Knight of Hohen Viecheln
The Knight of Hohen Viecheln is the life-size wooden sculpture of a knight in the village church of Hohen Viecheln in Mecklenburg . The sculpture stands on a pedestal on the church wall. It should have originally come from a high Gothic tomb and was made as a reclining figure. With an art history dating to the 13th or 14th century, it is one of the oldest secular sculptures in Mecklenburg. The original color version is no longer available. In 1919 the knight's sword was reconstructed as a long sword . During the restoration in 1995, the sword was left as a knight's sword without the historical addition. In the written tradition of the sculpture that began in 1611, it is mostly associated with the name Helmold Plesse , a knight from the Plesse family. It is not known which person is really portrayed.
The church of Hohen Viecheln
The village of Hohen Viecheln - located on the borders of the state of Mecklenburg, the county and the diocese of Schwerin - has been part of the Schwerin diocese since the Middle Ages. Because of this exposed location, the settlement gained importance for regional trade and political meetings early on. A church presumably existed as early as the 12th century, because in an episcopal document, probably dated to the year 1178, a clergyman named Symon de Vichele is listed as a witness.
The church of Hohen Viecheln is mentioned for the first time on April 24, 1310, when Heinrich II, Lord of Mecklenburg , allowed the miner Ludolf von Viecheln and his mother-in-law to hold a third of their village Kartlow a vicarage in Viecheln. Two sons of the lord of the castle Helmold von Plesse - Johann Rosendal and Helmold the Younger - were among the witnesses to the approval. Bishop Gottfried I von Schwerin confirmed on September 13, 1311 "the von Plessen family in the most emphatic way the right of patronage over this foundation of someone else". The church patronage - the dignity, the office and the right of a patron - was held by the knight Bernhard von Plessen and his brothers. Between 1313 and 1317, they donated lands to their church several times, thereby underscoring their interest and their rights in Hohen Viecheln. In a document dated February 19, 1351, the Mecklenburg dukes Albrecht II and Johann enfeoffed their vassal Johann von Plessen in Hohen Viecheln with the obligation, all carriage service, the low and high (!) Jurisdiction “and whatever may fall in between” and “with deme kerklene in deme dorpe thu Vigle, alse he vnde sine elderen van unsen elderen dat vrigest has lifted. ”Hohen Viecheln was a property of the Lords of Plessen, in which they did not tolerate any competing patronage rights of other families. In addition to the Gothic knight sculpture, the church furnishings of the village church in Hohen Viecheln include several important Gothic wooden figures with religious references.
The Knight of Hohen Viecheln
In the older literature, the knight sculpture was treated exclusively in connection with the genealogy of the Mecklenburg lords of Plesse. In 1611, the Mecklenburg historian and educator Bernhard Latomus , with the support of the sovereigns, conceived a work on the nobility as a multi-volume work, but could no longer complete it. The already completed manuscript on the Lords of Plessen, which he wrote “according to the taste of the time”, initially remained unpublished and was only published in 1743.
According to Latomus, the Plessen "have their origins in the Hartz from the Plesse family, and with Duke Hinrich from Bavaria and Saxony, called the lion, to help devour the Slavs or Wends for 600 years, to come to this country." the ancestry of the Mecklenburg Plessen from the noble lords of the same name. Allegedly it was - according to legend - three Plessen who went with the Guelph Duke into the fight against the Wends , two of which fell in the "Battle of Schlagestorff" and only one - namely Helmold - survived and then extensive possessions in Mecklenburg and in particular "The village of Vichel on the Schweriner See" should have received. This Helmold is the progenitor of all Mecklenburg Plessen. In Vichel he founded a church; there is "his picture, carved in wood and completely overgüldet, with a heavy weight in his hand and a pantzer hood on his head".
In the church visit protocol from 1648 the figure is mentioned: "A holtzer forms man Long should be the founder of these churches took Plessen's image". At that time, no inscription seems to have existed or been known to identify the portrait more precisely. The figure lay or stood in front of the churchgoers without any inscription and formed the projection surface for legends that grew up around the figure over time.
One hundred years after Latomus, in 1712, the Schwerin archivist Johannes Schultz followed in Latomus' footsteps and supplemented his work on the genealogy of the Plessen with extensive archival evidence. He did not mention the sculpture, but listed documents for three foundations by vicarages in the Vichel Church, including first the foundation of a nobleman Ludolph called von Vicheln and his wife Adelheidis from 1310, whose right to the knight Bernard von Plesse and his brothers and successors passed over, then in 1317 the confirmation of the foundations of vicariates of a knight Bernhard von Plesse and the confirmation of the foundation of a vicariate by the brothers Johann Rosendahl and Reinbernus von Plesse. It was common practice at the time that some or all of these donors or their family members were buried in the church and can be assumed without further ado.
A particularly interesting testimony is an additamentum of an anonymous to Schultz's work, which was printed together with this in 1743. It mentions for the first time the legend of the seven Pless churches, which a crusader from the Plessen family - a first name is not mentioned in the legend -, to which the wealth of the family goes back, promised to build chains and bonds after his seven years imprisonment and a detailed description of the wooden sculpture that had already ended up on the rubbish heap during the renovation of the church in 1687 and was only put back in the church and for the intercession of a historically interested person, namely Anonymous from Rehtkendorff near Hohen Viecheln posterity could be saved.
The editions of Latomus, Schultz and Anonymus were accompanied by a copper engraving in the print of 1743 by the learned editor, on which the knight sculpture is shown standing in front of a landscape and is described in the caption as follows:
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Helmold Plesse |
Helmold Plesse |
Instead of depicting a reclining figure with closed eyes resting on a burial bed, the artist depicts the figure in life by showing it standing in front of a cultural landscape. The face is whitewashed, the eyes open, eyebrows and mustache lifelike. The grave slab and pillow still indicate the sitter's death.
150 years later, a photo in Friedrich Schlie's work (1898) shows the sculpture standing on a console without an inscription. The color of the face corresponds to the depiction of the copper engraving, the pillow is no longer there, the sword has broken off at the height of the skirt hem.
The life-size sculpture by Hohen Viecheln is one of the outstanding secular treasures of the Middle Ages that are kept in Mecklenburg's churches. At the same time, sculpture has only been the focus of attention until now when researchers looked into the lineage of the Lords of Plessen, with Latomus and the copperplate engraving having an extremely misleading influence on this discussion. The nifty thing about Latomus and the engraving is that it could very well have been so. Why should it not be acceptable that the Plessen, who had been living in Mecklenburg for centuries, came into the country with the Duke of Guelph and founded those churches whose patronage they still held at the time of the publication of the “Monumenta inedita” (1743)?
The representations of Latomus, Anonymous and the copper engraver influenced all later authors as well as the image that the Lords of Plessen made or had made of their early Mecklenburg ancestors. For example, when the knight figure was renovated in 1919 and placed on a new console on the initiative and with funds of the “Family Association of the von Plessen”, the following inscription was chosen for the base: “HELMOLDUS DE PLESSE - FUNDATOR HUIUS ECCLESIAE” (in German: “ HELMOLD VON PLESSE - FOUNDER OF THIS CHURCH ”). This text conveys the wrong picture, because the Lords of Plessen never founded churches ("fundare"), but built places of worship ("aedificare") or protected and preserved them as patrons.
state of research
In the older literature, the sitter was referred to as a follower of Duke Heinrich the Lion of Saxony and Bavaria and placed in the 12th century. However, the Plessen was documented as followers of Prince Heinrich the Lion of Mecklenburg , who ruled at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries.
The church and cultural historian Friedrich Schlie says about Hohen Viecheln and the documentary evidence about the Lords of Plessen in the village, this proves that Bernhard von Plessen was the builder of the church. “If one also considers that the high Gothic forms of the church to the last period of the XIII. Century or at the turn of the XIII. point to the XIV. Century, as well as that in the Church today an undoubtedly the XIII. A wooden knight statue belonging to the 18th century is kept, which from ancient times is considered to be the knight who founded the church and it is added that the already cited episcopal document of September 13, 1311 among the older brothers living at the time, the knight Bernhard von Plesse in conspicuously emphasizes that, as we believe, it did not go too far if, without prejudice to the participation of the other family members, we see him as the real builder of the church that is now standing. "
Friedrich Schlie's assignment of the knight statue to the 13th century has since been specified by Eckhard Michael (1980). After his detailed description of the armor and a comparison of its accessories with knight sculptures all over Europe, he comes to the following conclusion: “Costumes and weapons comparisons made the knight figure in Hohen Viecheln likely to be created in the early 14th century. It must have served as a support for a high grave. This grave was probably erected in connection with the new building of the church in Hohen Viecheln as an expression of conscious maintenance of tradition. ”Even if the sculpture is shown standing today, there is no doubt that it represents a reclining knight, because the relaxed position of the feet and the overlapping hands on the sword show this clearly.
Web links
supporting documents
- ↑ a b c d Friedrich Schlie : The art and history monuments of the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Volume II: The district court districts of Wismar, Grevesmühlen, Rehna, Gadebusch and Schwerin. Schwerin 1898, pp. 287-295. Digitized . Reprint [Schwerin] 1992, ISBN 3-910179-06-1 .
- ↑ Bernhard Latomus : Origen Plessiacae Megapolenses. Manuscript 1611. In: Ernst Joachim von Westphalen : Monumenta inedita rerum Germanicarum praecipue Cimbricarum et Megapolensium. Volume 3, Leipzig 1743, Sp. 1921-1928. Digitized .
- ↑ Johannes Schultz: Annales Plessenses Diplomatici from An. 1160-1712. In: Ernst Joachim von Westphalen : Monumenta inedita rerum Germanicarum praecipue Cimbricarum et Megapolensium. Volume 3, Leipzig 1743, Sp. 1928-1970. Digitized .
- ↑ Anonymous: Additamentum. In: Ernst Joachim von Westphalen : Monumenta inedita rerum Germanicarum praecipue Cimbricarum et Megapolensium. Volume 3, Leipzig 1743, Sp. 1970-1972. Digitized .
- ↑ Eckhard Michael: The wooden sculpture from the tomb of a gentleman from Plessen from the beginning of the 14th century. In: Plesse-Archiv Vol. 16 (1980) pp. 65–91.