Protestant Church (Alsenborn)
 Protestant Church Alsenborn |
|
| Basic data | |
| Denomination | Protestant |
| place | Enkenbach-Alsenborn, Germany |
| Building history | |
| completion | 1733 |
| Building description | |
| Architectural style | Baroque |
| 49 ° 29 '28.3 " N , 7 ° 55' 14.9" E | |
The Protestant church in the Rhineland-Palatinate town of Alsenborn in the Kaiserslautern district is an art-historically significant church.
history
The Protestant Church in Alsenborn in its current form was built in 1733. It was originally Catholic and consecrated to Saint Vitus . The preserved Romanesque frescoes in the basement of the tower are a specialty .
After the previous building collapsed in 1732, the nave was rebuilt the following year. The tower from the 13th century, in the basement of which the choir was located, was included. The tower itself received a slate-covered baroque dome.
Furnishing
The nave is a hall building with a width of 9 meters and a length of 14 meters. Windows and doors are arched; the portals also have a baroque sandstone frame. The pews are partly set up in the longitudinal direction of the nave with a view of the pulpit . Historically valuable old tombstones are still standing on the outside wall at the main entrance and on the inside of the choir.
organ
The organ was built in Rhaunen-Sulzbach in 1833 by the fourth generation of the Stumm organ building family , one of the most famous organ building dynasties in Germany. The case is decorated with classicist carvings.
Frescoes
The basement of the tower is the most valuable in terms of art history. In the square choir room from the Middle Ages, there are Romanesque wall paintings in fresco-secco technique from the middle of the 13th century, which were only exposed again during the renovation in 1964.
It turned out that the existence of these frescoes was known to some members of the parish, as they were discovered during a major renovation of the building in 1898. At that time, Professor Grünewald from Speyer was called in as an expert, who dated the frescoes to the beginning of the 14th century. Although such wall paintings were being restored in other places at that time, they were simply plastered up again in Alsenborn.
When the restoration workers knocked off the plaster in 1964, the medieval wall paintings came to light. The construction police then ordered the work to be stopped immediately and notified the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Speyer. Then the restorer Friedrich Leonhardi from Frankfurt was commissioned to expose and preserve the frescoes.
The frescoes show a blessing Christ and a lamb with a halo and staff of the cross, an early Christian symbol of the sacrificial death of Christ in a circular medallion-like frame.
In the Middle Ages, these paintings had the function of a Bible for the poor and were intended to bring the Bible and the legends of the saints closer to the population . The Alsenborn paintings belong to Romanesque art, but also show early Gothic features. They must therefore have been made towards the end of the 13th century. It is believed that they were whitewashed during the Reformation and thus remained in good condition.
literature
- Joachim Glatz: Medieval wall painting in the Palatinate and in Rheinhessen , Mainz: Ges. Für Mittelrhein. Church history, 1981, p. 157 online edition
