Behrenhoff Church

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Behrenhoff Church from the southwest (2016)

The Behrenhoff Church is a 13th century church building in the municipality of Behrenhoff in Western Pomerania . The evangelical parish of Behrenhoff belongs to the Gützkower parish. Both have belonged to the Demmin provost in the Pomeranian Evangelical Church District of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany since 2012 . Before that she belonged to the Greifswald parish of the Pomeranian Evangelical Church .

location

Coming from the northwest, Dorfstrasse leads through Behrenhoff to the historic town center. There it branches further to the northeast as a village road and to the southwest as a ring road . The church stands on a piece of land north of this intersection, which is fenced in with unlayered and uncut field stones .

history

The construction of the choir made of granite ashlar masonry began around 1280. The brick nave , originally built in the form of an originally three-bay and three-aisled basilica, dates from 1415 according to dendrochronological studies of the roof structure. In the middle of the 17th century, the north aisle and probably The sacristy that was built with the choir was also removed. The foundations remained in the ground and acted like water catchment basins, which until the restoration in 2014 caused the interior walls to become damp. At the same time, craftsmen changed the south aisle, the vestibule and the portals. In 1816 the wooden west tower was demolished. During a restoration in 1857/1858, the west gable was renewed and provided with a panel structure and a pinnacle crown . The ogival windows received cast iron tracery .

In February 2013, the German Foundation for Monument Protection issued a call for donations to restore the church and preserve the wall paintings due to mold and algae infestation. The sale of the listed former Behrenhöffer rectory contributed to the restoration's own contribution. The renovation of the roofing, the roof structure and the outer walls were important. But a wing formerly added to the north is also to be rebuilt on the old foundation walls as a winter church. In 2014, the first phase of the renovation, the listed repair of the outer shell, especially the west gable, was largely completed. A dendro examination of the roof structure of the church showed that the woodwork dates back to the construction time of the building (13th to 14th centuries). In the second reconstruction phase, which began in September 2014, the vault was renovated and stabilized. There are tie rods installed, removes mold and algae. The south aisle was provided with a copper roof. In mid-2016, the restoration of the large-scale wall paintings from the second half of the 13th century began. The renovated church was consecrated again on December 10, 2017.

Building description

The strikingly high choir is straight, closed and not moved in. It was built from carefully hewn and layered granite blocks. In the center is a large, ogival window that extends over a large part of the facade. The glass painting was made by Gottfried Heinersdorff from Berlin from 1907 to 1909 . It shows the coat of arms of the von Behr family as well as Jesus Christ rising from the grave with the victory flag and the birth of Jesus. Above it is a frieze of stairs that was not completely restored during the restoration. The gable , decorated with pinnacles, is decorated with six ascending panels and was made from bricks. Traces can still be seen on the east wall, suggesting that the ship was originally intended to be wider.

The central nave has an eight-part rib vault with paintings from the beginning of the 14th century. The southern nave with the side aisle is still preserved in its original masonry form. In the western area there is a pointed arch-shaped, renewed step portal with a round bar and a panel above. This is followed to the east by two pointed arched, profiled windows with tracery; in between are buttresses. In the upper storey there are three windows and a small wooden door between the western and the middle window.

On the western side of the building, the viewer can see the original width of the sacred building. In the center there is a large, pressed, ogival, five-fold stepped portal, albeit a clogged one. The wall above is closed. The gable is decorated with ascending panels and pinnacles.

Furnishing

Altar, pulpit and stalls

The neo-Gothic furnishings come from Theodor Prüfer from Berlin from 1857 and 1858. It includes an altarpiece , the pulpit , the stalls and the west gallery. The altar enclosure is decorated with openwork two-bolt . The pulpit stands on a pointed arcade and is decorated with clover leaves; above it is an octagonal sound cover . The parapets of the chairs date from the 18th century. The font was made from Gotland limestone in the second half of the 13th century ; the cup wrongly added around 1900.

Murals

Wall painting (2014)
Detail from the painting - the oldest (?) Griffin coat of arms

The painting of the north and south walls of the choir is unique in Pomerania. The paintings have not survived in full. They were exposed in fragments in 1897 and restored by the Berlin painter Hans Karl Seliger by 1899, who was largely based on the medieval contours. The torments of hell are shown on the north wall: near the choir, a demon is dragging a crowd of damned people through a crenellated gate. Among them a king, a bishop and two monks. To the left of it torture scenes: a kneeling begging for mercy is being beaten by a devil with a stringed instrument. Next to it, a man has to sit on a glowing anvil with a hot horseshoe on his shoulder. A woman who draws water from a barrel is prevented from drinking by a hanging device while a devil simmering liquid pours over her head. On the far left, the huge jaws of hell in the shape of a mouth with fangs, into which several sinners fall, is staged in an expansive way. In front of it the crowned prince of hell is enthroned with a scepter and lightning bolts in his hands. The fall of man and eight medallions of saints are shown on the south wall, more modest in size and effect . The representations of the wall drawings are structured strictly horizontally. In the upper zone of the three walls, the apostles are shown in pairs on the cloud band. Unusually for paintings from the 13th century, family coats of arms of von Behr , the dukes of Pomerania and the Gützkow counts (their liege lords) line up between tendrils and consecration crosses in the narrow frieze in the lower zone . The picture program shows the high demands of the influential knight family Behr for the design of their house church, which followed the call for the settlement of the sparsely populated area by the Pomeranian dukes from around 1230. The dating of wall paintings is somewhat controversial in literature. While Christiane Schilling places them in the second half of the 13th century, the Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler Mecklenburg-Vorpommern assumes that wall painting was created at the beginning of the 14th century. The website of the churches in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania also follows the latter date. In comparison with the wall paintings of the Bishop's residence Ziesar, Tobias Kunz comes to the somewhat Solomonic conclusion that the wall paintings were created around 1300.

Further equipment and interior

There are still several carved figures and reliefs in the building, as well as parts of a baroque altarpiece from around 1700. Further fittings include a limestone epitaph from 1617 with the coats of arms of those of Behr and those of Lepel. At the transition to the side aisles there are profiled arcades , which merge into octagonal pillars and end in profiled dividing arches . In the central nave, the craftsmen built a ribbed vault , which was decorated with drolleries and painted with vegetal decor.

Organ and bells

The organ on the west gallery with profiled parapet areas was built in 1858 by A. Fischer from Demmin and later expanded by F. Beyer from Stralsund . The prospectus is three-part and neo-Gothic.

The bell of the church consists of two bells , the older one from the 15th century and the younger one by Joachim Metzker from 1724. This was re-cast in 1989, including the inscriptions and ornaments. They hang in a compact belfry southwest of the church.

Environment of the church

The church is surrounded by the associated churchyard / cemetery of the community. The churchyard is separated from the street by a brick wall. Next to the church on the southwest side is the belfry with the two bells. To the northeast of the church is a small morgue. Apart from a few cast-iron grave crosses, there are no more old grave monuments. On the east side of the church is the family grave of the CFW von Behr family in neo-classical forms.

literature

  • State Office for Monument Preservation Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Hrsg.): The architectural and art monuments in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Western Pomerania coastal region. Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-89487-222-5 , pp. 276-277.
  • Georg Dehio (edited by Hans-Christian Feldmann et al.): Handbook of German Art Monuments - Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich, 2016, ISBN 978-3-422-03128-9 .
  • Landurlaub Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Ed.): Open Churches II - From Greifswalder Bodden to Peene , Thomas Helms Verlag, Schwerin 2005, ISBN 3-935749-50-3 , p. 60

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christiane Schillig: Heaven & Hell. The painting in the church of Behrenhoff threatens to go under. In: Monuments . 23 February 2013, pp. 46–50 ( online ).
  2. ^ Behrenhoff Church on the Churches in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania website
  3. ↑ Tobias Kunz: The choir furnishings of the patronage church Behrenhoff near Greifswald. An example of early wall painting and political image content in Pomerania. In: Bishop's residence Burg Ziesar and its chapel. Documentation of the wall paintings in the context of the late medieval art and cultural history of the Mark Brandenburg and neighboring regions. Berlin, be.bra Wissenschaft Verlag 2009, pp. 274–287 ISBN 978-3-937233-54-3 (Series: Publications of the Museum for Brandenburg Church and Cultural History of the Middle Ages; Volume 4)

Web links

Commons : Behrenhoff Church  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 54 ° 0 ′ 18 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 21.5 ″  E