Fußfall (Hochkirchen)
The Fußfall is a memorial in Hochkirchen near Nörvenich , Düren district , North Rhine-Westphalia .
location
Directly at the confluence of the “Am Fußfall” street with Neffeltalstraße is a large, unkempt-looking monument.
This monument is popularly called "The Footfall". Ancient chestnut trees stand next to the large image made of sandstone . The signposted Kaiser route from Aachen to Paderborn leads right past it .
The monument
The Poensgen family decorated the “Fußfall” for the Corpus Christi procession because they run a restaurant where the donor of the monument lived. You also have a number of original documents from the 18th century to prove this.
The "Fußfall" was donated in 1771 by Jacobus (Jakob) Hamacher. In 1969, the Latin inscription was still to be read on two panels, each with a chronogram, on the base of the monument . Her name was:
- eX LargIs IaCobI haMaCher posIta fVIt DonIs (built from a generous donation from Jakobus Hamacher). Chronogram: 1771
- haeC CrVX DeVotIone aC proprIIs sVMtIbVs hVIVs pagI renVata. (This cross was renovated out of piety and at the expense of the village). Chronogram: 1851
Until the construction of the Hochkirchen school , later a four-class elementary school as a branch of the Nörvenich community elementary school , today privately owned, the memorial stood on today's west wall of the school and was then moved to its current location. The land map from 1895 shows the location.
Christ collapsed under the cross on the heavy pedestal . It was colored, just like the pictures carved on the four sides. These four pictures showed representations from the Passion of Christ (painful rosary ). The depiction of Christ with the cross can only be seen on the west side.
Despite the stone hardening that the municipality has carried out twice so far , the environmental pollution has seriously damaged the footfall and the chestnuts that cover the entire monument are also contributing to decay. Otherwise details can no longer be recognized on the entire monument.
The homeland and history association of the municipality of Nörvenich e. V. erected a stele on the monument that explains the history.
Legend
Around the year 1710 a wealthy man lived in Hochkirchen next to the church, where the inn "Im Kirchspielkrug" is today. His name was Andreas Hamacher and he had three sons: Evert, Winand and Jakobus. The sons should also be the heirs of the paternal property . Evert, the eldest of the brothers, went on tour as a craftsman when he was young . Winand and James stayed home. For the younger ones, the father died too early. They were placed under guardianship while Evert, at the time 22 years old, had not yet returned from his wanderings. Because of a debt of 150 Reichstalers , the two brothers' guardians now sold the entire property, allegedly to avoid the judicial confiscation of the property . But the proceeds from this sale were not paid out. The Landbote Schröteler published the sale of the Hamacher property on September 21, 1727 by posting on the church in Hochkirchen. The widow of the late Andreas Hamacher with their sons Winand and Jakobus were allowed to continue living in the house. But from now on they were no longer owners , they had to pay rent . Hard years of hardship followed, and one day the widow was put out on the street because she could not afford the rent. Her son Jakobus had meanwhile moved to Bonn . Human fates often follow strange paths: on the same day that the mother was expelled from the house, Evert, the eldest, finally returned to Hochkirchen after years of absence from Nancy . He found his mother crying at the place where the "Fußfall" stands today. He did try to comfort his mother over the monstrous and showed her the money he had saved on the journey, with which he wanted to regain his father's inheritance . He transferred all rights to his brothers Jakobus and Winand and left Hochkirchen again in 1753 to earn even more money abroad for the repurchase of his father's inheritance. Years of trials followed in Hochkirchen. They ended with the bailiff of the Nörvenich jury finally reinstating the cheated heirs in the old law.
But Evert Hamacher, who remained a bachelor , had grown old and tired over the long inheritance dispute. He hired a younger brother, James, to uphold family rights. James, like his ancestors and siblings a pious and God-fearing man, had the monument, the " Fußfall ", which is still preserved today, erected in 1771 at the place where his mother and his brother Evert met . True to tradition, the memorial is decorated every year on Corpus Christi day by the owner of the “Kirchspielkrug” inn. It is one of the four blessing stations of the Hochkirchen Corpus Christi procession.
Others
A copy of the Hochkirchen school chronicle shows that even a hundred years ago the youth had no place to stay and met in the village at the memorial. In 1900 it is reported that the monument suffered greatly from the hustle and bustle of young and old who had set up their playground there. Therefore, it was decided to build a protective fence around the monument, which was completed in autumn 1896. The costs amounted to 400 Reichsmarks , of which the teaching staff raised around 150 RM through a collection and the remainder was taken over by the community.
After the monument “Fußfall” in Hochkirchen, the council decision of the municipality of Hochkirchen on February 23, 1965 named the street “Am Fußfall” coming from Eggersheim and leading into Neffeltalstrasse. The monument is a listed building . It was entered on March 14, 1985 in the list of monuments of the municipality of Nörvenich under No. 36.
The footfalls
The “ Seven Footfalls ” are the oldest form of the Way of the Cross - mediated by pilgrims from Jerusalem to the Rhineland in the late Middle Ages - with seven crossroads , chapels or holy houses each commemorating one station of the Passion of Christ in Jerusalem. The Bittgang got its name from the habit of falling to the ground with both knees at the same time at the individual stations .
When someone was dying, seven virgins went with a married woman, in Hochkirchen it was last “Zöpps Nies”, to seven holy houses or crosses in the village or in the field markings and prayed the painful rosary with the addition: “Lord give what him is blessed, take from him what is harmful to him. ”This custom was still practiced here in isolated cases after the First World War , including by girls from Poll and Irresheim .
The "Seven Footfalls" were common from East Belgium to the Sauerland .
Individual evidence
- Hochkirchen school chronicle, archive of the Nörvenich community
- Hochkirchen - 900 years of village history in brief, Karl Heinz Türk , 2002
- Dürener Zeitung, June 1969 "What a footfall tells"
Coordinates: 50 ° 47 '48.1 " N , 6 ° 38' 23.9" E