St. Katharina Hospital Church (Aschaffenburg)
The St. Katharina Hospital Church was built in 1848 as a hall church in Romanesque-Classicist style. Today the Romanian Orthodox Parish Presentation of Mr. Aschaffenburg celebrates its services there.
history
The old hospital on Lamprechtstrasse, the cornerstone of which was laid for a “new hospital and charity institution” on May 27, 1824, has been rebuilt and structurally changed over and over in its almost 200-year history.
The main building was built as a horseshoe-shaped structure on Wermbachstrasse. Architect and site manager, agricultural inspector Wolfgang Streiter, designed a simple two-story building with sparingly yet decoratively used classical elements. On the first floor there was a prayer room which, according to a respected Aschaffenburg citizen, was “insufficient for promoting the wellbeing of the soul”. On September 4, 1846, councilor Fidel von Baur-Breitenfeld informed the magistrate that Juliane Betz, b. Eisenberger, the widow of the businessman Andreas Betz, donated 3,000 guilders to build a hospital chapel. She attached three conditions to this donation:
- The city of Aschaffenburg had to provide the remaining financing of 950 guilders within a year so that construction could start in 1847.
- Your name should never be mentioned in connection with this donation.
- On some thank-you days, “In Eternal Times” soul masses should be read for you and your loved ones.
In 1848 the chapel was completed, but those involved had to make more money available. His Majesty the King also donated 200 florins. A hall was built in the style of the early neo-Romanesque, as an extension of the southern side wing on Lamprechtstrasse. The side facades have five semicircular closed windows, a chapel and a tower with a gable roof. In 1870 the city magistrate decreed that the clock of the Herstalltor, which had recently been demolished, should be installed in the tower of the hospital chapel. A relief of St. Elisabeth of Thuringia , created by Otto Gentil , is embedded in the west gable as a remnant of an entrance system that was destroyed in the war .
Hospital chapel
The chapel of the Catholic Curate at the Municipal Hospital served mainly as a place of retreat for the performance of the daily prayers of the Sisters of Mercy of St. Vinzenz von Paul from the mother house in Munich . At the urging of King Ludwig I of Bavaria , Matron Ignatia Jorth and four sisters came to the hospital and charity institution in Aschaffenburg on November 19, 1837 to support the nursing staff. The sisters, after the Second World War up to 60 religious women, performed their self-sacrificing service. They have gained unforgettable popularity because their quiet, humble, kind and reliable manner in dealing with the sick was unprecedented until they were called back to their mother house in Munich on November 19, 1969, after 132 years.
After moving to the new "Klinikum am Hasenkopf" in 1989, the Aschaffenburger Krippenfreunde eV. found her accommodation with exhibition room here.
Since 1997 the Romanian Orthodox parish "Presentation of the Lord" under priest Costel Habelea from Würzburg celebrates its services there every second Sunday of the month.
Furnishing
From an estate in 1833, the hospital sisters received a 1.20 m high late Gothic Madonna figure (Mary with baby Jesus) from the school of Tilman Riemenschneider, carved at the beginning of the 16th century. During the Thirty Years' War , the figure is said to have been damaged by a sword cut on the forehead by a Swedish soldier. In view of its artistic importance, the figure was taken to the museum.
The chapel is restored in 1869. Altars, figures, seating, gallery and floor are renewed under the direction and according to the designs of the linear drawing teacher at the Aschaffenburg industrial school, Anton Niedling. The neo-Gothic wood-carved high altar is adorned by three figures in the middle of Maria Immaculata , flanked by the church patrons , St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Elisabeth of Thuringia . Above the cafeteria in the middle of the tabernacle with expositorium (exhibition of the monstrance), 2 angels to the side and a mercy seat in the middle . During the last renovation of the high altar was given its original polychrome back and it was an offset of the main altar people's altar for celebration versus populo newly created and installed.
The Way of the Cross (14 sculptures in terracotta) on the south wall was created in 1931 by the Würzburg master sculptor Ludwig Sonnleitner (1878–1947). The sculptures are half-figures, the representation is limited to three people, in a lively narrative form, in a reddish tone and walled in in a continuous row. Suffering, embodied in all its gravity in the figure of the Savior, but also the bearing of suffering turned towards God, which the stations characterize, gives the sick, the sisters in their difficult occupation and all the pious prayers comfort and strength.
The wood-carved crucifix hanging on the north wall also comes from Sonnleitner from the same year. The cross 2.60 m and the body 1.20 m, a so-called four-nail crucifix (Christ standing on a pedestal - feet not crossed) refers to a Romanesque and Gothic style epoch, reminiscent of the narrow body with fragile, strongly angled arms of the suffering Christ of the plague crosses of the 14th century.
organ
The first organ with only twelve registers came from the collegiate church in 1854 . In 1862 the organ builder Josef Zahn delivered a new organ, which was sold to Keilberg in 1896. The third organ was built by Bruno Müller in 1896 and sold to Sennfeld near Schweinfurt in 1934 and installed in the newly built Catholic church there. The fourth organ in 1934 came from Leopold King from the company Flügel- und Pianofortefabrik Philipps - Bülow - Arnold (Aschaffenburg) . The prospectus is in three parts, the side panels framed with pilaster strips, the wide center panel set back a little and without framing. All prospect pipes of the same length, extend (as if cut off) to the ceiling.
Individual evidence
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↑ Peter Körner, Main-Echo No. 201 of August 31, 1996(Note: a street was named after him!)
"Only the first condition was met ... the ban on making the name of the founder public has now been disregarded by several publications ... Such investments in a more beautiful existence in the afterlife mostly turned out to be speculation in Aschaffenburg. This was also experienced by the city's many benefactors, who donated their wealth to social causes against the condition that part of their income should be thought of. Commemoration has long since been given up so intensely by the following generations that not even the disappearance of their graves in the old town cemetery is worth a comment ...! "
- ↑ Aschaffenburg City Archives: Ministries' minutes of October 14, 1847
- ↑ Ernst Holleber: Notes on the Open Monument Day 1996
- ↑ Alois Grimm: Aschaffenburg house book . Volume III: Urban area between Sandgasse, Roßmarkt, Betgasse and Wermbachstraße with the collaboration of Monika Ebert, Ilse Meißner, Klaus Eymann, Peter Fleck, Ernst Holleber, Franz-Josef Heller, Martin Kempf and Alois Stadtmüller. Geschichts- und Kunstverein eV, Aschaffenburg 1994, ISBN 3-87965-063-2
- ↑ 10th anniversary, Main-Echo No. 31 of February 7, 2007
- ↑ Spessart Calendar 1918 p. 52
- ↑ Alois Grimm, see below
- ↑ Observer am Main No. 150 of July 4, 1931 HHDomkapitular Dr. Karl Staab from Würzburg consecrated the Way of the Cross on July 5, 1931
- ↑ Thomas Ratzka: "No metallic cold flows from him ..." A contribution to the rediscovery of Ludwig Sonnleitner's (1878-1947) sculptures in Aschaffenburg . Aschaffenburg Yearbook of the Geschichts- und Kunstverein eV, Aschaffenburg Volume 23 2004, ISBN 3-87965-100-0 , p. 162 ff.
- ^ Hermann Fischer: Organs of the Bavarian Lower Main region. History and Art Association V., Aschaffenburg 2004, ISBN 3-87965-099-3 .
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 58 ′ 18.5 ″ N , 9 ° 8 ′ 58.9 ″ E