Chapel in the old cemetery (Giessen)

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Chapel with tombstones, seen from the south

The chapel in the old cemetery in Gießen , central Hesse, is a two-story hall building from the years 1623 to 1625 with a strictly symmetrical half-timbered upper floor in the old cemetery . It was built by city architect Johannes Ebel zum Hirsch in the Renaissance style. The roof, which fell into disrepair in 1840, was renewed by Hugo von Ritgen , who added a half-timbered upper floor with a crooked hip roof in the historicism style and in 1862 designed the slender roof turret. In addition to the city ​​church tower , the chapel is the oldest preserved sacred building in the city center. Today it houses the Luther Church, founded in 1927. The entire cemetery, including the cemetery chapel including the interior, is a listed building as a whole .

history

Johannes Ebel zum Hirsch, builder of the chapel
Crucifix, one of the oldest inventory items

The cemetery was laid out outside the city gates from 1529 to 1530 when Gießen was expanded and fortified under Landgrave Philipp the Magnanimous . At first it only comprised a rectangular area of ​​about 60 × 100 meters between today's Licher Straße and the street “Am Nahrungsmittelberg”. Previously, the area was probably already used as a "pest field". A first chapel can be traced back to the old cemetery in the 16th century. Today's chapel was built or redesigned from 1623 to 1625 under the direction of the then Gießen master builder, Johann Baptist Ebel zum Hirsch († 1636), as the first stone house on the food mountain. A signature under the portrait of Ebels, which hung in the chapel until 1944 and has been in the Oberhessisches Museum since then , confirms this: “In the jar after our dear Lord and Blessed Christ's birth, 1623 uf Johannis Baptistae, this Cappell is by Johannes Ebelln for hirsch, the stat Giessen decreed bawherrn to honor God, and was completed and finished in the Jar Christi 1625. ”At first it served as a cemetery chapel and occasionally for church services on certain holidays. Another renovation followed in 1717.

There is no evidence of the condition of the chapel before 1830; not much can be seen on an imprecise lithograph from 1830, as the building is only shown from the back. It remains uncertain whether the renaissance building from 1625 had a half-timbered upper floor, whether this was supplemented in 1717 or raised in 1840. Due to the proportions, an originally two-storey complex with a gable roof is considered possible.

During the coalition wars, the chapel was secularized and served as an arsenal and workshop for the French artillery and suffered war damage. Because no repairs were made, the building was in danger of collapsing or even collapsing in 1840. Hugo von Ritgen , who had already restored the Wartburg and was professor of architecture at the Ludoviciana in Gießen, was commissioned with the reconstruction . The work was completed in 1860/1861. Von Ritgen added a half-timbered upper floor in Upper Hesse to the basement and designed the bell tower in 1862. The bell dates from the same year and was made by the Gießen bell founder Georg Otto. The central portal on the south side was closed and the north portal was created.

After the Lutheran Evangelical Congregation was founded in 1927, the city left the chapel to her as the new community church. The congregation has held its services there ever since. As the city expanded further south, the St. Luke community was divided and it was with effect from 1 January 1929, the Peter community . In 1936 the altar and the pulpit were moved from the east to the west. A major interior renovation followed in 1964, when the interior was renewed. In 1980, the staircase leading to the gallery was given semicircular sandstone steps and a matching outer door. The heating was renewed in 1981, and a loudspeaker system was installed in 1985.

architecture

Chapel from the north
View from the west

The cemetery chapel is in the north corner of the cemetery in the oldest part of the original complex. It is a two-story hall building with a strictly symmetrical half-timbered upper floor and a crooked roof. The massively bricked-up basement on a rectangular floor plan is east-facing , but has no choir . Three portals made of red sandstone in the originally preserved south side are arranged symmetrically. The original main entrance to the cemetery was to the south. The middle round arch portal (1.72 meters wide) from the Renaissance has protruding transom plates and wide garments with fittings in the arch and small, inserted obelisks in the arch. Semicircular seats with shell niches are embedded below the fighters. The flanking portals (1.40 meters wide) are also from the construction period, but have simple pointed arches with intersecting profile bars. The arched north portal (2.05 meters wide) in the middle of the wall was created in 1717 when the cemetery received its north entrance.

The half-timbered upper floor from 1840 was created on the drawing board and consistently constructed. Four surrounding bars with side struts divide the framework into three levels. The middle level is higher than the other two and has crosses throughout the compartments . The gable triangles are slated. The roof turret from 1862 on the west is four-sided. An open floor with nuns' heads rises above the slated base , above a pointed helmet, which is crowned by a tower knob and a simple cross with a weather vane. The roof turret houses a bronze bell (0.40 meters in diameter), which was cast by Georg Otto in Gießen in 1862 and bears the inscriptions: "Christ is my life and dying is my gain" and "Cast by Georg Otto AS in Gießen 1862" .

Furnishing

Winckelmann epitaph
Interior facing west

The interior is closed off by a flat wooden beam ceiling, which has a recess with a semicircular wooden barrel in the middle. The room is dominated by a four-sided, wooden gallery with balustrades , which rests on free-standing wooden supports and on wall supports with bows . Above the gallery, wooden pillars support the beamed ceiling. A wall in the west separates the sacristy and the staircase to the gallery, which is only accessible through an external door.

The large crucifix of the three-nail type comes from the time the church was built. However, it seems oversized for the space, so that another origin was assumed, possibly from the town church, which was demolished in 1809.

The historic church stalls , which came from around 1800, 1840 and 1890, were first exchanged for modern benches in 1964, and wooden seats during the renovation in 2005/06. The altar area is raised one step opposite the parish hall by a wooden pedestal. The altar and pulpit were also renewed in 1964. There is a simple wooden cross on the altar table. The polygonal wooden pulpit has round corner pillars and bears an inscription from 2 Cor 4,5–6  LUT on the front pulpit field . The lectern rests on an octagonal wooden column. The baptismal bowl was donated in 1893 for the inauguration of the Johanneskirche and given to the Luther congregation in 1972.

Numerous tombstones from the 17th and 18th centuries were erected on the outer walls of the basement to protect them. In 1936 the most valuable ones were moved inside the chapel. There are tombs from the 16th to 19th centuries, including Renaissance epitaphs by the Marburg sculptors Philipp and Adam Franck. Remarkable are the full-length and color combined epitaphs for the theologians and three first university rectors Johannes Winckelmann (1551-1626), Justus Fire Born (1587-1656) and Peter Haberkorn (1604-1676). Winckelmann was the founding rector of Giessen University in 1607. Feuerborn took over his position when the university reopened after the Peace of Westphalia in 1650. Haberkorn was his son-in-law and successor. The professors are portrayed in their black official salars with Spanish collars and books as an expression of their education.

organ

Organ from 1965

The organ was created in 1965 by the Lich company Förster & Nicolaus Orgelbau and acquired second-hand by the Luther Church in 1975 from Saarlouis, where it was used by Prof. Rudolf Rühl as a house organ. The old organ was given to the Stephanus congregation in 1980. The new two-manual instrument with mechanical performance and register action has nine registers . The disposition is as follows:

I Hauptwerk C – g 3
Reed flute 8th'
Principal 4 ′
Sesquialter II
Mixture III-IV
Tremulant
II upper structure C – g 3
Wooden dacked 8th'
Pointed flute 4 ′
Principal 2 ′
Tremulant
Pedal C – f 1
Sub-bass 16 ′
Gemshorn 8th'

literature

  • Literature about the chapel in the old cemetery in the Hessian Bibliography
  • Gerhard Bernbeck: The old cemetery in Giessen . 3. Edition. Ferber'sche Universitäts-Buchhandlung, Giessen 1997, ISBN 3-927835-92-7 .
  • Georg Dehio : Handbook of German art monuments , Hessen I: Administrative districts of Giessen and Kassel. Edited by Folkhard Cremer, Tobias Michael Wolf and others. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03092-3 , p. 318.
  • Luther Congregation (Ed.): Evangelical Luther Congregation Gießen. 1982-1992. Giessen 1993.
  • Edelgard Heim, Annekathrein Otte, Christiane Schmidt: The old cemetery in Giessen. A tour through art history and arboriculture. Magistrat, Giessen 1991, pp. 5-6.
  • Dagmar Klein: A cultural monument in a comprehensive sense and a historical park and place of remembrance. In: Matthias Recke , Wolfgang Maaß (Ed.): Pouring at second glance - walks through the university town. Brühlscher Verlag, Giessen 2003, ISBN 3-922300-57-X , pp. 89-99.
  • Dagmar Klein: The Giessen cemeteries. Memorial sites of the university. In: Horst Carl, Eva-Marie Felschow, Jürgen Reulecke, Volker Roelcke, Corinna Sargk (eds.): Panorama. 400 years of the University of Giessen. Actors, locations, culture of remembrance . Societäts-Verlag, Justus Liebig University Gießen, Gießen 2007, ISBN 978-3-7973-1038-5 , pp. 250-255.
  • State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.), Karlheinz Lang (edit.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. University town of Giessen. (= Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany ). Verlagsgesellschaft Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1993, ISBN 3-528-06246-0 , pp. 382-383 ( online , PDF).
  • Heinrich Walbe : The art monuments of the Gießen district. Vol. 3. Southern part without Arnsburg. Hessisches Denkmalarchiv, Darmstadt 1933, pp. 137–142.
  • Peter Weyrauch : The churches of the old district of Giessen. Mittelhessische Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Giessen 1979, DNB 800512863 , pp. 58-59.

Web links

Commons : Alter Friedhof Gießen, Friedhofskapelle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. University town of Giessen. 1993, p. 383.
  2. ↑ a b Heim / Otte / Schmidt: The old cemetery in Giessen. 1991, p. 5.
  3. ↑ Klein: The Giessen cemeteries. Memorial sites of the university . 2007, p. 250.
  4. ^ Portrait of Ebels in the Marburg picture index , accessed on October 21, 2015.
  5. ^ Dehio: Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Hessen I. 2008, p. 318.
  6. ↑ a b Evangelische Luthergemeinde Gießen: The history of our chapel , accessed on February 23, 2017.
  7. ↑ Klein: The Giessen cemeteries. Memorial sites of the university . 2007, p. 252.
  8. ↑ a b Luther Congregation (ed.): Evangelische Luthergemeinde Gießen. 1993, p. 13.
  9. ^ Heim / Otte / Schmidt: The old cemetery in Giessen. 1991, p. 6.
  10. ↑ Walbe: The art monuments of the district of Giessen. 1933, p. 138.
  11. ↑ Walbe: The art monuments of the district of Giessen. 1933, p. 137.
  12. ^ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Cultural monuments in Hesse. University town of Giessen. 1993, p. 382.
  13. ↑ a b Weyrauch: The churches of the old district of Gießen. 1979, p. 58.
  14. ↑ a b Weyrauch: The churches of the old district of Gießen. 1979, p. 59.
  15. ^ Bernbeck: The old cemetery in Giessen . 1997, p. 19.
  16. ↑ Luther Congregation (ed.): Evangelische Luthergemeinde Gießen. 1993, p. 15.
  17. ↑ Klein: A cultural monument in the broad sense. 2003, p. 91.
  18. ↑ Klein: The Giessen cemeteries. Memorial sites of the university . 2007, p. 251.
  19. ↑ Luther Congregation (ed.): Evangelische Luthergemeinde Gießen. 1993, p. 21.
  20. ^ Franz Bösken , Hermann Fischer : Sources and research on the organ history of the Middle Rhine. Vol. 3: Former province of Upper Hesse (=  contributions to the Middle Rhine music history 29.1 . Part 1 (A – L)). Schott, Mainz 1988, ISBN 3-7957-1330-7 , p. 367 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 34 ′ 59.2 "  N , 8 ° 41 ′ 7.4"  E