Palatine Chapel of St. Michael

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The Palatine Chapel of St. Michael was a historically significant chapel in Heilbronn from the pre-Romanesque period . It is mentioned in a document from 822 referring to the year 741 and is therefore probably the oldest documented sacred building in Heilbronn. Exactly where the chapel was located and whether and in which church building in Heilbronn it was opened is a matter of dispute among experts.

history

When the diocese of Würzburg was founded in 741, the new bishop in the East Franconian area received 24 churches with all parish rights and income. This also included a “basilica” in “villa Helibrunna”. This church was previously a royal church dedicated to the archangel Michael , who was popular at the time and who has been venerated at mountain shrines since the 5th century. This is documented by a donation dated to 741. This document is of historical importance because it proves that there was a royal court and a church in Heilbronn in 741. This Michael's basilica was built in the time of the Franks near the fountain that gave the city its name and was mentioned again in a document in 889.

The oldest church in Heilbronn, a Michaelsbasilika , including its tithe, according to a document from 822 in 741, was donated by the Franconian caretaker Karlmann to the then newly founded diocese of Würzburg . 889 a Frankish royal court is mentioned in Heilbronn . Two churches in Heilbronn are mentioned around 1100, and the Teutonic Order Church and the Kilian Church existed in the early 13th century .

It is not clear which and whether one of these two churches emerged from the earlier Michael's basilica. What is certain is that the Michael's basilica must have been located within the Franconian royal court. However, there is also uncertainty about the exact location of this royal court and its dimensions.

Possible locations

Michaelsbasilika as the forerunner of the Marienkapelle in the Deutschordenshof

In the 1960s there were several historians who, among other things, located the royal court in the area of ​​today's Deutschhof in the local history supplement of the Heilbronn voice . The local researcher Klaus D. Koppal also located the royal court at this point in an article in the yearbook of the Heilbronn Historical Society from 1969. If this assumption is correct, the Teutonic Order Church would most likely go back to the Michael basilica, which is documented by sources. The Teutonic Order, who came to Heilbronn around the year 1220, could have found remains of this previous building at that time and included them as a welcome advance in the construction of their late Romanesque choir tower made of sandstone . When the former chapel of the royal court was converted into a church for the then newly founded Teutonic Order, the patronage (St. Mary) also changed. Various reasons are given for the assumption that the Teutonic Minster must be the royal palatine chapel, including the east facade.

Michael's basilica as the forerunner of Kilian's Church

In the 1970s, it was possible for the first time to examine the historical conditions in Heilbronn on the basis of geological and morphological aspects. The historians Schmolz and Wild came to the opinion, independently of one another, that the royal court, like any other permanent settlement, was due to the groundwater situation and the altitude to the Neckar before the clearing of 10/11. Century could only have been located north of Kirchbrunnenstrasse. A ridge is said to have been located here, whereas the Deutschhof, located to the south, was at that time lower down and at risk of flooding, making it the building site for the already in the 8th / 9th Michael's Basilica mentioned in the 19th century is eliminated. According to these investigations, the Kilian's Church is likely to be the extension of St. Michael's Basilica.

Michaelsbasilika as the forerunner of the Johanneskirche at the Katharinenspital

Heilbronn Katharinenspital with Johanneskirche 1617.jpg

It is also conceivable, however, that Michael’s basilica and a predecessor building of Kilian's Church were spatially separated (around 1100 two churches are named), and that the Teutonic Order Church can be traced back to a replacement for the Michael’s basilica, which was presumably given up after 1100. Fekete mentions that in 1976 Helmut Schmolz suspected the royal court and chapel in the area of ​​the former Katharinenspital near Gerberstrasse, Kaiserstrasse and Untere Neckarstrasse. An old copper engraving by Heilbronn from the work Civitates Orbis terrarum from 1617 shows that apart from the Katharinenspitalkirche, the Romanesque St. John's Church still stood at the Katharinenspital. Fekete assumes that the royal court could possibly have been located where the Neckar runs today.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Dieter Bechstein: Heilbronn - The Kilian Church: Center of the City , Heilbronn 1975, page 11
  2. ↑ Christhard Schrenk: House of God with an eventful fate . In: The Kiliansturm: Tower of the Towers in Heilbronn , Heilbronn 2005, page 15
  3. ^ Royal court in Heilbronn . In: Swabia and Franconia: Local history supplement of the Heilbronner voice . Saturday, July 8th, 1967:

    "

    • The Kirchbrunnenbach (along the later Kirchbrunnenstrasse) in the north of St. Peter and Paul as a moat and northern boundary of the royal court in the 12th century.
    • The St. Michaels Chapel on the site of today's Peter and Paul Church and the royal court with the walls surrounding today's Deutschhof.
    • Allerheiligenstrasse with the oldest mill (near the "Götzenturm") as the southern boundary of the royal court.
    • The Deutschhofstraße as a former country road that represents the western boundary and leads to the oldest graves on the Rosenberg.
    • Fleinerstrasse in the east "
  4. ↑ Hans Koepf : The Heilbronner Kilianskirche and their masters ; there: the royal palatine chapel of St. Michael and later the Teutonic Order Church of St. Mary (today St. Peter and Paul) . City of Heilbronn, City Archives 1961. Page 12:

    “ The former enclosing walls of the old nave to the west (the Carolingian Imperial Palatinate Chapel) leading to the Romanesque tower choir chapel can still be seen very well in the structure of the southern extensions of today's church west of the tower choir. Purely technical considerations when determining the new east axis force us to assume that the nave to the west must be older than the tower choir from the Romanesque period. If there is a western building, a new eastern axis can be determined after sunrise , while the reverse orientation is hardly feasible. "

  5. ^ Julius Fekete , Simon Haag, Adelheid Hanke, Daniela Naumann: Stadtkreis Heilbronn . (= Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany , cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg, Volume I.5.). Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1988-3 , pp. 93 .
  6. ^ Julius Fekete , Simon Haag, Adelheid Hanke, Daniela Naumann: Stadtkreis Heilbronn . (= Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany , cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg, Volume I.5.). Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1988-3 , pp. 34 .