Moritz Church (Spandau)

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Coordinates: 52 ° 32 ′ 15 ″  N , 13 ° 12 ′ 6.2 ″  E

Moritzkirche (marked in yellow) on a map of Spandau in 1728
The building from the south before demolition (1920)

The Moritzkirche was a church building in Spandau . It is mentioned for the first time in 1461, but was certainly older and existed until 1920. From 1806 it was used as a barracks . The church bore the patronage of St. Mauritius . It was between the southern end of Jüdenstrasse and the city wall, today Viktoriaufer.

history

Time of origin

The time when the church was built is controversial among historians. The first written message about the existence of the church dates back to 1461, when the presbyter Martinus Brunne bought a newly built altar in honor of the Virgin Mary and Saints Andrew , Laurentius and Antonius in the "Church of St. Mauritii" from his paternal inheritance. at which he was a cleric himself . However, the beginnings of the church are certainly earlier. Hans-Herbert Möller considers it possible that originally only the eastern part could have existed, which was enlarged to double its size towards the west at the beginning or middle of the 15th century.

In sources from 1461, 1500 and 1543 the church is also called ecclesia parochalis “parish church”, old or past parish church ; For Joachim Pohl, "the memory of this past state", that St. Moritz had served as a parish church, is "consciously cultivated" in these documents. Earlier sources are not known, so that an assessment is very difficult. It is disputed among historians whether it was the oldest parish church in Spandau, a second parish church next to the St. Nicholas Church or a monastery church of the Benedictine monastery . A function as a monastery church presupposes that the nunnery founded in 1239, which was located outside the city walls immediately south of the later so-called "Potsdamer Thor", was originally built in the west near the medieval city center; When it came to lie within the wall ring after the city was expanded and the city wall was built in 1319, it was moved to the south because it had to be outside the city due to the rules of the order. The Moritzkirche, as a monastery church at the original location of the monastery, dates from the middle of the 13th century. This thesis was advocated by Albert Ludewig, but it is definitely doubted by Hans-Herbert Möller, who assumes that the building was built towards the end of the 14th century, and not as a monastery church. Gunther Jahn thinks that the church will be built at the beginning of the 15th century as "very likely".

Joachim Pohl also considers Ludewig's thesis to be wrong, since as early as 1251 one of the monastery churches consecrated to St. Mary (and not St. Mauritius) was mentioned in writing, which was located at the monastery south of the city. He assumes that the Moritzkirche was built even earlier, namely the 13th, possibly the 12th century, and sees St. Mauritius as the first parish church in Spandow after Christianization. Christianization came from the Archdiocese of Magdeburg , whose patron saint was Mauritius , in the Slavic-German transition period of the Mark Brandenburg , and brought with it the worship of Mauritius, as was also the case in Mittenwalde and Jüterbog . Around the year 1240 , according to Pohl, the Benedictine nuns transferred the status of the parish church to the market church ( ecclesia forensis ) St. Nikolai, which was restored by the Spandau citizenship , in order to enable the citizenship to develop into a representative city church with parish rights, and the Moritzkirche became a minor church. In any case, in a document from 1323, St. Nikolai is the only parish church in Spandau. The sexton of St. Nikolai supplied the Moritzkirche and received 24 groschen a year. According to several documents from the 15th and 16th centuries, the church leaders of the Moritzkirche were probably identical to those of the Nikolaikirche and at the same time belonged to the city council

A connection with the Benedictine monastery was that the abbess had the church patronage over the churches in Spandau and the surrounding area, was responsible for the services and was therefore the superior of the pastors and other clergy at the St. Nicholas Church and its neighboring churches . In 1500, the Hüfner von Spandau complained to the monastery about “negligent service” at St.Moritz - according to a foundation, Holy Mass should be celebrated on Wednesdays and Fridays - and refused to make their donations until the problem was resolved. According to the regulations of their Spandau guild of 1485, new master shoemakers had to pay two pfennigs to the Moritzkirche. Around the middle of the 16th century, in addition to the Marienaltar from 1461, two other altars are mentioned that were equipped with an altar foundation : a Johannes altar , which brought 1½ shock income, and a rifle altar endowed with 2½ shock and 18 groschen.

16. – 19. century

Even after the Reformation was introduced in Spandau in 1539 and a corn floor was installed in 1545/46, sermons continued to be held occasionally in the St. Moritz Church, which had become Protestant , although the importance of the church declined. Because the nunnery was doomed to extinction with the Reformation, the Moritzkirche was also deprived of its economic basis. The monastery property and the patronage over the churches fell to the office of Spandau. In 1552 the city council spent three groschen on cleaning the church. One bell had to be delivered to Hennigsdorf on the orders of Elector Joachim II , a second went to the commandant of the citadel in 1656, where it was still used as a clock bell at the end of the 18th century. As a replacement, the Moritzkirche got two smaller bells, one of which it gave to the Nikolaikirche as a gate bell in 1716.

The Moritzkirche had become "desolate" over time, fell into disrepair and served as a hostel for beggars until the city council of Spandow decided in 1642 to have it built as a replacement for the abandoned Gertraudenkirche in Stresow . Since the donations received were apparently insufficient for this, Pancratius Gunzel only painted the ceiling with arabesques . In a second attempt in 1656, more donations were collected so that the church could be thoroughly renovated. On September 22nd, 1657, the day of remembrance of St. Mauritius, the renewed Evangelical Lutheran Church was inaugurated by Inspector Joachim Mauritz, and three sermons were held in the church that day. In the years that followed, preaching took place all year round on “ Apostle days” and on weekdays. In the 18th century, the church received income from donated fields, donations and the sale of grave sites in the cemetery. From 1659, the artillery unit stationed in Spandau was allowed to hold services in the Moritzkirche, from 1716, on the orders of King Friedrich Wilhelm I and at the request of General Johann Sigmund von Schwendy, Protestant Sunday services were regularly held there by the garrison, from 1713 until the penal chapel was enlarged in 1721 also for the prisoners of the nearby penitentiary . Before that, the military services had taken place since 1709 in the newly built castle chapel on the Spandau citadel . Catholic soldiers were directed to the chapel on the gun map . When the Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg , campaigned for the opening of the church to the growing Reformed community , the Magistrate of Spandau refused. As a result, the Johanneskirche was built for the Reformed community at the northern end of Jüdenstrasse .

Military use

When Spandau was occupied by the French in 1806, the building's use as a church ended. The French military first set up a slaughterhouse and later a forage magazine , and the pulpit and stalls were removed. After the withdrawal of the French troops, the Prussian army continued to use the former church as a forage magazine. The magistrate sold the building, which had been devastated inside, to the military treasury for 2000 thalers , because money was needed to restore the Nikolaikirche after the destruction by the French military. The application of the Catholic community, which grew strongly, to buy the church was approved by the government in Potsdam, but not approved by the Spandau magistrate in 1826. The Catholics then built the Church of St. Marien am Behnitz in 1847/48 . The Moritzkirche was included in the barracks complex on Jüdenstrasse, occasionally served as a parade hall and in 1837 it was converted into a team quarters for teams from the military shooting school, where it served until the end of the First World War.

When living space urgently needed to be made available in Spandau for the workers of the settled industrial companies after the First World War, city planning officer Karl Elkart had the Moritz barracks demolished along with other buildings in 1920 in order to build several three-storey tenement houses in Jüdenstraße and on Viktoriaufer. It was neglected to take a construction survey of the building to be demolished.

The construction

East wall of the former Moritzkirche (1907)

The church was an elongated building in an approximate east-west orientation with a size of about 28.60 × 10.60 m, as can still be seen today from the files of the city property office. The files of 1836 said it was 90 feet long, 33 feet wide, 22 feet clear , and 3½ feet (about 1 meter) thick. It was built on a low field stone plinth in the Brandenburg federation , the bricks were monastery format in two sizes: 7.5 × 13.5 × 25 cm and 10-11 × 13.5-14 × 30 cm. The roof was supported by a small turret with a bell . The rectangular hall church had a flat closed choir to the east , which was slightly drawn in opposite the western part, with possibly three windows; Walled-up windows were still recognizable even when it was used as barracks. The position of the altars and pulpit can no longer be determined, on the west side there was a wooden gallery inside ("student choir"). A large late Gothic window was later placed in the east wall - at the time of the altar foundation or later in connection with the addition of floors. Until at least 1552 the Moritzkirche had a church tower with a clock tower and several bells.

The entire building was presumably increased in 1545/46, a false ceiling was put in and the roof turret was removed. This created an upper floor above the church in the basement, which was used as a grain floor. Four new windows were broken into; their location can no longer be reconstructed. The windows in the basement were barred in 1547 and given shutters. Since the 16th century there was a rectangular extension of 10 x 5 m on the north side, presumably a sacristy .

Around the middle of the 17th century, the thorough repairs decided by the magistrate took place, during which eleven windows, two large pewter candlesticks and a door with a lock and hook straps could be installed. In addition, the wooden altar created in 1604 from the Gertraudenkirche, which was demolished in 1640 and a foundation of Countess Lynar , came into the church; For this, the electoral construction clerk Joachim Steinhaeuser, in whom Gunther Jahn sees the driving force of the renovation, built a stone substructure. The altar was perhaps a scaled-down replica of the altar retable in the Nikolaikirche . The picture program showed the Lord's Supper , above the crucifixion and above the ascension of Christ and also below members of the Lynar family. The pulpit with representations of the Apostle Paul , Jesus Christ with the Easter lamb and victory flag, Moses with the tablets of the law and (perhaps on the pulpit) the four evangelists could have been taken over from the Gertraudenkirche. There were stalls for the council, preachers and the church council. Next to the pulpit hung a painting showing the Last Judgment . There was also a wall painting with the theme "Jesus Christ and the four evangelists". In 1776 over two hundred thalers were spent on a "major repair".

When converting to a barracks, all existing windows were removed and replaced by new window break-ins, some as double windows.

Tombs and cemetery

The elector's construction clerk Steinhaeuser created a hereditary burial for himself in 1656 in the form of two vaults arranged one above the other behind the pulpit, in which he was buried. In 1687 Lieutenant Melchior Valentin from Priort was buried in a grave in front of the pulpit in Moritzkirche , which was surrounded by a wall and closed by a small vault. As a result, numerous officers from the Spandau garrison were buried there. The "Steinhaeusersche Gewölbe" was repaired in 1737 after the Steinhaeuser's heirs had given it back to the church in 1709. One of the vaults was underground, one above ground. The sarcophagi could be buried in them. A burial in one of the vaults cost forty thalers, elsewhere in the church ten thalers.

The St. Mauritz Kirchhoff surrounded the church and extended from the city wall in the west to Jüdenstrasse in the east. Since the beginning of its existence, the St. Mauritius Church has had the churchyard belonging to a parish church, says Joachim Pohl. When St. Nikolai became the parish church, its functions were transferred to its cemetery, and the Moritzkirche cemetery was only rarely used. There has been regular burial again since 1612, when 927 people died of the plague , so that the Nikolaifriedhof became too small; the cemetery was then called "New Churchyard". A grave digger's house was already mentioned in 1549, a limestone house had to be repaired in 1679 and was demolished in 1697. In 1779 a barn was built for the hearse . The cemetery, which brought the church income from the sale of grave sites, was greatly reduced in size in 1767/68 by the construction of a barracks on the south side and in 1784 a military hospital on the north side. In 1786, to replace an above-ground vault for burials on the city wall, which was fully occupied, a new vault was built at the "Wasserpforte", a new breakthrough through the city wall for Moritzstrasse. Möller suspects that after the devastation of the Moritzkirche in 1806 the burials were also stopped. Most of the cemetery grounds were transformed into a barracks yard in 1836/37, and there were also smaller residential buildings and a peat shed for the penal institution on the property. The Gottfried Kinkel School was built in 1876 on the last part of the cemetery on Moritzstrasse.

literature

  • Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 1971, pp. 187–193.
  • Hans-Herbert Möller : The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 15, Berlin 1962, pp. 59-70.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Text of the document: pro fundatione et dedicatione cuisdam novi altaris sub vocabulo et honore gloriose virginis Marie, genitricis dei, sancti Andree, apostoli, sancti Laurentii, martiris, et beati Anthonii, confessoris, in loco ecclesie parochialis sancti, Mauritii opidii Spandow , after Joachim Pohl: The Benedictine nunnery of St. Marien zu Spandau and the church institutions of the city of Spandau in the Middle Ages. Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1996, p. 85 note 31.
    Joachim Pohl points out that Otto Kuntzemüller ( Documentary history of the city and fortress Spandau. 1881, reprint 1928/29, p. 247.) and Hans-Herbert Möller ( The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 15, Berlin 1962, pp. 59–70, here p. 63) based on a translation of the document written in 1640 by the Spandau preacher Christian Schnee, where the “ rebuilt ”is incorrectly related to the church and not to the altar.
  2. ^ Hans-Herbert Möller: The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 15, Berlin 1962, pp. 59–70, here p. 64.
  3. ^ The Benedictine nunnery of St. Marien zu Spandau and the church institutions of the city of Spandau in the Middle Ages. Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1996, p. 86.
  4. ↑ Albert Ludewig: Considerations on Merian's townscapes in terms of architectural history with special consideration of the engraving 'Die Stadt vnd ​​Fortress Spandow'. In: Monthly sheets of the Landesgeschichtliche Vereinigung für die Mark Brandenburg , Volume 48 (1943), pp. 17-25.
  5. ^ Hans-Herbert Möller: The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 15, Berlin 1962, pp. 59-70, here pp. 60-64.
  6. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187–193, here p. 187.
  7. ^ Joachim Pohl: The Benedictine nunnery of St. Marien zu Spandau and the church institutions of the city of Spandau in the Middle Ages. Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1996, pp. 87–91, 399f (sexton and ruler), 561 (Marienpatrozinium of the monastery church).
  8. ^ Joachim Pohl: The Benedictine nunnery of St. Marien zu Spandau and the church institutions of the city of Spandau in the Middle Ages. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1996, p. 92.399.
  9. ^ Hans-Herbert Möller: The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 15, Berlin 1962, pp. 59–70, here p. 64.
  10. ^ Joachim Pohl: The Benedictine nunnery of St. Marien zu Spandau and the church institutions of the city of Spandau in the Middle Ages. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1996, p. 399.
  11. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187–193, here p. 191.
  12. ↑ Joachim Pohl: The Benedictine nunnery St. Marien zu Spandau. P. 399 (cleaning), for the whole: 533f, 555 and: Felix Escher: Piety and cultural life in Spandau before the Reformation. P. 147; Joachim Pohl: (Berlin-) Spandau. Benedictine women. In: Klaus Neitmann (ed.): Brandenburg monastery book. Handbook of the monasteries, pens and commander by the mid-16th century. Volume II. Berlin-Brandenburg 2007, p. 1182.11877.
  13. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187–193, here p. 192.
  14. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187–193, here p. 150.
  15. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187–193, here p. 150.
  16. ^ Hans-Herbert Möller: The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 15, Berlin 1962, pp. 59-70, here pp. 65f.
  17. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187-193, here pp. 188f.
  18. ↑ Franz Kohstall: history of the Catholic parish Spandau. Spandau 1924, p. 47.
  19. ^ Hans-Herbert Möller: The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 15, Berlin 1962, pp. 59–70, here p. 66.
  20. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187-193, here pp. 188f.
    Shooting school: Otto Kuntzemüller: Documented history of the city and fortress Spandau. 1881, reprint 1928/29, p. 248.
  21. ^ Hans-Herbert Möller: The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 15, Berlin 1962, pp. 59–70, here p. 59.
  22. ↑ Often mentioned under this name by Daniel Friedrich Schulze: On the description and history of Spandau , published by Otto Recke, Spandau 1913.
  23. ^ Joachim Pohl: The Benedictine nunnery of St. Marien zu Spandau and the church institutions of the city of Spandau in the Middle Ages. Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1996, p. 399f.
  24. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187–193, here p. 188.
  25. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187–193, here pp. 188f., 191f (equipment).
  26. ^ Hans-Herbert Möller: The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. 15th volume, Berlin 1962, pp. 59-70, here pp. 60-67.
  27. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187–193, here p. 190.
  28. ^ Hans-Herbert Möller: The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 15, Berlin 1962, pp. 59–70, here p. 66.
  29. ^ Gunther Jahn: The buildings and art monuments of Berlin. City and district of Spandau. Berlin 1971, pp. 187-193, here pp. 188.192f.
  30. ^ Joachim Pohl: The Benedictine nunnery of St. Marien zu Spandau and the church institutions of the city of Spandau in the Middle Ages. Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1996, p. 86f.
  31. ^ Hans-Herbert Möller: The former Moritzkirche in Spandau. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 15, Berlin 1962, pp. 59-70, here pp. 59.67f.