St. Mary's Church (Barth)
The St. Marien Church in Barth is a typical building of the North German brick Gothic in the town of Barth in the district of Vorpommern-Rügen . It is the church of the Evangelical Parish of St. Marien Barth in the Propstei Stralsund of the Pomeranian Evangelical Church District .
history
The laying of the foundation stone of the Marienkirche probably took place around the year 1250. The church was not finished until 200 years later when the tower was completed. The oldest part (around 1250) is likely to be the early Gothic choir with a ribbed vault . The church was first mentioned in 1333 and in 1340 for the first time under the name of St. Mary's Church. While the outer shell was hardly changed, there were several changes inside the church. The largest took place with the introduction of the Reformation in Pomerania around 1535. The formerly splendid furnishings by the rich port city of Barth were adapted to the new views with simple furnishings. In 1820/21 the church was renovated in the style of the Enlightenment and an organ from the Berlin company Buchholz was installed instead of an instrument from 1597 that had been rebuilt several times.
The last major redesign took place in the years 1857–1863 at the instigation of Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia . During one of his visits to the province of Pomerania, which had belonged to the Kingdom of Prussia since 1815, the king noticed the Marienkirche in Barth. The romantic did not like their white interior painting and sober interior design . He commissioned the Schinkel student Friedrich August Stüler to redesign the interior in the neo-Gothic style .
So the church got an altar with a canopy . The pulpit and the galleries were renewed or newly installed, the painting and the ornamental design renewed. The organ front was completely renewed (in neo-gothic instead of classical style); the organ itself was not changed. The pulpit was given a new cover in the form of a richly structured tower. These were made by the old Barther carpenter Schlie. Since then, pictures by Karl Gottfried Pfannschmidt depicting the twelve apostles and the birth and ascension of Christ have been on display in the chancel.
The church was last renovated between 1992 and 1996. The entire roof including the tower was re-covered, the roof structure and roof turrets were renovated. The masonry on the tower and church building was renovated and five windows were newly bricked up and glazed. The church received a new bell, the organ and the north tower side hall (2005) were restored.
Building description
The Marienkirche is a six-bay, three-nave hall church with an 80 meter high tower. The single-nave, rectangular choir comprises two bays and is covered by a ribbed vault. At the nave are fixed to the north and south walls from the outside in each case six buttresses. The east gables of the choir and nave are decorated with panels. The west tower has a high tower hall and a two-bay side hall to the north and south. Above this floor there are two more with triangular gables with an octagonal helmet. At a height of around 55 meters there is a viewing platform from which there is a panoramic view of Barth, the wide area around the lagoon and, on a clear day, to the Hiddenseer Dornbusch and the Stralsund church towers. A staircase with 180 steps leads to the viewing level.
Furnishing
The oldest wall paintings from around 1400 can be found in the cross vault of the first yoke in the south aisle. They represent Christ as the judge of the world.
Adjacent to the chancel on both sides there are sacristies that were used as confession rooms until the Reformation.
From the 14th century originated Tauffünte from gunmetal under the pulpit. It is the only preserved bronze baptismal font in Western Pomerania. The octagonal basin shows human and animal heads. Apostles, saints and groups from biblical stories can be seen in pairs in the Gothic rows of gables.
In the main nave of the church above the central aisle hang three brass chandeliers. The middle one is said to be a foundation of the Barther mayor Kaspar Kümmelberg (1577–1655). His tombstone is near the baptismal font. The other two candlesticks were created by the Stralsund brass caster Dominicus Slodt in 1589 and 1590. The lid of the baptismal font was melted down for this. The Pomeranian Duke Bogislaw XIII, who resided in Barth from 1574 to 1603 . donated an organ, a bell, a candlestick and a few other things to the church.
In the church there are grave slabs with the house brands of the important Barther families. After the First World War , a five-part memorial plaque with 286 names of those who fell in the war was donated by the former warrior association.
The church-historical, non-public, 4,000-volume church library is located in the north side of the tower .
organ
The organ of the Marienkirche is the Buchholz organ with the largest original inventory of organ pipes in Germany . The early romantic organ was built by the Berlin organ builders Johann Simon Buchholz and (mostly) Carl August Buchholz . Today it has three manuals and a pedal with 50 registers .
Peal
The church has had a five-part bell in the tower since the 1st of Advent 2005. The largest (second largest bronze bell in Western Pomerania) (pitch: a 0 ) was originally a foundation of Bogislaw XIII. and was last remelted in 1911.
The two smaller bronze bells that used to hang next to it were replaced by two iron bells after the First World War in 1925. These had to be shut down in 1997 due to the unsuitable bell material becoming fatigued. In the years between 2000 and 2005, private donations (inheritance from a Barther citizen) and the cities of Barth and Greifswald made it possible to purchase four bells: two bells (pitch: d 1 and a 1 - cast in Karlsruhe in 2005), one bell (pitch : e 1 - 2000 cast in Heilbronn) and a bell (pitch: f sharp 1 - 1975 cast in Apolda). The latter was bought from the inventory of the Greifswald Cathedral.
Web links
- Literature on St. Marien Church (Barth) in the state bibliography MV
- ev-kirche-barth.de, ST.-MARIEN-KIRCHE - STRUCTURES AND EQUIPMENT
- Entry on the library in the manual of the historical book collections online
Coordinates: 54 ° 22 ′ 8.8 ″ N , 12 ° 43 ′ 28.5 ″ E