Nikolaikapelle (Hanover)

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Nikolaikapelle ruins, the rest of the nave on the left , the front choir on the right
The still intact chapel from a similar perspective; around 1898

The Nikolaikapelle with its choir from 1325 is considered to be the oldest preserved building in Hanover . The chapel was originally built outside of the old city, north of the former stone gate and at the southern beginning of the old St. Nikolai cemetery in front of the (later) Klagesmarkt . The location outside the former city walls was chosen together with the Nikolai monastery as a healing and quarantine location in order to avoid infection of the city's residents with leprosy and plague . The chapel was largely destroyed in the air raids on Hanover in World War II. Today the ruin is a monument .

history

middle Ages

The Nikolaikapelle as the destination of a corpse - procession from the stone gate to the old St. Nikolai cemetery in the " stone gate ";
Copper engraving around 1740 by IG Schmidt after EE Braun , from Grupens Origines Et Antiqvitates

The mayor of Hanover, Christian Ulrich Grupen, suspected in his ORIGINES ET ANTIQVITATES HANOVERENSES , published in 1740 , that the burial site around the Nikolaikapelle was very old, as the residents of the old village of Herrenhausen had always buried their dead there. It was not until 1952 that excavations by the researcher Helmut Plath revealed certainty that the former church was built between 1250 and 1284 “on a rectangular plot of land [still] without the detached choir that has survived today ”. The chapel served as a leper chapel for the Nikolai monastery , which was probably donated by the Hanover City Council before 1259 .

The chapel was first mentioned in a document in 1284 as “capella leprosorum extra muros” (for example: “Leprosy chapel outside the city ​​walls of Hanover ”). At that time, the chapel was separated from the association with the market church and was instead assigned to the parish of St. Spiritus .

The name "capella sancti Nycolai" was first handed down in 1323 , when Johann von Steinhaus the Elder and his heirs were granted the right of patronage over the high altar donated by him in the chapel. Christian Ulrich Grupen later suspected that the naming of the chapel was derived from Nikolaus von Myra as the patron saint of boatmen , as their stacking place on the leash was not far away. The polygonal choir preserved today was presumably added around 1325 in connection with the donated high altar.

While the original, rectangular nave at the southern end of the Nikolaifriedhof was modestly built as quarry stone from limestone , the earliest known occurrence of brick masonry (in today's Hanover) was integrated into the Gothic choir extension .

After the construction of the Holy Spirit or Cross Church in 1333, the chapel passed into its parish . In the following decades, the chapel was mentioned in 1355 in connection with indulgences from various bishops as well as donations and the foundation of an altar of ten thousand martyrs . “Far famous” was also a miraculous picture of the Savior , for whose visit an indulgence was promised and who was housed in an oratory that was built on the right of the southern portal of the (then) churchyard wall. After the Thirty Years War , the picture probably went missing :

Tilly had pitched his tent camp in front of the city, but had not captured Hanover in exchange for war contributions - and looted it. The Nikolaikapelle with its miraculous portrait, however, like many of the districts around the old city that are incorporated today, was outside the city fortifications.

Johann Heinrich Redeckers sketched the oratorio in his Chronik Historische Collectanea around 1723 . A stone drawing by Rudolf Wiegmann in the Hanover City Archives shows the oratory and an additional annex to the chapel, which also pointed towards the stone gate and was demolished in 1824 with the prayer house. Before that, however, large parts of the outer walls of the nave and the entire roof of the chapel had been renewed in 1742/43 due to the damage that had occurred over the centuries.

A picture from the beginning of the 17th century hung in the vestibule of the Nikolaikapelle and depicted the procession of a funeral procession in a scenic setting : the funeral procession moved from the center of the picture with the homeide of the stone gate into the walled Nikolaifriedhof with its chapel.

Beginning of the modern age

View from the north over the cemetery to the chapel, gouache by Justus Elias Kasten , 1820
1906 as the "English Chapel";
Postcard No. 28 from Ludwig Hemmer
Interior with church windows , wall paintings with images of saints , altar and church stalls ;
Postcard No. 55 , anonymous photographer

In 1664, a head tax description first listed the " garden people " in front of the Steintor, which in 1793 was combined with those of the Aegidientorgemeinde to form the Hanover Court School Authority and from which 14 localities were formed in 1829: These were combined in 1843 to form the suburb of Hanover and incorporated in 1859 . This also affected the area around the Nikolaikapelle and the garden people living north of it: In the course of industrialization , the population between Hainholz and the Steintor had risen to around 7,000 people. The area now belonged politically to the 60,000 inhabitants of the city of Hanover, but ecclesiastically still to the community of Hainholz. After long negotiations with the royal ministry , the latter approved the establishment of a separate community for the (present-day) northern city . Until the Christ Church was completed, the Nikolaikapelle was allowed to be used by the new congregation from 1859 to 1864.

While still in the Kingdom of Hanover , the congregation moved from the Nikolaikapelle to the Christ Church built by Conrad Wilhelm Hase , and at the solemn inauguration on September 21, 1864, the patron, King George V , took part personally in the service for this only time .

1869 Nikolai chapel was leased to living in the city of Hanover "English Church" after the English congregation "to ensure the use of 50 years" against the magistrate had offered the city to pay for the cost of an extension and expansion of the chapel . Here, too, Conrad Wilhelm Hase was won as the architect , who in 1883/84 converted the nave into a hall church and extended the nave.

In 1890 the Nikolaikapelle came into municipal ownership, but the English congregation left the chapel before the contractually stipulated 50-year useful life had expired: With the outbreak of the First World War , the German Empire and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had become enemies, and the English congregation became Disbanded in 1914.

As a result, the city of Hanover rented the Nikolaikapelle one after the other to various free church communities until the Second World War .

Inscriptions

  • Group of epitaphs next to the Nikolaikapelle

  • Epitaph for Ludolf von Anderten and his family (1601)

  • Unfinished inscription on another buttress: " Jobst Bleidoren / Johan Arent Höÿer 1663 / IGB"

  • Unfinished inscription on one of the buttresses : " Anno 1654 is the / IDF / Johan"

  • Epitaph for ILSA MARGARE [TA?] († 1654), daughter of Justus Müller and his wife.

  • Stand painting dated 1684 for the master shoemaker Hans Hagen (1627–1716) and his wife Margareta Wietgrefe (1633–1697) with the artist's signature H. JU for the sculptor Hans Jacob Uhle

War and post-war period

The chapel is on the former St. Nikolai cemetery
Redesign of the old St. Nikolai cemetery at the Nikolaikapelle as part of Hannover City 2020 + (2012)

In 1943 the chapel suffered severe damage in an air raid on Hanover . Only the outer walls remained. A partial demolition in 1953 of the larger part of the building in the form of the nave for traffic planning reasons for the purpose of widening the Goseriede was carried out according to plans by urban planner Rudolf Hillebrecht as part of the "car- friendly city ".

This was thought to be necessary in order to build a four-lane carriageway and a roundabout in this area.

The ruins that exist today are only the front Gothic choir of the formerly much larger chapel. This part of the building made of limestone stones is dated to the year 1325. In and around the Nikolaikapelle numerous significant tombs have survived, some of them from the Middle Ages , all of which are also listed . The ruins of the chapel and old tombstones are located in a park-like area that was the St. Nikolai cemetery until 1866 . There are well-preserved tombstones from the 16th to 18th centuries on the outer walls of the chapel. Century. The busy Goseriede street leads past the remains of the wall and leads to the nearby Klagesmarkt. The roundabout created at this point was dismantled in 2012 and 2013.

Urban development changes around the Nikolaikapelle as part of the inner-city renovation concept Hannover City 2020 + took place after an architectural competition. From June 2012, the Goseriede and Celler Strasse streets that crossed the cemetery were partially downsized. During the earthworks in November 2012, parts of the historic cemetery were damaged by excavator drivers. They had exposed human bones there and left them lying there, whereupon the Lower Saxony State Office for the Preservation of Monuments demanded a construction freeze. The bones were reburied in a religious ceremony. At the intervention of the State Office for Monument Preservation, the city of Hanover had the examinations required by the Lower Saxony Monument Protection Act carried out by a specialist company before the earthworks for the redesign were completed.

In addition to the remains of the chapel, a number of gravestones in the form of a lapidarium were erected. Some of them are protected from falling over with the help of rectangular iron bars that are embedded in the ground and connected to the stones by round bars.

Hereditary vault across

The Hinübersche hereditary vault was created "under the chapel of the St. Nikolaifriedhof". Jobst Anton von Hinüber , among others, was buried here.

literature

  • Waldemar R. Röhrbein : Nikolai Chapel. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 477.
  • Helmut Knocke , Hugo Thielen : Goseriede. In: Hanover Art and Culture Lexicon . P. 124.
  • Herbert Mundhenke : Hospital and Abbey St. Nikolai in Hanover. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter . Neue Episode 11 (1958), pp. 193-380.
  • Helmut Plath : On the building history of the Nikolaikapelle. An excavation report. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter. Neue Episode 11 (1958), pp. 381-394.
  • Henrike Schwarz u. a .: The St. Nikolai cemetery and the Neustädter cemetery . Ed .: City of Hanover, Department of Environment and Urban Greenery. Hanover 2003 ( online [PDF; accessed on December 5, 2015] Brochure available free of charge from the department, Arndtstrasse 1, 30167 Hanover).
  • Arnold Nöldeke : Nicolaifriedhof. In: Die Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Hannover , Vol. 1, H. 2, Teil 1, Die Kunstdenkmale der Stadt Hannover , self-published by the provincial administration, Schulzes Buchhandlung, 1932, pp. 239–248 (reprint: Verlag Wenner, Osnabrück 1979, ISBN 3 -87898-151-1 )
  • Gerd Weiß, Marianne Zehnpfennig: Nikolaikapelle and Nikolaifriedhof. In: Monument topography of the Federal Republic of Germany , architectural monuments in Lower Saxony, City of Hanover, part 1, vol. 10.1 , ed. by Hans-Herbert Möller, Lower Saxony State Administration Office - publications by the Institute for Monument Preservation , Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1983, ISBN 3-528-06203-7 , p. 57ff .; here: p. 58; as well as in the middle of the addendum to volume 10.2, list of architectural monuments according to § 4 (NDSchG) (excluding architectural monuments of the archaeological monument preservation) / Status: July 1, 1985 / City of Hanover , p. 3ff.
  • Helmut Zimmermann : Hölty received a "decayed burial". In: From the Steintor to Herrenhausen. Forays into Hanover's history. Verlag Ellen Harenberg-Labs, 1986, ISBN 3-89042-018-4 , pp. 16-21.
  • Ernst-August Nebig: Finally save the jewel Nikolaikapelle! No more debates and always new reports, action is required. In: home country. 2005, ZDB -ID 501220-x , pp. 173-175.
  • Michael Braune, Klaus Harenberg: Dealing with a ruin: Nikolai chapel in Hanover. In: Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony , vol. 27, no. 3, 2007, pp. 88–91.
  • P. Paul Zalewski: News about the oldest building in Hanover. For building research on the cemetery chapel in the old town Nikolaifriedhof. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter. New series 60 (2006), pp. 265–289.
  • Stefanie Richter: Foundation and development of the Christ Church Community until 1900. In: 1859–2009. 150 years of the Christ Church in Hanover. Anniversary publication on the occasion of the foundation of the community on August 28, 1859, ed. self-published by the Protestant-Lutheran parish of North Town, editors: Stefanie Sonnenburg, Felicitas Kröger, Wolfgang Pietsch, Claudia Probst, Peter Troche, Rolf Wießell, Hannover 2009, p. 13f.
  • Simon Benne et al. a .: Insufficient cleanliness: The plague rages in the streets. In: Michael Schwibbe, Hans Staroska, Andreas Stephainski (Hrsg.): Zeit-Reise. 900 years of life in Hanover. Verlagsgruppe Madsack , Hannover 2008, ISBN 978-3-940308-26-9 , p. 44.
  • Hanne Lahde-Fiedler, Reinhard Wolf (Red.): Second phase. Design documentation Klagesmarkt. In: Hannover City 2020+. The competition. ed. from the state capital Hanover, Baudezernat, Hanover September 2010, p. 46ff.
  • Conrad von Meding: City 2020 / criticism of plans for space development , in the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ) on July 23, 2009, last accessed on November 19, 2012
  • Conrad von Meding: Nikolaifriedhof / Bagger opens several graves in the city , in the HAZ on November 19, 2012, last accessed on November 19, 2012
  • Claus Conrad: History of the St. Nikolai Friedhöfe , text as a PDF document for the Nikolai Stift, last accessed in 2012 on May 29, 2013
  • Michael Heinrich Schormann / Rainer Schomann / Friedrich-Wilhelm Wulf : The Nikolaifriedhof in Hanover, a place of historical interest. In: Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony. 4/2013

Web links

Commons : Nikolaikapelle  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Nikolai Chapel. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover, p. 477.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Arnold Nöldeke: Nicolaifriedhof ...
  3. ^ A b Rainer Kasties MA: Nikolai-Stift. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 477.
  4. ^ A b Gerd Weiss, Marianne Zehnpfennig: Nikolaikapelle and Nikolaifriedhof. In: Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany ... , p. 51; and in the middle of the annex to vol. 10.2: List of architectural monuments in accordance with § 4 (NDSchG) (excluding architectural monuments of the archaeological monument preservation) / Status: July 1, 1985 / City of Hanover , p. 3f.
  5. ↑ a b Christian Ulrich Grupen: ORIGINES ET ANTIQVITATES HANOVERENSES , p. 13.
  6. ↑ Helmut Plath: On the history of construction .... p. 477.
  7. ↑ see map on p. 16a of the digitized book.
  8. ↑ Helmut Knocke, Hugo Thielen: Goseriede ..., p. 124.
  9. ^ Klaus Mlynek : Thirty Years War 1618-1648. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , pp. 139f.
  10. ^ Johann Heinrich Redecker: Historical Collectanea from the Royal and Electoral Residence City of Hanover ... started on July 8, 1723; 2 volumes with a register volume, p. 189.
  11. ^ Arnold Nöldeke: Nicolaifriedhof .... as well as Bernhard Hausmann : Memories from the eighty-year life of a Hanoverian citizen , Hahn , Hanover 1873; P. 123. , digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf
  12. ↑ A figure can be found in the digitized version of Christian Ulrich Grupens Origines Et Antiqvitates Hanoverenses… on p. 70a from the University Library Center of North Rhine-Westphalia
  13. ^ Klaus Mlynek: Nordstadt. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 482f.
  14. ↑ a b Stefanie Richter: Foundation and development of the Christ parish until 1900 ... p. 13.
  15. ^ Helmut Knocke: Hillebracht, Rudolf. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 295f.
  16. ↑ State Office orders construction freeze on the Goseriede In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung of November 20, 2012
  17. ↑ Hartmut von Hinüber: Jobst Anton von Hinüber - the creator of the English Garden in Hanover-Marienwerder. In: Hartmut von Hinüber, Peter Krüger, Siegfried Schildmacher: The Hinübersche Garden in Hanover-Marienwerder. A Masonic Garden , ed. from the Freemason's lodge "Friedrich zum white horses" Hanover, Hanover 2011, self-published, pp. 6–19; here: p. 19.

Coordinates: 52 ° 22 ′ 41 ″  N , 9 ° 43 ′ 56 ″  E