Ducal crypt chapel (Meiningen)

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Ducal crypt chapel in Meiningen

The ducal crypt chapel in Meiningen was a burial place of the ducal house of Saxony-Meiningen . The neo-Gothic building, completed in 1839, is a listed building.

location

The crypt chapel is a must-see gem on an elevation in the southern part of the English Garden in a line of sight to the Great Palace near the historic old town .

history

The ducal crypt chapel was built from 1835 to 1839 due to a lack of space in the princely crypt in Elisabethenburg Castle on the site of the St. Martin Church, which was demolished in 1827 . For this purpose, Duke Bernhard II acquired the property of the former Gottesackerkirche from the city of Meiningen. The architect of the neo-Gothic building was August Wilhelm Döbner . At the location of the chapel was the former municipal cemetery, which was shut down in 1841 and integrated into the English Garden together with the chapel. A large number of tombs surround the crypt chapel up to the present day. Some members of the Meiningen ducal house found their final resting place in the crypt itself. Among them were Duchess Charlotte Amalie von Hessen-Philippsthal , Duke Georg I and his wife Duchess Louise Eleonore zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg as well as Duke Bernhard II (1800–1882) and his wife Duchess Marie von Hessen-Kassel (1804–1888).

In 1977 the Meiningen district leadership of the Kulturbund planned to set up an art gallery in the crypt chapel. On November 11, 1977 so the local authorities were in violation of the Meininger history, irreverent and in disregard of the requirements of the Institute of Cultural Heritage Erfurt all the coffins from the chapel remove cremated and anonymous urn graves in the park cemetery Meiningen in the vicinity of the grave of Duke George II and Ellen Franz are buried. The chapel was thus deprived of its function. On June 12, 1998, the city of Meiningen arranged for an official and dignified urn burial of the violated people near the grave of Prince Friedrich von Sachsen-Meiningen, who fell in 1914 .

After the coffins were removed, the originally intended use did not take place and the chapel fell into disrepair until the first maintenance work took place in 1982 and from 1985 to 1990 the first exhibition "Witnesses of the City's History" took place. In 1990/91 the roof and in 1999/2000 the rest of the chapel were completely renovated. The crypt chapel now serves as an exhibition hall with the permanent exhibition “History of the Park and the Crypt Chapel”, which opened in 2001 and is accessible in the summer months.

Funerals

Building

The crypt chapel from the southeast

Description: The grave laying was in the basement vaults located crypt housed, which is covered by a bottom having hexagonal and square and patterned stones. The chapel , built of limestone and provided with three bays , rises as a hall building . It has nine Gothic windows, three of which are in a small apse . The colored glass windows decorated with saints from the New Testament were destroyed in the Second World War and replaced by simple glass windows. A roof turret with a bell sits on the west facade . There is also the six meter high and two meter wide Gothic portal with a two-winged wooden gate, crowned by a large stone rose window. The gate was once flanked by two almost man-high stone sculptures of angels, standing on consoles and covered with canopies. The two angel figures were initially secured and stored in 1999 because of their poor condition. The two corner buttresses on the west side are crowned by pinnacles . In the interior of the hall church there is a stone neo-Gothic altar on the east side, in front of which there is the entrance to the crypt, provided with a sinking device for the coffins. The hall is spanned by a ribbed vault on the keystones of which a Saxon diamond coat of arms and 15 coat of arms of the ducal house are attached.

literature

  • Reissland / Heinritz, Staatliche Museen Meiningen (Hrsg.): Meininger views. Staatliche Museen Meiningen, 1982, DNB 209150491 .
  • Reissland / Pfannschmidt: The Meininger Parks . Verlag Resch, Meiningen, 2012, ISBN 978-3940295309 .
  • Ingrid Reissland, Meininger Heimatklänge number 7: The crypt chapel has graced the English garden for 180 years . Meininger Tageblatt, 2019.

Web links

Commons : Gruftkapelle Meiningen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Meininger Tageblatt: Meininger Heimatklänge 7 , published on July 1, 2019.
  2. ^ Reissland / Pfannschmidt: The Meininger Parks . Publishing house Resch, Meiningen 2012.

Coordinates: 50 ° 34 ′ 18 "  N , 10 ° 25 ′ 7.4"  E