Wieck funerary chapel
The Wieck grave chapel , also known as the castle chapel , is located in the park of Wieck Castle near Gützkow in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district .
history
At the beginning of the second half of the 19th century, Franz Heinrich Erich II von Lepel auf Wieck and his wife Mathilde, née Rodbertus, planned to build a representative chapel with a burial place in their estate. The contract was awarded to the Berlin architect Richard Lucae , who was acquainted with Bernhard von Lepel , the lord's son-in-law. It was Richard Lucae's second major work after Katowice and was completed in 1859. Lucae's design in two versions was archived in the architecture museum of the TH Berlin-Charlottenburg and was still considered lost during the war in 1983. Both documents were found by a Gützkow collector of such archival material and one copy was donated to the Gützkow local history museum in 2005 (see adjacent images).
Following the construction, the landscape park around the chapel was redesigned. The cemetery wall had already been removed beforehand in 1842. The cemetery for the villagers of Wieck was left in the park in front of the east side of the chapel.
The von Lepel couple turned to pietism as a strict form of the Protestant religion around this time. After 1859 they first invited four pastors who were friends and later also other pastors to the so-called "Wieck Pastoral Conferences" in the chapel. After the couple's death, the chapel was only used for church purposes in exceptional cases. The successors of Franz Heinrich Erich II von Lepel appeared as patrons of the Gützkower Nikolai Church (window sponsor from 1883). The chapel was only used for pure family events, such as baptisms, weddings and funerals.
Until 1931 the chapel was the church and burial place of the von Lepel family. By 1931, 12 adult coffins and one children's coffin were placed in the crypt floor. Then the estate went bankrupt and the manor house, along with the landscape park and the burial chapel, was taken over by the city of Gützkow because of the property's tax liability. According to the records in the archives of the Nikolai Church in Gützkow, the chapel was not consecrated, only the sacred objects were given to the church in Gützkow. Subsequently, until the end of the war, the chapel was only used as a morgue for the residents of Wieck.
In May 1945 the burial place in the basement was cleared out by the Red Army , the remains of the 13 coffins were dumped in an earth grave and high-ranking fallen officers of the Soviet Army were brought back home with the oak-zinc coffins. The chapel remained intact, but fell into disrepair in the following decades partly due to lack of use. After the construction of the old people's home at the park in 1953, the chapel was used as a morgue above and as a coal cellar below. In 1965 the cemetery of the old people's home was relocated and the chapel has since been unused and deteriorated increasingly.
Together with the castle, an application was made for them to be included in the list as a monument in 1980. In 1982 the monument documents were presented for both objects. In 1983 the monument preservation objectives and the building report were made and the measurements were carried out. Incomplete safety work began. The condition of the building was now worrying because there was a large hole in the roof. Water penetrated into this and collected in the vaulted funnels. In winter, the frost blew up the walls, cracks appeared and the walls inside had algae growth. Between 1996 and 2000 the chapel was repaired and restored with the financial support of the von Lepel family. The re-consecration took place at a family day of the family association of Lepel on June 3, 2000. At the same time, the large memorial stone on the family's “grave” was unveiled.
After the complete restoration, the chapel is used as a registry office and, in rare cases, for church purposes, for example for baptisms.
investment
The two-storey sacred building was built from yellow clinker bricks in the neo-Gothic style, taking advantage of the natural hillside location in the southern part of the castle park. The chapel is accessible from the west on the upper floor and looks rather graceful here. In front of the altar there is a 1 × 2 m opening in the floor, which is closed with a cast iron plate. Through this, the coffins of the deceased were lowered into the crypt floor. There are six niches for two coffins each.
In the plastered blind windows on the long sides, Bible texts are attached to the outside (partially damaged). On the east side, the chapel, which has access to the crypt in the basement, looks like a large Gothic church building.
literature
- Jürgen Schröder: burial chapel as a “masterpiece”. The architect Richard Lucae has created something impressive in Gützkow, Rostock, Berlin and Frankfurt / Main. In: Nordkurier . April 27, 2009, p. 24 ( online ).
- Historisch-Genealogisches Handbuch des Familie v. Lepel (Lepell). Developed by Andreas Hansert and Oskar Matthias Frhr on the basis of family history sources. v. Lepel with the assistance of Klaus Bernhard Frhr. v. Lepel and Herbert Stoyan. German Family Archives, Volume 151, Verlag Degener & Co., owner Manfred Dreiss, Insingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-7686-5201-8 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Werner Malz, "Documentation for inventory analysis, monument conservation objectives and security measures", Greifswald, 1983
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 56 ′ 24.7 " N , 13 ° 24 ′ 13.4" E