Little St. Martin

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Tower of Klein St. Martin, south side

Klein St. Martin was a parish church in Cologne which, together with the collegiate church Groß St. Martin and many other churches and buildings, determined the Cologne panorama of the Rhine. The church tower was preserved and was rebuilt after it was destroyed in the war.

location

At the lower section of the east-west breakthrough road from the Rhine (Heumarkt) over the Neumarkt to the rings between Pipinstrasse and Augustinerstrasse is the tower of Klein St. Martin. The west side of the former nave was built on the old Roman city wall , parallel to the former “Obermauren” street. The former parish comprised the southeast corner of the Roman city up to Marsplatz and from the medieval Cologne suburb of the Rhine the parts from Heumarkt (except the north side) to Rheingasse.

history

The time of the first construction of the Martinskirche is not recorded. It can be assumed that with the inclusion of the Rheinvorstadt in the wall ring of Cologne in the 2nd half of the 10th century a church was built here as well. It becomes tangible for the first time through entries in the shrine files from the years 1130–40. The first documents with her name date from 1172 to 1176 in connection with the consecration of the crypt . Very soon after the introduction of the shrine cards, the church was named Klein St. Martin to distinguish it from the collegiate church . The church was probably completely rebuilt around 1460–1486 with a new west tower as a five-aisled hall church and arched in 1489 by the master builder Johann von Langenberg. They appear high Gothic kink helmet as one of the few parish churches on the Cologne Cityscape of 1531 of Anton Woensam . Like many other parish churches, the Martinskirche also showed the strengthening of the parishes in Cologne through valuable furnishings and its external appearance. She even had the right to help appoint her pastor. In 1317 the electoral college consisted of thirteen parishioners, including four members of the Overstolzen family . The proposal then went to the abbess of the St. Maria monastery in the Capitol , who then presented it to the cathedral provost. In 1554 the interior of the parish church was upgraded with an organ by master Vitus ten Bendt. The organ remained in the church until 1804 (abolished in 1802) and then moved to the Catholic parish church of St. Bartholomew in Porz-Urbach , where it was partially renovated in 1912 and 1962.

Klein St. Martin lasted until the secularization under Napoleon in 1802. With the abolition of the monasteries and monasteries , the parish was assigned the neighboring church of St. Maria im Kapitol in 1803. The church was then closed, the nave was auctioned and served secular purposes. Around 1824 it was demolished due to its disrepair. The four-storey tower was left standing in isolation, as St. Maria had not had a group of west towers since the 17th and at the latest since the 18th century and the bells of St. Maria had therefore been hung in St. Martin since 1637.

The tower burned down in World War II . Since the tower was part of the cultural heritage of the Cologne Rhine panorama, it was rebuilt, but with a blunt Romanesque spire in the form of a low pyramid that barely protrudes from the Rhine front. A weather vane made by Elmar Hillebrand with the figure of Saint Martin of Tours blows at the top . In the basement a devotional chapel was set up in 1954, the bronze portal (1963) and tabernacle of which was designed by Heribert Calleen .

Bells

The bells at Klein St. Martin have an eventful history, which is related to the former double use of the bell tower for both the parish and the neighboring collegiate church of St. Marien in the Capitol. The ringing of the parish at Klein St. Martin consisted of four bells. The two big bells formed the main ringing for Sundays and holidays. The larger of them, last cast by Edmund Pippin in Cologne in 1721 and consecrated to the church patron Martin, weighed around 1,100 kilograms. Their predecessors came from the years 1455 and 1570. The second bell, consecrated to Saints Martin and Sergius, was cast by Derich and Heinrich von Coellen in 1571 with a weight of around 900 kilograms. For the daily mass celebration, the small measuring bell was hung in the roof turret. The small clock cymbal, cast by Johann Schursgyn in Cologne in 1500 and weighing 120 kilograms with a diameter of 56 centimeters, was sold to St. Antonius zu Seligenthal in 1836 and has been preserved there.

After the collapse of the westwork at St. Marien in 1637, the five bells there from 1338, 1447, 1508, including the municipal storm or fire bell, called Bram-Klock, and the clock cymbal, were placed in the spacious tower of Klein St. Martin transferred. Even after the parish church was demolished, it continued to serve as a bell tower for St. Mary's. After the abolition of the local monastery, the two large bells were sold to Boslar , where the larger of the two has been preserved to this day.

In 1836 Georg Claren and Stephan Hilgers from Sieglar bought a new bell to replace the still existing parish and monastery bells. The three bells consecrated to Saints Martin, Maria and Barbara weighed around 6,000 kilograms together and rang out in the notes a, cis ′ and e ′. Spared in the First World War, they melted in a firestorm in 1942. The bell chamber has been empty since then.

  • Anton Woensam, excerpt from “Large View of Cologne”: St. Maria in the Capitol (still with west tower) and Little St. Martin

  • Detail of the bronze portal by Heribert Calleen

  • Bronze portal in the devotional chapel

and display information about the image
Panorama old town bank, left tower of Klein St. Martin and St. Maria in the Capitol

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cologne's Romanesque Churches , special supplement to the Kölner Stadtanzeiger on 30 years of the Friends of Roman Churches Cologne , May 2012 (with reference to the future 2013 yearbook)
  2. ^ Hans Hulverscheidt: Die Rheinische Orgellandschaft , In: Yearbook of the Rheinische Denkmalpflege , Volume XXVI. Treatises from the field of monument preservation and inventory 1959 - 1964 . Verlag Butzon & Bercker, Kevelaer 1966, pp. 349-359.
  3. ^ Adam Wrede : New Cologne vocabulary . 3 volumes A - Z, Greven Verlag, Cologne, 9th edition 1984, ISBN 3-7743-0155-7 , Vol. II p. 184; Little St. Martin.
  4. ↑ Hiltrud Kier : Kleine Kunstgeschichte Kölns , München, Beck 2001, pp. 116, 123-124.
  5. ↑ a b Konrad Bund: West building and chimes of St. Mary's in the Capitol 1637 to 1803 . In: Förderverein Romanische Kirchen Köln eV (Ed.): Colonia Romanica . tape XXIV , 2009, p. 265-268 .
  6. ↑ a b Martin Seidler: Cologne churches and bells . In: Förderverein Romanische Kirchen Köln eV (Ed.): Colonia Romanica . tape IV . Greven-Verlag, Cologne 1989, p. 22nd f .

Web links

Commons : Klein Sankt Martin (Cologne)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 8 ″  N , 6 ° 57 ′ 33 ″  E