St. Alexandri Church (Eldagsen)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The St. Alexandri Church in Eldagsen

The Evangelical Lutheran St. Alexandri Church is the parish church of the village of Eldagsen . The site of the listed church building , whose origins date back to the 8th century, is today's Marktplatz 2 .

history

View from the south of the church, the rectory and the former school;
So-called emergency money from the city of Eldagsen 1921/22

A first wooden church was built in "Eildagessen" in 775 as a small baptismal church, when King Charlemagne moved from the east through the area of ​​the then Saxons . Around 785, a new pentagonal building was planned in place of the wooden predecessor , but the foundations did not come out.

In the year the diocese of Elze was founded in 796, the church was assigned to this diocese as the mother church and a hall church was built on the foundation of the pentagonal church . Also dating from around 796 and thus the early days of Christianity is one of the oldest in subsequent excavations discovered artefacts dated, which was then set up in the hall in the church tower: The rest of a sand stone tympanum with a pictorial representation from the Book of Revelation , is surrounded of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life , the Lamb of God in the conquest of a winged dragon , the dragon Babylon . The diocese was moved to Hildesheim as early as 815 .

Around 1100 the church was elevated to the status of an archdeacon church, i.e. the seat of the representative of the bishop. By 1150, under the influence of the noblemen of Völksen-Heusen (Hogisim) and Völksen-Heusen-Higesim-Haldessen, the church was expanded into a three-aisled cross basilica and served as the burial place of the noblemen. Some grave slabs from this period are exhibited on the tower wall. When Eldagsen was founded in 1254, the church was on the market square. In 1350 the church was enlarged. Between the years 1479 and 1488 further extensions followed, a new winged altar was purchased.

In the course of the Reformation , Bernhard Lange became the first evangelical preacher to St. Alexandri, but was soon expelled again by the Augsburg interim applied by Duke Erich II .

During the Thirty Years War , the church was badly damaged when the entire place burned down in 1626. The bells in the tower were also destroyed, while the winged altar was spared. In 1628, the then Duke of Calenberg-Wolfenbüttel gave the parish a bell that is still preserved today, and two more bells followed 16 years later, one of which has also been preserved. In 1698 the dilapidated Gothic vault was demolished and the nave was provided with a baroque barrel vault and a roof that connected all three naves until 1709. This gave the church its present form. In the following years the church building was renovated several times and in 1854 a Furtwängler organ was installed. In 1962 the altar was restored and in 2005 the two historic bells were repaired.

Excavations

The first excavations on the church were carried out on small areas in the area of ​​the church tower in the years 1963 to 1965 and 1970. Due to structural redesigns on the church and market square as part of a city redevelopment, extensive excavations were carried out in 2013 in the vicinity of the St. Alexandri Church . They were carried out in the old cemetery surrounding the church before construction began and lasted from March to August 2013. The archaeological investigations were carried out by an excavation company and the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation . They provided new insights into the building history of the church and the use of the surrounding area. 356 burials and 57 building and settlement structures were found in the ground , which was an unexpected frequency of discovery. During the excavations, some burial remains were found only 20 cm deep. The graves were laid out in a very small space. As a result, there were often grave disturbances and grave overlays in up to five layers. It is said that a cemetery was fenced in in the early 19th century when pigs digged human bones out of the earth. Noteworthy were four brick crypts under the paving directly at the church choir with a depth of 1.5 meters. Anthropological investigations are carried out by the University of Göttingen on the excavated bone material . They are intended to provide information about the living conditions of the people living in Eldagsen and their demographic development from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Some of the exposed skeletons are 1000 years old.

Among other things, iron coffin nails and handles, drapery needles made of non-ferrous metal, coins and rings were recovered from finds from the burial places. The most outstanding find is a gold finger ring that was found outside a funeral. It is mistaken for a bishop's ring and can be dated to the second half of the 12th century based on comparative pieces from various bishops' tombs, such as Albero von Montreuil , Absalon von Lund , Ranulf Flambard and Roger de Vico Pisano . The gemstone formerly set in the ring has not been preserved. The gold ring is subjected to a comprehensive metallurgical examination including comparative pieces from Germany and abroad. The investigations are carried out at the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry at Leibniz Universität Hannover by the Archaeometry Working Group .

See also

literature

  • Friedrich-Wilhelm Wiegmann, Joachim Krienke, Thorsten Schoppe, Christel Fritz Prüßner, Ulrich Rohn (Red.): 1200 years of St. Alexandri zu Eldagsen and St. Nicolai zu Alferde. Edited by the parish councils of the St. Alexander parish in Eldagsen and the parish of St. Nicola in Alferde. Self-published, Eldagsen 1996

Web links

Commons : St. Alexandri (Eldagsen)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Henner Hannig (arr.) Et al. , Gerd Weiß, Walter Wulf (Red.): Springe-Eldagsen , in: Monument topography of the Federal Republic of Germany , architectural monuments in Lower Saxony , Volume 13.1: District of Hanover , ed. by Hans-Herbert Möller , Lower Saxony State Administration Office - Institute for Monument Preservation , Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Braunschweig 1988, ISBN 3-528-06207-X , pp. 152f., 269-272; and Eldagsen / Stadt Springe , oaO, p. 301
  2. ^ A b c Friedrich-Wilhelm Wiegmann, Joachim Krienke, Thorsten Schoppe, Christel Fritz Prüßner, Ulrich Rohn (ed.): 1200 years of St. Alexandri zu Eldagsen and St. Nicolai zu Alferde. Edited by the parish councils of the St. Alexander parish in Eldagsen and the parish of St. Nicola in Alferde . Self-published, Eldagsen 1996, passim
  3. ↑ a b c d Joachim Krienke: St. Alexandri Church Eldagsen. Information about the history on the homepage of the parish
  4. ^ Friedrich-Wilhelm Wiegmann et al. : Mission Bishop Willehad and the central building in Eldagsen , as well as A testimony of the conversion of Saxony , in: 1200 years ... , p. 20f.
  5. ↑ Danielis Eberhardi Baringii : Descriptio Salae principatus Calenbergici locorumque adiacentium or description of Saala in office Lauenstein of Brunswick-Lüneb. Fürstenthums Calenberg and all sources and brooks flowing into the same, the same of the counties and lordships, cities, towns, villages, forests, mountains, salt wells, healthy wells, and the like ... , Lemgo: Druck und Verlag von Johann Friedrich Meyer, 1744, pp. 68f .; Digitized via Google Books
  6. ^ Website of the Eldagsen parish
  7. ↑ At the scene Gräbefeld in: New Deister newspaper from April 6, 2013
  8. ↑ Where do these skeletons come from? in the Schaumburger Zeitung of April 10, 2013
  9. ↑ Anthropology of the University of Göttingen researches Edagser skeletons in Neue Deister-Zeitung of November 10, 2016
  10. ↑ Excavation costs the city a lot of time and money in: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung from April 5, 2013
  11. ^ Photo of the ring in the Neue Deister-Zeitung from November 5, 2013
  12. ↑ A treasure for the history books in: Neue Deister-Zeitung from June 7, 2013
  13. ^ S. Agostinetto, T. Poremba, Friedrich-Wilhelm Wulf : The archaeological investigation at the St. Alexandri Church in Eldagsen in 2013 in: Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony 4/2014
  14. ↑ University should examine Goldring in: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung from November 4, 2013

Coordinates: 52 ° 10 ′ 15 ″  N , 9 ° 39 ′ 36 ″  E