St. Johannis (Brandenburg an der Havel)

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St. Johannis 2015 after renovation

St. John is a former monastery church of the Franciscan in the city of Brandenburg , which is used as an event hall. It is located in the old town on the Havel in the immediate vicinity of the Millennium Bridge .

history

13th to 19th centuries

Plan of the monastery complex (Paul Eichholz 1912)
View of the monastery and the church of St. Johannis am Salzhof seen from the Long Bridge, around 1860

Around 1250 - at the earliest in 1237, at the latest in 1258 - the convent of the Franciscans was moved from Ziesar to the old town of Brandenburg because there had been military unrest in Ziesar. According to Friedrich Grasow, the first church without a tower was built on the site of St. Johannis around 1240 . The Franciscans transferred the body of Ziesar Pastor Helias, who had died in 1237 and was a great sponsor of the local monastery, to their Brandenburg monastery church and buried him, dressed in a Franciscan habit, in front of the altar of St. John the Baptist. The current building was carried out through various additions and heightening measures from 1411, traditionally starting with the choir .

In 1271, a provincial chapter of the Saxon Franciscan Province ( Saxonia ) took place for the first time in Brandenburg . The Franciscan monastery was already the seat of a subdivision of Saxonia called a custody in 1274 , to which the monasteries in Berlin , Frankfurt / Oder, Kyritz , Gransee , Stendal and Salzwedel belonged. In 1428 it was the first monastery in the Saxon province that turned to the stricter direction of the observants in the Franciscan order, which was characterized by a more consistent interpretation of the vow of poverty and the handling of money.

In the course of the Reformation , the monastery was closed by Elector Joachim II . From 1544, the old town of Brandenburg managed to use the monastery building as a hospital . The newly established hospital then housed the former Gertraudenhospital in its larger premises in front of the Plauer Tor in the old town. However, the remaining members of the Franciscan convent were granted the right to stay for life, a final record of Franciscans in Brandenburg dates back to 1570. From then on, the monastery was completely in the hands of the old town.

On October 3, 1687 , the French Reformed congregation was assigned the Johanniskirche as a place of worship by the electoral order . Before that, from December 16, 1685, the Nikolaikirche served them as a place of preaching. On February 1, 1835, the French and German Reformed parishes merged into one parish and continued to use St. Johannis as a church. In the 19th century a beer brewery was set up in the monastery walls. In 1865, however, the last monastery building was demolished. In place of the demolished monastery building along the Havel, the refectory last used by the brewery, a school building was built in 1866, which housed the Saldria . This school was also destroyed in the last days of World War II by a bomb hit in the middle of the building, killing two teachers and a student under the rubble of the building. The area is overgrown and part of a park. Only one memorial stone reminds of the former use and the dead in the air raid. 58

20th and 21st centuries

The inner main nave after structural emergency securing of the ruin

The Franciscan library was after the Reformation in the St. Gotthardt church kept, in 1923 to the Prussian State Library awarded and from there in World War II outsourced today Polish territory. After it was taken over by Poland, it was taken to Krakow as spoils of war , where it is kept in the library of the Jagiellonian University . The theft, which the federal government regarded as illegal, is still the subject of a dispute between Poland and Germany, which insists on the return of the Franciscan library under international law.

The entire Westjoch was destroyed by a British air raid in World War II. The demolition went in the middle through the westernmost window openings. The original surrounding wall of the westernmost yoke is still around three meters high. In 1985 the roof over the choir collapsed.

After the structural emergency security of 1991/92 with a flat makeshift roof

At the end of the 1980s there were plans to remove the church ruins. Due to the political changes in the GDR in 1989/1990, this did not happen. Since then, there have been various projects to secure the building, restore it or bring it to a contemporary level. In the course of emergency safety measures for the ruin , the church was provided with an emergency roof and internal scaffolding from 1991/92. In preparation for further planned security measures in 2006, the first archaeological digs were carried out in and around the building.

In October 2011, the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences examined the church floor for the suspected presence of tombs using radar measurements in the 400 MHz range with antennas. Their existence has been controversial due to the fact that the Havel is only a few meters away. However, there are indications from the written tradition that justify the investigation.

Ahead of the Federal Garden Show 2015, the church ruin of 3.7 million euros was financed to 80 percent of the funding program "Urban Heritage Protection", extensively renovated and converted into a venue and vice uses . The topping-out ceremony was on December 12, 2013. During the Federal Garden Show 2015 , St. John's Church hosted various floristry exhibitions.

First service of the Evangelical Reformed Church after renovation and federal horticultural show on Easter Sunday 2016

Since Easter Sunday 2016, the Evangelical Reformed Parish of St. Johannis has been using the church again for its Sunday services between spring and autumn .

Church building

The Johanniskirche is an unplastered two-aisled building that was built entirely from brick in the late Gothic style. A slender church tower is located at the southern transition from the main nave to the choir . It was built between 1460 and 1469. The tower is covered with a simply curved hood .

The clear south inclination of the outer walls and the modern west end in glass construction can be seen

The Havel, only between 40 and 70 meters away, destabilizes the building site. Both the north and south walls face south, and are considerably out of vertical alignment towards the banks of the Havel . The south wall is supported by massive external pillars. There is a singular aisle on the north side. The parish of St. John used this separated by a temporarily drawn into the arches of the nave walls still until 1985 for worship . It is accessible from the outside via a segmented north portal .

As part of the renovation and renovation in the run-up to the Federal Garden Show 2015, the walls separating the aisle from the main nave were removed again in the arches and this opened up to the main nave. A new floor was also installed. The Gothic pointed arch windows were glazed with white antique glass.

The north-western step portal with a tracery rose window

About a northwestern stepped portal for access to the nave there is a big of a stone tracery manufactured Relief and above a large likewise designed from tracery, solid white glazed rose window in the outer wall. Historically, this rose was not covered with colored but with white glass.

A noticeable feature is a new west end in a modern glass-metal construction with an additional wide access to the building, which was built by 2015 as part of the renovation. A flat, provisional roof that was put on in the course of securing the building was replaced by a new, permanent one. This roof construction has the steep angle of inclination of the historic roof structure that collapsed in the 1980s and is covered with a standing seam covering made of copper sheet .

There is nothing left of the historic interior of the church in the building. During the restoration work in 2011 and 2012, a late Gothic wall painting was secured under a layer of plaster. The south-east wall of the north aisle is decorated with arabesques and plant motifs. Medieval paintings were found in the northern niche of the church choir. These were probably made around 1420 immediately after the choir was built. They represent two figures sitting next to each other and surrounded by figures of floating angels . It is believed that it is a representation of a Marian coronation or blessing. Furthermore, in the second niche, counted from the north, there is a representation of the Last Judgment. The opening and securing of the third niche is planned for spring 2017.

The decorative frieze with vine leaf motifs in the city-side prospectus, i.e. the north wall, shows, according to statements by the art historian and building archaeologist Dr. Dirk Schumann made the St. John's Church as a building for the “ Choriner School”. The cathedral style based on the Choriner model is also quoted above the representative north-west double gate. The decorative tile “carpet” above the double gate is characteristic.

The oculus of the largest rosette of the Mark Brandenburg in the last remaining yoke on the northwest side of the nave was once "mirrored" in the field above the double door system with a second, smaller rosette. This lower rosette, however, was later removed and can only be detected in the structural approaches of the door arch.

gallery

  • inner aisle

  • bricked up Gothic windows

  • medieval wall paintings in niche in the choir room

literature

in alphabetical order
  • Markus Cante: City of Brandenburg on the Havel. Part 1: Cathedral Island - Old Town - Neustadt (= monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . Monuments in Brandenburg . Volume 1.1). Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1994, ISBN 3-88462-105-X , p. 131 f.
  • Markus Cante: Johanniskirche Brandenburg on the Havel. Research - Securing - Restoration (= workbooks of the Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and State Archaeological Museum . No. 43). Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 2017, ISBN 978-3-88462-373-2 .
  • Friedrich Grasow: Brandenburg, the millennial city - A walk through the culture and architecture of past centuries. 928-1928 . Self-published by the city of Brandenburg, Brandenburg an der Havel 1928, DNB 580889920 , p. 112 ff. ( Gives a reprint from 1992).
  • Joachim Müller, Dietmar Rathert: The closed buildings of the Franciscan monastery St. Johannis in the old town of Brandenburg an der Havel . In: Gert Melville , Bernd Schmies, Leonie Silberer (Ed.): The Franciscan Monasteries in the Middle Ages. Spaces, uses, symbols . Lit Verlag Dr. W. Hopf, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-643-12921-5 , pp. 249-274.
  • Otto Tschirch : History of the Chur and capital Brandenburg on the Havel. Festschrift for the city's millennium in 1928/29 . 2 volumes, Wiesike, Brandenburg an der Havel 1928 (gives a reprint from 2016).
  • Petra Weigel (author, history of architecture and art, especially 6.2), Thomas Ertl (participation), Marus Cante (history of architecture and art, especially 6.1): Brandenburg / Havel. Franciscans . In: Heinz-Dieter Heimann , Klaus Neitmann , Winfried Schich and others (eds.): Brandenburgisches Klosterbuch. Handbook of the monasteries, pens and commander by the mid-16th century. Volume I (= Klaus Neitmann on behalf of the Brandenburg Historical Commission and in connection with the Brandenburg State Main Archive [Hrsg.]: Brandenburg Historical Studies . Volume 14). 2 volumes, Be.Bra Wissenschaft Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-937233-26-0 , pp. 278–288.

Web links

Commons : St. Johannis (Brandenburg an der Havel)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Chronological outline of the history of the Saxon Franciscan provinces from their beginnings to the present. Werl 1999, p. 49.
  2. ↑ Ursula Creutz: History of the former monasteries in the Diocese of Berlin in individual representations. Leipzig 1995, ISBN 3-89543-087-0 , p. 191.
  3. ^ Art. Brandenburg / Havel. Franciscan. In: Heinz-Dieter Heimann et al. (Ed.): Brandenburg monastery book manual of the monasteries, monasteries and coming to the middle of the 16th century. Vol. I, pp. 278-288, ISBN 978-3-937233-26-0 , here p. 278.
  4. ↑ Ursula Creutz: History of the former monasteries in the Diocese of Berlin in individual representations. Leipzig 1995, ISBN 3-89543-087-0 , p. 191.
  5. ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 67.255.
  6. ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 313.
  7. ↑ TOP ST. JOHANNISKIRCHE IN BRANDENBURG AN DER HAVEL ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2015 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. . Accessed May 15, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.buga-2015-havelregion.de
  8. ↑ Information board for the divine service in the St. Johannis Church .
  9. ^ Susanne Nitsch: The northern choir niche in the ruins of the St. Johannis monastery church of the Franciscan order in Brandenburg on the Havel. (PDF) University of Applied Sciences Potsdam , 2012, accessed on May 15, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Lecture by the restorer Susanne Nitsch MA at the symposium on history, art and architecture “Brick building and architecture of mendicant orders - Franciscans and Dominicans in the Mark Brandenburg” in the accompanying program of the exhibition “Burned Earth. Nine centuries of brick in Brandenburg and Berlin, organized by the Archaeological State Museum Brandenburg in the Paulikloster ”, February 10, 2017:“ The wall paintings in the choir of the Franciscan monastery church in Brandenburg an der Havel ”.
  11. ↑ Lecture by the art historian and building archaeologist Dr. Dirk Schumann at the symposium on history, art and architecture "Brick building and architecture of mendicant orders - Franciscans and Dominicans in the Mark Brandenburg" in the accompanying program of the exhibition "Burned earth. Nine centuries of brick in Brandenburg and Berlin, organized by the Brandenburg State Archaeological Museum in the Paulikloster ”, February 10, 2017:“ The St. Johannis monastery church in Brandenburg's old town and the Ascanic architecture ”.

Coordinates: 52 ° 24 ′ 41.2 ″  N , 12 ° 33 ′ 16.3 ″  E