St. Johannis Church (Oldenburg in Holstein)

St. Johannis

The St. Johannis Church in Oldenburg in Holstein was built as a Romanesque basilica by the last Oldenburg bishop Gerold from 1156 to 1160 , making it one of the oldest brick churches in Northern Europe and an important representative of brick Romanesque . It is located on Wallstrasse and thus in the immediate vicinity of the Oldenburger Wall , a Slavic defense system.

history

In the course of the Wende mission of the Hamburg bishop Adaldag , Otto I. decided in the middle of the 10th century the Vagrian port city of Starigard to be the seat of the new diocese of Oldenburg . Little more is known about the church, which was built at the time and consecrated to John the Baptist , than that it went up in flames during the Slavic uprisings in 1001. Their foundations were found during excavations on the wall. For 150 years there was no more church in Oldenburg.

Only after the Wendenkreuzzug did Vicelin's visit to Oldenburg in 1150 give the impetus to build a chapel, which presumably only served the German new settlers from the empire who had been brought into the country by Adolf II von Schauenburg , without their own priest officiating there. It is possible that he was already planning today's cathedral, which was consecrated as a bishop's church in 1157 - still unfinished - by his successor, Bishop Gerold and Count Adolf II. The chronicler Helmold von Bosau reports about it as an eyewitness. But as early as 1160/63 the diocese was moved to the city of Lübeck , newly founded by Heinrich the Lion . The cathedral remained as a relatively insignificant church with only one priest.

Choir room with baroque altar

The church building with the west portal was completed around 1230. Instead of a tower, the church had a roof turret. The choir was rebuilt and enlarged in the early Gothic style in 1329. At that time, the St. John's Church was one of the four main churches of the Lübeck diocese with several side altars and vicarages .

In 1531 the Reformation was carried out in Oldenburg , the community was detached from the Diocese of Lübeck and placed under the Holstein superintendent . The city council received church patronage . In spite of this, Catholic priests still officiated in St. John's Church in 1575.

In 1773, most of the interior was destroyed by the great Oldenburg city fire. In 1777 the church was rededicated. The baroque tower dome from 1778, which can be seen from afar, was designed by the Eutin court architect Georg Greggenhofer . The pulpit and altar were donated by citizens.

Furnishing

The Oldenburg Cathedral is a pillar basilica. The current baroque interior of the church is a result of the town fire of 1773. The building structure survived the fire almost undamaged, so that the spatial impression corresponds to that of the originally Romanesque basilica.

The high altar and the pulpit were created by the Copenhagen wood sculptor Nikolaus Hollm in the years after the fire in the late Baroque style. The baptismal angel and two sarcophagi in the north aisle date from the time before the fire .

In 1867 the church received an organ from the Marcussen company. Due to the age of the organ, maintenance work was carried out in the 1990s to indicate that a replacement would be necessary in the near future. In 2012, the church council therefore decided to commission a new building. The costs for this were estimated at around 530,000 euros. To finance the new organ, an organ building association was founded, which is supposed to bring in part of the necessary funds through donations. The new organ of the organ builder Hermann Eule (Bautzen) was inaugurated in 2018, the slider chests -instrument has 29 registers on two manual stations and pedal .

I Hauptwerk C – g ³
Drone	16 '
Principal	08th'
flute	08th'
Viol	08th'
Octave	04 '
flute	04 '
Fifth	02 ² ⁄ ₃  '
Octave	02 '
Cornett II-IV	02 ² ⁄ ₃  '
Mixture IV	01 ¹ ⁄ ₃  '
Trumpet	08th'

II Swell C – g ³
Violprincipal	08th'
Salicional	08th'
Vox Angelika	08th'
Dumped	08th'
Principal	04 '
Transverse flute	04 '
Nasard	02 ² ⁄ ₃  '
Piccolo	02 '
third	01 ³ ⁄ ₅  '
Mixture V
oboe	08th'

Pedals C – f ¹
Violon	16 '
Sub-bass	16 '
Octave	08th'
Dumped	08th'
Octave	04 '
trombone	16 '
Trumpet	08th'

Pastors

Johann Petersen (chronicler) , pastor 1531–1552
Peter Lackmann , pastor 1695–1713
Johann Rudolf Christiani , pastor 1809–1812

literature

Church council of the evg.-luth. Parish of Oldenburg in Holstein (ed.): Festschrift for the 850th anniversary of the St. Johanniskirche in Oldenburg in Holstein . Oldenburg 2007.
- This includes the following articles:
- Rumold kitchen master: 800 years of St. Johanniskirche in Oldenburg . (Original article from 1957 with historical additions by Jürgen Eberhardt 2007.)
- Jürgen Eberhardt: The St. Johanniskirche today .
- Peter Ulkan: The organ .
- Jürgen Eberhardt: Timeline of the church history of Oldenburg .
- Jürgen Eberhardt: Important personalities in the church history of Oldenburg .