St. John Evangelist Church (Stettin)
Coordinates: 53 ° 25 ′ 21 ″ N , 14 ° 33 ′ 26 ″ E The St. John Evangelist Church (St. John 's Church ) (Polish: Kościół św. Jana Ewangelisty ) in Szczecin, Poland, is a Gothic building. It goes back to the foundation of the Franciscans in the 13th century and is today a Roman Catholic church.
Geographical location
The Church of St. John the Evangelist is located on the south-eastern edge of the old town of Szczecin at ul. Św. Ducha (until 1945 Heiliggeiststraße ) on the left bank of the Oder . The nearest train station is the Szczecin Central Railway Station (Dworzec głowny). The house of God is one of the listed sights on the European Route of Brick Gothic (Europejski Slak Gotyku Ceglanego) and should not be confused with the much younger St. John the Baptist Church in the northwestern city center (ul.Bogurodzicy, until 1945 Greifenstrasse ) .
Building history / description
Church from the 13th century
In 1240 Franciscans of the Saxon Order Province ( Saxonia ) came to Stettin. For them, Duke Barnim I donated a monastery and a church, which was initially made of wood. The order, founded in Italy in 1210, quickly spread throughout Germany to Livonia from 1221 onwards . A convent in Stettin was first mentioned in a document in 1267. From 1274 it was the seat of one of the 12 administrative districts ( called custodians ), into which the approximately 90 branches of the Saxon Franciscan Province were divided. The monastery must have been of a certain size, because between 1363 and 1507 the provincial chapter of the Saxon province met in Stettin six times .
14th century church
In connection with the construction of the city wall, a realignment of the monastery church was necessary, and so the church was built in the Gothic style at the beginning of the 14th century. The choir was largely completed by the 1330s at the latest. The nave of the three-aisled, seven-bay hall church was built before 1368, as this date has been established as the date when the timber of the roof was felled.
The main nave is adorned with particularly beautiful vaults: four-pointed stars, the easternmost and westernmost yoke have a richer pattern. This contrasts with the clearly sparse aisle.
The main entrance was then in the north wall. In the 15th century, the walls were rebuilt and the interior was expanded to include six chapels on the north side. They were built between the buttresses and connected to the aisle by wide arcades of pointed arches broken into the old walls. The south aisle has also been extended by four of these insert chapels. Door openings that connected the church with the monastery were made in the corner bays. The interior of the chapels is provided with cross-ribbed vaults and exposed through wide, pointed-arched windows.
In 1428, a larger chapel was built between the choir and aisle, which connected both sections with a wide, pointed arcade. However, this chapel was demolished in the 18th century.
In the 15th century, the walls of the choir and the naves, as well as the pillars and the reveals of the arcades of the chapel, were covered with polychromies . The reveals were painted with plant tendrils, the arcades with representations of squires with coats of arms.
In the chapel on the south side there is a representation of the "Marriage of St. Catherine", in another on the same side that of the "Last Supper".
The grave slab of the couple Heinrich and Getrud Rabenstorp , donated by their descendants in 1378, has also been preserved from the medieval furnishings . It is a particularly valuable work of the stonemasonry of that time.
In 1525 the Franciscan order had to leave Szczecin in the course of the introduction of the Reformation . The monastery became an educational institution and the church served its residents as a Protestant place of worship. In 1678 the interior of the church was renovated and adapted to the needs of a garrison , which has used the church for over a hundred years.
In 1701 the church received a turret on the east gable, the vaults were also replaced and the roofs repaired.
Between 1806 and 1813, Napoleon's troops confiscated the church and used it as a warehouse and granary. The structural decline was not long in coming: because of the danger of collapse, the parishioners stayed away from the church even after the French left, the remains of the monastery were used as building material for new houses. Only between 1834 and 1837 were the walls of the southern chapel areas secured, anchors installed inside, the vaults repaired, the pillars reinforced and a new chapel built on the south side of the choir. Further renovation work took place in 1841, 1864 and 1878.
In 1899, however, the building supervision ordered the church to be closed: the pillars had tilted too much, the reason for this being the lowering of the ground. Even demolishing the church was envisaged, but the efforts of the monument conservator and historian Professor Hugo Lemcke saved the building. In 1929 and 1930, a thorough renovation saved it from decay; the church could be secured with a reinforced concrete framework built under the floor. In addition, the walls were repaired with clinker bricks, and the plant friezes under the choir windows were also reconstructed.
The St. John's Church survived the Second World War relatively unscathed. The building was structurally overhauled as early as the 1950s, and the roof coverings were later replaced and work on the nave continued. In addition, extensive conservation measures were taken, including a. on the polychromies.
Between 1982 and 1985, the Pallottine Fathers erected a three-winged building with a rectory, apartments and a chapel, which was designed by the Szczecin architect Stanislaw Latour , instead of the previous enclosure . The Pallottine Order also took over the administration of the church.
Parish
Pre-Reformation
Hardly any documents have been preserved about the Johanneskirche from the pre-Reformation period. As a Franciscan monastery church, it was probably not a parish church.
Evangelical
As early as 1527, preaching in line with Lutheran teaching was taking place in the Johanneskirche . Two clergymen officiated at the church, the second of whom was employed at the St. Gertrudkirche on the Lastadie until 1766 and the service at both churches was divided. He was also responsible for prison chaplaincy .
On the night of December 9-10, 1811, the neighboring Nikolaikirche burned down completely. From Easter 1817, the Nikolaigemeinde was merged with the Johannesgemeinde and operated as Nikolai-Johannis-Gemeinde until 1945. It was incorporated into the parish of Stettin-Stadt in the later western district of the church province of Pomerania of the Church of the Old Prussian Union . In 1940 the parish had 16,918 parishioners. The church patronage was then incumbent on the city council of Szczecin.
Pastor
From the Reformation until 1945 the clergy were in office at the Johanneskirche:
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Catholic
After 1945 the Johanneskirche became a Roman Catholic church again. Since February 16, 1974 there has also been an independent parish belonging to the Deanery of Szczecin-Śródmieście (Stettin City Center) within the Archdiocese of Stettin-Cammin .
literature
- Hans Moderow : The evangelical clergy of Pomerania from the Reformation to the present . Part 1. Szczecin 1903.
- Hans Glaeser-Swantow: The Evangelical Pomerania . Part 2. Szczecin 1940.
- Johannes Hinz : Pomerania. Signpost through an unforgettable country . Wuerzburg 1996.
- Agnieszka Lindenhayn-Fiedorowicz: The architecture of the Franciscan Church of St. Johannis in Stettin. In: Dirk Schumann (Ed.): Brandenburg Franciscan Monasteries and North German begging orders. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86732-037-5 , pp. 261-281.
Web links
- Sankt Johannes Evangelistkirche, Szczecin (Poland)
- Parish of St. John's Church in the Archdiocese of Stettin-Cammin
Individual evidence
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↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 39.63.67.
Lothar Hardick : East Westphalia in the plan structure of the Saxon Franciscan Province. In: Westphalian magazine . 110: 305-328 (1960).
Lothar Hardick: Spatial planning of Saxonia before secularization. In: Vita Seraphica. 40/41 (1959/60), pp. 85-92. - ↑ 1363, 1379, 1401, 1429, 1456 and 1507, see Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Werl 1999, p. 119.125.139.155.177.231.