Marienkirche (Brandenburg an der Havel)
The former Marienkirche near the cities of Brandenburg an der Havel ( old town Brandenburg and Neustadt Brandenburg ) was located on the summit of the Harlungerberg until 1722 on the site of a Wendish main temple of the Slavic deity Triglaw (Triglaf). According to Schütz and Müller, St. Mary's Church was "... the largest and most imaginative cross building in German Romanesque ..." . In the same place, the sacred building is referred to as "... the highlight of the Lower Rhine late Romanesque in the brick area" .
Building history
In 1222, under the direction of Bishop Gernand , instead of an insignificant predecessor building, the appearance of which is not documented, the Marienkirche was built by builders from the Lower Rhine on the plan of an isosceles (Greek) cross, with four towers in each corner. It "... had a main center with the crossing and four secondary centers in the cross arm angles in the style of Byzantine cross-domed churches, additionally distinguished by four cross arm cones , by galleries and on the exterior by four towers ..." .
The original core building filled a square approximately 31.4 × 26.4 m and was supported by 16 columns. The height of the central dome can be assumed to be around 18 m, the towers rose around 37.5 m above the church floor. The imposing appearance of the Marienkirche becomes clear if one adds to these values the 67.5 m height above sea level, which the natural pedestal of the sacred building, the Marien- or Harlungerberg, rises above the city. If you subtract the 32 m above sea level at which height the city of Brandenburg an der Havel lies at the foot of the Marienberg, then the experience is 73 m.
To the west , a Gothic choir was added in 1443, similar to the Aachen Cathedral . It enclosed the chapel of the Swan Order . Goecke says: “[...] The lower room of the two-storey chapel formed a kind of crypt, which was consecrated to St. Leonhardt and contained the hereditary burial of the von Waldenfels family . The upper actual chapel room lay like a high choir facing the church and was connected to it by a wide straight staircase in a larger arched opening. In addition, two spiral staircases sideways next to the chapel connection provided access to the crypt and the church gallery ... "
The architectural style of the main building can be seen as a transition from the late Romanesque to the early Gothic style, while the chapel had all the stylistic features of the High Gothic .
function
Apparently the Marienkirche was laid out as a pilgrimage church from the beginning . As such, it enjoyed a European reputation.
Furthermore, served the sacred edifice as the center of a 1435 by the Elector of Brandenburg I. Friedrich donated Premonstratensians' or canons - pin .
During the time of the European church reformation movement ( Johannes Hus ) bitter disputes arose over the admissibility and justifiability of the pilgrimage “industry”. In the course of these disputes, the Marienkirche for the first time lost large sums of money.
With the introduction of the Reformation in the Mark Brandenburg , the premonstratensian canon monastery was dissolved and the church and its property secularized .
Another story
With this measure the decay of the building outside the city walls began.
Although the cities of Brandenburg, primarily the magistrate of the old town, endeavored to preserve the building, which was unique in northern Germany - a few people were posted to guard - the entire complex became more and more a refuge for light-shy shapes. When the domes of the ships and towers began to collapse around 50 years after the building was closed, the Marienkirche and its adjacent buildings were exploited as a quarry by the local population.
In order to prevent this theft of his property and to win stones for the Potsdam military orphanage, the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I (Soldier King) ordered the demolition of the ruins in 1722 against the massive resistance of the municipal authorities of Brandenburg, which began on April 20, 1722 .
Supposedly, Colonel von Pini, head of the Prussian Infantry Regiment No. 1 stationed in Brandenburg and the predecessor of Colonel Ewald Wedig von Massow , gave the reason for the demolition decision with a story about a Premonstratensian treasure under the church. For the soldier king, the demolition company turned out to be a subsidy business. The treasure summoned by Pini was not found, and the transport costs exceeded the value of the building material obtained. In total, usable building materials could only be brought to Potsdam for around 5,000 thalers. The sum corresponds roughly to the equivalent of a normal townhouse in Potsdam or Berlin at that time.
Massow is said to have obtained stones from the demolition mass for his new building of a representative town house (Frey-Haus, Ritterstraße 96, today's town museum) and his country estate, the Massowburg, which is in front of the old town in the direction of Brielow .
So far, no stones have been found in the complex of the Potsdam military orphanage whose origin can be clearly traced back to the Marienkirche. During remodeling and renovation work (2006) in Colonel Massow's Frey House, stones were recovered that clearly have the dimensions of the so-called monastery format . It is therefore very likely that this is demolition material from the Marienkirche. Building material from the Marienkirche or the associated monastery complex was also found in the vicinity of the former private residence of Colonel Massow, the Massowburg on the banks of the Beetzsee , which was destroyed in the course of the fighting during the Second World War . Another part of the demolition compound was used to consolidate Plauer Chaussee, which is the road that leads from the Plauer Tor in the old town along the federal highway 1 to Magdeburg.
The last remnants of the material from the Marienkirchen complex were found and removed from the construction of the new reservoir on the Marienberg in the early 1960s.
Furnishing
Little is known about the interior of the Marienkirche. After the abandonment of the building, some liturgical textiles, a land register and other small archival material, as well as presumably a small bell, are said to have found their way into the possession of the Brandenburg Cathedral , whose adjoining monastery was also subject to the Premonstratensian order.
A Triglaf statue was exhibited in St. Mary's Church until 1526 before it was given away to the Danish royal court to King Christian II . Tschirch, on the other hand, claims that Christian II, who was expelled from his country in 1524, was in Brandenburg an der Havel around 1526 and on this occasion stole the idol of Triglaf. Research into the whereabouts of this idol has not yet produced any tangible results.
meaning
The pilgrimage church on the Harlunger Berg was of enormous national importance for the cities of Brandenburg. First, the streams of pilgrims carried money and mercantile sales into the region and took the reputation of the “Chur and capital of the Mark” back home with them. With the drying up of this source, both the Premonstratensian order and the cities of Brandenburg suffered heavy losses.
Another aspect is its importance as an architectural exception in northern Germany. The floor plan of an isosceles cross is very rarely proven for this room. The beauty and balance of the proportions of the building, of which two models (City Museum of Brandenburg an der Havel in the “Frey House” (wood) and treasury of the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul in Brandenburg an der Havel (clay model)) have been preserved have remained, have been widely praised.
Aftermath
The romantic on the Prussian throne, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Is said to have toyed with the plan to rebuild the Marienkirche, according to statements that have not yet been reliably proven. However, there was no even rudimentary implementation of this idea, as the available financial resources were directed towards the completion of Cologne Cathedral .
The Harlunger Berg, which owes its name to a local Wendish population group, has been called "Marienberg" for centuries after the building that crowns it. This naturalized name increasingly found its way into the official language, so that today's inner-city survey is only rarely given its original name.
A large leisure complex on the western slope of the Harlunger Berg, about three hundred meters below the location of the Marienkirche, was christened "Marienbad" by the population in the nineties of the 20th century according to an eponymous survey.
Comparison between the Frue Kirke in Kalundborg, Denmark and Marienkirche in Brandenburg
The architectural affinity with the Church of Our Lady in Kalundborg , Denmark, claimed by some , is contested by Goecke and Eichholz. It does not go beyond a superficial similarity with regard to the four-tower complex. It can be seen that the Frue Kirke in Kalundborg shows its four otherwise hexagonal towers at the respective ends of the aisles, whereas the towers of the Marienkirche, listed on an approximately square floor plan, were indented into the intersection points of the naves at right angles to each other. In addition, the Frue Kirke carries a huge crossing tower that towers above the outer towers, which the Marienkirche never even had a roof turret. The crossing of the Marienkirche was vaulted by a dome.
Bibliography
- Friedrich Grasow: Brandenburg, the millennial city. Book and art print shop J. Wiesicke, Brandenburg an der Havel 1928, ISBN 978-3-7950-1503-9 (reprint)
Web links
References
- Markus Cante: Monuments in Brandenburg; City of Brandenburg an der Havel; Cathedral Island - Old Town - New Town. in the series: Monument topography in Germany Volume 1.1, Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms am Rhein 1994; ISBN 3-88462-105-X
- Otto Tschirch: History of the Chur and capital Brandenburg on the Havel, commemorative publication for the millennium of the city in two volumes. Brandenburg an der Havel 1928
- The art monuments of the province of Brandenburg. Published by the Brandenburgisches Provinzialverbande, Volume II, Part 3 - Stadt und Dom Brandenburg, published by commission and printed by the Vossische Buchhandlung, Berlin 1912, edited by the architect Paul Eichholz, p. 121 ff. , Under the editorial management of the provincial curator Theodor Goecke .
Footnotes
- ^ A b c Bernhard Schütz, Wolfgang Müller: Deutsche Romanik. Komet, Frechen 2002, ISBN 3-89836-212-4 , p. 63.
- ↑ Sebastian Kinder, Haik Thomas Porada (ed.): Brandenburg an der Havel and surroundings - a landscape inventory in the area of Brandenburg an der Havel, Pritzerbe, Reckahn and Wusterwitz. In the series Landscapes in Germany - Values of the German Homeland. of the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography and the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, Volume 69, published by Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar Vienna, 2006, ISBN 978-3-412-09103-3 , p. 265
- ^ The Marienberg to Brandenburg on the Havel. Past and present. Author collective, edited by BAS Brandenburg an der Havel 2000
- ↑ a b c The art monuments of the province of Brandenburg. Published by the Brandenburgisches Provinzialverbande, Volume II, Part 3 - Stadt und Dom Brandenburg, published by commission and printed by the Vossische Buchhandlung, Berlin 1912, edited by the architect Paul Eichholz under the editorship of the provincial curator Theodor Goecke
- ↑ Otto Tschirch: In the protection of the Roland. Cultural-historical forays through old Brandenburg. Verlag J. Wiesike, 2nd edition, Brandenburg an der Havel 1938
Coordinates: 52 ° 24 ′ 56 ″ N , 12 ° 32 ′ 50 ″ E