St. Vitus Church (Wünschendorf)
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The Protestant St. Vitus Church is in the district of Veitsberg in the municipality of Wünschendorf / Elster in the district of Greiz in Thuringia . It belongs to the parish Wünschendorf in the parish of Gera of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany .
history
The parish church of St. Veit is over 1000 years old. It is the oldest church in Vogtland and one of the oldest in Thuringia. | The church was the center of a Burgward area around Weida . Until the 17th century it was rebuilt and expanded again and again, so that styles from several epochs were combined. Around 1170, a second, larger Romanesque church with a west tower was added to the existing single-nave church. By opening the partition wall in the 13th / 14th In the 19th century a larger one was created out of both churches and the Gothic high choir was built.
In addition to worship services, the church is also used for monthly concerts.
architecture
The massive western bell tower on which the late Gothic portal from the Mildenfurth monastery was added in the 16th century is striking . The sacristy is a wall tower of the ruined castle that was incorporated into the church extension around 1360.
Furnishing
Choir
During the restoration in 1896, a whitewashed dedication inscription was discovered under the choir windows, which was exposed and freshened in 1970. It dates from the 14th century and reproduces a text that was probably placed in the smaller previous building of the choir in the 12th century. The inscription indicates that the church was consecrated on October 4th 1170. Below the inscription there are gravestones from the early 18th century on the east wall of the choir.
Winged altar
The late Gothic winged altar was built around 1480 as a Marian altar in the workshop of Hans Topher, to which an inscription in the hem of the coat of Saint Catherine indicates. A triptych rests on a predella in a stone cafeteria , where consecration crosses can still be seen . The conversation narrow that the altarpiece crowned, has been lost.
The predella consists of a middle part and a pair of wings. When the wings are closed, you can see four painted busts of holy women, which can be recognized by the attached attributes : Apollonia with a pair of tongs that grasp a tooth, Dorothea with a basket with roses and apples, Margaret with a cross and a dragon, and Ursula with an arrow. When the wings are opened, the birth of Jesus appears in the middle shrine as a relief. The relief is flanked by two paintings on the wings: the Annunciation to Mary on the left and the Adoration of the Magi on the right .
When closed, the triptych shows two paintings: on the right St. Levinus with a book and a pair of tongs with a tongue as an attribute, on the left St. Vitus with a book on which a rooster stands. When the reredos are opened, the festival side becomes visible. The center shrine and wings are decorated with carved figures. In the center of the altar stands Mary with her child in a halo on a crescent moon. On the left wing, St. Barbara is depicted with a chalice, on the right, St. Catherine with a sword. Their names are written in their halos. The holiday side is richly gilded.
The carved tracery of the earlier building was replaced by a figure carved from wood after the Reformation. It depicts Christ at rest , framed by a golden halo. However, the artistic quality of this statue does not reach the level of the reredos.
Root Jesse slices
The two-lane Gothic south window of the choir has a round window in the arched area. At this highest point and in the uppermost rectangle of the right track, a colored glass pane from the period between 1170 and 1190 has been inserted. They are fragments of a large window that was probably located in the former apse of the main choir, although the former apse of the north aisle cannot be completely ruled out as a possible location. The original place was probably lost as early as 1360 when the church was rebuilt. The theme of this window was the root of Jesse , the representation of the ancestors of Jesus. The number of figures in the original family tree is not known. What remains are the full-length Christ figure crowning the family tree, which now occupies the highest place in the window, and a half-length figure of an Old Testament king, perhaps King David , as comparisons with other Wurzel-Jesse pictures suggest.
The enthroned Christ has raised his left hand in blessing, while in his right he holds a banner with a Latin Bible quote:
- EGO FLOS CAMPI ET LILIUM CONVALLIUM (I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys).
The blue background is traversed by green leaf tendrils. Christ is depicted with a cross nimbus and dressed in a white robe and yellow cloak. The king wears a red cloak over a yellow undergarment with wide red-purple horizontal stripes. A richly decorated headdress crowns his head.
During the restoration of the church in 1896, which aimed to regotise the interior, the two Romanesque panes were damaged. The figures were disfigured by arbitrary additions and removal of original parts. The Christ head was replaced by a new head in the Nazarene style. The discs remained in this condition until the early 1960s. Then the ingredients from 1896 were removed again and lost glass parts replaced. The head of Christ was reconstructed from a carefully executed drawing of the Christ Disc from 1860. The Romanesque stained glass, which is now one of the oldest and only in small numbers preserved stained glass from the 12th century in Germany, has been in its current location since 1963.
painting
The south pore, which was built in 1896, is located in front of the Wurzel Jesse window. On its parapet there are four panels from the early 17th century with motifs from the life of Jesus: the Annunciation , the birth of Jesus, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan and the Lord's Supper . The group is flanked by ornamentally painted panels that were created in the 16th century.
There are two keystones on the ceiling of the choir . The eastern one is decorated with the Jesus monogram IHS , the western one with a rosette. In the four vaulted caps of the western yoke, an angel making music is depicted on a cloud, each with a different wind instrument . This painting is dated to the 15th century.
On the east side of the triumphal arch, a circular painting from the 14th century shows the adoration of the kings in front of an open hut, above which three angels hover. The motif is surrounded by a circle of clouds and thus placed in a heavenly sphere. Not only every king, but also Mary wears a crown here.
Main nave
The triumphal arch between the nave and the high choir shows a depiction of the Last Judgment from the end of the 15th century. There are 16 Renaissance cassettes on the ceiling of the nave .
North aisle
The Ottonian Chapel , the oldest part of the church, used to be a place of pilgrimage for many pilgrims . It emerged from Veitsberg Castle as a castle chapel, which was built in 974 and consecrated in the name of Mary, the Mother of God , and still serves as a baptistery today. Formerly separated from the north aisle by a stone rood screen, the triumphal cross from 1513 is now under the arch of the former eastern apse. It was created by the most important Saxon sculptor of the Gothic, the famous master Hanns Witten (HW), and was located right up to 16th century in the monastery church of St. Marien (Maria am Wasser) in Cronschwitz .
In the vestibule there is a medieval stone relief from around 1162 to 1170 depicting St. Vitus, one of the fourteen helpers in need and the patron saint of the church, as he was martyred in the cauldron with boiling pitch .
organ
The parapet of the organ gallery is richly illustrated with the apostles' procession.
Small organ (1974–1995)
In 1974 the organ building company Wilhelm Sauer built a small organ for the church in Wünschendorf as op. 1988. The instrument had 8 registers (organ) in a manual (music) and pedal . It had slide chests and the action was mechanical. In 1995 this organ was replaced by a new one, nothing is known about its whereabouts.
Organ since 1995
1993–1994 the company Vogtländischer Orgelbau Thomas Wolf built a new organ with 16 sounding stops and mechanical action for the St. Vitus Church in Wünschendorf. The space on the gallery was very tight, so that the main work and the pedal work are on steel girders that are embedded in the outer wall. The breastwork and the gaming table are in a separate housing. The actions are mechanical.
This organ has the following disposition :
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- Coupling : II / I, I / P, II / P
Way of the Cross
At the choir of the St. Vitus Church there are medieval stone reliefs with stations from the Passion of Christ.
Christ prays in the Garden of Gethsemane
Flagellation of Christ
Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross
Crucifixion of jesus
Resurrection of Jesus
literature
- Paul Heller: The Church of St. Veit to Wünschendorf. A guide through the building and history. Evangelical Publishing House, Berlin 1985.
- Karl-Joachim Maercker: The Romanesque root-Jesse-slices in Veitsberg-Wünschendorf. In: Ute Reupert, (Ed.): Monument Studies and Monument Preservation. Knowledge and work. Festschrift for Heinrich Magirius for his 60th birthday on February 1, 1994. Karl M. Lipp Verlag, Dresden 1995, ISBN 3-87490-519-5 , pp. 107–117.
Web links
- Website of wish / excursion destinations: St. Vitus Church
- Website of the parish church of St. Veit zu Wünschendorf / Elster
- Information about the church on the website of the church district
Individual evidence
- ↑ www.vogtland-tourismus.de Sights: St. Vitus Church ( Memento of the original from October 10, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ A short guide through St. Veit, Flyer of the Ev.-Luth. Parish Church of St. Veit Wünschendorf / Elster
- ↑ Landkreis Greiz: Churches and Monasteries ( Memento of the original from November 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved November 13, 2013
- ↑ Hld 2,1
- ↑ Hartmut Haupt : Complete list of organs in the Gera district. In: Organs in the Gera district. An overview of the organ landscape in East Thuringia. Council of the District of Gera, Dept. Culture, Gera 1989.
- ^ New organ in Wünschendorf
Coordinates: 50 ° 47 ′ 37.4 " N , 12 ° 5 ′ 24.6" E