Munchenbuchsee Church

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The church of Münchenbuchsee from the southeast

The church Münchenbuchsee was in the 12th century private church of the Lords of Buchsee and served three hundred years as Johanniterkirche the Coming Münchenbuchsee . Today it is the village church of the Evangelical Reformed parish Münchenbuchsee-Moosseedorf with the political communities Münchenbuchsee , Diemerswil , Deisswil , Wiggiswil and Moosseedorf with their own church .

history

Having returned from the Holy Land after three pilgrimages, the childless knight Cuno von Buchsee bequeathed his property with the church, castle and village of Buchsee, with other goods in Wankdorf and Worblaufen, and vineyards on Lake Biel to the Order of St. John. The order was to establish a hospital on site and fill a convent with friars. The founder himself was a brother in the Johanniterkommende Hohenrain (LU) in 1185 .

He donated the church to the patron saint John the Baptist . The patronage has changed over the centuries, as it was consecrated to the Holy Trinity in 1495. Until the Reformation, the choir was reserved for the friars and the priesthood, the common people attended the mass in the more modestly furnished ship. With the secularization of the monastery, the choir also became the property of the state. From then on there were the preachers, the governors and selected personalities in the choir, the people were encouraged to attend regular sermons and to behave morally. The authorities watched over this and a secret person brought the wrongdoers to the choir court, which meets every two weeks, for judgment. On crime public law was the 1887 felled Gerichtslinde judged at the church by the district court Zollikofen.

The Roman Catholic community has also been celebrating its services in the church since 1966.

Building history

The checkered architectural history of the church is already clearly visible from the outside, such as the late Gothic choir, which is elevated towards the nave, and the tower built to the west in the historicizing style. With a Romanesque round choir extension to the still existing nave and the tower on the north side, which is presumably covered with a cheese bite roof, the church should have looked similar to the church in Einigen or Bremgarten BE . The architect SIA, Paul Riesen (1882–1958), created an approximate picture of the buildings based on records in old documents and on the basis of invoices and receipts and created watercolors of the building based on his plans. In the 13th century, the long and high choir was rebuilt as the Order of St. John. Presumably it was planned to continue building the nave to the same extent to the west later, but this probably exceeded the financial possibilities of the future. They had to support their mother house on Rhodes financially and personally in the fight against the Turks.

Münchenbuchsee, rectory and church, Jakob Samuel Weibel, around 1825

The Johanniterkonvent became impoverished and the church kept its existing form. The tower was probably given the helmet typical of Bernese country churches in 1460 to 1480 to accommodate the new bells, as can still be seen in the picture by Samuel Weibel. After the Reformation, the church was transformed into a sermon hall. In 1630 bailiff Hans Dick arranged for the church to be renovated.

With the demolition of the Gothic tower on the north side and the construction of the bell tower on the west facade in 1891, the church received its present form. The tower was designed by the cantonal master builder Stempowski, and the master builder was carried out by the local Johann Kästli and the carpenter Jakob Kästli.

Furnishing

Landvogt Dick had the sandstone communion table set up in 1630. The ornate base of unknown origin consists of four consoles, presumably intended for a different purpose. The table top bears a biblical saying and the coat of arms of the bailiff and the family coat of arms of the bailiff couple Hans Dick and Ester, née Thierstein .

The simple Gothic choir stalls were already in use by the Johanniter and could have been built around 1300. The four richly carved seats on the north side were created in 1630 for the governor's family. The Bernese architect Henry Berchtold von Fischer-Reichenbach , honorary Bailli of the Sovereign Order of Malta in Switzerland, had a church place sign attached to one of the choir stalls in 1929 , which he dedicated to one of his ancestors, the "Commenthur Henrico Piscatori Johanniterhaus Buchsee".

The Renaissance pulpit - also erected in 1630 by Bailiff Dick, comes from another church and is much older than the year and the coat of arms on the parapet indicate.

Five grave slabs, four of which are placed on the choir walls, were found in 1908 under the wooden floor in the choir. They commemorate the governors and their relatives: Johann Holzer (1627–1678), Margaretha Tscharner - von Werdt , mother of Johann Georg von Werdt (1648–1693), Susanna Dorothea von Erlach, wife of Johann Rudolf von Erlach (1633–1711 ), Barbara Wyttenbach, wife of Jakob von Wyttenbach (1697–1752) and Johann Rudolf von Sinner (1699–1747).

On the north wall there is a memorial plaque for Commander Johannes von Ow , who died in Buchsee in 1481 after being Grand Master in Rhodes from 1454 to 1464.

The stained glass

In all of the originally eleven choir windows there were valuable medieval painted panes, some of which were lost over the centuries. In 1901 the remaining glass windows were renovated and rearranged by Emil Gerster from Lyss under the direction of Lucerne art historian Joseph Zemp (1869–1942). The two-part high Gothic windows are in the end of the choir. Modern windows are built into the south wall.

The left apse window contains vine tendrils that grow up from the mouths of dragon-like animals. On a red and blue background, covered with leaves, grapes and birds, the tendrils extend over the entire height of the windows.

In the middle window from the beginning of the 14th century, the Passion of Christ is shown. According to Ellen Beer , the sequence of images originally consisted of twelve scenes. The following are preserved: Flagellation, crowning of thorns, carrying the cross, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. At the bottom the sequence begins ornamentally with sun, star and foliage in two fields, above the Passion paintings, at the top closed by the enthroned Madonna and Child and next to St. Catherine with the wheel, sword and palm frond. Both are crowned with tabernacle discs.

The paintings on the southern window date from the late 13th century. The lower fields are copies of the original discs above, with the sun and star on a red or blue background. In the fields of the third row, a Johanniterbruder is depicted on the left, referred to as Kuno von Buchsee, and on the right, Peter , the protector of Rhodes, with the key.

John the Baptist is depicted in the niches above. The fifth row shows Mary Magdalene with the ointment box and Saint Agnes as queen with a scepter and a modern lamb. At the top, the sequence of images is completed by two pinnacles with finial.

There is another picture of St. John on the narrow south windows. Larger than in the other depictions, John the Baptist is shown in beautiful robes with a halo, plus a small, unknown donor figure in the right corner. In the further window, in a round medallion, are the newly assembled Bern coats of arms with the imperial eagle from a former Bern-Rych disc and a coats -of-arms disc donated by the Seckel master Daniel Lerber with the allegory of justice.

  • Johanniterbruder also known as the founder Kuno von Buchsee as well as Apostle Peter

  • Maria Magdalena with an ointment box and Saint Agnes

  • John the Baptist with lamb in festive robe

  • Passion of Christ, window below

  • Passion, window above. Resurrection, Ascension, Mary with Child and Catherine

The bells

The three old bells from before 1480 bore inscriptions in Gothic minuscule . The bigger one: “MEMENTEM SANCTAM SPONTANEAM, HONOREM DEO ET PATRIE LIBERTATIONEM” (Sing the holy and willing mind, proclaim honor to God and liberation to the fatherland). A saying that can also be found on bells in other places. The second: “O REX GLORIE KRISTE VENI MICHI CUM PACE” (O King of Glory, Christ, come to me with peace). The smallest and probably oldest bell had no inscription. These bells weighing 729 kg were melted down after the old tower in Aarau was demolished. For the new bell tower, the H. Rüetschi bell foundry in Aarau cast five bells donated by local residents. On November 15, 1891, the old and new bells rang together for the inauguration, because the old tower was only demolished afterwards.

The organs

The organ of the Münchenbuchsee church

The oldest mention of an organ was in 1529/30 on a statement from the first bailiff, Andreas Zeender, for the demolition of the organ and a dwelling for the preacher. So a first measure of the Reformation.

In 1837 Mathias Schneider von Trubschachen (1775–1838) built a late baroque organ with three towers on the gallery built in 1616. The gilded decorations for the organ case were made by the sculptor Joseph Amberger from Lucerne and the turned urns were made by Jakob Häberli. The instrument was used by the seminarians from Hofwil to study and had to be repaired in 1877 by the organ builder Weber from Bern. The organ builder J. Zimmermann from Basel converted the organ from a mechanical to a pneumatic one in 1908.

In 1968 a new organ was installed by Orgelbau Geneva and supplemented with a back positive in the same baroque style on the extended gallery parapet. With three manuals and a pedal with 35 registers, the prospectus represents “one of the most delightful organ solutions in the canton”.

Web links

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

literature

  • Roland Petitmermet: Contributions to the history of Münchenbuchsee , community of Munchenbuchsee, 20 issues up to June 1979
  • Marco Zimmermann: Church and former Johanniterkommende Münchenbuchsee . (Swiss Art Guide, No. 782/783, Series 79). Ed. Society for Swiss Art History GSK. Bern 2005, ISBN 978-3-85782-782-2 .
  • Klaus Pressmann: The choir windows of the Johanniterkirche in Münchenbuchsee , residents and parish Münchenbuchsee, 1980.
  • Ellen Judith Beer, Hans Robert Hahnloser : The glass paintings of Switzerland from the 12th to the beginning of the 14th century , series Corpus Vitrearum medii aevi Switzerland; Volume 1, Verlag Birkhäuser Basel, 1956
  • Ellen Judith Beer, Hans Robert Hahnloser : The glass paintings of Switzerland from the 14th and 15th centuries , Corpus Vitrearum medii aevi Switzerland series; Volume 3, Verlag Birkhäuser Basel, 1965

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marco Zimmermann: Church and Johanniterkommende Münchenbuchsee , Swiss Art Guide, page 5
  2. ↑ An official entrusted with the management of measures to be kept secret (secret council)
  3. ↑ Roland Petitmermet: contributions to the history of Münchenbuchsee, Issue 10. "Paul Riesen: From the architectural history of the Hospitaller house Münchenbuchsee"
  4. ^ Hans Gugger : Die nachreformatorischen Orgeln, 1978, pp. 390–397
  5. ↑ Organ directory Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Ref. Church Münchenbuchsee BE

Coordinates: 47 ° 1 '18.4 "  N , 7 ° 26' 56.8"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred thousand seven hundred ninety-seven  /  207858