Martinskirche (Spenge)
The church St. Martin is part of the Evangelical - Lutheran parish of Spenge , Herford . Along with the Marienkirche in Wallenbrück, it is the oldest sacred building in the community.
history
The oldest documentary mention of the Spenger Church can be found in 1160 in a document from the Bishop of Osnabrück, in which he awarded the income of the Dean's office to the Johannis Stift in Osnabrück. The patronage rights of the church were granted to the Bielefeld St.-Marien-Stift in 1293. They remained there until the abolition of the monastery in 1810. In the course of the Reformation , a Lutheran pastor took over the Spenger parish for the first time in 1562.
In 1975, an archaeological excavation revealed clues about the building history of the church. The first verifiable predecessor of today's church was erected over graves to the east, a burial ground that was already used by Christians. Assumptions that the first church was built on the basis of the patronage of Martin von Tours in the 9th or 10th century could not be confirmed from the excavation findings.
The art historian Albert Ludorff had assigned the church tower of St. Martinus to a Romanesque construction period, but this could not confirm the excavation either. The core of the existing church dates from the second half of the 13th century. It was built as a single-nave early Gothic hall church, which ended in the east with a rectangular choir . The archaic-looking west tower and the nave belong to the same construction period.
Fundamental changes to the church building itself were only made when the church was renovated and expanded in 1877. As in neighboring Wallenbrück, an expansion of the sacred building became necessary in the course of the revival movement . The old choir area was changed into a transept and this was given a neo-Gothic choir. Most of the medieval furnishings were removed, of which the Spenger Martins Altar from the 15th century was the most important. This was given to the Westphalian Art Association in Münster on April 22nd, 1877 by decision of the presbytery . After lengthy negotiations he was finally able to return to Spenge in 1993, where he has now found his place in the new choir of the Martinskirche.
literature
- A. Schmidt: Protocol of the church visitation of the county Ravensberg from the year 1533: according to the files of the royal. Staatsarchiv zu Düsseldorf, in: Yearbook of the Association for the Protestant Church History of Westphalia 6 (1904), pp. 135–169, here p. 148ff.
- Leopold von Ledebur: The Principality of Minden and the County of Ravensberg. Monuments of History, Art and Antiquity (1825). Edited by Andreas Priever and Ulrich Henselmeyer with the collaboration of Jan Sachers (Herford Research, Vol. 21), Bielefeld 2009, pp. 143–144.
- Mathias Austermann: The excavation in the ev. Luth. St. Martinus Church in Spenge, Herford district. In: Westphalia. 70, 1992, ISSN 0043-4337 , pp. 124-131.
- Burkhard Budde (ed.): The Spenger Altar. Church life in the city of Spenge. Past present Future. Knoth, Melle 1993, ISBN 3-88368-250-0 .
- Albert Ludorff : The architectural and art monuments of the Herford district (= The architectural and art monuments of Westphalia 24). Schöningh, Münster 1908 (Unchanged reprint. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 1994, ISBN 3-922032-64-8 ).
Web links
Coordinates: 52 ° 8 ′ 41.6 ″ N , 8 ° 29 ′ 0.9 ″ E