Kreuzkirche (Breslau)
The Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross and St. Bartholomew ( Polish : Kolegiata św. Krzyża i św. Bartłomieja ) at plac Kościelny 1 in Wroclaw , or Kreuzkirche for short , is a high - Gothic two-storey double church . It is the second largest church on the Wroclaw Cathedral Island .
history
The collegiate church was donated by the Silesian Duke Heinrich the Just on January 11, 1288 and was a vote after the reconciliation with Bishop Thomas II , who in turn donated the Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury in Ratibor . The Kreuzkirche in Breslau was to become the temporary burial place of the duke, who had previously donated the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary as his mausoleum , but which, due to the parallel construction project, had no prospect of completion in time. The ducal court architect Wiland is believed to be the builder of the Kreuzkirche .
The foundation walls and the choir were built by 1295 . The church was probably planned as a basilica with a transept and a crypt under the lofty choir. Duke Heinrich was buried there as early as 1290, but not only temporarily. His Tumba was created in the years 1300 (top plate) to 1320 (side walls) .
In the years 1320-1350 the continued construction of the church, the crypt was extended to the entire floor plan to a complete lower church, Apostle Bartholomew ordained . Instead of the basilica, a hall church was built . Finally, the towers were raised, whereby only the south tower could finally be completed in 1484 with the attachment of the helmet .
In the years 1503–1538 Nicolaus Copernicus was a canon of the Kreuzstift. During the Reformation in Wroclaw, the church, which was on the episcopal land, remained Catholic .
In 1672 and 1723 the two church rooms were given a Baroque style and an organ gallery was built into the upper church .
The cross pin was secularized in 1810 and the lower church was temporarily divested. The Heilig Kreuz parish was founded in 1925. During the Battle of Breslau in 1945, the Kreuzkirche was much less damaged than the neighboring large churches, St. John's Cathedral and the Sand Church . The roof and vaults of the upper church were partially damaged, but the roof structure was retained, while in the lower church only one vaulted area collapsed.
After the war , the Polish administration had the church building completely rebuilt, and the interior was largely restored to its original state. The founder's tumba, which was dismantled during the war, has been in the Wroclaw National Museum since the 1990s . The lower church served the German Catholics remaining in Breslau until 1956 and then the Greek Catholic parish until 1997 . In 1999 the collegiate foundation was restored.
architecture
The architecture of the church is exceptional in some ways. Above all, the two-storey building, which is almost unique in Silesia, and the height of the brick church are remarkable.
The two church rooms are characterized by an almost identical floor plan in the form of a 66 m long and 44 m wide Latin cross . These are three-aisled , five-bay halls with a four-bay choir with a five-eighth end as well as five-eighth closed transept arms. The transept appears among the Gothic churches in Wroclaw only in the Adalbertkirche and Matthias Church . The upper cruciform church is approx. 19 m high in the interior and appears to be flooded with light despite the shape of the hall, while the lower Bartholomäuskirche is almost three times lower at 7 m and gives a squat impression. In addition to the different room heights, the fact that every second pillar was left out in the upper church and the yokes there are combined in pairs (2nd – 3rd and 4th – 5th) with spring vaults in side aisles and star vaults in the central nave contributes to this contrast were. The lower church is vaulted with cross rib vaults .
The location of the two towers is rather untypical. These are placed in the inner corners between the side aisles and the transept and thus each take up a yoke width. The north tower was never completed and is finished with a copper-covered hip roof. The 69 m high south tower bears the original, late medieval wooden spire from 1484, which was built by master Stephan von Meißen and re-covered with copper in 1672. This is the only original structure of this type in Wroclaw.
The central nave, the choir and the transept have steep, monk-nun-covered gable roofs. The side aisles are covered in each yoke with their own transverse gable roofs, each of which ends with a triangular gable.
The choir of the east-facing church is adjoined from the north by a multi-storey sacristy , which, in addition to the uneven towers, deviates from the symmetry of the building, but is already in the first phase of construction.
In the interior there is a tympanum depicting the adoration of the mercy seat by Duke Heinrich the Righteous and his wife Mathilda of Brandenburg, around 1350. The church has two organs .
literature
- Adam Żurek: Dawny kościół kolegiacki Św. Krzyża, obecnie parafialny… , in: Jan Harasimowicz (ed.): Atlas Architektury Wrocławia, Tom 1 , pages 10–11, Wroclaw, 1997, ISBN 83-7023-592-1
- Edmund Małachowicz: Wrocławski zamek książęcy i kolegiata św. Krzyża na Ostrowie , Wroclaw, 1994, ISBN 83-7085-012-X
Web links
- History of the Kreuzkirche from the book by Kurt Engelbert and Josef Engelbert: The Catholic Churches in Breslaus, 1961, 2nd edition
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Kreuzkirche on www.breslauerleben.de; Retrieved July 7, 2015.
- ^ History of the Kreuzkirche ( memento from June 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on July 7, 2015.
Coordinates: 51 ° 6 ′ 54 ″ N , 17 ° 2 ′ 38 ″ E