Sankt Michaelskirche (Meiringen)
The St. Michael Church in Meiringen is an Evangelical - Reformed Church in Hasli , Switzerland . It is one of the most spectacular buildings in the region. Under the current baroque hall church , built in 1684, there are several predecessor churches that were made accessible through archaeological excavations. In addition to the church, there are other important buildings on the site: the bell tower, the armory chapel, the pfrund barn and the rectory. St. Michael's Church is under federal protection.
history
origin
For centuries, the church buildings in Meiringen were repeatedly flooded and buried by brooks carrying floods. The buried churches were dug up or rebuilt, enlarged and a new mortar floor was poured on the rubble.
The foundation of the first church in Meiringen, or to Hasle, as they said at the time, is still hidden in the darkness of the past and under the rubble of the brooks. The church was dedicated to the Archangel Michael . There is some evidence that a pagan sanctuary must have existed as early as the Christianization. An indication of this is a Roman marble slab in front of the altar of the church from the 13th century, as well as the presence of a Celtic stone circle on the church (Ker), the stones of which were delivered to Bern in 1840 for the construction of the Nydegg Bridge due to ignorance of their historical significance .
12./13. century
The church of Meiringen is first mentioned in writing on August 18, 1234. King Heinrich von Hohenstaufen donated the imperial church and the church set to the crusader order of the Lazarites. The church interior was expanded to the south and west and thus shifted from the previous central axis. Towards the east, the higher-lying rectangular choir with altar and the Lazarite chapel with the Lazarite residential tower were built.
The Lazarites in Meiringen
The Lazaritan Order comes from a Christian brotherhood of St. Lazarus , who built a hospital for lepers near Jerusalem and took care of them. In the 11th century this brotherhood was transformed into an order of knights . This military hospital order cared for knights who were injured or ill during the fighting in the crusades. Wounded opponents also found care and support. Therefore, the Lazarites were also respected and valued by Sultan Saladin . It should also be interesting that their sign of the cross is the color of the prophet Mohammed .
The Lazarites only worked for a short time in Meiringen. In the church they served as people priests. It is not known whether they also established and operated a monastery with a hospital here to look after the sick or injured travelers who came over the mountain passes. As early as 1272 they donated the church and the church set to the Augustinian monastery in Interlaken. In today's Switzerland there were two other branches of the Lazarite order. So in Seedorf (Uri) and in Gfenn near Dübendorf . The head office was in Schlatt near Freiburg im Breisgau .
Care of the Interlaken Monastery
In the years from 1272 to the Reformation in 1528, the church of Meiringen was subordinate to the Interlaken monastery . During this time there were many disputes on various issues between the Hasle landscape (political authorities) and the monastery on the Bödeli. The Meiringen church was rebuilt and expanded on higher ground in the 14th and 15th centuries after being buried again by the streams. A reconstruction of these buildings is hardly possible because important cornerstones are missing. Whether the church was designed as a three-aisled pillar basilica (similar to the Amsoldingen church ) cannot be verified due to the lack of pillar foundations. Only the choir floor plan of the church, which was built shortly before the Reformation in the 15th century, is known.
New church from 1683/84
The building of the church from 1683 was directed by the Bernese city architect Abraham Dünz I. He expanded the choir part in line with the Reformed understanding of the church.
The local specialist Melcher Gehren could be won over for the carpentry work on the large roof structure. He had completed additional training as a ship carpenter in Hamburg. In order to bridge the large span of the roof structure, Gehren designed an ingenious solution. In principle, the construction corresponds to an inverted ship's hull. The beams were connected with wedges and fixed with wooden nails. By attaching the twelve large wooden columns, a three-aisled church interior was created.
Furnishing
Church door lock
Even before entering the church, you will notice the artistic lock on the church door. According to an expert opinion, this locking device was attached to the door after the flood of 1762. The material, which was expensive at the time, was probably only affordable for the landscape because the iron was extracted in Hasli and smelted in the Mühletal iron mine.
Baptismal font
The Gothic baptismal font made of sandstone in the shape of a chalice is likely to have been made around the middle of the 14th century. It is the oldest object in the church from 1684. A basin cover made of chased copper and decorated with a Hasli eagle from 1949 complements this historical object in an ideal way. The chronicle reports that the baptismal font was moved from the center of the church in 1597 and moved to the choir in 1684.
pulpit
The pulpit has largely been preserved in its original condition from 1684. Originally it was attached to the third wooden pillar on the right-hand side near the entrance stairs. After the gray-black painting at the time had been removed during the renovation in 1973, the pulpit was attached to the second pillar on the opposite side.
Murals
To decorate the walls, Christian and Hans Victor Stucki made two polychrome panels as wall decorations in 1683. The plaque with the creed hangs on the south wall and the Ten Commandments are painted in gold letters on the north wall . The panels were restored in 1973.
Choir stalls
The choir stalls with the carved panels from 1907 were made and assembled by the then Schnitzlerschule in Meiringen based on models by the Bern painter Rudolf Münger.
Stained glass window
Two colored glass windows are set into the sloping choir walls on the east side of the church, on both sides of the organ. The pictures by glass painter Ernst Linck from 1915/16 show Moses with the tablets of the law and Christ with the cross. The original colored glass windows, a donation from the Bern government and the city of Unterseen , were destroyed in the flood in 1762 .
organ
The organ was built by Johann Suter, organ builder in Bern, in 1789. The costs amounted to 1500–1600 crowns, according to today's value approx. 350,000 francs. A hundred years later, the organ builder Goll von Luzern renews the organ. The old pipes made of pewter are replaced by those made of bronzed zinc sheet. (19 registers - 2 manuals). In 1943 the Metzler and Sons family from Dietikon expanded the organ to 25 stops and 2 manuals. In 1972/73 the organ was renewed by the Rieger family from Schwarzach in Vorarlberg and expanded to 36 registers with 3 manuals. The last complete overhaul of the organ took place in 2005.
Before the organ was procured in 1789, a wind quartet accompanied the community singing. When the organ was first revised in 1889, the old, well-preserved organ case was still used. Mr. Althaus (Fam. Althaus, wood carving) equipped the outer case and the organ player with wood carvings, which were then gilded.
Frescoes
Romanesque frescoes have been preserved on the southern and western inner walls from a former cycle of paintings . After assessing the painting in terms of ornamentation, architecture, garments and armaments, the images are kept in Romanesque style. It was first painted in the 13th century.
The subject of the pictures are stories from the book Gen 6,9 EU and Gen 9,20 EU . The pictures show Noah's ark, Noah as a farmer laying out a vineyard, Noah and his family admire the beautifully grown vine. The classy clothes of the family are striking. Noah wears a Romanesque coat with a brooch clasp on the armpit. Another picture shows the drunken Noah. He lies intoxicated in the garden under a tree. He is covered with a coat by his sons. The representation does not literally correspond to the biblical text.
Today the frescoes are in great danger of decay and in many parts of the picture can only be seen faded.
Excavations
On the occasion of the church renovation in 1915/16, the builders discovered old wall fragments under the church floor. In the further investigations and excavations that could be carried out after funding by the federal government, the canton, the parish and the non-profit association von Meiringen, it turned out that several foundation walls, altars, a rood screen (choir screen) and valuable sacred objects came to light. These discoveries became the key to the church history of Meiringen, as described above. During the restoration in 2006, an excavation cut in the northern church wall was uncovered. The overpasses of the debris flows and the floods of the brooks from the 12th to the 16th century can be "read" from the stratifications . Colored frescoes from the 12th century came to light on the north wall. To protect the mortar floor from the 12th century, the construction management decided to lay gratings as catwalks, flanked with railings, guide visitors through the excavations. With the modern lighting equipment, the wall fragments, the rood screen, the two side altars and the main altar with the plate made of pink marble with the worked edge (Roman) in front of it can be presented.
Steeple
The beginnings of the history of the church tower are still a secret today. Due to the structure of the building, it can be assumed that its original purpose served a different purpose. The dimensions of the floor plan, the two steps of the tapering of the masonry upwards and the former high entrance point to a defensive tower. Was it part of a Zähringer castle area? An octagonal pyramid-shaped tower spire with a golden ball (archive capsule) and the Hasli eagle close the tower at the top.
The 45 m high tower is oriented towards the four cardinal points and is free from the church. Four bells are installed in the belfry. The death bell Ø 146 cm, tone d '4/16 * The midday bell Ø 125 cm, tone e' 5/16 The after-work bell Ø 104 cm, tone g '7/16 The small bell Ø 87 cm, tone h
The old after-work bell from 1351 (oldest bell in the Canton of Bern) and the old midday bell from 1480 are set up in front of the tower. These had to be replaced because of cracks.
Tower clock
The tower clock is in the top southern row of windows (quartz movement). The large medieval fresco of Christophorus is painted between the first and second wall paragraphs on the south side . The local painter A. Brügger sen. restored the painting in 1938. An ancient sundial with a shadow stick is attached to the central axis of the tower.
Armory Chapel
The early mess chapel with the ossuary was built in place of an earlier chapel around 1486 . Ulrich Hürnli, Landammann and Säumer, was the donor of this building. During the Reformation of 1528, the building was used for other purposes. It henceforth served the Hasli than Arsenal . It was not until 1892 that the building was used again for church events. Hence the current name "Zeughaus-Kapelle". In 1933 the building was extensively restored. The local painter A. Brügger sen. renovated and added the fragments of the old wall paintings.
From 1980 to 1982 the armory chapel was completely renovated and the late Gothic wall paintings were carried out.
Rectory
The rectory was built in the years 1734/1736 by the city architect of Bern, Niklaus Schiltknecht in the style of a baroque country house. At the same time he built the “Lengenmüür” water barrier on behalf of the Bern government. Master Schiltknecht was previously entrusted with the construction of the Heiliggeistkirche and the construction of the Burgerspital in Bern. Here in Meiringen he completed one of the last jobs. Schiltknecht died in 1735.
Pfrundscheune
To manage the beneficiary property belonging to the church, the beneficiary barn was built in 1763. The wooden structure erected on a limestone base in a mixed post construction is used today as a funeral hall for the Meiringen burial community. The architects Bysäth and Linke built a light-flooded interior made of glass and marble.
literature
- R. Forrer: The Romanesque altars and frescoes of the church of Meiringen . 1934.
- G. Kunz / Ch. Lerch / A. Würgler: History of the landscape Hasli . Brügger Verlag, Meiringen 1979.
- Parish of Meiringen (ed.): The St. Michaelskirche of Meiringen . Publishing house Pauli Druckerei, Meiringen 1984.
- A. Mühlemann: Studies on the history of the Hasli landscape . Historical Society of Bern, 1895.
- R. Marti-Wehren: Notes from old Oberhasler Kirchenrödeln . Ehinger print shop, Meiringen 1932.
Web links
Coordinates: 46 ° 43 '46.7 " N , 8 ° 11' 21" E ; CH1903: 657 370 / one hundred seventy-five thousand six hundred fifty-six