Cemetery chapel (Möckmühl)
The cemetery chapel in Möckmühl in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg was built around 1580.
history
The original cemetery in Möckmühl was around the old Bonifatius Church on the site of today's Evangelical City Church . Presumably a plague epidemic in 1574 gave rise to the relocation of the cemetery outside the city walls. For 1579, the documents contain a copy of the contract with the builder Hans Friedberger from Roigheim for the construction of a new cemetery chapel. The chapel was built exclusively with regional building materials: sandstones from the sheep blade , sand from the Gauferwiesen , lime and roof tiles from the brickworks on the road to Bittelbronn , latt nails from Neuenstadt am Kocher and roof battens from Gundelsheim . The stone monument erected on the north wall of the chapel, which commemorates the completion of the building in 1581 and is adorned with a crucifix and an allegory of transience (a child tied to the earth with a skull and an hourglass) as well as with coats of arms and handicraft symbols, was decorated by the Stonemason made by Balthasar Albert . According to an accounting from 1582/83, the same artist also painted the Christophorus picture in a niche on the south wall. The chapel gallery is not mentioned in the contract of 1579 and was only added later. Originally it was probably reached by a staircase inside, before the covered staircase outside was added in 1688. With the exception of the roof turret , which was added later , the chapel had achieved its present shape.
Numerous grave monuments from the 16th to the early 18th centuries have been preserved in and around the chapel. The older grave monuments, such as that of the former canon and later Protestant pastor of Mulfingen , Stephan Binicker, who died in 1565 , probably originate from the old cemetery. A tombstone attached to the outside of the chapel was found in 1957 as a capstone of the town hall fountain and can be assigned to a Hans Reinhart, probably a relative of the cellar of the same name, who died in 1559 , whose heirs made a generous donation in 1617 for the benefit of the cemetery expansion. Another gravestone on the outside wall of the chapel dates from the plague year 1635, for which 678 deaths were recorded in Möckmühl. Another stone from that year is set into the cemetery wall. The children's graves of the daughters of Bailiff Johann Friedrich Kless from 1665 and 1667 were once set into the floor of the chapel. When they were moved to the side wall of the chapel in the 1960s, the children's coffins and the bones of the buried were found underneath.
In addition to the grave monuments, the chapel's other historical furnishings include the crucifix , which comes from the town church that burned down in 1898. The sacrament house of the city church, dated 1471, had also been in the cemetery chapel for a long time since the 16th century, but was then returned to the city church in 1974.
literature
- Erich Strohhäcker: Möckmühl - image of a city . Stadtverwaltung Möckmühl, Möckmühl 1979, pp. 204–207.
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 19 ′ 39.3 " N , 9 ° 21 ′ 18.6" E