Liebfrauenkirche (Worms)

The Liebfrauenkirche in Worms was a collegiate church and is now a Roman Catholic parish church. It is the only preserved Gothic church in Worms.

Liebfrauenkirche Worms - view from the southwest

West facade before the last renovation (2004)

Geographical location

The Liebfrauenkirche faces east. It is located in the north of the old town of Worms, just inside the second, late medieval , but outside of the high medieval wall ring of the old town of Worms. After the area of ​​the city expansion within this outer wall ring was only built on to a small extent in the early modern period , the church, although centrally located in the Worms city area, still stands in a large green area mainly formed by vineyards . These vineyards and their wine, Liebfrauenmilch , got their name from the church.

history

Previous buildings

Little is known about the predecessors of today's church building. Archaeological excavations have not taken place. Due to the location on the edge of the Roman cemetery east of the Römische Rheintalstraße to Mainz (today: Mainzer Straße), a late antique Christian cemetery chapel is assumed to be the nucleus of the location. The oldest surviving documentary mention of a St. Mary's Church here comes from 1173 .

The Gothic Church

Building inscription, 1465

inside view

In 1267 Pope Pius II granted indulgence to finance the building of the church and the work on the cloister with Jodokus chapel . Construction began in 1276. The south portal has been preserved from this phase. On October 31, 1298, the church of Bishop Emich I. Raugraf von Baumburg , supported by his nephew, the cathedral provost and later Bishop Heinrich III. von Daun , converted into a collegiate monastery with twelve canons .

In 1310 the plan for the new building was changed. A Marian pilgrimage could have been the occasion. The pilgrimage can be documented for the first time in 1478, but it is much older as it was already considered "famous" back then . In 1380 the nave was completed, in 1381 the west portal decorated with figures. In the same year the ambulatory was started and the towers were built between 1450 and 1465. At the same time, the tracery windows , the two-story cloister and the St. Jodokus Chapel were built. According to a building inscription on the north-western transept pillar , construction work was completed in 1465 .

Modern times

As part of the Reichstag in Worms (1495) , Emperor Maximilian I and his wife Bianca visited the church. Because of the iconoclasm associated with the Reformation in the 16th century , the statue of Mary was relocated in 1565.

In 1630 the Capuchins settled in Worms and received the Jodokus Chapel in the cloister as a convent church. The Church of Our Lady was badly damaged both during the Thirty Years' War and during the War of the Palatinate Succession , when Louis XIV's troops burned the city down in 1689. The southern spire, the roof and the interior were particularly affected. Reconstruction only began 15 years later. The ceiling vaults were renewed, whereby the Gothic forms were preserved. In 1710 the church also received a baroque organ. As a result of the destruction, static problems remained which could not be finally resolved until the 1960s.

After the secularization of the Liebfrauenstift at the end of the 18th century, the church was profaned . As a result, the cloister and Jodokus chapel were destroyed and largely removed. It was not until 1816 that services were held again in the church . It was now assigned to the parish of St. Martin . Under their pastor Nikolaus Reuß , the decision was made in 1854 to renovate the church. The renovation concept was designed by the architect and master builder from Mainz, Ignaz Opfermann, from 1858 onwards. Work began in April 1860 with external repairs. This was followed by the renovation of the choir and transept by 1862 . The old rood screen was removed and the material used to build the choir screens, which separate the ambulatory and the central area of ​​the choir. The nave followed from 1862. In order to relieve the external walls statically ( buttresses are missing), the destroyed central vaults were renewed at a lower level, which changed the spatial impression very much compared to the medieval design. The new capitals required are foliage capitals and were made of plaster . The historic capitals have been preserved in the attic above the vaults. The vaults were painted blue with gold stars by Peter Muth , the pillars, services and vault ribs were given sandstone paint. Almost all windows have been replaced. The new ones come from Nikolaus Usinger , Ignaz Hirschvogel and Ignaz Neumair . The church was given a neo-Gothic interior. After the death of victim man in 1866, the work was completed by the district builder of the Worms district . The consecration of the new altars took place on September 6, 1868. The south tower, which had been damaged for a long time, was later restored and given a top corresponding to the north tower, work that was completed in 1882.

South of the Liebfrauenkirche were the remains of the former parish church of St. Amandus until 1956. In September 1956, Lord Mayor Heinrich Völker allowed the US armed forces, who needed a few cubic meters of rubble to fill in a sports field, to demolish the ruins.

On January 1, 1898, Liebfrauen became an independent parish church. A Valentinus pilgrimage has been to the Church of Our Lady since the 19th century. Since 1928 there has been an official Marian pilgrimage again.

Duration

Madonna and Child, south portal

building

The Liebfrauenkirche is an elongated, three-aisled basilica with a cross-shaped floor plan . To the east of the transept, which protrudes only a little over the aisles, the three nave naves with a choir and ambulatory on both sides are continued. The choir has a five-eighth closing . The total length of the interior is 78 m, that of the transept 22 m. The church is completely provided with a ribbed vault that is up to 18.5 m high. In the west, the nave ends with a baroque gallery on which an organ prospect decorated with carved figures stands.

The west facade has two towers and a vestibule. The towers are square in the basement and octagonal above. The southern tower spire was added after being destroyed in the 19th century. The west portal, with rich figural decorations, around 1310, shows stylistic connections with the south portal of the Worms Cathedral and simultaneous parts of the Strasbourg cathedral . The church is mainly made of red sandstone .

The church is now a cultural monument due to the Rhineland-Palatinate Monument Protection Act .

Furnishing

Crucifixion group on the north side

Around 1260 the wooden miraculous image of the Mother of God, preserved in the church, but reworked in the 19th century by Gottfried Renn from Speyer, was created . To the north-east of the side aisle there is a group of figures " Anna Selbdritt ", originally from the south portal and created around 1276, but whose baby Jesus has been lost.

The carved reredos of the high altar in the choir dates from the end of the 15th century, was moved here from the Martinskirche and provided with neo-Gothic superstructures. From the same time, from 1470, comes a holy grave with life-size stone figures on the ground floor of the south tower as well as the tower-like sacrament house that stands on the northeastern crossing pillar . In front of the north outer wall is a copy of a crucifixion group from 1493, with the two accompanying figures of Mary and John being additions from the 18th century.

In the transept there are Mannerist choir stalls carved by Christoph Franck from Speyer around 1625 .

The neo-Gothic Valentinus altar in the south transept dates from the second half of the 19th century.

In 1919, a Lamentation of Christ by Heinrich Waderé was set up outside the south wall , at the same time a memorial for the victims of the First World War .

From 1966 to 1995, the Mainz glass painter Alois Plum created a cycle of windows to replace the windows destroyed in the 1943 bombing . In the style of the medieval Biblia pauperum , scenes from the history of salvation in the Old and New Testaments are depicted: The five windows on the north side show scenes from the Old and the corresponding windows on the opposite south side show scenes from the New Testament.

Burial place

In the ambulatory of the Liebfrauenkirche there are numerous grave monuments of collegiate clerics and other people buried here from the 14th to the 18th century, including those of

• Rosina von Oberstein , b. Schliederer von Lachen († 1615), sister of the Carthusian Provincial Caspar Schliederer von Lachen and sister-in-law of the Speyer reform cathedral dean Andreas von Oberstein ,
• Bishop Hugo Eberhard Cratz von Scharfenstein († 1663),
• Johann Friedrich Faber († 1724), Elector of Trier and Episcopal Worms Vice Chancellor and Reichstag Envoy of the Upper Rhine District ,
• Auxiliary Bishop Johann Anton Wallreuther († 1734); the epitaph was in the Johanneskirche , which was demolished at the beginning of the 19th century, and was moved here
• Baron Ignatius Ferdinand von Vogelius († 1784); in the south aisle; moved here from the demolished Dominican church.

• 

  Grave slab of the canon Nikolaus Worempe († 1491)

• 

  Grave slab of the collegiate vicar Peter Luff († 1499)

• 

  Grave slab of Rosina von Oberstein , b. Schliederer von Lachen († 1615)

• 

  Gravestone of the diplomat Johann Friedrich Faber († 1724)

• 

  Epitaph from Auxiliary Bishop Johann Anton Wallreuther

• 

  Epitaph of Baron Ignatius Ferdinand von Vogelius

Vineyards

View with vineyards, from the east

The Liebfrauenkirche gave the Liebfrauenmilch from the surrounding vineyards its name. Wine merchant Peter Joseph Valckenberg bought the vineyards in 1808 at an auction of national goods as part of the secularization and made the brand name famous.

literature

in alphabetical order by authors / editors

• Gerold Bönnen : Liebfrauen Worms 1298 - 1998: 700 years of the monastery - 100 years of the parish = sources and treatises on church history in the Middle Rhine, vol. 86. 1998. ISBN 978-3-929135-18-3
• Silvia Speckert: Ignaz Opfermann (1799–1866): Selected examples of his construction work in the vicinity of the city of Mainz = housework to obtain the academic degree of a Magister [!] Artium. Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 1989. Typed. Volume 1: Text, Volume 2: Tables. Mainz City Archives: 1991/25 No. 11.
• Irene Spille et al. a .: City of Worms = monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . Cultural monuments Rhineland-Palatinate 10. Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft , Worms 1992. ISBN 3-88462-084-3
• Franz Staab (Ed.): Liebfrauen Worms 1298–1998 . Verlag der Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte , Mainz 1998. ISBN 3-929135-18-3

Web links

Commons : Liebfrauenkirche  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Monasteries and monasteries in Rhineland-Palatinate: Collegiate monastery Liebfrauen
• Catholic parish of Liebfrauen Worms

Remarks

1. ↑ According to the Kirschgartener Chronik (around 1500) by Johannes Heydekyn von Sonsbeck , Bishop Emich had a St. Mary's Chapel built here a few years earlier, when he was still provost himself, and furnished it with several priests .
2. ↑ A corresponding building inscription has been preserved.
3. ↑ The outer wall of the cloister and its buttresses have been preserved at a height of approx. 2 m and today form a surrounding wall.
4. ↑ He is known as the “Savior of the Church of Our Lady”, was made an honorary citizen of Worms because of his services in this regard and is buried in the church.
5. ↑ This pilgrimage originally led to the St. Sylvester and Valentinus Chapel from the 13th century (Spille, p. 58).
6. ↑ The original is in the main cemetery in Worms (Spille, p. 58).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Spille, p. 58.
2. ↑ Spille, p. 12.
3. ↑ Spille, p. 56.
4. ↑ Spille, p. 56.
5. ↑ Spille, p. 56.
6. ↑ Spille, p. 56.
7. ^ Website for the building inscription from 1465 .
8. ↑ The most important historical dates of the Liebfrauenkirche. In: Liebfrauen Foundation Worms. Retrieved April 26, 2015 . 
9. ↑ Spille, p. 58.
10. ↑ Speckert, p. 13.
11. ↑ Speckert, p. 14.
12. ↑ Speckert, p. 13.
13. ^ W. Wagner: Mittheilungen aus Vereinen . In: Deutsche Bauzeitung 19 (1885), p. 369f.
14. ↑ Speckert, note 82.
15. ↑ Speckert, p. 14.
16. ↑ Speckert, p. 13.
17. ↑ Speckert, note 82.
18. ↑ Speckert, p. 14.
19. ^ W. Wagner: Mittheilungen aus Vereinen . In: Deutsche Bauzeitung 19 (1885), p. 369f.
20. ↑ Otto Böcher: On the reconstruction of the Worms synagogue . In: Der Wormsgau 19 (2000), pp. 205-218 (208f).
21. ↑ Spille, p. 58.
22. ↑ Spille, p. 58.
23. ↑ Spille, pp. 56-58.
24. ↑ Spille, p. 58.
25. ↑ Spille, p. 58.
26. ↑ Spille, p. 58.
27. ↑ Spille, p. 58.
28. ↑ Spille, p. 58.
29. ↑ Spille, p. 58.
30. ^ Website of the bishop's grave slab

Coordinates: 49 ° 38 ′ 20.7 "  N , 8 ° 22 ′ 7.9"  E