Katharinenkirche (Lübeck)

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Katharinenkirche before 1873; Southwest view

The St. Catherine's Church , and St. Catherine of Lübeck , is the church of the former Franciscan - monastery and the only remaining abbey church in Lübeck . She has the patronage of St. Catherine of Alexandria .

The Katharinenkloster existed as a monastery of the Franciscans (the so-called fratres minores or Minor Brothers) from 1225 until the Reformation in 1531. The medieval building complex on Königstrasse in Lübeck's old town is now part of the world cultural heritage . The former monastery church is now a museum church, in the adjoining parts of the building are the old-language grammar school Katharineum and the city ​​library .

history

Katharinenkirche as seen from the tower of the St. Petri Church. Southwest view (2007)

During the lifetime of St. Francis of Assisi , the Franciscans received a plot of land to build a monastery and church on the corner of Königstrasse and Glockengießerstrasse in 1225 . Little is known of the church built at that time.

At the beginning of the 14th century, probably around 1303 ( dendrochronological dating of the roof structure), the eastern part with the choir and transept was first rebuilt in the brick Gothic style . Due to the disputes between the friars and the city with the militant Lübeck Bishop Burkhard von Serkem and the interdict imposed on the monastery, construction work came to a standstill around 1310 and was only resumed in 1319 after the reconciliation with his successor, Bishop Heinrich II. Bochholt . The mayor Segebodo Crispin , who also had the north choir aisle built as a family chapel, made a significant financial contribution . In 1329 the choir stalls were built in, then the nave was completed in 1335. In 1356, when a provincial chapter of the Franciscans took place in the monastery, the building will have been completed. Later chapel fixtures and extensions were added such as the richly furnished chapel of the circle society from 1458 in the western yoke of the north aisle; around 1510–1515 the choir stairs were rebuilt.

During the Reformation , the Katharinenkloster was converted into a Latin school, the Katharineum zu Lübeck , through the church ordinance of Johannes Bugenhagen in 1531 . The city ​​library received additional rooms at the beginning of the 17th century . The Katharinenkirche was used as a branch church of the Marienkirche and for school services as well as for burials until the 19th century. The former sacristy in the south side room of the high choir, which was only recently identified as such, was occupied by the consistory in 1760 , which met here three times a year as a church / city court for marriage and family matters until it was dissolved in 1814. In 1829 this room was also given to the city library.

During the French occupation of Lübeck (1806–1813), the church was profaned and used as a horse stable and hospital .

From 1841 the first collection of medieval sculptures was created in the high choir, primarily through the efforts of Carl Julius Milde , who was largely responsible for the salvage and securing of the art treasures of the castle monastery , and the Society for the Promotion of Charitable Activities . In 1846 the decorative floor of the upper choir and in 1847 the choir windows and their tracery were renewed. The “Collection of Lübeck Art Antiquities”, which was finally opened in 1848, formed the basis for the Sacred Art of the Middle Ages department in the St. Anne's Museum from 1915 onwards .

The rest of the church space was repeatedly used for trade fairs, exhibitions and concerts in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1899 Albert Kollmann exhibited his private collection here, mainly of works by Max Liebermann . In the week of Pentecost in 1911, as part of the VI. German Esperanto Congress of the German Esperanto Association the Esperanto exhibition took place. During the Nordic Week 1921 “ Emil Nolde's religious pictures” were shown, supplemented by religious sculptures in the nave of the church. An exhibition on German and Nordic architects was shown in the lower choir of the church and documents, seals and incunabula from Lübeck's holdings in the upper choir . From 1926 onwards, a collection of plaster casts of sculptures from Lübeck origin in the Baltic Sea region was created in the course of the exhibition of Lübeck art outside Lübeck, based on a plan by Carl Georg Heise . The monumental plaster cast of the St. Jürgen ( St. Georg ) group in the Nikolaikirche in Stockholm , made by Bernt Notke for the Swedish ruler Sten Sture to commemorate the Battle of Brunkeberg and some altars are still there.

After numerous other inner-city churches were burned out during the bombing of Lübeck on Palm Sunday 1942 , St. Katharinen was temporarily prepared for regular church services again. A stone altar pedestal was built in the crossing; for this, the St. Jürgen group, which had initially been set up here, was moved to the first western yoke of the central nave. The preserved barriers of the Circular Brothers Chapel from 1458, which were stored in the museum store, fell victim to the renovation. The Marien organist Walter Kraft took care of the installation of a Kemper organ as well as a gallery in the third western yoke of the southern central nave, replicating the music galleries of the Marienkirche, which were destroyed in 1942, and used the church and especially the high choir for church music performances until he could return to the Marienkirche. The Russian Orthodox community received a side chapel in the lower choir and continues to use it today as the Church of Blessed Procopius . The Greek Orthodox community also held its services here in the lower choir for many years. Since the early 1980s, the church has been available to supporters of the Society of St. Pius X , who celebrated masses in the Tridentine rite here . Use by the Pius Brotherhood was canceled by the City of Lübeck in May 2009.

At the beginning of the 1960s the connection between the church and the cloister of the monastery or school was restored. The church used the Katharineum for weekly morning devotions until the 1990s. Even today, the school's celebrations and concerts take place in the church.

Since around 1980, the Katharinenkirche has been administered as the St. Katharinen Museum Church by the Museum for Art and Cultural History of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck; on January 1, 2006, management responsibility was transferred to the Hanseatic City of Lübeck Cultural Foundation .

From autumn 2011 to spring 2015, the church was fundamentally renovated with funds from the Federal World Heritage Fund for around 3 million euros and was closed during this time. Since April 29, 2016, the church has been open to visitors again on Fridays and Saturdays. This was made possible by the construction of a ticket booth by volunteers from the Lübeck Youth Building and - for the first time in the history of the Lübeck museums - through the use of volunteer supervisors.

architecture

The church is a three-aisled, nine-bay basilica with side aisles that are asymmetrical because of the course of Glockengießerstraße , a polygonal choir closure and a two-aisled transept that does not extend beyond the side walls and is only visible in the roof area. As the monastery church of a mendicant order, the Katharinenkirche did not have a tower, but only a roof turret . This housed a bell from 1399, which was cast by master Johann Reborch and is now exhibited in the nave. It is rich in pilgrimage signs and images of saints (such as St. Catherine).

The architecture, which is unusually elaborate for a church of mendicants , is evident in the richly structured west facade in the special design of the choir as a high choir above a lower choir in the form of a hall, which extends into the crossing . The rich painting from the 14th century is only partially exposed again.

  • Ground plan of the church and monastery in 1832

  • North-facing plan of St. Catherine's Church in Lübeck by Paul Laspeyres before 1871

  • Sections of the transept and nave of Laspeyres before 1871

  • Interior to the east (2010)

  • View into the high choir (2007)

  • Longitudinal section of Laspeyres before 1871

  • North view of the choir and east view of Laspeyres before 1871

  • View of the choir , drawn by Carl Julius Milde around 1850

  • West view of Laspeyres before 1871

  • West facade of the Katharinenkirche (2006)

Furnishing

Naves

Fresco: Francis of Assisi

From the Gothic furnishings, in addition to the painting, the choir stalls in the upper choir from 1329, which were expanded in 1472/1473, with the rear wall being decorated with a depiction of Franciscan saints, and a different arrangement in 1829. The triumphal cross group at the interface between nave and choir is dated to around 1450. Fully sculpted towards the west, there is an inscription of the crucifixion dated 1489 on the back of the cross towards the choir, stylized as a tree of life . The erection of the triumphal cross is to be seen in the context of the reorientation of the convent in the middle of the 15th century, which also included the opening of the lower choir for private burials. The staircase in the choir is adorned as the latest painting from the monastery period with a fresco with four scenes from the life of St. Francis with his stigmatization in the center, around 1510/1515.

The rood screen parapet received a clock donated by the heads of the church Johann Spangenberg and Carsten Petersen in 1597 , which has been preserved to this day, and at the beginning of the 17th century was provided with six panels depicting scenes from the Passion story : Christ in Gethsemane , the kiss of Judas , Christ before the high priest , flagellation of Christ , Ecce Homo and carrying the cross .

The pulpit from 1699 from the old St. Lawrence Church, which was demolished in 1899, has been placed in the central nave . The actual Renaissance pulpit of the Katharinenkirche was moved to the Petrikirche at that time , where it burned in 1942.

Items of equipment in the St. Anne's Museum

Segebodo Crispin and wife

Several pieces of equipment from the church can be seen today in St. Anne's Monastery . These include the Lukas altar from the painter's office by Hermen Rode , the so-called Schlutup clan altar from the Henning von der Heyde area (around 1500), which came to the Schlutup St. Andreas Church and from there to the museum at an unknown time Grand piano retable with a depiction of the crucifixion (around 1515–1520), as well as the Passion Altar ( Schwartauer Altar ) from the chapel of the noble circle society . The grand piano retable of the circle society came to the Georgskapelle in Bad Schwartau at the beginning of the 17th century . The so-called Schwartau Altar has been in the St. Anne's Museum since 1926. Also the family pictures of the Crispin family originally hung in the family chapel in the north side choir , the doors of the healing cabinet in the upper choir (around 1480–1500) painted with Eucharistic motifs in a typological arrangement and the votive picture of Hinrich Gerdes by Hans Kemmer , which came into the museum in 1916, are exhibited there.

Gravestones and epitaphs

The Katharinenkirche has been one of the most popular burial places of Lübeck's citizens since it was founded. In 1277 the town had its first bitter dispute over the right to be buried in the church with Bishop Burkhard von Serkem , who obtained an interdict from the Pope and initiated a lawsuit before the Roman Curia. The trial ended in 1281 with a settlement that guaranteed the beggar monks their right to be buried.

In the 14th century, those buried in St. Katharinen also included three bishops: Johannes, elected bishop of Reval († 1320), Helenbert Visbeke, bishop of Schleswig († 1343) and Jakob, bishop of Ösel († 1337). Only the tombstone of the latter is still preserved in the floor of the upper choir.

Almost the entire floor of the rest of the church consists of tombstones from the Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century. The corpus of medieval grave monuments lists 114 tombstones up to 1600; there are also five more, which are now in the St. Annen Museum. The most precious grave slab in the church is the Flemish-influenced brass grave slab of Mayor Johann Lüneburg († 1461) in the lower choir. The mayor Hinrich Castorp was also buried here, as was the Danish court master Erich Krummediek in 1439 .

The most important epitaph hangs slightly to the side at the western end of the south aisle facing Königstrasse. In a lavish mannerist setting, it shows an Italian masterpiece, the Raising of Lazarus by Jacopo Tintoretto (1576). Also in the south aisle hang the epitaph of arithmetic master Arnold Möller († 1655), which he designed calligraphically and gives his life dates as magic squares , and the epitaph of the master craftsman Zacharias Kniller , designed by his sons Godfrey Kneller and Johann Zacharias Kneller . In the north aisle there is a gravestone and epitaph for the Hamburg organist and composer Johann Adam Reincken . Reincken's daughter had married another son of Kniller, the organist Andreas Kneller .

The early classical marble sarcophagus for Claus von Reventlow († 1758) by the Danish sculptor Simon Carl Stanley is rather unexpected in a Gothic context .

Niche figures community of the saints of Barlach and Marcks

Ernst Barlach: Woman in the Wind , Beggar , Singing Monastery Student (Photo 2003)

In 1929, at the suggestion of the Lübeck museum director Carl Georg Heise , Ernst Barlach began drafting a sculpture ensemble for the niches in the west facade under the title Community of Saints . Heise acted as the client and organized the financing, the city and its monument council only gave permission for the installation, albeit against strong criticism from the Association for Homeland Security , which wanted to leave the Gothic facade untouched. By 1933, Ilse Bergbau AG was only able to build three clinker brick statues from the project, which was originally designed for 16 statues : Woman in the Wind. Beggar and singing monastery student . All three were shown for the first time in October 1932 at the autumn exhibition of the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin . A duplicate of the beggar was bought by Edward MM Warburg, a son of Felix M. Warburg , for the Busch-Reisinger Museum , and the singing convent pupil was shown at the World Exhibition in Chicago in May 1933 . Then the group of three sculptures was first exhibited on the high choir of the Katharinenkirche, in Barlach's opinion “a nicer [place] than on the facade”. Heise, who was released in 1933, succeeded in February 1936 in hiding the figures as a private property from being delivered to Berlin as Degenerate Art and thus saving them. After the end of the National Socialist regime and the Second World War , they were installed in their intended niches in the facade in 1947 by the Lübeck museum director Hans Arnold Gräbke .

Gerhard Marcks: Man of Sorrows (in the middle between the high windows), arsonist , virgin , mother and child , Kassandra , prophet (photo 2009)

Gerhard Marcks , who had already made his first draft in 1932, completed the frieze in his own shapes with the figures: Christ as Man of Sorrows , arsonist , virgin , mother and child , Cassandra and prophet . These figures were placed in their niches on February 18, 1949, the 60th birthday of Marcks. Heise bought a second piece of the Man of Sorrows for the Hamburger Kunsthalle , a complete second cast set is now in the possession of the Gerhard Marcks Foundation in Bremen.

Barlach and Marcks deliberately designed the proportions of the figures from below, so that the upper half of the body is elongated and the heads are shown slightly enlarged, in other words, the leg length seems a bit too short. The reason for the perspective is that the sculptures are located high up in the facade: the viewer therefore never perceives the figures in their natural size at eye level in the relatively narrow street, but always looking up at an angle from below from the opposite side of the street . Figures with normal body proportions would appear shortened towards the top from such a perspective. Wire meshes are stretched in front of the sculptures to prevent pollution from pigeons.

Bell collection

  • A cathedral bell from 1315 was transferred to the Museum of Art and Cultural History in 1912 and is located in the north transept.
  • Bell from the time between 1330 and 40 from the demolished St. Clement's Church . It came into the collection of the Lübeck museums via St. Jakobi as the mother church of the Clement Church.
  • Bell of the Katharinenkirche from 1399 cast by Johannes Reborch . Together with the bell that was cast by Hinrich van Campen in 1510 when the Maria Magdalenen Church of the castle monastery was demolished in 1819 , it was given to the Luther congregation in the wooden bell tower that was inaugurated on October 14, 1923. However, it was not rung, only struck. With the completion of the Luther Church , the ringing was supplemented by several bells and transferred to the church. All except the 1510 bell were removed in 1941 to be melted down.
  • A bell cast by Lübeck's council caster Dietrich Strahlborn in 1745 from the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital with the names of the former heads of the foundation Heinrich Balemann , Heinrich Rust , Hermann Woldt, Matthaeus Rodde , Bernhard Bruns and Peter Heinrich Tesdorpf .
  • A bell cast by the council founder Albert Benningk in 1672 for the St. Menas (Mina) Church in Staraja Russa was also temporarily in the small collection in the 20th century. During the Second World War it was confiscated by soldiers of the 30th Infantry Division of the German Wehrmacht from Lübeck and sent to Lübeck during the Second World War because of the inscribed reference to Lübeck as the place of its origin . The Hanseatic city returned the looted art to Staraya Russa in 2001. During the war, the bell was placed in a corner of the Katharinenkirche and was then forgotten until the question about its whereabouts .

  • Bell from the cathedral

  • Bell of the Katharinenkirche

  • Bell of the Clement Church

  • Bell from the Holy Spirit Hospital

organ

Nothing has been preserved from the historic organs . In 1937 a positive organ from 1723, acquired from Karl Kemper in East Prussia, was placed on the high choir and is now in St. Mary's letter chapel .

When the Katharinenkirche was used more intensively for church services and church music events after the Second World War as a temporary replacement for St. Marien, it received an organ from Kemper & Sohn in the south-east corner of the transept, which was inaugurated on Palm Sunday 1948 and until today, albeit to this day in poor condition, has been preserved.

Main work
1. Principal 8th'
2. Chanter 8th'
3. octave 4 ′
4th octave 2 ′
5. Mixture VI
6th Trumpet 8th'
Upper work
7th Dumped 8th'
8th. Salizet 8th'
9. Reed flute 4 ′
10. Forest flute 2 ′
11. Fifth 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
12. Sesquialtera II
13. Scharff IV
14th Krummhorn 8th'
Tremulant
pedal
16. Sub bass 16 ′
17th Dacked bass 8th'
18th Choral bass 4 ′
19th Wide whistle 1'
20th Rauschpfeife III
21st Dulcian 16 ′

literature

Werkmeisterhaus of the church on the north side of the choir in Glockengießerstraße
  • Paul Laspeyres : The St. Catharinen Church in Lübeck. In: Journal for the construction industry. 21st year 1871, column 357-364. ( Digitized version of the booklet); the elevations in the atlas for the year 1871, pages 54–58 ( digitized version; PDF; 33.88 MB)
  • Friedrich Techen : The tombstones of the churches in Lübeck , Rahtgens, Lübeck, 1898, p. 123–140 ( digitized version )
  • Johannes Baltzer , Friedrich Bruns , Hugo Rahtgens: The architectural and art monuments of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. Volume IV: The Monasteries. The town's smaller churches. The churches and chapels in the outskirts. Thought and way crosses and the Passion of Christ. Nöhring, Lübeck 1928. (Facsimile reprint 2001, ISBN 3-89557-168-7 , pp. 35–155)
  • Hartwig Beseler (ed.): Art topography Schleswig-Holstein . Neumünster 1974.
  • Günther H. Jaacks: St. Katharinen zu Lübeck. Building history of a Franciscan church. (= Publications on the history of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. Volume 21). Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1968.
  • Lutz Wilde : The Katharinenkirche in Lübeck . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1996.
  • Klaus Krüger: Corpus of medieval grave monuments in Lübeck, Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg (1100–1600). (= Kiel historical studies. Vol. 40). Thorbecke, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-7995-5940-X . (see also: Univ., Diss., Kiel 1993)
  • Hildegard Vogeler : Scenes from the life of St. Francis from Assisi. A mural in St. Katharinen zu Lübeck. In: ZLGA. 70: 129-151 (1990).
  • Jürgen Fitschen, Volker Probst (ed.): The community of saints: the cycle of figures at the Katharinenkirche in Lübeck and the monumental work of Ernst Barlach. Gerhard Marcks Foundation / Ernst Barlach Foundation, Bremen / Güstrow 2001, ISBN 3-924412-40-5 .
  • Martina Brohmann: The sacristy of the former Franciscan monastery church of St. Katharinen zu Lübeck: building history and wall paintings in the upper southern side choir. In: Nordelbingen . 73 (2004), pp. 7-42.
  • Heike Trost: The Katharinenkirche in Lübeck: Franciscan architecture in the brick area. From the architecture of the mendicant order to the citizen church . (= Franciscan Researches. H. 47). Edition Coelde, Butzon and Bercker, Kevelaer 2006, ISBN 3-7666-2106-8 . (see: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 2004)
  • Uwe Albrecht (ed.): Corpus of medieval wood sculpture and panel painting in Schleswig-Holstein. Volume 2: Hanseatic City of Lübeck, The Works in the City Area. Ludwig, Kiel 2012, ISBN 978-3-933598-76-9 .

Web links

Commons : St. Katharinen, Lübeck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Consolation: Katharinenkirche (lit.), p. 190.
  2. ↑ Brohmann (lit.), Trost (lit.)
  3. ↑ Directory of Lübeck's antiquities of art, which are on the upper choir of St. Catherine's Church. Lübeck, 1855
  4. Jump up to the walls: Now the world heritage millions are being built. ( Memento from October 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) In: Lübecker Nachrichten . October 29, 2011, accessed October 29, 2011.
  5. ↑ Katharinenkirche in new splendor. , Lübecker Nachrichten of April 28, 2016, accessed on April 29, 2016
  6. ↑ Thanks to volunteers: St. Catherine's Church will be opened Lübecker Nachrichten of April 13, 2016, accessed on April 29, 2016
  7. ↑ St. Katharinen: Radiant light in the old walls , HL-live from April 28, 2016, accessed on April 29, 2016
  8. ↑ See Annett Alvers: The double-sided triumphal cross of the Lübeck Katharinenkirche. A contribution to the Franciscan reform in the 15th century. In: Tobias Kunz, Dirk Schumann (Hrsg.): Work and reception: Architecture and its equipment. Ernst Badstübner on his 80th birthday. (= Studies on brick architecture. 10). Lukas, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86732-114-3 , pp. 131-148. By Walter Paatz made reversed to the master of lübeckischen triumph crucifixes is no longer shared today.
  9. ↑ Dating from H. Vogeler (Lit.).
  10. ↑ BuK IV, p. 105.
  11. ↑ Uwe Albrecht, Jörg Rosenfeld, Christiane Saumweber: Corpus of medieval wood sculpture and panel painting in Schleswig-Holstein. Volume I: Hanseatic City of Lübeck, St. Annen Museum . Ludwig, Kiel 2005, ISBN 3-933598-75-3 .
  12. ↑ Abraham B. Enns: Art and the bourgeoisie: the controversial twenties in Lübeck . Weiland, Lübeck 1978, ISBN 3-7672-0571-8 , pp. 140 .
  13. ↑ Catalog entry
  14. ↑ Barlach to Artur Eloesser, November 26, 1933, quoted from: Martina Rudloff (arrangement): Ernst Barlach - Gerhard Marcks: the Lübeck figure cycle. A documentation. Gerhard Marcks Foundation, Bremen 1978, p. 11.
  15. ^ Inscription with translation by Adolf Clasen : Misunderstood treasures: Lübeck's Latin inscriptions in the original and in German. Lübeck 2003, ISBN 3-7950-0475-6 , p. 180.
  16. ↑ On dating: See Adolf Clasen: Misunderstood treasures: Lübeck's Latin inscriptions in the original and in German. Lübeck 2003, ISBN 3-7950-0475-6 , p. 181.
  17. ↑ Adolf Clasen: Misunderstood treasures: Lübeck's Latin inscriptions in the original and in German. Lübeck 2003, ISBN 3-7950-0475-6 , p. 182.
  18. ↑ Karen Meyer-Rebentisch: What is Luther doing in St. Lorenz? History and stories from the district and community. Parish Luther-Melanchthon, 2014, p. 41.
  19. ^ Inscription with translation by Adolf Clasen: Misunderstood treasures: Lübeck's Latin inscriptions in the original and in German. Lübeck 2003, ISBN 3-7950-0475-6 , p. 184 ff.
  20. ↑ See Holger Walter: The bell of Staraja Russa. In: Spoils of War. 8 (2003), pp. 105f. ( Digital copyhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.lostart.de%2FContent%2F07_Publikationen%2FDE%2FSpoilsOfWar%2FSpoils%2520of%2520War%25208.pdf%3F__blob%3DpublicationFile10%5~page%3DpublicationFile10~523 3D ~ IA% 3D ~ MDZ% 3D% 0A ~ SZ% 3D ~ double-sided% 3D ~ LT% 3D ~ PUR% 3D ; PDF; 2.2 MB)
  21. ↑ Lübeck returns Russian bell. In: The world. February 3, 2001.
  22. ↑ Photo from 2010

Coordinates: 53 ° 52 ′ 9 ″  N , 10 ° 41 ′ 21.9 ″  E