Gerdt Benningk

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Gerdt Benningk (born before 1601; died after 1643) was a piece and bell founder who worked in Gdansk in the first half of the 17th century .

Lübeck

Little is known about Gerdt Benningk's living conditions. He is documented as a caster in Danzig between 1601 and 1643. His affiliation to the Benningk bell foundry family, which is active in Hamburg and Lübeck, has not yet been clarified.

Piece casting

In 1909, Thieme-Becker referred to a cannon presumably made by him in the collection of the Berlin armory , which was made in 1617 and signed G. Benninck .

Bells

Gerdt Benningk's bell from 1647, placed in front of the Petrikirche in Lübeck (2009)

Numerous bells are known from Gerdt Benningk in Gdansk and the surrounding area. Some of them ended up in western Germany as a result of the turmoil of World War II in the middle of the 20th century and some of them escaped being melted down for armament purposes at the bell cemetery in Hamburg and were thus saved.

For example, the two bells in front of the main portal of Lübeck's Petrikirche originally belonged to Gdansk churches and came to the Hamburg bell cemetery to extract raw materials during the Second World War and escaped being melted down. After 1945 they were brought to Lübeck because many refugees from Danzig had found a new home here. The restitution last discussed does not currently fail because of the attitude of the Lübeck committees, but because of an outstanding agreement in principle by the Union of Evangelical Churches in Berlin , which, as the legal successor to the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union, was decided by the Berlin Court of Appeal on September 22, 1970 for all property matters Prussian Protestant parishes east of the Polish-German state border has been declared responsible for movable property that was on German territory after May 8, 1945, with the responsible bodies in Poland.

A bell cast by Gerdt Benningk in 1606 from the church of Groß-Plauth (in the Danzig area) has been in the Evangelical Church of Medebach in the Sauerland since 1951 .

Also known is a bell cast in 1647 from the church of Zuckau in West Prussia with the inscriptions Divino auxilio fudit me Gerhardus Benningk (With divine help, Gerhard Benningk poured me) and Sj deus pro nobis, quis contra nos (Is God for us, who is against us).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Benningk → Gerdt B. In: Ulrich Thieme , Felix Becker (Ed.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker. tape 3 : Bassano – Bickham . Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1909, p. 335 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ). - (In the family entry; today probably in the Spandau Citadel ).
personal data
SURNAME Benningk, Gerdt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Piece and bell founder who worked in Gdansk
DATE OF BIRTH before 1601
DATE OF DEATH after 1643