Snake chapel
The snake chapel is located in the area of the municipality of Stegen , above the Dreisam valley between the side valleys of Atten, Witten and Steurental in the southern Black Forest nature reserve in Baden-Württemberg and still serves as a place of pilgrimage today .
Name declaration
The name of the chapel goes back to a legend . After that, the farmers in the entire Attental suffered from a plague of snakes , including the Henselehof. They vowed to build a chapel in honor of the Virgin Mary if they were freed from this plague. They were heard and built the chapel for it. In the altar of the chapel there is still an Immaculata , a portrait of Mary of a type for which the pictorial element of a snake is characteristic: Mary stands on a globe and crushes a snake's head - actually to be understood as Mary's victory over worldly sin, but here reinterpreted in the context of the snake saga.
Even if the naming goes back to a legend, "snake chapels" can be found in several places in the central and southern Black Forest, where the same cause is given for their origin, e.g. B. in Vöhrenbach . There was a very widespread fear of poisonous adders who, because of the warmth, stayed on the mountain slopes in summer and in the manure heaps of the farms in winter. This plague of snakes is quite conceivable, as the cow dung was previously only driven into the fields once a year in spring and thus offered an ideal breeding ground for adders and adders over the year . Today the problem no longer arises in this form, as the manure pits are emptied several times a year.
But even today there are numerous blessings or magic spells as well as legends and customs around snake conjuration, which presumably all go back to church ordinations. In the Kinzig- and Harmersbachtal as well as in Ettenheimmünster the so-called "Peterlestag" takes place on February 22nd. H. Petri chair celebration , instead. On this day children go from house to house and receive sweets for their little saying, in which they wish the house protection from snakes. Peterlestag is also called "Storchentag" there, which in turn goes back to a legend: people affected by a snake plague vowed to hold a good day for the poor and children every year if they were to be released from the snakes. Their request was granted because storks came and ate the snakes. In this context, however, the legend of the child and the snake, in which the latter does not play a negative role, is surprising. Once a child shared a bowl of porridge with a snake, but when the mother killed the snake, the child died of grief shortly afterwards.
history
A first wooden chapel is already recorded on a plan by the Barons von Sickingen from 1780. A stone chapel was probably built in 1882 by Karl Thoma (1857–1924), the future farmer of the Henselehof. In the early 1950s, the Wittental community acquired the already dilapidated chapel and had it renovated. The population also actively helped. The work was finished in 1953 and the chapel was consecrated. In 2003, for the 50th anniversary of the consecration, it was also given a new shingle roof with a new roof turret for the bell .
The statue of the Virgin Mary is no longer the original either: it was stolen from the chapel in 1978 and found near the motorway near Freiburg. A replica now stands in its place and the original is now in the safe.
Until the end of the 19th century, the ceremony of expelling snakes took place in February on Candlemas at the chapel. To this end, several rosaries were prayed in the chapel . Then the farmers pulled a chain three times around the rear entrance to their farms to symbolically prevent the snakes from entering their property. A May devotion takes place every year at the chapel, to which the faithful pilgrimage with the original statue of the Madonna .
The Fehr family from the nearby Recklehof farm in Wittental has been looking after the snake chapel since 1955.
The serpent guild Zarten was created due to the plague of snakes and the resulting snake chapel, and their mask is based on the snake charmer .
Access
By car you drive from Freiburg via Ebnet towards Stegen and before that left into the Attental. The hiking trail goes right up to the chapel, which is located between the Henslehof and the Waseck (641 m). Other hiking trails also start directly in Stegen and are very well signposted.
swell
- Franz Kern: The Dreisamtal with its chapels and pilgrimages . Schillinger Verlag, Freiburg 1986, pp. 40-43.
- Lutz Röhrich: Legends and fairy tales. Narrative Research Today. Basel et al .: Herder, Freiburg 1976, pp. 86-87.
- Info snake chapel
Coordinates: 48 ° 0 ′ 12 ″ N , 7 ° 56 ′ 39.5 ″ E