Weltenburg Abbey Church
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The St. George monastery church of the Weltenburg Benedictine abbey on the Danube breakthrough near Kelheim in Bavaria is one of the most important baroque sacred buildings in Europe. The monastery church was built between 1716 and 1718 and was subsequently furnished by the Asam brothers in the late Baroque style.
history
A first monastery church of St. Georg in Weltenburg is said to have been consecrated as early as 700 by St. Rupert , the "Apostle of Bavaria". A new church built under the Augustinian canons who lived in Weltenburg from 1123 to 1328 was consecrated in 1191. This was renovated under Abbot Conrad V, again a Benedictine , in the years 1447 to 1449 together with the other monastery buildings. This house of worship is said to have been a single-nave, long rectangular hall building with a flat ceiling and a not retracted, just closed choir . The tower is also said to have been separated from the monastery church at that time - integrated into the east wing of the convent building.
In the years 1606 to 1608 a tower was built, which was finished with a lantern with an onion dome. The basement of this tower is still preserved today, while the new structure dates from 1763. In the years 1633 and 1634, in the middle of the Thirty Years War, the monastery was looted. The church was robbed and the bells were lost. In 1642 Georg Schelchshorn cast a new, approximately five hundredweight bell for the monastery church, which is still preserved today and which strikes the quarter-hour. Another bell was made by Johann Schelchshorn, the son of Georg Schelchshorn, in 1657. However, this had to be delivered to Munich in 1804 in the course of secularization .
In the course of a complete rebuilding of the monastery complex from 1714, the monastery church was also rebuilt under Abbot Maurus Bächl . The shell of the convent building was completed in 1716 according to plans by the architect and Franciscan friar Philipp Plank (Blank) and under the actual construction management of Parliaments Michael Wolf, so that construction work on the church could begin. After the old church was demolished in the spring of 1716, the foundation stone for the new construction of the St. George monastery church was laid on June 29 of the same year. The foundation stone was laid by the Freising Prince-Bishop Johann Franz Eckher von Kapfing and Liechteneck , as he was on friendly terms with Abbot Maurus and the Regensburg bishop's seat was vacant at the time. The on-site builder was again Michael Wolf. On October 9, 1718, the Freising Prince-Bishop was able to consecrate the shell of the new monastery church. According to recent research, it is no longer as undisputed as before, who delivered the plans for the church building and whether the concept from 1716 already corresponded to the completed church. In addition to Cosmas Damian Asam , which is assumed in older literature, Philipp Plank and the collaboration of Abbot Maurus Bächl himself are also eligible for the design .
In the period from 1718 to 1722, the master stonemason Pietro Francesco Giorgioli carried out the marble work in the new church, for example the pillars and the parapet of the organ loft and the choir screen . In 1721 the large ceiling fresco in the church was painted and signed by Cosmas Damian Asam and the surfaces of the half-dome were stuccoed with figures and reliefs by his brother Egid Quirin Asam and the high altar with the equestrian statue of St. Georg set up in a first version. Two years later, this altar was supplemented by additional figures, and the church now received the apse in the east as an extension behind the high altar instead of a straight wall end. In the years 1723 and 1724 Maria Salome Bornschlögl, b. Asam, last barrel painting work carried out on the high altar.
In 1732 the stonemason Johann Jakob Kürschner made the pulpit out of Weltenburg marble . Between 1734 and 1736 Egid Quirin Asam completed the elaborate stucco inside the church and made a total of four side altars. His older brother Cosmas Damian created the altar leaves for three of these altars and the Landshut painter Matthias Daburger for the fourth. During this time Cosmas Damian Asam also painted several wall frescoes, especially the pictures in the two transverse arms. In 1735 and 1736 the stalls were also made by the sculptor Franz Anton Neu fromprüfunging , and in 1736 four marble confessionals were again made by Johann Jakob Kürschner. Cosmas Damian Asam died on May 10, 1739 while working on the ceiling fresco in the high altar room, so that his son Franz Erasmus Asam had to complete the painting. He also painted a ceiling fresco in the anteroom of the church in 1745. With the construction of a new upper floor and a new spire in 1763 by master bricklayer Christoph Wolf from Regensburg, the monastery church has largely received its present appearance.
Major renovations to the church building were carried out in 1874, 1887 to 1890, 1928 to 1931, 1960 to 1962 and around 2000.
description
architecture
Due to its location between the convent buildings of the Weltenburg monastery and the Frauenberg, the church is rather inconspicuous from the outside compared to the riches inside. From the outside of the monastery courtyard, only the tower and the oval dome of the central building stand out. The former is not connected to the church building itself, rather it is attached to the east wing of the convent building as a roof turret. The dome is smoothly plastered and has twelve windows evenly distributed around the circumference in its upper attachment, which are framed alternately oval and curved. The main facade is on the west side of the church towards the cloister courtyard, where the famous beer garden is also located. It is a house facade with a triangular gable, on the top of which a figure of St. Benedict is enthroned. The structure is made up of two cranked pilasters on each side, each bearing a stepped cornice . The wooden church portal is flanked by two pairs of columns, and above it a log-like round arched window .
inner space
The interior of the monastery church is divided into three parts: the western vestibule, the main room in the middle and the presbytery , which traditionally faces east.
lobby
The vestibule has an oval floor plan and a comparatively low flat ceiling . It is divided by two three Ionic pilasters on the walls. Above is the organ loft with the psallier choir, which is reserved for monks. This room is equipped with a barrel vault and is separated from the main room of the church by the high balustrade and the organ front. The vestibule and choir are illuminated through windows in the west facade. The design of the vestibule was made in 1751 by the sculptor Franz Anton Neu fromprüfunging according to the plans of the Asam brothers. Since this part of the church was the last to be completed, the stylistic features of the vestibule are much more Rococo than in the rest of the church. On the left and right there is a wooden confessional, above it elaborately stuccoed busts of the two penitential saints Peter (left) and Magdalena (right). The ceiling design is also remarkable. The central ceiling fresco by Franz Asam, the son of Cosmas Damian Asam, from 1745 shows the Last Judgment . At the edges there are cartouches with stucco formations of the Four Last Things : on the left, death with the insignia of worldly and spiritual power; above the portal the judgment with scales, sword and book with judgment as a sign of God's righteousness; on the right, hell with an ouroboros , a snake forming a circle, flames, a torch and an empty vessel as symbols; above the passage to the main room the heavens with an equilateral triangle with the eye of omniscience as a sign of the Trinity of God.
Main room
The main room also has an oval floor plan and is 19.5 meters long and 14.5 meters wide, very small for an abbey church. Due to the open dome construction, which is flat covered at a height of 20 meters, the church interior looks impressive. The elaborate artistic design with shiny gold stucco and colorful ceiling and wall frescoes is extraordinary. The main room is divided by eight columns made of Weltenburg marble, which on the one hand seem to support the dome and on the other hand separate eight wall niches . The church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale in Rome could have been a model for the interior design . The niches are divided into four large and just as many small niches, which are arranged alternately and all end with a rounded arch at the top . The large niches break through the cornice at the foot of the dome, while the small niches with a height of around 11 meters end below this paragraph.
The large niches include the passage to the anteroom on the short rear side of the oval, above the organ loft with the psalli choir, and the niche opposite, through which the main room opens to the presbytery. The niche on the south side contains a monumental gold-framed fresco depicting the arrival of Benedictine monks with Christopher Columbus in America, including a wooden confessional . The niche opposite contains the Weltenburg marble pulpit , including a confessional of the same design. A gold-framed painting is arranged around the pulpit, which refers to the figure of St. Benedict as a preacher on the sound cover: on the left of the pulpit, the approval of his sermons is shown based on personalities from history, on the right, the rejection in the form of an allegorical representation of pride and idolatry of earthly values.
The small niches each contain a side altar designed by Egid Quirin Asam. These four altars are identical in structure. You have an altar table that is richly decorated with gilded ornaments. On top of it build two winding marble columns that enclose an oval relief and a rectangular framed painting and form a canopy made of the finest stucco above. The front altar on the south side shows Saint Joseph in relief and the Most Holy Trinity and the Coronation of Mary in the picture ; the rear altar on this side contains a relief of St. John Nepomuk and a painting of St. Benedictine monk Maurus who saves his brother Placidus . The front altar on the north side shows a relief guardian angel, in the picture a representation of the crucifixion of Christ; the rear altar on the same side contains a relief of St. Scholastica and a painting depicting a vision of St. Benedict .
On the round arches of the four large niches there are figures of the four evangelists with their respective attributes. The large hollow of the dome is divided into four wide and four narrow fields according to the large and small niches by eight golden straps. The four narrow fields above the niches of the side altars show reliefs of the Archangels Michael , Gabriel , Raphael and Uriel in front of a noble brocade background . The four broad fields, on the other hand, show elaborately framed, gilded reliefs with scenes: the death of St. Benedict, the encounter of the Gothic prince Totila with St. Benedict, the death of his sister Scholastika and the construction of the Montecassino abbey . The frame of the dome cutout is adorned with ornaments, cloud formations and groups of angels wearing a star hoop. Between this and the dome parapet, a figure by the architect and artist Cosmas Damian Asam looks down on the church, diagonally opposite in the ceiling fresco is his brother Egid Quirin.
The ceiling fresco on the flat ceiling above the dome section depicts the transfigured church in allegorical form. The central design element is the Holy Spirit, who stands for the heart of the church. In the front area you can see the coronation of Mary by God the Father and God the Son, including the acceptance of the church patron St. George into heaven. From here the following motifs can be found in a clockwise direction: an allegory of the triumphant church; Saints Benedict and Scholastica; the convent of Weltenburg headed by Abbot Maurus Bächl, under whom the monastery church was built; the church's plasterer, Egid Quirin Asam, as genius; St. Martin and the also canonized Regensburg bishops Wolfgang and Emmeram ; the holy women and virgins Helena, Ursula, Barbara and Katharina; above the organ St. Cecilia , the patroness of church music; next to King David and other representatives of the Old Covenant ; Above the pulpit, finally, the twelve apostles and the "Bavarian apostle" Rupert , who supposedly had the first monastery church built in Weltenburg.
presbytery
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The center of the choir is clearly the splendid high altar in the late Baroque style. The structure consists of two winding columns on each side, between these columns there are figures of St. Martin (left) and St. Maurus (right), the latter bearing the features of the builder Maurus Bächl. The altar opens to the rear through a round arch , above it a cartridge with the Bavarian coat of arms . The four columns carry a blown gable , between the halves of which there is a three- dimensional representation of the Assumption of Mary into heaven . The rotating tabernacle attachment on the altar table has three niches, is made of wood and is gilded. The main picture in the middle shows St. George on horseback, how he kills the dragon and thereby saves the king's daughter freed by him. This three-dimensional representation is considered to be a masterpiece by Egid Quirin Asam. Behind it, a representation of Maria Immaculate is executed as a fresco on the apse rear wall of the presbytery . Especially in the early morning hours, three rear windows, which are positioned behind the scenes of the high altar or behind its gable, provide atmospheric lighting in the chancel. On both side walls of the presbytery there are richly decorated wooden doors to the sacristy , above each oratorio , which are apparently released by silver-plated angels with red stucco draperies . The ceiling fresco in the barrel vault of the choir shows the foundation of the monastery by the Bavarian Duke Tassilo III. and the takeover of the abbey by St. Benedict.
Organs
Weltenburg has a very long organ tradition. An organ can be found as early as 1077 . This instrument is one of the first sacral organs ever. In 1595 a new instrument was commissioned from the famous organ builder Kaspar Sturm from Regensburg , which was later destroyed when the old monastery church was demolished.
Gallery organ
The Weltenburg abbot Maurus I. Bächel commissioned the organ builder Johann Konrad Brandenstein (1695–1757) from Stadtamhof near Regensburg to build the organ for the then new monastery church, which has been preserved to this day . The one-manual organ with pedal should originally have the following disposition ; with pipes made of pewter (Z) and wood (H), some as dacked (G).
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Brandenstein built the organ with two further registers (Gembshorn, Superoctav), the gamba with division into bass and treble. The disposition is:
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Changes followed in 1792 by Ludwig Ehrlich, several repairs in the 19th century, more in 1931 by Michael Weise and after 1950 by Eduard Hirnschrodt . 1992–1994 Georg Jann restored the instrument; he reconstructed the forest lulls from ten remaining pipes and replaced four registers.
Former choir organ
In 1908 Willibald Siemann built Opus 222, a pneumatic organ with 19 stops on two manuals and a pedal in the gap between the high altar and the rear wall of the apse, invisible from the church interior. The sound outlet to the church interior was in the recess of the high altar. The plastic representation of St. To see Georg. Eduard Hirnschrodt converted this organ in 1964 to an electro-pneumatic action and brightened the sound by adding small-footed voices. After this renovation, the console was on the right gallery in the choir area. This made it possible for the organist to better follow the liturgical events. The organ is no longer there, a new building is planned.
Organ positive
In the church there is a historical organ positive with four registers , which was originally located in the nearby Frauenberg chapel. According to the inscription, the instrument was built in 1790 by the instrument and organ maker Andreas Fux from "Grossbryfling" Großprüfening . It was restored in 1968 by Hermann Kloss and rebuilt. Today's disposition is:
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Peal
The bells 1 to 3 derived from the Glockengießerei Otto from Hemelingen in Bremen and were cast in 1948th Their patrons are Saint Benedict , Saint Georgius and St. Guardian Angel. Bell 4 is a bit smaller than the other bells, but much older. It was cast by Georg Schelchshorn in 1642 and still strikes the quarter-hour clock today. The bells in detail:
- g '+ 2. “The typical deviations from the tones of the tempered tuning for bells are given in sixteenths of a semitone. The reference tone is a '= 435 Hz. ”( Kurt Kramer in“ The bell and its peal ”), Ø 102 cm, approx. 650 kg, wooden yoke, hour strike of the clock.
Inscription: 547 PAX 1947 JUBILATE DEO, portrait: “St. Benedictus ”. - a '+ 4, Ø 90.5 cm, approx. 500 kg
Inscription: ESTOTE FORTES IN BELLO - Be steadfast in battle, portrait: St. Georg. - h '+ 4, Ø 80 cm, approx. 320 kg.
Inscription: ANGELUS DEI VOBISCUM EST - The angel of God is with you. Portrait: A Guardian Angel. - d "- 3, Ø 71.5 cm, approx. 250 kg.
Inscriptions: Two lines on the shoulder: CAMPANAM ISTAM FIERI CVRAVIT MATTHIAS ABBAS IN WELTENBVRG ANNO MDCXLII (Abbot Matthias in Weltenburg arranged for this bell to be cast in 1642). GEORG SCHELCHSHORN VON REGENSBVRG GOS MICH - AVS DEM FEVER FLOS ICH
(In an art guide 1986 this bell is erroneously listed under the names of artists and craftsmen - Schelchshorn - as "no longer available".)
literature
- Lothar Altmann: Benedictine Abbey Weltenburg ad Donau. History and art . (= Great Art Guide 86). Regensburg 1997, ISBN 3-7954-1117-3 .
- Hans Christian Egger: The Weltenburg Abbey and the Asam brothers - a correction. The new building history of a baroque jewel . Dissertation. disserta Verlag, Hamburg 2014. ISBN 978-3-95425-526-9 . (there is an overview of the older literature)
- Georg Schwaiger (ed.): Weltenburg Abbey . Anton H. Konrad Verlag, Weißenhorn 2014. ISBN 978-3-87437-472-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Timeline of the building history of the monastery . Online at kloster-weltenburg.de. Retrieved March 15, 2016.
- ↑ Egger 2014, p. 63.
- ↑ Egger 2014, p. 90.
- ↑ Egger 2014, 79 - 90. The new attribution of the shell of the church to Plank is not undisputed. Under no circumstances can one continue to assume that Cosmas Damian Asam's authorship for the architecture of church buildings is guaranteed.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i The monastery church . Online at kloster-weltenburg.de. Retrieved March 15, 2016.
- ↑ Martina Topp: The organ in the Dreieinigkeitskirche in Regensburg. In: Roma Quanta fuit. Wißner, Augsburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-89639-799-7 , p. 655.
- ↑ https://rzblx10.uni-regensburg.de/dbinfo/detail.php?bib_id=bsb&colors=&ocolors=&lett=f&titel_id=5070 | Organ database Bavaria, accessed on July 30, 2020
- ^ Christian Vorbeck: The organ builders Martin Binder and Willibald Siemann . Siebenquart Verlag Dr. Roland Eberlein, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-941224-02-5 .
- ^ Works archive with correspondence from the Hirnschrodt company
- ^ Hermann Fischer : Historical positives in Bavaria. Acta Organologica, Vol. 35, Merseburger, Kassel 2017, ISBN 978-3-87537-343-1 , p. 140.
- ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto bells. Family and company history of the Otto bell foundry dynasty . Self-published, Essen 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063109-2 , p. 588, especially page 545 .
- ↑ Gerhard Reinhold: Church bells - Christian world cultural heritage, illustrated using the example of the bell founder Otto, Hemelingen / Bremen . Nijmegen / NL 2019, p. 556, especially p. 503 , urn : nbn: nl: ui: 22-2066 / 204770 (dissertation at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen).
Coordinates: 48 ° 53 ′ 56.1 ″ N , 11 ° 49 ′ 12.9 ″ E