God's Rest Chapel

The Evangelical Gottesruhkapelle is a late medieval chapel about one kilometer west of the Middle Franconian town of Windsbach . It is on the road to Wolframs-Eschenbach .

history

By the middle of the 14th century stood near the "directional Wasens", the medieval execution site, a previous chapel, the knights and Windsbacher bailiff who converted Hanns Hellberg in 1400 to Gottesruhkapelle and expand. The basement of the tower is still preserved from the previous building.

Right from the start, the Gottesruhkapelle also had a leprosy - leper house, which later became a hospice and was used as a retirement home from 1918 to 1980.

There are no written sources from the first centuries about the origins of the chapel. Only in a report from the 17th century are more detailed circumstances mentioned. The chapel is said to have been built by the knight and bailiff Hanns von Hellberg around 1400 at his own expense. According to legend, he wanted to thank him for his recovery at the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land . “His” chapel should stand just as far outside the walls of Windsbach as St. Tomb from the city of Jerusalem. At that time, a plaque inside the church read:

Hans von Hellberg, a clever knight, did this church building, in honor of God at his expense. That is why he calls it for God's rest, because he was in Jerusalem, recovered there by the holy grave, as far as from there to the place of the skull than there from that city. He ruled and was a bailiff when one wrote fourteen hundred years.

Plaque on the east side, which takes up the original inscription

In a report from 1688 it goes on to say: "Your founder and builder has provided you with the necessary income to maintain it and in addition made such a constitution that every year on St. Stephen's Day a church consecration sermon and otherwise more often breakfast should be held."

The Thirty Years War led to the neglect of the church. It was then repeatedly renovated and redesigned.

Frescoes

Look at the choir

The fact that the Gottesruhkapelle is probably the most important building in Windsbach in terms of art history is based on the discovery of an almost completely preserved fresco cycle , which was discovered under layers of plaster during a renovation in 1947. In the four fields of the choir vault are the evangelist symbols , on the choir walls there are apostolic crosses and scenes from the life of Christ, above the choir arch the Last Judgment , on the north wall of the nave scenes from the life of the Mother of God and the Old Testament , on the south wall from the Acts of the Apostles . They all come from the same artist and were probably created shortly after the chapel was built around 1400–1420. Although some of them are poorly preserved, they show impressively how the chapel was furnished in the sense of a "poor Bible ".

literature

• Herrmann Altmann: The Gottesruhkapelle in Windsbach and its frescoes , special print from the 91st year book of the Historical Association of Middle Franconia 1982/83
• Karl Dunz : Windsbach - home and cultural history of the city with all districts . Neuendettelsau 1985, p. 159-163 .
• Günther P. Fehring : City and district of Ansbach (=  Bavarian art monuments . Volume 2 ). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1958, DNB  451224701 , p. 156 .
• Horst Heissmann (Ed.): ... in the midst of you: 200 years of the Windsbach deanery . History, Parishes & Institutions. Erlanger Verlag for Mission and Ecumenism, Neuendettelsau 2009, ISBN 978-3-87214-801-8 , p. 82 .
• Manfred Jehle: Church conditions and religious institutions on the upper Altmühl, Rezat and Bibert: Monasteries, parishes and Jewish communities in the Altlandkreis Ansbach in the Middle Ages and in modern times (=  Middle Franconian Studies . Volume 20 ). Historical Association for Middle Franconia, Ansbach 2009, ISBN 978-3-87707-771-9 , p. 179 .
• Günther Zeilinger with e. Working group d. Dekanates (Ed.): Windsbach - a deanery in Franconia (=  series of portraits of Bavarian deanery districts ). Verlag der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Mission, Erlangen 1987, ISBN 3-87214-220-8 , p. 94-98 .

Web links

Commons : Gottesruhkapelle  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Cultural hikes around Windsbach

Individual evidence

1. ^ Parish archive Windsbach, Tomus VII, 11 .; quoted from: Herrmann Altmann: The Gottesruhkapelle in Windsbach and its frescoes , special print from the 91st year book of the Historical Association of Middle Franconia 1982/83, 19.

Coordinates: 49 ° 14 ′ 41.1 ″  N , 10 ° 48 ′ 50.2 ″  E