St. Pauli Monastery (Brandenburg an der Havel)

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The St. Pauli monastery from the southeast

The St. Pauli Monastery is a former Dominican monastery in Brandenburg an der Havel in the area of ​​the Neustadt . Today the Brandenburg State Archaeological Museum is located in its interior .

history

Emergence

After the Brandenburg margraves had left the old castle on the cathedral island of Brandenburg , the Ascanians chose an area on the southwestern edge of the new town of Brandenburg as the seat of their residence . The new town was planned and laid out by the Brandenburg margraves before 1196.

Margrave Otto III died in 1267 . on the margravial court, surrounded by Dominican monks. His son Otto V (the Tall One) donated the margravial residence to the Dominican order in 1286 . The construction of the monastery complex began in the same year . The choir is the oldest part of the building. The hall church, reserved for laypeople, and the adjoining cloister building were not completed until about 100 years later .

In 1286, Bishop Gebhard von Brandenburg consecrated the church to St. Andrew and St. Maria Magdalena . Almost a hundred years later, after the completion of the monastery-church complex, Bishop Dietrich III consecrated it . in 1384 the church and dedicated it to the three kings and to St. Paul .

Dissolution of the monastery and decay

With the arrival of the Reformation in the Mark Brandenburg, the Catholic era of the monastery ended. The monks were allowed to remain in the monastery for life, but replacement was prohibited. In 1560, Elector Joachim II donated the monastery to the new town of Brandenburg. The church was rededicated as a Protestant , and the monastery buildings were used for charitable purposes as a hospital in the new city and as an institution for care for the elderly.

In the last days of the Second World War , during the conquest of Brandenburg by the Red Army on April 26 and 27, 1945, fire from the neighborhood spread to the monastery complex. You, the church and the tower burned out by April 29th. Only the walls and the vaults of the naves and some epitaphs have been preserved. Because nothing was done to secure the ruins, the southern row of pillars collapsed in 1958. The remaining vaults were then removed and the tower and the surrounding walls secured.

The reconstruction for museum purposes , which had been planned since the sixties of the twentieth century, did not come about until the end of the GDR .

reconstruction

In 2002 the decision was made to completely reconstruct the monastery. Without massively interfering with the structure, modern technical requirements were brought into line with the original monastery concept. Bricks made in the region in the so-called monastery format were used to repair the damaged building sections . The vaults in the monastery church were not restored. After the restoration work was completed, the State Archaeological Museum was opened on September 24, 2008. In addition, the nave is often used for other cultural events, such as concerts or the Brandenburg monastery summer.

location

Following a tradition that was widespread in the Middle Ages, this monastery of a mendicant order is located in the medieval suburbs. In the south, the largely intact city ​​wall delimits the monastery area. This results in a commonality with the former Franciscan monastery St. Johannis in the old town of Brandenburg on the opposite bank of the Havel .

A marginal location, isolated from the urban hustle and bustle, favored the monks in their contemplative endeavors, without, however, hindering them too much in their spiritual obligations towards the city population.

Construction and style

The church is a simple three-aisled Gothic hall structure without a choir ambulatory. The entire system was built using Brandenburg brick technology . At its southeast corner, in front of the transition to the east wing of the monastery complex, the nave is accompanied by a fragile, narrow tower.

To the south of the nave is the monastery complex surrounding a cemetery .

Choir apex window

Choir window

The choir apex window of the Läutkirche in St. Pauli was returned to the monastery complex after sixty-five years of outsourcing and should be restored and hung in its original place by Easter 2008 with funds from the State of Brandenburg, the Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung and donations from the population.

Due to the war, it was relocated before the destruction of the Paulikloster during the fighting around Brandenburg an der Havel in April 1945 and initially taken into custody by the parish of St. Gotthardt and about 30 years later by the parish of St. Katharinen . In 1975 the congregation hung the window in the apex window of St. Katharinen, where it was hardly visible because of its smaller size and the altar in front of it . After the restoration of the monastery was completed, the decision was made to return the window to its original location.

The choir apex window is in parts around 30 years older than the windows of St. Marienkirche in Frankfurt (Oder) . It is one of the oldest and most beautiful medieval church windows in Brandenburg and is the tenth oldest stained glass window in Germany. In the Margraviate of Brandenburg, only a single stained glass window compartment in the Lindena village church (mid-13th century) is dated older.

The choir apex window to St. Pauli consists of 12 rows and 3 columns, a total of 36 subjects, accompanied by tracery , of which 22 subjects show motifs of the Christian typology of the Middle Ages according to traditional instrumentation. The meaning and purpose of the typological representation of Old and New Testament scenes was to prove that Old Testament quotations refer to events in the New Testament and thus underpin a legitimate succession of Christianity in the covenant God made with the Jews .

The rest of the fields, with the exception of the tracery fields connected above, are covered with ornamental representations.

Typological windows, which usually took the place of the most exposed, i.e. the apex window, were usually designed according to fixed rules. In the case of three-column windows, the sequence of scenes from the birth of Christ to the Ascension of Christ was shown from bottom to top in the middle column . These New Testament images were then flanked on the left and right by quotations from the Old Testament, which could be interpreted as a reference to the Son of God and his work.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the apex window underwent a thorough restoration by a previously unknown workshop. From an art-historical perspective, lost fields were supplemented, among other things, by using typological templates from the medieval Biblia pauperum (Bible for the poor). However, the harder, more angular and expressive style of representation of the Gothic was changed in favor of the contemporary taste of the 19th century. The figures got more pleasing, softer, "sweeter" contours and features.

In the apex window of St. Pauli, the original and restored or supplemented glass fields can be distinguished very well by looking at the back, as the old window surfaces show a much higher level of corrosion .

Also noteworthy is the fact that the medieval glass painter only used the color black for direct painting. This color was applied to differently colored glass surfaces, which were then connected to one another like a mosaic by strands of lead .

particularities

  • In a corner between the church and the monastery, a Romanesque window was discovered that had been built over for centuries and is now considered to be one of the oldest window openings in the Mark Brandenburg.

Cemetery on the former monastery vineyard

During excavations in the Neustädtische Heidestrasse in preparation for a building project, around 500 graves were found in the spring of 1995, some of which were, however, severely disturbed or poorly preserved. These burials came from the early modern Pauli cemetery, which was laid out in 1583 on the former vineyard of the medieval monastery and used until 1795. The burial area was closed due to overcrowding after a dysentery epidemic in the garrison. Further interventions on the former cemetery grounds in 2007 and 2010 increased the number of skeletons recovered, so that 218 burials could be examined. The skeletons were examined by the anthropologist Bettina Jungklaus . Most of the deceased were of advanced age or adults. There were twice as many women as men among the elderly. The proportion of children was rather low at just under 20%; but it may be that the child's skeletons had already decayed because of the poor location. The mean height was average for the time, which suggests a poor supply of animal protein . Many degenerative diseases and severe dental caries were found.

gallery

  • View from the northeast of the choir and nave

  • View from the east

  • The monastery complex from the west

  • Church from the monastery courtyard

  • Probably the oldest window in the Mark Brandenburg ; around 1286

  • Provincial Archaeological Museum

  • St. Pauli monastery with tower from Friedgarten from a south-westerly direction, December 2006

literature

  • Matthias Barth: Romanesque and Gothic in Brandenburg and Berlin. Architecture and building decor of the Middle Ages. Bergstadtverlag, Würzburg 2009.
  • Friedrich Grasow (arr.): Brandenburg, the millennial city. A walk through the culture and architecture of past centuries 928–1928. Self-published by the city of Brandenburg, Brandenburg 1928.
  • Otto Tschirch : History of the Chur and capital Brandenburg on the Havel. Festschrift for the city's millennium in 1928/29 . J. Wiesike, Brandenburg 1928.
    Reprint of the 3rd edition (Wiesike, Brandenburg [Havel] 1941), ed. by Uwe Czubatynski, Becker, Potsdam 2012, ISBN 978-3-88372-044-9 .
  • Lecture by private lecturer Dr. Frank Martin (TU Berlin) ( Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Potsdam), Mara Bittner, Zitha Pöthe and Maraike Winkler on October 18, 2007 in St. Pauli / Brandenburg an der Havel regarding the current state of research on medieval glass painting using the example of the choir apex window St. Pauli (Brandenburg an der Havel).

Web links

Commons : St. Pauli Monastery (Brandenburg an der Havel)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Götz Eckardt (ed.): Fates of German architectural monuments in the Second World War. A documentation of the damage and total losses in the area of ​​the German Democratic Republic. Volume 1, Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1980, p. 138f.
  2. ↑ Christmas concert 2017 in the Paulikloster
  3. ^ Project Brandenburg / Havel, Pauli-Friedhof. In: anthropologie-jungklaus.de. Retrieved June 4, 2017 .
  4. ^ Bettina Jungklaus: The early modern cemetery in the Brandenburger Neustadt . In: Archaeological Society in Berlin and Brandenburg eV in cooperation with the Brandenburg State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and the State Archaeological Museum and the State Monuments Office Berlin (ed.): Archeology in Berlin and Brandenburg 1995 - 1996 . Konrad Theiss Verlag , Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 978-3-8062-1331-7 , p. 131-132 .
  5. ↑ Bettina Jungklaus: The anthropological processing of the skeletons from the early modern Pauli cemetery in Brandenburg Neustadt . In: Publications of the Brandenburg State Museum for Prehistory and Early History . tape 31 . Brandenburg State Museum for Prehistory and Early History, 1997, ISSN  0946-7734 , p. 85-94 .
  6. ↑ Bettina Jungklaus: Human skeletons from the Pauli monastery - results of the anthropological investigation . In: 16th Annual Report 2006 - 2007 . Historischer Verein Brandenburg (Havel), Brandenburg an der Havel 2007, p. 141-145 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 24 ′ 22.5 ″  N , 12 ° 33 ′ 46.9 ″  E