Black Church (Brașov)

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View from the northwest
View from the north

The Black Church ( Romanian Biserica Neagră ) is a Gothic hall church in the Transylvanian city ​​of Kronstadt . It is one of the most important architectural monuments in Romania and Southeast Europe. Together with the Old Town Hall, the Black Church is a landmark that defines the historic center of the city.

Originally it was consecrated as a Catholic Church to the Blessed Virgin Mary . With the Reformation in Transylvania , which was largely determined on the part of the Transylvanian-Saxon population by the reformer and later Kronstadt parish priest Johannes Honterus , the Catholic patronage was given up. The Black Church has had its current name since a town fire in 1689. It is the main church of the German-speaking Honterus parish of the Evangelical Church AB in Romania .

Building history

South tower and Honterus monument

Archaeological excavations during restoration work in 1937 uncovered the foundation walls of a previous building. The parish church is mentioned for the first time in a papal tax list for the year 1373-1374. The foundation stone for the building was laid in 1383. In 1421 the church was destroyed again during an Ottoman invasion of Burzenland . In the first half of the 15th century the choir , the nave and the western facade were completed. Originally, double towers were planned for the west facade, of which only the south tower was built over the church roof. The year 1477, which can be read in the southern porch, indicates that the building was completed between 1470 and 1480. In 1472 the pleban Johannes Rudel donated the baptismal font. In 1476 an organ and the bells were mentioned for the first time, in 1514 the repair of the tower clock.

Repairs due to earthquake damage were repeatedly documented throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1655–56 the buttresses of the triumphal arch had to be reinforced. In a town fire on April 21, 1689, the parish church was also badly damaged. While the roof, towers and interior burned out completely, the vaults were preserved. Since the construction of an emergency roof dragged on until the end of 1690, the vaults were also damaged by rainwater, partially collapsed and were torn down in 1691. The reconstruction of the church roof did not begin until 1693, the Gothic windows were restored in 1707, and the interior was restored in 1710. The side aisles have new galleries. Work on the Black Church was not completed until the nave was vaulted from 1762 to 1772.

Renovation work was necessary repeatedly in the 20th century. The stone restoration started in 1912 by the Hungarian monument preservation department was interrupted in 1914 by the outbreak of the First World War. From 1923 to 1925 the west gallery was widened and the chancel was fixed with a polygonal ring anchor . From 1935 to 1944 the foundations had to be reinforced. The sacristy was rebuilt, the sixteen branches of the choir were replaced by copies made of artificial stone. The statues of the buttresses of the choir were also replaced by new sculptures by the artists Hans Guggenberger, Margarethe Depner and Kurtfritz Handel. A warm air heating system was installed, and the benches with their adjustable backrests were installed. 1978 to 1984 the interior was restored. The windows were provided with ultraviolet radiation filtering glass. From 1987 to 1999, the north and west facade were restored with the support of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland . The wall paintings around the clock faces of the tower clock were restored according to the historical findings. In 2001 the restoration of the Buchholz organ was completed. The roof structure of the church has been restored since 2016.

Building description

The Black Church was planned as a hall church. Its choir measures 28.5 × 16.5 m and is closed off to the east by seven sides of a sixteen-cornered floor plan. Six pillars support the vault of the choir, the ribs of which are brought together on the walls in bundled services . In the north of the choir is the sacristy. From the outside, 15 buttresses decorated with pinnacles and statues support the choir walls. The nave of the church has galleries with star-shaped rib vaults in the side aisles. It measures 41.6 × 22.8 m. Five pairs of pillars support the vault of the central nave, the westernmost also the organ gallery. The church has tracery windows whose soffits , like those of the portals, are richly profiled. The east portal on the south side of the building is called the “wedding gate”, the west portal opposite is called the “confession gate”, on the north facade the east portal is called the “golden gate”, the west portal is called the “sacrificial gate”.

Furnishing

Longhouse of the Black Church. There are numerous “Transylvanian” carpets on the outer wall of the aisle and the balustrades of the galleries.

The Gothic baptismal font in the form of a measuring chalice has a Latin inscription with the Magnificat , the year 1472 and the name of the founder. The pulpit was donated in 1696. It is located on the central pillar on the south side of the nave. The baroque pulpit with the round pictures of the four evangelists rests on a foot with the representation of Moses with the tablets of the law . On the sound cover of the pulpit there are statues of the evangelists with their symbols and of the victorious Christ with the flag. The neo-Gothic main altar was erected in 1866. It was designed by the architect Peter Bartesch and the work was carried out by the sculptor Franz Schönthaler .

In the pews of the aisles of the nave, the coats of arms and guild symbols of the medieval guilds can be seen. The front walls of the two western chairs each have five panels depicting the virtues personified. Numerous epitaphs from the 16th to 18th centuries were removed from the floor when the heating was installed and are now kept on the ground floor of the north tower. The grave of Johannes Honterus is located in the choir room to the left of the main altar. Outside in front of the south tower, the life-size statue of Harro Magnussen is reminiscent of the reformer.

In the vestibule on the south side, a fresco from the time before the church fire in 1689 has been preserved in the tympanum above the inner portal . It shows Mary with the Christ Child, two angels with a crown, as well as Barbara of Nicomedia on the left of Mary and Catherine of Alexandria on the right. On the side are the coats of arms of the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus and his second wife Beatrix von Aragón , which allow the fresco to be dated to before 1490. The tower of the Black Church has a clock with two dials about 30 meters high. They are decorated with colorful frescoes and have Latin sayings: Verbum Domini manet in aeternum and Sic transit gloria mundi . There are three church bells in the tower . The largest with a weight of about 6000 kg was cast by Johann Andraschowski in Klausenburg in 1858 , a weekday bell (about 1000 kg) from 1839 and a small bell ring today.

Organs

Buchholz organ

The Buchholz organ in Kronstadt was built between 1836 and 1839 by the Berlin organ building company HCA Buchholz. It was built by Carl August Buchholz and three journeymen, including Pohl and Maywald, and workers from Kronstadt. The largest pipe is about 13 meters high. The organ has four manuals with 56 keys and a pedal with 27 keys and 63 registers . It is tuned to 450 Hz. Following the complete renovation of the church, the organ was restored until October 2001.

Hesse organ

This organ is now used as a choir organ after the restoration by the Stemmer / Zumikon company in 1997. It was built by Carl Hesse from Vienna for the municipality of Lechnitz, came to Paßbusch in 1907 and finally to Brașov in 1987. It has a manual with attached pedal, eight registers and is arranged according to the Italian model with soft flute parts and split single slides for the mixture. It is tuned to 440 Hz.

Historical textile collection

In their versatility and quality, the textiles preserved in the Black Church attest to the extensive commercial history and cultural networking of the Transylvanian patriciate. They testify to the economic boom in Transylvanian-Saxon cities at the turn of the modern era, when trade between Central Europe and the Ottoman Empire expanded.

Paraments

A few years ago, numerous liturgical vestments of great art historical importance were found in the depots of the Black Church. They were still used in church services until the 19th century and then forgotten. The mediaeval and baroque period textiles mainly come from Italian silk weaving mills, some from Ottoman factories. The gold and silk embroidery trimmings were created in Moldovan, Italian, Central European and local workshops. In addition to the ecclesiastical textile treasures in Halberstadt, Brandenburg and Danzig, the Kronstadt Parament Treasure comprises one of the richest collections in Central Europe.

Transylvanian carpets

One of the world's largest collections of so-called Transylvanian carpets is located in the Black Church . These are Anatolian knotted carpets from the 16th to 18th centuries. Century, which reached Kronstadt as luxury goods via the trade routes from the Ottoman Empire and were donated to the church by citizens of the city or given to the church in a will.

meaning

As a representative architectural monument and landmark in the center of the city, the Black Church has a special role as an identity-creating space. This is not limited to the Transylvanian-Saxon part of the population, but also includes the other ethnic groups of Romania. Memories are associated with the church that range from the time it was built, through the Reformation, to the communist arbitrariness of the judiciary of the “Black Church Process” of 1958.

In 1421 Kronstadt and the not yet completed church were partially destroyed in the Hungarian-Ottoman conflict. Probably because the fortifications were greatly expanded in the period that followed, fewer funds were available for building the church, which was therefore more modest than planned. In the end, the west facade was given only one tower instead of two, and the choir, 31 meters long, is disproportionately large compared to the 42 m smaller nave. A. Weber (2013) recognizes in the description of the events in the wall chronicle of the city, which can be seen on the choir up to the 18th century, a symbolic role of the church as " Antemurale Christianitatis ". In contrast to other “Southeast European memory landscapes”, “with the Kronstadters and overall with the Transylvanian Saxons, however, there was only a small amount of victimizing loss history associated with it.” The “Black Church” was “built and built in the imposing dimensions of Western European cathedrals in spite of all historical impairments been received ".

literature

  • Herrmann Fabini: Kronstadt. In: Sacred architecture in Transylvanian-Saxon cities . monuMenta Verlag & Working Group for Transylvanian Cultural Studies, Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-973-7969-15-6 , p. 145-159 .
  • Virgil Vătășianu: Istoria artei feudale în țările romîne . tape I . Editura Academiei RPR , Bucharest 1959. OCLC 536121
  • Evelin Wetter, Corinna Kienzle, Ágnes Ziegler: Liturgical vestments in the Black Church in Kronstadt in Transylvania . Ed .: Henry B. Hohmann. Abegg Foundation, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-905014-63-1 .
  • Collections: Black Church, Brașov - Kronstadt . In: Stefano Ionescu (Ed.): Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania . 2nd Edition. Verduci Editore, Rome 2005, p. 177-183 .
  • Ágnes Ziegler, Frank-Thomas Ziegler: God in honor and the praiseworthy guild for ornament and use. The Ottoman carpets of the Black Church . Foton, Kronstadt 2019, ISBN 978-6-06858255-9 .

Web links

Commons : Black Church  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Herrmann Fabini: Kronstadt. In: Sacred architecture in Transylvanian-Saxon cities . monuMenta Verlag & Working Group for Transylvanian Cultural Studies, Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-973-7969-15-6 , p. 145 .
  2. ^ Franz Zimmermann and Karl Werner: No. 1021 . In: Document book on the history of the Germans in Transylvania . tape 2 (1342-1390) . Sibiu 1897. According to Fabini (2013), p. 146.
  3. ↑ Gernot Nussbächer, Peter Simon: Guide through the Black Church in Kronstadt . Aldus-Verlag, Kronstadt 2008, p. 4 .
  4. ^ Herrmann Fabini: Kronstadt. In: Sacred architecture in Transylvanian-Saxon cities . monuMenta Verlag & Working Group for Transylvanian Cultural Studies, Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-973-7969-15-6 , p. 150 .
  5. ^ Herrmann Fabini: Kronstadt. In: Sacred architecture in Transylvanian-Saxon cities . monuMenta Verlag & Working Group for Transylvanian Cultural Studies, Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-973-7969-15-6 , p. 158-159 .
  6. ^ Herrmann Fabini: Kronstadt. In: Sacred architecture in Transylvanian-Saxon cities . monuMenta Verlag & Working Group for Transylvanian Cultural Studies, Sibiu (Hermannstadt), Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-973-7969-15-6 , p. 154-155 .
  7. ↑ Erwin Hellmann, Péter Simon (Ill.): The guild boards in the black church in Kronstadt . Ed. Foton, Kronstadt 2009, ISBN 978-973-7641-45-8 .
  8. ^ Evelin Wetter, Corinna Kienzle, Ágnes Ziegler: Liturgical vestments in the Black Church in Kronstadt in Transylvania . Ed .: Henry B. Hohmann. Abegg Foundation, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-905014-63-1 .
  9. ^ Collections: Black Church, Brașov - Kronstadt . In: Stefano Ionescu (Ed.): Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania . 2nd Edition. Verduci Editore, Rome 2005, p. 177-183 .
  10. ↑ Ágnes Ziegler, Frank-Thomas Ziegler: God to honor and the praiseworthy guild for ornament and use. The Ottoman carpets of the Black Church . Foton, Kronstadt 2019, ISBN 978-6-06858255-9 .
  11. ↑ Peter Motzan: thing symbol of collective identity. The Black Church as an "object" of Transylvanian-German literature (1919-1944) . In: 50 Years of the Southeast German Cultural Work - Southeast German Quarterly Papers 1951-2001 . Munich 2001, p. 55-64 .
  12. ^ Albert Weber: The Black Church in Kronstadt . In: Joachim Bahlcke; Stefan Rohdewald; Thomas Wünsch (Hrsg.): Religious places of remembrance in East Central Europe: Constitution and competition in access across nations and epochs . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2013, p. 741-751 .

Coordinates: 45 ° 38 ′ 27.7 "  N , 25 ° 35 ′ 16.9"  E