Golden miracle of Westphalia
The Golden Miracle of Westphalia is an Antwerp reredos from 1521 in the Petrikirche in Dortmund .
With a height of 5.65 meters and a width of 7.40 meters with the double doors open, the Dortmund carved altar is the largest preserved Antwerp altar. The reredos is equipped with two pairs of wings, the interior of which is also plastically carved on the inside.
The winged altar is opened differently in the course of the church year and then shows a different representation on the front. During Holy Week , the reredos are closed, with 18 panel paintings on the front. From Pentecost to Thanksgiving , the outer pair of double doors of the retable is opened. A cycle of the family and childhood history of Jesus can now be seen on the 36 panels . After the second opening, the reredos are presented in full splendor. From Thanksgiving to Holy Week and from Easter to Pentecost, the actual gilded carved altar with 36 compartments and a total of 633 gilded figures can be seen in it. The detailed story of the Passion of Jesus with the crucifixion is shown here . Among them is one of the earliest depictions of a child on a hobby horse .
The altar was originally commissioned by the Dortmund Franciscans from Jan Gillisz Wrage in Antwerp for their monastery church. After the abolition of the monastery in the course of secularization, the Petrigemeinde bought the Golden Miracle of Westphalia and brought it to their church shortly before the monastery church was demolished in 1809. During the Second World War the altar was relocated and returned to Dortmund in 1954. Here he was initially housed in an emergency church, as the Petrikirche was not available due to war-related damage. From the beginning of the 1960s, the altar in the Petrikirche was restored and put up again in 1985.
literature
- Godehard Hoffmann: The Antwerp reredos in St. Petri in Dortmund . In: Westfalen 76, 1998, ISSN 0043-4337 , pp. 26-51.
- Godehard Hoffmann: The late Gothic winged altar in the Petrikirche in Dortmund - An Antwerp masterpiece from the times before the Reformation . In: Contributions to the history of Dortmund and the county Mark 91, 2000, ISSN 0405-2021 , pp. 11-60.
- Gerhard E. Stoll: Evangelical home. Churches in Westphalia . 2nd Edition. Luther Verlag, Bielefeld 1993, ISBN 3-7858-0352-4 .
- Barbara Welzel (ed.): Old gold in new splendor. The "Golden Miracle" in St. Petrikirche in Dortmund . Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 978-3-89534-639-2 , ( Dortmunder Medieval Research 9).
- Barbara Welzel (Ed.): The "golden miracle" in the Dortmund Petrikirche. Image use and image production in the Middle Ages . Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2003, ISBN 3-89534-522-9 , ( Dortmunder Medieval Research 2).