Krieler Dömchen

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Coordinates: 50 ° 55 ′ 10 ″  N , 6 ° 54 ′ 22 ″  E

"Krieler Dömchen" Alt St. Stephan in Cologne-Lindenthal
Side view of the "Krieler Dömchen"

The church Alt St. Stephan, called Krieler Dömchen , is the oldest ecclesiastical building in Cologne-Lindenthal and after St. Gereon the second oldest in Cologne . The year the Christian church was founded is unknown. The church is one of the 13 small Romanesque former village churches in front of Cologne's medieval city ​​wall that are now part of Cologne. It is looked after by the Friends of Roman Churches in Cologne . Alt St. Stephan served the Krielers and the rest of the Catholic population of Lindenthal as a parish church until the inauguration of the new St. Stephan parish church in Bachemer Strasse in 1887 .

The small church from the 10th to 11th century in the southwest of the city of Cologne, consecrated to the arch martyr Stephanus , is located next to St. Albertus Magnus in the Lindenthal district on Suitbert-Heimbach-Platz between Zülpicher and Gleueler Straße not far from the outer Cologne green belt . The cemetery that surrounds the church on the south side in a semicircle is Lindenthal's oldest burial place . Funerals were held here until 1869.

prehistory

Krieler Dömchen churchyard, gravestones from the 17th century

Even in the time of the Romans there were brickworks in the southwestern area of ​​today's Lindenthal , but they were abandoned in the early Middle Ages . This explains why the early Romanesque church building stands on the foundation of an even older building, for which Roman bricks were apparently used.

Legends

According to a legend, the later Archbishop of Cologne Hildebold is said to have worked as a pastor at this hall church at that time, where Charlemagne discovered him.

The "stories" that appear in publications in connection with Bishop Hildebold and his patron Charlemagne, that the emperor was interested in marble from a quarry in the Krieler area, probably refer to Eifel marble, partly because of the geological conditions of the Cologne Bay 1000 m thick sediment deposits. The thesis of the Cologne historiographer Aegidius Gelenius (1595–1656) is based on this. He speaks of marble quarries in connection with the trough stones covered with sintered lime of the ancient Roman Eifel aqueduct passing Kriel . The building, also known as the “Roman Canal”, was already in demand and valued as a source of building material at the time of the Staufer family because of the marble-like structure of the lime sinter.

The at a Bodenschürfung before the Second World War by Cologne archaeologists of the Germanic Holy Roman Museum of Cologne found artifacts , led to new insights. The basement foundations running north of the church were cut and the previous assumptions about the age of the church building were confirmed based on the findings of the wall as well as the fragments found and the fragment of a relief band amphora from the Carolingian period dating around the year 900.

Building

Miniature tower and south side
From the southeast

The church is a two-aisled asymmetrical basilica with a recessed, almost square choir bay and a semicircular apse . There were changes around 900, 1100, 1250, 1775 and in the 20th century. The current length of the building, including the tower and apse, is 18.95 m, the greatest width 6.50 m.

Hall church

The current state of knowledge assumes that in the history of church construction there were three construction phases with far-reaching changes. Around the year 900 the change from a wooden hall church to a solid structure probably took place . The original stone building was a flat-ceiling hall with a slightly lower chancel. The two-room building type, a hall with a retracted rectangular choir, is often found in early medieval church buildings in the Rhineland .

The naming can be seen as a further indication. In the Carolingian period, St. Stephen's patronage was widespread on the left bank of the Rhine . Gregory of Tours named the saint as the patron saint of Franconian churches as early as the 6th century. The date on which the history of the origins of the Kriel Church was established is confirmed primarily by the remains of the old Kriel estate and three early Christian memorial stones. These stones were memorial plaques for the deceased, which assumed a church. From this, a trapezoidal stone with a resurrection cross was inserted as a crown stone above the west portal. The two rectangular stones with their carved volute crosses were later built into the south side wall of the nave. Parallels to these cross stones can be found almost exclusively in the closer Cologne area, for example in St. Gereon, Groß St. Martin , Alt St. Maternus , Rodenkirchen and in Refrath.

Tower and entrance

The next change is the expansion of the eastern, not indented apse and the construction of the church tower. Building materials, wall technology and the sparse style elements allow experts to date these changes to the period around 1100. The tower on the west side of the building with a pyramid helmet with a west arched portal and an outside staircase to the north to the tower gallery looks squat. The tower ground floor has a cross vault with ridges . Today's tower with the ground floor, gallery and the bell room above probably had four floors. The west and south walls are each loosened up by two arched panels. The slender arches on the western front have the entrance portal in their center.

Through this one enters a groin-vaulted small hall, in which a baptismal font is set up, which was acquired in 1615 by the St. Gereon monastery from the former parish church of St. Maria Ablass for Kriel. The font is a type of crucible made from Rhenish basalt lava . It is assigned to the late 12th century. Its conical baptismal font lies on a column drum and is decorated with circular medallions on the front, like an arched frieze. However, the figurative representations in the medallions can no longer be clearly recognized. The tower is made of tuff stone with a few Roman bricks. The strikingly long tuff stones can also be found in the masonry of the apse. Red sandstone and trachyte blocks strengthen the corners. After the tower was integrated, demolition material from parts of the west wall was used in the north wall of the nave.

Bells

Two bells were cast for the tower . Their inscriptions bear the numerous names of the founders. The five-part ringing (d 1 –f 1 –g 1 –a 1 –b 1 ) of the neighboring church of St. Albertus Magnus was coordinated with these bells .

No.
 		 Percussive
( HT - 1 / 16 )		 Casting year
 		 Foundry, casting location
 		 Diameter
(mm)		 Mass
(kg, approx.)
1 c 2 +8 1772 Martin Legros , Cologne 720 210
2 f 2 +4 1762 Bartholomäus Gunder, Cologne 595 150

The main ship

Main nave

The main nave consists of a seven-meter-long and four-meter-wide nave with a flat ceiling, on which a low slope joins the aisle to the north, which is separated from the nave by two pillars connected with round arches . To the east, separated by an arcade , is the three meter long square choir (architecture) with a cross vault . This closes off with a semicircular apse . There are small windows over the dividing arches of the northern slope.

Long sides and choir

apse

After the Stephanuskirche was elevated to a parish church, it apparently became too narrow for the growing number of believers. So it was expanded again by adding a north aisle. At the same time, by changing the choir gable and increasing the apse, the choir vault was hung. As an equivalent to the north aisle, a wooden vestibule was added to the south side of the main nave and connected to the nave through a round arched door. The building material for the aisle was mainly the demolition material from the north wall of the main nave. The redesign also affected the choir, initially its long walls. Here the upper wall was pushed forward to the east on the north and south sides. As a result, the choir square had to be stretched inside, and the beginning of the apse was moved back further.

These changes probably took place in the middle to the end of the 13th century. During the transition from the High Middle Ages to the Late Middle Ages , there was also an unexplained damage, possibly a fire, for the repair of which the Weiherkloster on Cologne's city wall donated an amount of 110 marks to the church in 1380 . The main nave, side aisle and upper tower storey have wooden beams and plank ceilings. The cross vault of the choir bay has bulging ribs , the apse arches in half a dome .

South vestibule / court arbor

On the outside of the long south side of the ship, four corbels protruding from the wall in the shape of hooks are attached under the high windows . They suggest an adjoining hall at the time, a so-called court arbor, which served as a court court . Possibly it was only covered and only partially closed. Such side halls are known from Cologne-Niehl , Vollberg and Kofferen .

Establishing courtrooms protected against the effects of the weather goes back to an order from Ludwig the Pious . A former arched door connecting the nave and the hall was walled up with a tombstone from 1658 and two Romanesque cross stones , so-called memorial stones. The Kriel court was moved to St. Gereon in Cologne in the 15th century. However, the southern side hall was only demolished much later. It is dated to the end of the 17th century, analogous to the year of the walled up tombstone in the former southern entrance door. In the archives of the churches one can still read numerous rulings on disputes that have been negotiated; they are preserved in so-called “wisdoms” .

Earlier interior

The church used to have three altars, the high altar and two side altars. Around 1887 Rosellen reports: "The high altar was consecrated to St. Stephen, one side altar to St. Catherine and the other under the title of the Holy Cross" . “Of the baroque altars made in plait style , only the first two are left”. It is also reported from that time: "The sacred vessels are all of more recent date, since the church was visited many times by robbery" .

present

Former dwarf school at the church

At the beginning of the 20th century the sacristy was expanded and the main nave was provided with a flat wooden beam ceiling. The appearance of Alt St. Stephan changed not only externally over the centuries, but later interventions in the existing interior were also serious. The interior of the church has changed significantly with the removal of the baroque altars. The cafeteria of the high altar was renewed, its reredos (around 1770) received the Albertus Church. A valuable piece of equipment was found in the granary of the church, a bronze Madonna (24.5 cm high) from the middle of the 14th century, but she too, like a peasant Pietà from the 15th century, is now in St. Albertus Church. A small carved Anna herself (end of the 15th century) found its place on the side aisle altar. A figure of Catherine and a standing Madonna stand on consoles in the nave. A statue of Stephen, a work from the 18th century, moved to Neu St. Stephan, today's parish church.

In 1926 the historic Kriel estate in the immediate vicinity of the church was torn down. With its church and jurisdiction, it was the core of the old Kriel for many centuries. The Gleueler Bach, which passes it to the south, was also piped up. Despite severe damage in the war year 1944, the structure of the Krieler Dömchen was preserved. The remaining pastorate was resigned around 1970.

literature

  • Irmgard Schnellbächer: Cologne's small churches from the Romanesque period I ; Book (Bernadus Verlag), 2003
  • Konrad Adenauer and Volker Gröbe: Lindenthal, the development of a Cologne suburb . ISBN 3-7616-1603-1 .
  • L. Arntz et al. a .: The art monuments of the city of Cologne . VII / 3, Cologne 1934.
  • Robert Wilhelm Rosellen: History of the parishes of the deanery Brühl , JP Bachem Verlag, Cologne 1887.
  • R. Schwarz: Early types of the small Rhenish church . Bonn Yearbooks 132, 1927.
  • Parish council of St. Albertus Magnus (Ed.): From Crele to Kriel, 50 years of St. Albertus Magnus - 1000 years of pastoral care at Krieler Dom , Cologne 1988. 151 pages.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Roman-Germanic departments of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum
  2. ↑ Zehnphennig: Annales Berchem.

Web links

Commons : Krieler Dömchen  - album with pictures, videos and audio files