Nikolaikirche (forest)

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City church St. Nikolai in Forst (Lausitz)
City church view from the park

The Stadtkirche St. Nikolai is a Protestant church in Forst (Lausitz) in Brandenburg .

history

13th to 16th centuries

A previous building of today's church probably already existed in the middle of the 13th century. The current church building was started around 1400, but it was not vaulted until 1516 . The addition of the Jacob's Chapel (today Bonhoeffer Chapel) dates from 1508. The retracted square west tower was completed in 1570. In 1589 there was a fire in which the church vault was damaged. A year later, however, the damage had already been repaired.

17th century

In 1605 the parish had the church tower topped up and covered with roof tiles , which were replaced in 1616 by wooden shingles soaked in oil . On October 11, 1626, the church burned again; this time the church vault collapsed, so a year later the congregation decided to build a church roof with a standing chair made of beams and slats. In 1630 a life-size, gold-plated angel with a trumpet and star crowned the church tower, the so-called gold - plated button . In 1642 invading Swedes looted the church during the Thirty Years' War . Among other things, they dismantled the organ pipes in order to cast bullets from them . In 1645 the church burned down again and was restored in a rather rudimentary form in 1648: the first services were held under a thatched roof; the tower was completely missing. In 1661 the collapsed tiled roof and the vault were rebuilt, and in 1680 later the church tower. In 1683 work on the church was completed, which burned down again after only three years. It was not until 1688 that the rebuilding began.

18th to 20th century

In 1747 a lightning strike destroyed the tower dome . A year later the church again in 1752 for the fifth time destroyed by fire and was inaugurated . It was expanded several times in the years to come. In 1883 it received gas lighting , two years later a lightning rod was installed . In 1891, investigations on the facade led to the result that in earlier centuries the windows had to be provided with pointed arches , some of which were made with shaped stones and decorations. In 1907 the two tombs were opened and repaired.

In the First World War, the great and the small were bell of bronze melted down. Extensive renovation and restoration work was carried out in 1938 and 1939. On February 25, 1945, grenades hit the building and destroyed the baroque furnishings. The church tower and the roof collapsed, the organ was completely destroyed. From 1951 to 1954 the church was rebuilt. The tower received new cast steel bells with the theological virtues of faith , love and hope . A renewed restoration of the roof took place in 1979 and 1990 in order to dedicate itself to the interior from 1992. The church tower was restored in 1991 and 1992 and inaugurated on the first Advent in 1992.

Interior decoration

Before the Second World War, there was a baroque high altar with three galleries in the interior , which was clad with brown stucco marble . Behind the altar was an image of Saint Joseph with the Christ Child . This facility was completely destroyed in the war and was not restored in this form in 1954. In 2002 the Berlin artist Helge Warme designed three colored altar windows that show cloth motifs and are intended to remind of the prosperity and wealth that Count von Brühl brought to the city with the cloth production. The artist also designed the altar, the background of which consists of 144 different glass plates and was inaugurated in 2013.

organ

In 1755 she received a new organ from master organ builder Tobias Schramm . In 1920 a new organ with 4500 pipes was installed by the master organ builder Friedrich Ernst Gustav Heinze from Sorau . In 1959 the organ building company Eule installed a new organ, initially without a Rückpositiv , which was only added in 1960. A general overhaul of the organ took place in 2002, which was expanded in 2006 with two electronic tremulants for the swell of the Rückpositiv.

The owl organ has 37 sounding registers and has the following disposition :

I Hauptwerk C – g 3
1. Gedacktpommer 16 ′
2. Principal 8th'
3. Tube bare 8th'
4th octave 4 ′
5. Gemshorn 4 ′
6th Night horn 2 ′
7th Sif flute 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
8th. Rauschwerk II
9. Zinc II-III
10. Mixture V
11. Trumpet 8 ′ (from 2002)
II Swell C – g 3
12. Wooden principal 8th'
13. Quintatön 8th'
14th Italian principal 4 ′
15th Viola di gamba 4 ′
16. Nassard 2 2 ⁄ 3  ′
17th octave 2 ′
18th third 1 3 ⁄ 5  ′
19th octave 1'
20th Sharp IV
21st Krummhorn 8th'
22nd Rohrschalmei 4 ′
Tremulant
III Rückpositiv C – g 3
23. Pointed 8th'
24. Reed flute 4 ′
25th Principal 2 ′
26th Tonus fabri 2 ′
27. Ringing Zymbel III
28. Rankett 16 ′
29 Hopper shelf 8th'
Tremulant 8th'
Pedal C – f 1
30th Principal 16 ′
31. Sub bass 16 ′
32. Octave bass 8th'
33. Bass flute 8th'
34. Forest flute 4 ′
35. Bass cornet III
36. Mixture V
37. trombone 16 ′

Heinrich von Brühl's tombs and burial site

The electoral Saxon and royal Polish prime minister Heinrich von Brühl (1700–1763) found his final resting place in a crypt . In the years 1740 to 1746 he had acquired the rule of Forst and rule of Pförten . When large parts of the city fell victim to the city fire in 1748, he supported the reconstruction of the houses and the church by using money from the building pardon fund. He also sponsored the renovation of the church from an unplastered Gothic building to a lavishly furnished, plastered baroque church. After his death on October 28, 1763 in Dresden , he was buried in a baroque wooden coffin on November 4, 1763 in the "crypt under the baptism" (today Bonhoefferkapelle) . In 1905, the descendants had the bones transferred to a simple zinc coffin, as the old wooden coffin was completely rotten. In front of the coffin there is now an intestine urn with the entrails of the buried. Moreover, Heinrich Albrecht Christian Graf von Brühl (1743-1793) buried here. Further tombs were uncovered between 1900 and 1910. Members of three Forster lines belonging to the von Bieberstein family (Balthasar line, Jahn line and Melchior line) are buried here.

Memorial plaques

Pietà on the north facade of the church

From 1922 to 1940, stone tablets with the names of nearly 1,000 fallen Forster citizens from the First World War hung on the north side of the church. It is not known why the panels were removed. Two files found in the church archive made it possible to determine almost all of the soldiers' names and ranks by autumn 2007. Excavations found four of the eleven tablets. They can be viewed inside the church at the tower entrance. On the north facade there is only the Pietà by Georg Wrba.

Church building association and tower exhibition

For the further repair and maintenance of the church, a church building association Freundeskreis St. Nikolai was founded in 2006 . In the tower of the church there is an exhibition a matter of view with Forster panorama pictures. Around 80 images are shown showing the development of the city. These were partially supplemented by current photographs from the same perspective.

and display information about the image
Panoramic view from the church tower in north direction

literature

  • Wolfgang Hanke, Johannes Dette: Praising God is our office: Forst (Lausitz) as an organ town . 1st edition. Evangelical Church Community, Forst (Lausitz) 2005, p. 120 .
  • Evangelical parish of Forst [Lausitz] (Hrsg.): The tombs of the St. Nikolai church in Forst and their coffins . 1st edition. Evangelical Church Community, Forst (Lausitz) 2006, p. 12 .

Web links

Commons : Stadtpfarrkirche St. Nikolai (Forst in der Lausitz)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Ruf: If the hour strikes, it's a crypt instead of a groove . In: DNN , No. 121, May 28, 2018, p. 14

Coordinates: 51 ° 44 ′ 38.7 "  N , 14 ° 38 ′ 53.1"  E