farm entrance.
- Weather or hail crosses were set up as protection against weather disasters or after severe storms.
- Niche crosses have a niche for placing a monstrance or a figure.
Functions
Crosses in the hallway invite passers-by to prayer and reflection. This is occasionally expressed by a corresponding label. Many field crosses were and are also integrated into the common religious customs , e.g. B. they served as stations in a procession or pilgrimage.
In the Rhineland and the Eifel there was the custom of the " seven footfalls ", a petition to five crosses or holy houses in the district. This short form of the Way of the Cross was also widely used as a death custom when a villager was dying or had died.
Trivia
Because of a stone cross that was erected here centuries ago and has been preserved, a section of the route on the Nordschleife of the Nürburgring is called the "Schwedenkreuz".
Various field crosses (wayside crosses)
Court cross in Obergarschagen
Wayside cross at the catholic church St. Kilian in Oftersheim
Simple stone cross near Heimberg in the Main-Tauber district
The Steinbeck Giant Cross, the highest simple stone cross in Westphalia
Stone wayside cross in Baden-Baden
Wayside cross in Attendorn- Erlen, near Listerscheid
Weather cross on the Teufelsberg in the Palatinate Forest, erected in 1909
Road cross from 1756 in Utscheid (Eifel)
Way cross with weather vane near Frittlingen
Hagelkreuz with exposure niche in Leverkusen- Quettingen
Bavarian Marterl near Gaißach in the Isarwinkel
The Mersch Court Cross in Ibbenbüren
The Hochkreuz Wiewels Krüss in Hopsten -reischen
Way cross in Međimurje
Modern court cross in Offingen
Wayside Cross, Shillito, Derbyshire , England
See also
literature
- Cornelia Bauer: Swedes get sick! Traces of Sweden in Lower Austria from the time of the 30 Years War. Vienna 2012 (Diploma thesis at the Institute for Scandinavian Studies at the University of Vienna).
- Ruth Hacker-de Graaff: Crossroads in the Bonn area. Bouvier, Bonn 1991, ISBN 3-416-80671-9 (also: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 1989/90).
- Andrea Löwer: Crosses on the roadside - Modern rites of remembrance for road deaths. in: Death. On the history of dealing with death and grief. Exhibition catalog of the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, folklore department. Edited by Walter Stolle, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 3-926527-60-9 , pp. 166-171.
- Georg Jakob Meyer, Klaus Freckmann: Crosses and wayside shrines in the Eifel, on the Moselle and in the Hunsrück. In: Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitschrift für Volkskunde . Volume XXIII, 1977, pp. 226-278.
- Kurt Müller-Veltin: Middle Rhine stone crosses from basalt lava Neuss 1980 (yearbook of the Rhenish Association for Monument Preservation and Landscape Protection 1976/77, reprint 2001).
- Sigrid Metken (ed.): The last trip. Dying, death and mourning customs in Upper Bavaria. Hugendubel, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-88034-247-4 .
- Paul Werner: Landmarks. Pannonia-Verlag, Freilassing 1982, ISBN 3-7897-0107-6 ( Small Pannonia series 107).
- 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
- Cristina Mecchi (author): Small buildings in public space III: Small sacred buildings. (Leaflets of the Federal Office for Civil Protection, Protection of Cultural Property, Editing: ibid Altbau AG) , status: 2007.
- From murder cross to accident cross
- Sühnekreuz.de
- 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 of October 23, 2018, published by the LEADER cooperation project “Signs of our Cultural landscape ", therein:
- Explanation of the categories of small monuments (PDF)
- Saints and their attributes as well as religious symbolism - especially for small monuments (PDF)
- Technical terms in architecture - especially for small monuments (PDF)
- Identification key for the categories of small monuments (PDF)
- Further reading (PDF)
Individual evidence
- ↑ duden.de: Marterl
- ^ Harald Kröber: Nature and landscape in Lower Saxony. The natural monument types. Schlütersche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2001, p. 105. [1]
- ↑ a b c Sacred small buildings: Flurkreuzze / Wegkreuzze (PDF; 161 kB) Edited by: ibid Altbau AG, CH leaflets of the Federal Office for Civil Protection, Protection of Cultural Property
- ↑ www.suehnekreuz.de
- ↑ Palm Comploy, Schmid-Pittl: Cross group at the former plague cemetery. In: Tyrolean art register . Retrieved September 21, 2019 .
- ^ Christian Wiegand: Searching for traces in Lower Saxony: Discovering historical cultural landscapes. Schlütersche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2005, p. 210. [2]
- ^ Georg Peter Karn, Rolf Mertzenich: Bad Dürkheim district. City of Bad Dürkheim, municipality of Haßloch, municipalities of Deidesheim, Lambrecht, Wachenheim (= cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate. Monument topography of the Federal Republic of Germany . Volume 13.1 ). Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1995, ISBN 3-88462-119-X , p. 449 .
- ↑ https://www.erftmuehlenbach.de/wegekreuze/
- ↑ https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/guenzburg/In-Offingen-haben-ein-aussergewoehnliches-Kreuz-id55438436.html
- ↑ Wayside cross in Shillito Wood . Historic England. April 21, 1994.