Lazariterkirche Gfenn
The Lazariterkirche is a 13th century sacred building in Gfenn on the eastern edge of the municipality of Dübendorf in the Swiss canton of Zurich .
history
The church was originally part of a 300 years existing monastery of the Lazarus order , an order of knights whose lay brothers a leprosarium ( Aussätzigenspital for lepers led). The convent once belonged to a commander of the Alemannic order province located in the rule of Greifensee , together with the Lazarite monasteries of Schlatt (Breisgau) and Seedorf. The settlement of Lazarites in the Gfenn is dated to the first quarter of the 13th century, but so far there is no documentary evidence of this. The first mention by name of "pious brothers of the St. Lazarus Hospital in dem Gvenne" comes from a document from the year 1250. The bailiff Rudolf III is the founder. accepted by Rapperswil , who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1217 .
The men's convent is mentioned for the last time in 1326. However, it is apparently later continued by nuns, since the master of the order Bertha von Hünenberg took the lead in 1368 . After 1400 a decline in religious culture is recorded in the sources. In 1414, the General Commander of the Order put the priest Johannes Schwarber from Eglisau through as a good Commander in the Lazariter houses Gfenn and Seedorf , who spiritually renewed both convents until his death in 1443. In his surviving household and notebook, fourteen nuns and seven assistants are mentioned for the year 1420. In 1444 the convent was ravaged by the Schwyzers during the Old Zurich War, from which it never fully recovered. The nuns slowly turned from the purely nursing to the contemplative-monastic lifestyle. As a result of the Reformation of the Zurich estate in 1523, the reformers intensified the anti-monastery polemics, especially against female monastery inmates, whose lifestyle as praying nuns was resented and told to leave the monastery, to take a husband and to live as a wife and mother .
After the abbess Katharina von Zimmer had already handed over the Fraumünster monastery to the reformed city of Zurich in autumn 1524 and resigned, the Gfenn monastery was finally abolished in 1525, like all other religious institutions, by the city of Zurich. In the process, the city nationalized and took over the monastery property, equipped the former women of the monastery with personal belongings and paid them an annuity from the monastery pledges until they died. The former inmates of the convent married and had many children, as the prior and theologian Johannes Stumpf , who lives not far from Gfenn in the Johanniter Coming Bubikon , reports in his Reformation chronicle. In 1531, a former nun was still living in Gfenn, who finally had to be compensated with funds from the former Töss monastery because there was nothing left to get in Gfenn. With the expropriation and the abolition of the monastery, the city of Zurich intervened in the authority of the Grand Master of the Order of Lazarus, who resided in Boigny , France, and in that of the Bishop of Constance, who was responsible for Zurich .
In 1527 the city of Zurich sold the buildings to bailiff Heinrich Escher zu Greifensee . The monastery building then served as an inn until 1783 and was later converted into a farmhouse, and the church itself was converted into a barn. When the monastery building burned down in 1828, today's house was built on its foundation walls.
The political community of Dübendorf acquired the Lazariterkirche in 1956, but only two months later the building was almost completely destroyed by arson. However, the community quickly decided to have the church restored under the direction of the professor of art history Linus Birchler , the cantonal master builder Heinrich Peter , the cantonal monument conservator Walter Drack and the Zumiker architect Rolf Keller as site manager, which took place in the years 1961 to 1963. Because of its importance throughout Switzerland, it has been under federal monument protection since 1961 . The inauguration took place on April 30, 1967 ecumenically ; since then it has been used equally by several Christian denominations ( Simultankirche ). The “monastery room” and the rediscovered Romanesque cellar were restored by the city in 1988 and are now used as public spaces.
In addition to the former headquarters of the order in the Kommende Seedorf in the canton of Uri (today a monastery of the Benedictine nuns) and the Lazariterhaus in the district of Schlatt near Bad Krozingen in southern Baden, the Lazariterkirche in Gfenn near Dübendorf is now one of the most important centers of the European Lazarites (another branch the Lazarite in Switzerland was the Michaelskirche in Meiringen ). Every two years the general chapter of the order takes place there, at the beginning of April the Lazarites celebrate an investiture ceremony .
ensemble
The building complex is located east of the hamlet of Gfenn on a moraine hill about ten meters higher . The name Gfenn indicates that the area around the hill was once swampy. Chrutzelried, a nature reserve of national importance, is still nearby today . In the Middle Ages, a road from Zurich to Pfäffikon led past the monastery.
Next to the church are some houses that were built in 1828 on the foundation walls of the burnt down convent house of the monastery. Two parts of the house, the monastery room and the rediscovered Romanesque cellar, have been preserved.
The group of buildings has been the subject of artistic representations on several occasions: The oldest surviving image of the Gfenn monastery dates from 1673. Later, the art historian Johann Rudolf Rahn , among others, made several pencil drawings and detailed sketches of the complex in the second half of the 19th century.
church
building
The Lazariterkirche, built in the Romanesque style, consists of a rectangular nave , to which a recessed (narrower) square choir adjoins. On the eastern front of the nave above the choir roof there are still stumps of earlier walls, which may come from an earlier higher choir or choir tower.
Access to the church was originally possible through three arched doors: through the main portal in the west facade, above which a small round window is installed, in the eastern part of the north wall through a high entrance over a bridge from the convent building, and finally through near the southwest corner in the south wall another high arched door as access to the gallery . The main portal could largely be restored. The original access to the choir is the arched door in the north wall near the northwest corner, which today serves as a connection to the sacristy below.
Two Romanesque round arches lucid (slit-like narrow vertical openings) in the masonry are located as light openings on the southern eaves side of the building and a pointed arch window to the west of it. Three small Romanesque arched windows have been preserved in the north facade. The choir receives its light through an arched, original window in the east wall and a window in the south that has been reconstructed based on this model.
The Gothic changes were probably made under Komtur Schwarber and later : the pointed arch windows mentioned, as well as the interior painting and the pointed arched choir arch. According to his records, the church roof was also made steeper in Schwarber's time and covered with 8,000 bricks from Winterthur, and the tower and roof turrets were repaired. Possibly bailiff Heinrich Escher of Greifensee the west gable became available today stepped gable reshuffled.
In the course of the restoration, the facade was plastered using the Pietra-Rasa technique (with this technique, the mortar that oozes from the stone joints is applied, whereby the bricks are partially covered). The choir received a flat, Romanesque-looking saddle roof, the nave a steeper, Gothic-looking one. The cover was made with hollow bricks .
inner space
There are niches in the wall on both sides of the north-eastern corner of the nave. The larger one in the north wall is 1.5 m high and 2 m wide and possibly housed a side altar. In the east wall a 110 cm high, 80 cm wide and 25 cm deep round arch niche is cut out 15 cm above the church floor. Maybe there was a picture or a washbasin there. In the north and south walls there is a small square lavabo or light niche.
The choir is spanned by a groin vault , the flat wooden ceiling above the nave is more recent.
Medieval painting
During preliminary examinations for the restoration, medieval paintings were discovered in 1961/62: there was originally a cycle of images depicting the Passion of Christ on the north wall of the nave . Three fields of him are still partially preserved: they show the flagellation of Jesus , to the east of it the remains of a crowning of thorns and to the west Christ with a crown of thorns and a reed as a scepter (hence the Ecce homo scene).
There were also paintings in the choir area. Traces of a consecration cross appeared on the east wall to the left and right of the window . The inner side of the choir arch is decorated with numerous crabs (a typical foliage of the Gothic). The east window is framed by a frieze . Only the upper half of a Christ face with a cross nimbus at the apex of the window reveal has survived.
The right reveal shows a standing figure of a saint with a cross staff adorned with a flag , probably John the Baptist . In the rudimentary paint residues on the left soffit, a tree crown and folds of robe underneath can be seen, possibly the patron saint Lazarus was depicted there. At the top of the choir vault you can see a mandorla with the coronation of Mary . Above the ridges of the vault there is a circular medallion about 1.7 m in diameter with the image of an evangelist and his typical attribute : Matthew in the northwest , Mark in the southeast, Mark (poorly preserved), in the southwest Luke (also poorly preserved) and in the northeast Johannes , all sitting on backless benches with desks, but no two figures are alike. The main picture of the vault shows Christ blessing with the globe in his left hand and the looking down Our Lady, both crowned, sitting on a throne opposite one another. In the middle above them there was originally a dove as a symbol of the Holy Spirit .
Modern equipment
The painting by Max Rüedi from Zurich on the main portal shows four scenes from the parable of the good Samaritan . Rüedi also created the new window in the round window above the portal. The ironwork was carried out by the art locksmith Karl Rauser. The sculptor and iron sculptor Silvio Mattioli made the two iron anchors under the approaches of the stepped gable and a bell holder with a cock on the south side of the choir.
organ
In 1967 the Späth Orgelbau company from Rapperswil built an organ according to the specifications of the architect Rolf Keller. In 2018 , Bernhardt Edskes built a new movement in its housing , which is temperature-controlled according to Arnolt Schlick . The instrument has twelve registers , which are divided between two manuals and a pedal . The disposition is as follows:
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literature
- Walter Drack , Hans Rutishauser: The Lazariterkirche in Gfenn. Swiss Art Guide No. 125, GSK, Basel 1973.
- Roland Böhmer: The painting of the Lazariterkirche in Gfenn - a new look. in: Heimatbuch Dübendorf 2005. Dübendorf 2005.
- Rainer Hugener: Women in the Lazarite Order . In: Heimatbuch Dübendorf 2007. Dübendorf 2007.
Web links
- Peter Ziegler : Gfenn. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Gfenn , entry in the ortsnames.ch database
- Women in the knightly shaped Lazarite order. Article from NZZ of March 3, 2008. Retrieved 2016-07-09.
- The Lazariterkirche Gfenn near Dübendorf , article from: Tages-Anzeiger from January 8, 2002.
- Gothic painting in the choir vault, preserved / restored in 2002 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Neue Orgel, Lazariterkirche on the Dübendorfer Abendmusiken website, accessed on October 24, 2018.
Comingians / Commanderies: Breitenbich | Braunsroda | Gfenn | Gotha | Megersheim | Sangerhausen | Schlatt | Wackenhausen | Uri
Coordinates: 47 ° 23 '32.3 " N , 8 ° 38' 52.6" E ; CH1903: 691301 / 249757