Cemetery Cross (Deidesheim)

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Cemetery cross

The former cemetery cross of the small Palatinate town of Deidesheim stands in front of the parish church of St. Ulrich , where the town's cemetery used to be . As part of the immediate vicinity of the parish church, it is a listed building.

From the 15th century to the 18th century, the Deidesheim cemetery was located around the parish church. Remnants of this are old gravestones on the south aisle, the ossuary and the cemetery cross.

The cross is 6.48 meters high, the larger than life crucifix measures two meters. The body and the cross were cut from the same workpiece. The cross stands on a multi-tiered base; bones, skulls and pieces of rubble are carved into the top tier, a reference to the Golgotha skull . On the board at the top of the cross a "parchment" is nailed with eleven nails, three times, in three rows, the first letters of the inscription "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" can be found in Hebrew, Greek and Latin letters.

The crucifix at the collegiate church of Baden-Baden by Nikolaus Gerhaert (1467) can serve as a model for the cemetery cross . At first it was assumed that the cemetery cross dates from around 1500; However, the Deidesheim regional historian Berthold Schnabel was able to use old written sources to show that the cross must have been made after 1554, probably in the second half of the 16th century. It is no longer possible to determine which artist created the cross.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ G General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - Bad Dürkheim district. Mainz 2020, p. 20 (PDF; 5.1 MB).
  2. ^ A b c Berthold Schnabel: Art historical guide through the Deidesheim association . Deidesheim 1976, p. 20 .
  3. ↑ a b Markus Weis: Art and Architecture . In: Kurt Andermann , Berthold Schnabel (Ed.): Deidesheim - Contributions to the history and culture of a city in the wine country . Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen 1995, ISBN 3-7995-0418-4 , p. 173-175 .