Michaelskapelle (Bad Godesberg)

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View from the south of the Godesburg to the Michaelskapelle (February 2012)
The baroque interior (February 2012)
Statue of the Archangel Michael with sword on the dragon, which is located in the center of the high altar (October 2007)

The Michaelskapelle is a church building in the Bad Godesberg district of Bonn . The building is located about 60 meters northwest of the keep of the Godesburg, which was built in 1210 . It is a listed building as a monument .

history

Before the laying of the foundation stone for the construction of the Godesburg in October 1210 under the Archbishop of Cologne Dietrich I von Hengebach , an existing cemetery chapel dedicated to St. Michael had to give way on the Godesberg . The Cistercian monk and chronicler Caesarius von Heisterbach reports in his work “ Dialogus miraculorum ” about the demolition of the chapel in the course of the construction of the castle on the Godesberg. In the course of renovation work in the sixties of the last century, some exposed, east-facing Christian graves, the oldest from the 9th century, were able to delimit the original location of this cemetery chapel in the area of ​​the castle tower in the center of the mountain plateau.

As early as the first half of the 13th century, possibly in the course of the first expansion of the castle complex in 1244 under Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden , a new chapel dedicated to St. Michael was built outside the actual castle complex in the area of ​​today's Michaelskapelle. The exact dimensions of this chapel are not known, but parts of the current masonry come from this previous building. During the construction of the outer ward under the Archbishop Walram of Jülich (1332-1349) was the chapel of the outer fortification and possibly lost at that time its importance as a Christian church. When the castle complex was blown up in the course of the Truchsessian War in 1583, this Michael's chapel was also largely destroyed.

Around 1660 the chapel was rebuilt and rededicated to the Archangel Michael. A drawing by the Dutch painter Lambert Doomer from 1663 shows an intact church building near the Godesburg.

After the chapel was supplemented by a nave from 1697 to 1699 under Joseph Clemens von Bayern , from 1688 to 1723 Prince Archbishop of Cologne and the interior was furnished with a splendid Baroque decoration , from 1699 it became the house church of the Order of St. Michael, founded a few years earlier . The ceiling frescoes are by Lazaro Maria Sanguinetti . In the period that followed, the church served as a place of prayer for the citizens of Godesberg and, until 1787, as a meeting place for the religious celebrations of the Order of Michael.

Clemens August I of Bavaria , Prince Archbishop of Cologne from 1723 to 1761, relocated the oratory of the Order of St. Michael from Godesberg to Bonn, which made the St. Michael's Chapel in Godesberg less important. In his residential palace in Bonn, today's main university building , he furnished splendidly furnished rooms for the Order of Michael above the specially built Koblenz Gate , which then fell victim to a fire in 1777.

When Godesberg broke away from its centuries-old affiliation to the parish of Rüngsdorf in 1804, the Michaelskapelle became the parish church of the village of Godesberg. At that time the chapel received a baptismal font and an organ. A free-standing wooden bell tower was built for two bells procured from secularized Bonn churches.

Rapid population growth and the arduous path to the Michael's Chapel on Godesberg led to the construction of a new parish church at the foot of the mountain. The inauguration of the new, larger parish church of St. Mary took place on October 5, 1862 . In the following years, the baroque pulpit, the baptismal font and the gallery were removed from the Michael's Chapel. From then on, the Michaelskapelle was used as a cemetery chapel for the nearby castle cemetery and as a station during the Good Friday procession.

Today church services and weddings are occasionally held in the Michael's Chapel.

photos

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. List of monuments of the city of Bonn (as of March 15, 2019), p. 8, number A 23


Coordinates: 50 ° 41 ′ 8.5 ″  N , 7 ° 9 ′ 0.7 ″  E