Pulpit clock

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A pulpit clock , also known as a sermon clock , is a clock attached to the pulpit that is used to set the duration of the sermon .

Forms and uses

Pulpit clock from 1776 in the Erfurt Folklore Museum

A pulpit clock was "usually an hourglass on the pulpit, by which the preachers can refer to the length of their sermon". In this way the pastor could keep his sermon time and at the same time his audience could estimate how long the sermon would likely last. As a rule, the pulpit clock was a so-called "sermon hourglass": It usually consisted of four hourglasses attached to each other, therefore also called "four-glass hourglass". (Occasionally she also had two, three or six glasses.) On the one hand, there were pulpit clocks that went through every quarter of an hour. When the sermon began, the sexton turned the hourglass. The first section of the sermon, the introduction to the sermon pericope, lasted a long glass, so 15 minutes. After the reading of the biblical text, the second glass was reversed: The main sermon began, usually of three, was ever a glass lasting parts, so "that it is only with the last verrinnenden grain of the often long-awaited Amen done". In other models, the four-glass hourglass was rotated as a whole at the beginning of the sermon. In this case, the glasses differed in the speed of passage of the sand: e.g. B. 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes or 15, 20, 25 and 30 minutes.

Pulpit clock in the Evangelical Lutheran parish church of St. Nikolai in Marktbreit

Mechanical clocks were used as pulpit clocks less often and usually only since the 18th century, for example in the Peterskirche in Görlitz and in the St. Martini Church in Stadthagen . The simplest form of the pulpit clock, preserved only in a few cases, is a candle that burns down in a glass attached to the pulpit.

purpose

Insofar as preachers nowadays take care not to preach too long, it is often assumed that pulpit clocks should protect against excessive sermon time. The (mechanical) pulpit clock bought in 1717 for the Johanniskirche in Werben an der Elbe “struck every quarter of an hour, but after an hour it was very loud and strong as a warning for the preacher fini sermonem ” (in German: to finish the sermon). In the time of the Enlightenment, the authorities were careful that the people did not spend too much time on “unproductive activities”, but worked kindly. In the duchy of Nassau-Weilburg , the prince decreed in 1749:

“That in future every pastor should arrange the concept of his sermon in such a way that he does not spend more than three quarters of an hour in the pulpit during public services, including prayer and sermon.
That every pastor should turn around the hourglass that is to be attached to the pulpit and pay attention to its progress. "

Older church ordinances rather specified a minimum sermon duration. In this respect, pulpit clocks were also used to monitor that the preacher “kept his debts for which he was paid”.

Occasionally the preachers used the pulpit clock at the “ Memento mori ” and “ Vanitas ” sermons, which were frequent in the Baroque period , to illustrate to the audience how their lifetimes were inexorably flowing by.

history

Pulpit clock in the Reformed Church in Copenhagen . The four glasses are labeled: 1/4, 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4 hour.

A very old pulpit clock, allegedly from 1439, is in the holdings of the priestly houses in Zwickau . The oldest known picture of a church interior showing a pulpit clock dates from 1520.

Because the sermon made up the largest (longest) part of the Lutheran Sunday service and even more so in the Reformed service, pulpit clocks were mainly in use in Protestant churches in the 17th and 18th centuries, and in some regional churches since the second half of the 16th century . In some regional churches the pulpit clock was mandatory, in others it was recommended. Church and school regulations from 1565 stipulate: "The morning sermons, as well as all other sermons, should by no means last more than an hour, therefore a real hourglass should be bought on every pulpit ... which should be turned over when entering."

In Catholic Sunday mass, the sermon does not come first. Pulpit clocks are therefore uncommon in Catholic churches.

Most of the pulpit clocks were removed from the churches in the 19th and 20th centuries as "out of date" in the course of renovations, such as when the church in Kemnitz was "de-welded" in 1856. In the best case, the dismantled pulpit clocks became local museums or left to regional museums of cultural history.

Preserved pulpit clocks in churches

The pulpit clock has been preserved in the following churches:

In Germany

Baden-Württemberg

Bavaria

Berlin

Brandenburg

Hesse

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

Lower Saxony

North Rhine-Westphalia

Rhineland-Palatinate

Saxony

In 2014, a replica of the pulpit clock removed in 1912 was installed in St. Bartholomew's Church in Röhrsdorf in Saxony.

Saxony-Anhalt

Schleswig-Holstein

Thuringia

In other countries

Netherlands

Switzerland

Scandinavia

Pulpit clocks in museums

Pulpit hourglass with wall board 1674 on a GDR postage stamp from 1983 .
Pulpit hourglass (around 1700)

Pulpit clocks can be found u. a. in the following museums:

literature

  • Reiner Dieckhoff: About a newly acquired pulpit clock in the Schnütgen Museum . In: Bulletin of the Museums of the City of Cologne , year 1978.
  • Peter Faßbender: The sermon clock of the Church of St. Peter in Görlitz . In: Writings of the historical-scientific expert group “Friends of Old Clocks” in the German Society for Chronometrie , vol. 33 (1994), pp. 54–57.
  • Lothar Hasselmeyer: History and stories of an hourglass - the pulpit clock from Gröditz . In: Upper Lusatian house book. Lusatia-Verlag, Bautzen 2002, pp. 96-97.
  • Hermann Hess: hourglasses as timepieces in church services . In: Turmhahn. Journal for building and art in the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate , vol. 4 (1960), no. 3, pp. 7–8.
  • Inken Knoch: Pulpit hourglasses, preachers and sermons in post-Reformation Schleswig-Holstein . In: Writings of the Association for Schleswig-Holstein Church History , Series 2: Contributions and Messages , vol. 46 (1993).
  • Horst Landrock: Old watches - rediscovered. History, course and play . Verlag Technik, Berlin 1981. Chapter 5.8: The mechanical pulpit clock , pp. 107-108.
  • Art. Pulpit clock . In: Fritz von Osterhausen: Callweys Uhrenlexikon . Callwey, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-7667-1353-1 .
  • Karl-Heinz Pohl: For learning, for pulpit and seafaring. History and construction of the hourglass . In: Art and Antiques , vol. 1979, no. 1, pp. 23–28.
  • Heimo Reinitzer : Tapetum Concordiae. Peter Heymans tapestry for Philip I of Pomerania and the tradition of the pulpits carried by Moses . De Gruyter, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-027887-3 , pp. 201-218.
  • Joachim Salzgeber: 200 years of the pulpit clock (in the Einsiedeln collegiate church) . In: Maria Einsiedeln , Vol. 90, 1985, pp. 311-314.
  • Karl Thomas: Pulpit hourglasses in Waldeck . In: History sheets for Waldeck , vol. 90 (2002).
  • Dagmar Thormann: Two Windesheimers <sic! - should read: Windsheimer> pulpit hourglasses . In: Andrea Thurnwald (ed.): "... do not despise the sermon and his word". On the significance of the sermon in the tradition of Protestant communities in Franconia . Franconian Open Air Museum , Bad Windsheim 1993, ISBN 3-926834-26-9 , pp. 54–55.
  • Peter Wasem: "... stay in the pulpit for two hours". The hourglass in the Kirchheimbolander Paulskirche . In: Donnersberg-Jahrbuch , Vol. 31 (2008), pp. 113–115.
  • Franconian Museum Feuchtwangen - guide through the collections; Association for Folk Art and Folklore V. Feuchtwangen (ed.); Summer printing house, 1948.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Joachim Heinrich Campe : Dictionary of the German Language , Vol. 2: F to K. Braunschweig 1808, p. 885.
  2. ↑ Gudrun Tabbert: A last reminder of the old hourglass of the Protestant church in Neutomischel , accessed on March 3, 2015.
  3. ↑ Heinrich Alt: The Christian cult according to its various forms of development and its individual parts historically presented . GWF Müller, Berlin 1843, Chapter 7: “The house of God and its interior furnishings”, Paragraph 4: “The hourglass”, pp. 98–99, citation p. 98 ( digitized version of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek).
  4. ↑ Günter Kuschnik: Hourglass determined length of the sermon . In: Nordwest-Zeitung online, March 15, 2006 (about a pulpit clock in the Maritime Museum of the Oldenburg Lower Weser).
  5. ↑ In which church is there still a pulpit clock? (on a contribution in the series “Ausenseiter Spitzenreiter”, broadcast by MDR on November 11, 2011), accessed on March 3, 2015.
  6. ↑ a b Rosl Schäfer: Georg-Christophorus-Jodokus-Kirche Stellichte . Walsrode 2008, p. 15.
  7. ↑ Deutsches Pfarrerblatt, year 1932, p. 427.
  8. ↑ uhrenlexikon.de: History of the hourglass
  9. ↑ Quoted from Peter Wasem: The hourglass on the pulpit ( memento from September 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on March 4, 2015.
  10. ↑ Zwickau priests' houses are dedicated to Martin Luther , accessed on March 3, 2015.
  11. ^ Hourglasses - Church clocks , accessed on March 5, 2015.
  12. ^ Dorothee Reimann: The hourglass in St. Marien zu Torgau . In: Monumente , vol. 2005, issue 11/12, pp. 22–23, here p. 22.
  13. ↑ Quoted in: Community letter of the Evangelical Church Community Werden , 03/2008 edition.
  14. ↑ Cornelius Gurlitt : Amtshauptmannschaft Löbau (= descriptive representation of the older architectural and art monuments of the Kingdom of Saxony , vol. 34). CC Meinhold, Dresden 1910, p. 232.
  15. ^ Church letter of the Ev.-Luth. St. Bartholomäus parish Röhrsdorf, February – June 2014, ( Memento of the original from February 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. P. 12. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / kirchgemeinde-roehrsdorf.de

Web links

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