Martinskirche (Heuchelheim)

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Southwest side of the church

The Protestant Martinskirche , also known as the Old Church or Martinskapelle, in Heuchelheim an der Lahn in the Gießen district in Central Hesse is a choir tower church , the four structures of which were built in the 13th to 15th centuries. The most valuable piece of equipment is the late Gothic St. Mary's altar (“Heuchelheim Altar”), which dates from the second half of the 15th century. The church with its striking tower, which has four stone gables and a three-storey tower spire, characterizes the townscape and is a Hessian cultural monument .

history

Interior to the east

A vice pleban named Henrich and a pleban are mentioned in documents from 1255, the cemetery 1279. In the previous building, a wooden chapel from around 900, St. Martin , the Franconian national saint , was venerated. The church was built in the 13th century and was originally dedicated to Mary and Saints George and Valentine . This can be explained by the mariological influence of Altenberg Monastery , which at the time was in charge of building supervision, probably under the direction of Gertrud von Altenberg . In its original form, the nave took up the width of the choir tower, which presumably had an east apse . It was replaced in the 13th century by a rectangular choir with a polygonal finish. In the 15th century the old and low nave was widened and raised to the level of the choir. The old roof approach on the tower can still be seen. The old west portal and parts of the west wall were preserved. In addition, a sacristy was added to the north side of the choir , which is dated to the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th century. The formerly round arched, narrower and probably also unequal large triumphal arches of the choir tower were enlarged and made pointed arch. In the 15th century the veneration of St. Martin flourished again, as the St. Martin bell from 1452 and the depiction of Martin on the altar (around 1500) prove. The new ship was built in 1512. This date is stamped on the north pillar of the triumphal arch.

In the 15th century, the parish was assigned to the deanery of Wetzlar and the archdeaconate of St. Lubentius Dietkirchen in the diocese of Trier . During the Reformation , Heuchelheim changed to the evangelical creed in 1529 at the latest. The first Protestant pastor was Johannes Gernand, who worked there from 1536 to 1570.

In 1592 the galleries were built in, in 1613 the tower collapsed and received the current helmet during the reconstruction.

The wall paintings whitewashed in the middle of the 19th century and the gallery paintings covered with white oil paint were uncovered again in the course of the interior renovation in 1925/26. In addition, the fixtures in the choir were removed and the original red painting of the ribs in the choir vault was restored. During a renovation in 2009, the roof structure of the choir was restored to its original state with old beams.

On January 1st, 2020 the parish merged with Kinzenbach to form the "Evangelical Martinsgemeinde Heuchelheim-Kinzenbach". The congregation belongs to the Evangelical Dean's Office Gießen of the Upper Hesse Provost in the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau .

architecture

East side of the church

The oldest part of the east-facing church in the old village center is the 16-meter-high, massive choir tower from the 13th century on an approximately square floor plan, the four stone triangular gables of which merge into a wooden structure from 1613. The octagonal middle floor merges into a pointed helmet, which is crowned by a tower button, cross and weathercock. The total height of the tower is 36 meters. Inside the tower has a groin vault . A connecting corridor from the tower leads to the new Martinskirche, which was built between 1969 and 1972 next to the old church.

The rectangular choir with five-eighth end from the 13th century is supported on the outside by buttresses. Two ogival tracery windows with quatrefoil on the east and south sides provide the choir with light. The lead-glazed east window was created by Otto Linnemann in 1926 . It shows the four evangelists . Inside, the rib vault ends in figural keystones with the head of the "green man". Below the window front there are ogival niches in three walls, which are cut on the north wall through the sacristy and its ogival, chamfered door.

On the north side, the sacristy is built on a rectangular floor plan, which is closed by a pointed barrel vault and can be entered through a small door. For several years since 1954 it served to commemorate those who fell in the world wars.

Today's nave from the 16th century is wider than the tower and has ogival west and south portals. The west portal is from the previous building of the 13th century. A coat of arms with a chalice and three rosettes is embedded in the keystone of the archway. A tracery window on the south side and several small rectangular windows, which were later broken through, illuminate the room. On the north side, the ogival window is walled up outside.

Furnishing

Mary Altar
Sacrament niche

The interior is closed off by a flat ceiling with a joist in the northern third of the room, which is supported by three wooden posts with four services each . Various paintings have been preserved. In the choir, the original medieval painting with red cuboid lines, a tendril frieze and painted tracery windows on the sloping surfaces of the choir closure is still completely preserved. The figurative Secco painting by an unknown master depicting the crucifixion scene on the north wall of the tower measures 4.10 × 3.50 meters and is dated around 1400. On the south wall you can see Martin Luther with a swan (1749). On the north side of the nave there are remains of a Christophorus painting from around 1500 in the shield arch. The ceiling painting with the sun, moon and stars in a large circle comes from the Baroque period (around 1700). Two angels on the ceiling field at the triumphal arch date from the same time, blowing the trumpet and holding a vignette: “Whoever listens to God's word, thinks about it in life, and therefore has it in front of his eyes, in his ears and in his heart and in the spirit, he is welcome also stay gotlob and live in the father's house with God the Lord! "

The oldest piece of furniture is a large late Romanesque baptismal font made of Lungstein, weighing around two tons, with an arched frieze from around 1130, which was erected in front of the church in 1934 and has been located in the choir of the new St.

The late Gothic St. Mary's altar is a winged altar that was created in the second half of the 15th century with a width of 3.5 meters. The base and the predella are later additions. Carved representations of Mary can be seen on the five fields of the middle section (1.56 × 1.27 meters). A large crescent Madonna holding the Baby Jesus in her arms is flanked by two-story fields, which deal with the preaching of Mary , the birth and adoration of Jesus and the death of Mary. The inside of the two wings shows paintings of holy women, on the left Katharina with a wheel and Margaret with a dragon, on the right Barbara with a tower and chalice and Dorothea with a child and a basket. The crucifixion scene is shown on the outside left. The drops of blood of the crucified Christ falling on the ground cause flowers to bloom. On the right, Saint Martin rides a horse and shares his robe with a beggar. The altar still has the medieval plate, but it was later reduced and modified.

A late Gothic wooden crucifix of the three-nail type hangs on the wall above the old side altar on the south side of the nave. Three blessing crosses are carved into the granite slab of the altar. The latticed sacrament niche on the north side is richly decorated and was partially knocked off when the organ gallery was installed, which was temporarily housed in the choir room. The actual niche is closed with a metal grille and has a profiled frame that rests on a half-column with heraldic panels and a pentagonal base. The depiction of a man whose head and hands protrude three-dimensionally and who grasps a carpet rod serves as an eyelash . It is flanked by two smaller heads.

The three-sided gallery was created in 1592 by the master craftsman Hans Krauskop according to the bar inscription. Paintings of Christ and the twelve apostles on the western and long southern balustrades date from the time of the building. On the narrow south side three Old Testament scenes can be seen: Adam and Eve , the sacrifice of Isaac and Jacob's dream of the ladder to heaven , the north gallery shows New Testament scenes from the Passion story of Jesus to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Each of the panels has a heading.

The wooden polygonal Renaissance pulpit from 1617 rests on a square foot. The pulpit fields are coffered in the lower third. In the upper part of the parapet flowers are depicted under roofed round arches. Two marble epitaphs for parish priests date from 1694 and 1737. The latter is made of black Lahn marble and is dedicated to Philipp Wilhelm Geilfus. Glass windows for the church were created by Professor Otto Linnemann from Frankfurt in 1913/1928 .

organ

Küster organ in 1862
Organ behind a historic prospect from the 18th century.

It was not until the beginning of the 18th century that the church received its first organ, which has been repaired in 1725. It was replaced in 1793 by a work by the Marburg organ builder Georg Friedrich Küster. The third organ was built in by Adam Karl Bernhard in 1868, which he had taken from Klein-Karben in payment. It probably goes back to Johann Christian Köhler (1755) or his successor Philipp Ernst Wegmann (1767). The allocation of the prospectus to Köhler / Wegmann was confirmed by the organologist Hermann Fischer and an examination of the pipes in 2018. The former Klein-Karben prospectus is compared with the organ in Neunkirchen (Westerwald) from 1755 , which has the same structure but is based on an eight-footed organ. The same prospectus model was also used later by the workshop, namely in Heisters and in Groß-Eichen .

Today's organ on the west gallery was created by Förster & Nicolaus Orgelbau in 1926 behind the historic prospectus. The side instrument was financed by a donation from the entrepreneur Ludwig Rinn . The prospectus is divided into seven pipe fields and still contains the prospectus pipes from 1755 and 1767, which are, however, mute. The elevated central tower is flanked by narrow two-story pipe fields, which stand with the medium-sized pointed towers under a common cornice. On the outside, small harp fields form the end. All pipe fields are decorated above with gilded veil boards. The crowning cornices are richly profiled. The work has 13 registers , which are divided into two manuals and pedal , and has pneumatic cone chests . The soft bass in the pedal sounds as the wind weakening of the sub-bass . The disposition is in the romantic tradition and is as follows:

I Manual C-g 3
Principal 8th'
Dumped 8th'
Viola di gamba 8th'
octave 4 ′
Fifth 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
octave 2 ′
II Manual C-g 3
Flauto Amabile 8th'
Salicional 8th'
Aeoline 8th'
Vox Coelestis 8th'
Flute 4 ′
Pedal C – f 1
Sub-bass 16 ′
Soft bass 16 ′
Cello bass 8th'
  • Pairing :
    • Normal coupling: II / I, I / P, II / P
    • Super octave coupling: I / II (in II expanded to g 4 )
    • Sub-octave coupling: I / II
  • Playing aids : Fixed combinations (p, f, tutti), crescendo / decrescendo roller, automatic piano pedal, blind swell

Bells

The tower houses three bronze bells, two from the mid-15th century and the small late Gothic Our Father's bell, which has no inscription or year. The bells survived the collapse of the steeple in December 1612. According to the Salbuch of 1741, the fourth bell is said to have been sold to Giessen at the end of the Thirty Years' War . Johann Henschel cast it in 1683. Due to their age and value, the bells were not confiscated in 1917. The bell from 1455 was delivered in 1942 for armament purposes. However, it escaped being melted down and was brought back from the bell cemetery in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg to Heuchelheim, where it arrived on September 12, 1947 and was rebuilt into the bell cage with a new clapper from October 15 to 17, 1947.

No.
  		Casting year
  		Foundry, casting location
  		Diameter
(mm) 		Mass
(kg) 		Chime
  		inscription
  		image
 
1 1452 Tilman von Hachenburg , Andernach 1075 650 ges 1 " Sanctus martinus heyssen I piss off all bad weyder me meyster delemann von hachenburg gose me m cccc l ii " Evangelical Church (Heuchelheim, Hessen) 47.JPG
2 1455 Tilman von Hachenburg, Andernach 940 500 as 1 " In ere des helgen cruce i invited anno domini milesimo quaderendesimo m ccccc lv [relief with crucifix]" Evangelical Church (Heuchelheim, Hessen) 49.JPG
3 15./16. Century unsigned 630 ges 2 Evangelical Church (Heuchelheim, Hessen) 51.JPG

literature

  • Georg Dehio : Handbook of German art monuments , Hessen I: Administrative districts of Giessen and Kassel. Edited by Folkhard Cremer, Tobias Michael Wolf and others. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-422-03092-3 , p. 414.
  • Wilhelm Diehl : Construction book for the Protestant parishes of the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt (= Hassia sacra. Volume 5). Self-published, Darmstadt 1931, pp. 238–241.
  • State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.), Karlheinz Lang (Ed.): Kirchstrasse 6, Ev. Church In: Cultural monuments in Hessen. District of Giessen III. The communities Allendorf (Lumda), Biebertal, Heuchelheim, Lollar, Staufenberg and Wettenberg (= monument topography Federal Republic of Germany ). Theiss, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 3-8062-2179-0 , p. 162 f.
  • Heinrich Walbe : The art monuments of the Gießen district. Vol. 1. Northern part. Hessisches Denkmalarchiv, Darmstadt 1938, pp. 233–245.
  • Peter Weyrauch : The churches of the old district of Giessen. Mittelhessische Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, Gießen 1979, p. 86 f.
  • Walter Zwingel: Martinskirche Heuchelheim. W. Bender, Heuchelheim 1986 (church leader).
  • Walter Zwingel: From the Middle Ages to an industrial society - Protestant Church through the ages. In: Kulturring Heuchelheim (Hrsg.): Heuchelheim in words and pictures. Kulturring Heuchelheim, Heuchelheim 1961, pp. 40–53.

Web links

Commons : Alte Martinskirche Heuchelheim  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.), Lang (Ed.): Kirchstrasse 6, Ev. Church. In: Cultural monuments in Hessen. 2010, p. 163.
  2. ↑ Walbe: The art monuments of the district of Giessen. 1938, pp. 230, 233.
  3. ^ Zwingel: Martinskirche Heuchelheim. 1986, p. 2.
  4. ^ Zwingel: Martinskirche Heuchelheim. 1986, p. 3.
  5. ↑ a b State Office for Monument Preservation Hesse (ed.), Lang (edit.): Kirchstrasse 6, Ev. Church. In: Cultural monuments in Hessen. 2010, p. 162.
  6. ↑ During the renovation of the roof structure in the choir, dendrochronological investigations were carried out which show that the trees were felled for the beams in 1298.
  7. ^ Dehio-Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Hessen I. 2008, p. 414.
  8. ↑ a b c Weyrauch: The churches of the old district of Gießen. 1979, p. 86.
  9. ^ Zwingel: Martinskirche Heuchelheim. 1986, p. 3 f.
  10. ↑ a b Heuchelheim. Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on April 17, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b Zwingel: From the Middle Ages to an industrial society. 1961, p. 48.
  12. ^ Diehl: Construction book for the Protestant parishes. 1931, p. 239.
  13. ↑ Evangelical Dean's Office Gießen: Evangelical Martinsgemeinde Heuchelheim-Kinzenbach , accessed on April 18, 2020.
  14. ^ Zwingel: Martinskirche Heuchelheim. 1986, p. 17.
  15. ^ Zwingel: Martinskirche Heuchelheim. 1986, p. 16 f.
  16. ↑ Walbe: The art monuments of the district of Giessen. 1938, p. 239.
  17. ↑ Walbe: The art monuments of the district of Giessen. 1938, p. 236.
  18. ^ Zwingel: Martinskirche Heuchelheim. 1986, p. 9.
  19. ↑ Homepage of the parish: Romanischer Taufstein II , accessed on April 18, 2020.
  20. ^ Franz Bösken , Hermann Fischer : Sources and research on the organ history of the Middle Rhine. Vol. 3: Former province of Upper Hesse (=  contributions to the Middle Rhine music history 29.1 . Part 1 (A – L)). Schott, Mainz 1988, ISBN 3-7957-1330-7 , p. 472-474 .
  21. ^ With a letter dated September 14, 2008.
  22. ↑ According to Dehio's presumption: Dehio-Handbuch der Deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, Hessen I. 2008, p. 414, the prospectus possibly comes from Küster. As the photo from 1862 shows, the Küster organ had a completely different front structure.
  23. ^ Zwingel: Martinskirche Heuchelheim. 1986, p. 6.
  24. ↑ Sound examples of the organ can be found here and here .
  25. ^ Organ in Heuchelheim , accessed on April 18, 2020.
  26. ^ Weyrauch: The churches of the old district Gießen. 1979, p. 87.
  27. ↑ Robert Schäfer: Hessian bell inscriptions (PDF file; 37.7 MB), in: Archives for Hessian history and antiquity. 15, 1884, pp. 475-544, here: p. 529.
  28. ↑ Zwingel: From the Middle Ages to an industrial society. 1961, p. 45.
  29. ↑ Hellmut Schliephake: Bell customer of the district of Wetzlar. In: Heimatkundliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft Lahntal e. V. 12th yearbook. 1989, ISSN  0722-1126 , pp. 5-150, here p. 136.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on April 8, 2014 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 34 ′ 57 "  N , 8 ° 37 ′ 43"  E