Marienkirche Frankfurt (Oder)

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Marienkirche Frankfurt (Oder)
The choir of the Marienkirche
Marienkirche. Excerpt from: View of the city of Frankfurt (Oder). Pages 756 and 757 from Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster 5th edition 1550
S. Maria Kirch zu Franck-Furt on the Oder. Pen drawing by Johann Stridbeck the Younger , 1690
St. Marien Church in Frankfurt (Oder), approx. 1860, from the book "L'Allemagne illustrée" by Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun
Marienkirche 1900 on a picture postcard

The St. Marien Church in Frankfurt (Oder) is the former main parish church of the city and was built in more than 250 years of medieval building activity. The church building is one of the largest buildings in North German brick Gothic ; it is 77 meters long and 45 meters wide. The church was largely destroyed in the Second World War, but its main features could be reconstructed in the following period. Today the St. Marien Church is a socio-cultural center and a symbol of the city.

history

Established in the late Middle Ages

In 1253, after the city was founded, the original building was built with one of the earliest galleries in the Mark Brandenburg . From 1360/70 on, a hall choir was built in place of the original choir . At the same time, a polygonal entrance hall with a sandstone portal was added to the north transept . In the 15th century the nave was expanded to five naves . The outer aisles received representative, painted attics . The two-tower facade was raised by four storeys around 1450. The north tower was crowned by an aft helmet, the south tower by a crenellated wreath with a spire. With the founding of the Viadrina University , the last significant expansion of the church was created with the construction of the sacristy with a gallery in 1521/22.

A special feature are the three large stained glass windows that were made between 1360 and 1370. The windows, made in the Gothic style, consist of a total of 117 pictures, each 83 by 43 centimeters in size, and financed by the city's citizens. In a kind of picture Bible, the windows depict the creation story of the world, the life of Adam and Eve , the construction of Noah's Ark , the life of Christ and the legend of the Antichrist .

Backup in the 19th century

On May 15, 1826, the south tower of the church collapsed, whereupon Karl Friedrich Schinkel decided to completely wall off a Gothic display wall from the 13th century. The wall was forgotten and was only rediscovered in the 1990s during repair work. Schinkel left the repair of the church to his student Emil Flaminius ; the destroyed south tower was not restored.

Destruction in World War II

During the Second World War , the 117 fields of the windows were expanded in September 1941 to protect them from destruction. Initially stored in Frankfurt and documented photographically in black and white in 1943, they arrived in Potsdam in April 1945 in the New Palais . With the destruction of downtown Frankfurt in April 1945, the St. Marien Church also fell into ruin. Despite several emergency backups, there were further partial collapses.

Reconstruction in the post-war period

The sacristy and the martyr's choir were reconstructed in 1958 by the parish of St. Mary according to their means, the central shrine of the altar was erected and the space was ceremonially used. Due to limited heating, the service could only take place in summer. On September 27, 1974, the Protestant parish and the then Frankfurt City Council signed a 99-year lease for the continued use of the church. The city took on the obligation to restore and expand the ruins for general social purposes. In 1979, securing and repairs began in sections. The sacristy has been restored and taken into use.

The Soviet military administration in Germany brought the valuable stained glass windows in June 1946 from Potsdam to Berlin as looted tricks in the war bag camp 1 of the Red Army in the central cattle and slaughterhouse . From there they came to the Hermitage depot in Leningrad in August 1946 . The windows were therefore considered "lost since the end of the war".

After reunification

Reconstruction continued in 1990. In 1998 the main roofs over the choir and nave were rebuilt; the 21 meter high roof structure is the largest wooden roof structure that was erected in the 20th century. The last measure was the repair of the north tower with the restoration of the colored facade from the time it was built. The discovery of the color pigments on the tower had previously been an unexpected surprise. Art treasures from the formerly rich furnishings of the Marienkirche, such as the Marien Altar from 1489, the bronze baptism and bronze candlesticks at the end of the 14th century , as well as many epitaphs donated by the citizens have been installed in the Sankt Gertraud Church since 1980 .

After the Soviet Literaturnaja Gazeta published an initial notice of the whereabouts of the windows in April 1991, German efforts to get them back began in 1994 with a petition from the Frankfurt (Oder) parish council to Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrdin . In April 2002 they led to a Duma law with the approval of the Federation Council to return the 111 fields found. From summer 2002 they were gradually restored on site in a room above the sacristy with the help of black-and-white photos. On May 28, 2005, the rededication of the first restored window in the choir of St. Marien was celebrated in a ceremony. As a result, a message appeared in the Moscow daily Kommersant in June 2005 , according to which the missing six fields are in the Pushkin Museum there. After years of negotiations, the State Duma and the Federation Council passed a law in March 2008 to return the last six window frames. The German Minister of State for Culture, Bernd Neumann, handed them over to the parish and the city on November 17, 2008 from the German embassy in Moscow . The completely restored windows can be seen again in the Marienkirche since February 2009.

The church was equipped with a 38,000 euro fire protection system in 2002. In May 2006, the path in front of the west portal was repaved. Historical granite stones from the depot of the civil engineering office were used for this. Furthermore, there were so-called donation stones , which were provided with the names of donors. These stones cost € 75, € 25 of which was used for the manufacture and the rest for the restoration of the church.

Bells

The ringing of the Marienkirche originally comprised six bells , which were cast around 1400. Two bells were brought to Hamburg for war purposes in 1942, including the Maria cast in 1426 , also known as the middle bell . The other four remained in the church because of their historical value. The great Osanna from 1371 was provided with rare bell carvings . It was lost along with the three other bells when the church was destroyed in April 1945.

Central bell from 1426

The central bell escaped being melted down and was returned to Frankfurt in 1949 by the committee for the return of the bells . It came to Nördlingen for repairs in 2007 and was then initially parked in front of the west portal of the Marienkirche.

Based on the destroyed bells, three bells were cast by the Grassmayr bell foundry in Innsbruck in 2014 . While the two smaller bells were cast successfully the first time they were cast on February 7th, the Osanna, which weighs more than five tons, was cast the second time, on March 14th. On May 3rd, the four bells were put into service during a festival service and struck on the church square. After being hung up in May, they ushered in Pentecost on June 7th:

  1. Osanna , 2014, Ø 1,977 mm, 5,166 kg, h 0 : Hosanna to the son of David + praised be he who comes in the name of the Lord + Hosanna on high
  2. Maria (middle bell) , 1426, Ø 1,780 mm, 4,120 kg, d 1 : Hec campana fusa est in honorem marie virginis Anno dei mccccxxvi
  3. Adalbert , 2014, Ø 1,494 mm, 2,309 kg, e 1 : Go there and make all peoples younger + I am with you all days until the end of the world +
  4. Hedwig , 2014, Ø 1,237 mm, 1,318 kg, g 1 : One carries the other's burden + So you will fulfill the law of Christ +

So far, the clock has been played through loudspeakers.

Library

The Marienkirche has its own library, which comprises 972 volumes, 816 of them from the period from 1430 to 1850. In 1932 it was mentioned that the library had 5,000 works, but in April / May 1945 about 90 percent of them were destroyed. The oldest book is from 1430 and is a missal which was written on parchment . The book was probably also written in Frankfurt (Oder).

Support association

The Förderverein St. Marienkirche Frankfurt (Oder) eV was founded in 1990 and has since supported the reconstruction of the church and its cultural use.

gallery

  • Tower of the Marienkirche Frankfurt (Oder)

  • Marienkirche interior

  • Incomplete nave

  • One of the famous stained glass windows of the Marienkirche

  • Marienkirche, aerial photo (2015)

literature

in alphabetical order by authors / editors

The database of international literature on looted art (freely accessible) contains several hundred literature references on the fate of the Frankfurt church windows during and after the Second World War.

Web links

Commons : Marienkirche Frankfurt (Oder)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Digital copy in the holdings of the Central and State Library Berlin .
  2. ↑ Enter as search terms: Marienkirche, church window, lead glass window, glass painting or similar.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Antje Scherer: Comic from the Middle Ages , Märkische Oderzeitung / Frankfurter Stadtbote, October 9, 2009.
  2. ↑ http: //www.gläserne-werkstatt.de/st.-marienkirche-frankfurt-oder/geschichte-der-fenster-der-st.-marienkirche/
  3. ↑ Märkische Oderzeitung / Frankfurter Stadtbote, September 21, 2006, p. 14.
  4. ^ Frank Kaiser, Märkische Oderzeitung / Frankfurter Stadtbote, 13./14. May 2006, p. 17.
  5. ^ Ingrid Schulze: Incised drawings by lay hands - drawings by medieval sculptors and painters? Figural bell scratch drawings from the late 13th century to around 1500 in central and northern Germany. Leipzig 2006, ISBN 978-3-939404-95-8 , pp. 63 and 82-83.
  6. ↑ Marienglocke will not return until 2009 . Märkische Oderzeitung, November 20, 2008.
  7. ↑ Glocken Frankfurt an der Oder - Grassmayr bell foundry on YouTube .
  8. ↑ Important bell project of the Marienkirche in Frankfurt (Oder) .
  9. ^ Larch wood for the Marienkirche . Märkische Oderzeitung, December 10, 2013.
  10. ↑ "Osanna" bursts in Innsbruck . Märkische Oderzeitung, February 7, 2014.
  11. ↑ "Osanna" succeeded in the second attempt . Märkische Oderzeitung, March 14, 2014.
  12. ^ Festive service for new bells from St. Marien . Märkische Oderzeitung, May 3, 2014.
  13. ↑ That will be the voice of the city . Märkische Oderzeitung, January 14, 2014.
  14. ↑ Märkische Oderzeitung / Frankfurter Stadtbote, June 22, 2006, p. 13.
  15. ↑ Märkische Oderzeitung / Frankfurter Stadtbote, October 14, 2005, p. 13.
  16. ↑ http://www.st-marien-ffo.de/ueber-uns/ Website of the Förderverein, accessed on November 11, 2017

Coordinates: 52 ° 20 ′ 35 ″  N , 14 ° 33 ′ 16 ″  E