Johanniterturm (Nidda)

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View from the northeast

The Johanniter Tower in Nidda in Wetteraukreis in Hesse is the Baurest a medieval basilica , the 1187-1585 seat of St. John - Coming was. The tower was added in 1491/1492 and was preserved after the ship was demolished. The oldest building and landmark of the city is a Hessian cultural monument for historical, artistic and urban planning reasons . The massive brick tower made of quarry stone masonry with corner blocks has four stone triangular gables and an eight-sided pointed helmet.

history

Valentin Wagner : View of Niddas (1633), left Johanniterkirche
Johanniterturm from the north-west with mortar residues on the upper floor
Fallen memorial on the west side

During excavations in 2005, previous buildings were found that go back to the 10th century. A death board discovered under the foundation of the church is dated around the year 800. As the predecessor of the three-aisled Romanesque basilica, there is evidence of a stone church that was dismantled and built over. A double grave from the late 12th century is assigned to this stone church.

In the pre-Reformation period, Nidda had three worship service rooms: the castle chapel, a Marienkapelle on the market square and the Romanesque parish church, which was to the right of the Nidda in the original core settlement of the city. In 1187, Count Berthold II donated the church and extensive property to the Johanniter-Kommende. This makes it the oldest Johanniter branch in Hesse and the eighth oldest in the Grand Priory of Germany. The rebuilding of the Romanesque basilica at the end of the 12th century therefore goes back to the order. From an ecclesiastical perspective, Nidda was assigned to the dean's office in Friedberg in the archdeaconate of St. Maria ad Gradus in the Archdiocese of Mainz in the Middle Ages . There were branch churches in Eichelsdorf and Reichelshausen. In the Gothic period, the basilica was rebuilt and received a polygonal three-eighth end, which replaced the Romanesque semicircular apse . The tower was added to the south side of the choir in 1491/1492 .

With the introduction of the Reformation , the parish changed to the Protestant creed. The reformer Johannes Pistorius von Nidda (1526–1580) was the first Lutheran pastor to work here . After long negotiations, the master of the order obtained an annual pension in 1585 for the handover of the Nidda buildings and possessions to the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt .

When plans arose in 1605 to expand the city chapel, which was too small, the Giessen superintendent Jeremias Vietor resisted , as he foresaw that "this form of the fine, large Johanniterkirche outside the city of Nidda would come in garbage and destruction, to prevent that". The Johanniterkirche served as a parish church until 1618. Since it was replaced by the new City Church of the Holy Spirit , it served as a Latin school until it was abandoned in 1636 due to dilapidation and war damage. According to a contemporary report, “the schooling in the church had so disintegrated that the children could no longer walk in it and be taught in the fear of God” and “in addition, soldiers and foreigners who had fled to Nidda had completely damaged and devastated the church, that it was no longer like any church ”.

In the period that followed, the Johanniterkirche increasingly fell into disrepair; only the tower was maintained. The Giessen superintendent Peter Haberkorn reported in 1665 about the condition of the church, the roof of which had collapsed, but also that “the church, with its beautiful bells and a wonderful bell, was still standing”. His request for the restoration of the church was discussed in detail in 1669, but it was just as disregarded as the order of Landgrave Ludwig IV to at least rebuild the roof. After the rising walls fell into disrepair in the middle of the 18th century, they were given to the city of Nidda in 1780.

At the suggestion of the curator, a war memorial was erected on the west wall in 1922 for those who died in the First World War . A comprehensive renovation of the tower including slate cover took place in 1937. A lightning strike in 1952 made further repairs necessary.

Excavations were carried out in 2004 and 2005-2008. On the basis of this and on the basis of a renovation plan from 1633, a park was created around the tower, which is based on the foundation walls of the basilica that has been laid down. After significant damage to the tower was found in 2007, extensive renovation took place in 2012, which included a partial renewal of the wooden structure of the tower structure and the bell storey as well as a new slate of the roof. Crumbling stones in the masonry were replaced, the lime mortar supplemented and the sandstone of the tracery windows renovated.

architecture

Tracery windows on the east side
Floor plan of the Johanniterkirche

The church , which was not exactly easted , but oriented east-northeast, was built west of the Nidda in what was then the old town. The central nave including the choir was 114 feet long and 28 feet wide (about 32 × 7.8 meters), the side aisles each 84 feet long and 12 feet wide (about 23.5 × 3.3 meters). The tower was built in 1491/1492 in the southeast of the church as a choir flank tower. The quarry stone masonry made of basalt with corner blocks made of red sandstone has a square floor plan. All windows, sound openings and the portal are clad in red sandstone. An inscription with the name "Peter Gubert" possibly names the builder. It is attached to a corner cuboid in the base area of ​​the southeast corner.

Vault in the tower hall with stairs to the upper floor

The tower hall on the ground floor is vaulted with cross ribs, the keystone of which is covered with the coat of arms of the bailiff Asmus Döring and is marked with the year 1492: "Asmus doring amptman an dm cccc xcii". A high rectangular sacraments niche with simple sandstone walls is embedded in the west wall and a large rectangular piscina made of sandstone with a drain is built into the south side over a base . Today in the tower hall a steep wooden staircase leads through a roughly hewn hole in a vault cap to the upper floor. The earlier bell and clock mechanism of the Jordt family is located here. On the east and south sides, two-lane late Gothic tracery windows made of red sandstone with nuns' heads in the pointed arch illuminate the interior.

On the outside, a cornice band divides the solidly walled-up tower shaft, on which four triangular stone gables are attached. The cornice strip is interrupted on the west side by a chamfered ogival opening, which formerly provided access to the upper floor of the tower from the south aisle. On the ground floor, the tower hall was only connected to the choir by the pointed north portal and was not accessible from the outside. On the upper floor on the north side, a sloping edge from the original choir roof can be seen in the mortar. Above this, the triangular imprint in the mortar points to a transept-like extension between the choir and the tower. The fifth corner cuboid on the south side is built in 1491: "Anno dm m ° ccc ° xci".

In the plastered gable triangles, ogival sound openings of the bell chamber are embedded, which show a circle with two fish bubbles in the ogival arch. Above that, the clock faces of the tower clock are attached on all four sides. A slate octagonal pointed helmet is attached to the tower, which is crowned by a tower knob, a cross and a gilded weathercock.

The larger-than-life figure of a soldier by the sculptor Huber (Offenbach) is placed on a protruding console stone on the west wall. He is holding a sword in his right hand and Nidda's coat of arms with a soldier's helmet in his left. The names of the fallen are carved into the north-western corner of the tower.

Peal

The church tower houses a triple bell, the bells of which were cast in 1519, 1572 and 1629. The big bell from 1629 is the casting of a bell smashed by Brunswick troops by Claude Brochar from Lorraine. At the same time he had cast two bells for the town church. The middle bell dates from 1519 and thus dates from the pre-Reformation period. The small one from 1572 bears the first letters "VDMI AE" of the Latin Bible verse "Verbum Domini Manet In Aeternum" ( Isa 40.8  VUL ) as an inscription .

No.
  		Casting year
  		Caster
  		Diameter
(mm) 		Chime
  		inscription
  		image
 
1 1629 Claude Brochar " ANNO CHR MDCXXIX WARD THIS GLOCK ZV NIDDA GASTEN" ( JRRA : HZR) Nidda Johanniterturm bell (04) .jpg
2 1519 Stefan 940 " LAVDO DEVM VERVM SATANVM FVGO CONVOCO CLERVM STFEAN GOS ME ANNO 1519 " Nidda Johanniterturm bell (02) .jpg
3 1572 not designated " VDMI AE " Nidda Johanniterturm bell (03) .jpg

literature

  • Ottfried Dascher (Ed.): Nidda. The history of a city and its surroundings. 2nd Edition. Niddaer Heimatmuseum, Nidda 2003, ISBN 3-9803915-8-2 , p. 264.
  • Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments . Hesse II. Darmstadt administrative district. Edited by Folkhard Cremer, Tobias Michael Wolf and others. 3. Edition. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03117-3 , p. 612.
  • Wilhelm Diehl : Construction book for the Protestant parishes of the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt (= Hassia sacra. Vol. 5). Self-published, Darmstadt 1931, 321–322.
  • Siegfried RCT Enders; Ottfried Dascher (ed.): The cultural monuments in Nidda and its districts. Nidda 1992, 249-292.
  • Karl Kraft: The Johanniter in Nidda. To commemorate the founding of the Johanniter settlement in Nidda 800 years ago, Anno Domini 1187. 1187–1987. Hera, Nidda, Ober-Schmitten 1994.
  • Reinhard Pfnorr: The fate of the Johanniter inheritance since the 16th century in Nidda. Considerations on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the existence of the Johanniterturm on August 27, 1992. In: Niddaer Geschichtsblätter. Vol. 1, 1993, pp. 4-15.
  • State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.); Siegfried RCT Enders (arr.): Cultural monuments in Hessen. Wetteraukreis I (= monument topography Federal Republic of Germany ). Theiss, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-528-06231-2 , p. 286.
  • Walter G. Rödel: The Johanniter in Nidda. In: Ottfried Dascher (Ed.): Nidda. The history of a city and its surroundings. 2nd Edition. Niddaer Heimatmuseum, Nidda 1992, ISBN 3-9803915-8-2 , pp. 91-108.
  • Heinrich Wagner: District of Büdingen (= art monuments in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. Province of Upper Hesse. Volume 1). Bergsträßer, Darmstadt 1890, pp. 212-215 ( online ).
  • Wilhelm Wagner: 1025 years of Nidda. 951-1976. Nidda 1976, pp. 44-46.
  • Jörg Lindenthal, Matthias Renker, Dieter Wolf : First archaeological investigations at the Johanniterkirche in Nidda: Church excavation in Nidda, Wetteraukreis. In: Hessen Archeology. 2004, pp. 140-143.

Web links

Commons : Johanniter-Turm Nidda  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. Wetteraukreis I. 1982, p. 346.
  2. ↑ a b c Dehio: Handbook of German Art Monuments. 2008, p. 612.
  3. ↑ Enders: The cultural monuments in Nidd. 1992, p. 252.
  4. ^ Rödel: The Johanniter in Nidda. 1992, p. 92.
  5. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau of February 24, 2012: Johanniterturm in Nidda. No purlin is stable anymore , accessed on June 22, 2018.
  6. ^ Gerhard Kleinfeldt, Hans Weirich: The medieval church organization in the Upper Hessian-Nassau area (= writings of the Institute for historical regional studies of Hesse and Nassau 16 ). NG Elwert, Marburg 1937, ND 1984, p. 28.
  7. ↑ Nidda. Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on June 22, 2018 .
  8. ^ Wagner: Kreis Büdingen 1890, p. 213 ( online )
  9. ↑ a b c Diehl: Construction book for the Protestant parishes. 1931, p. 321.
  10. ↑ a b c Diehl: Construction book for the Protestant parishes. 1931, p. 322.
  11. ↑ The Johanniter Tower in Nidda. Landmark of a city Slate cover 1937 and 2013 , accessed on June 23, 2018 (PDF).
  12. ↑ Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung of February 23, 2012: Johanniterturm: The beams in particular have suffered , accessed on June 22, 2018.
  13. ↑ a b c Wagner: Kreis Büdingen 1890, p. 214 ( online )
  14. ^ Rainer Kritzler: Contributions to the history of the Evangelical Church Community Nidda. In: Niddaer Geschichtsblätter. Vol. 10, 2006, pp. 6-95, here p. 24.
  15. ^ Wagner: Kreis Büdingen 1890, p. 215 ( online )

Coordinates: 50 ° 24 '46.19 "  N , 9 ° 0' 21.92"  E