St. Martin Church (Eggersdorf)
The Eggersdorfer St. Martin Church ( ) is a Protestant sacred building whose beginnings go back to the 11th century. Eggersdorf is a district of the municipality of Bördeland in the Salzland district .
description
The building complex of the Martinskirche consists of a nave , choir and tower. The entire building is plastered and made of bricks except for the tower. The tower and individual wall segments, remnants of the medieval predecessor building, are made of rubble stones. The nave has a gable roof, the choir has a tented roof , while the tower is covered with a pyramid roof. The tower roof is made of slate, the other roofs are covered with tiles.
The nave has a rectangular floor plan, is about 14 m long and 9 m wide. The polygonal choir attached to the east is about one meter narrower than the nave, but with its south wall it connects directly to the nave. The square tower has a width of six meters. It is located on the south wall, about five meters from the west wall and tapers slightly upwards. Six tall rectangular windows are set into the nave, and each of the five walls of the choir has an arched window. Round-arched sound openings are embedded under the roof of the church tower, and clock mansards are located on the east and west gables.
Inside the church is closed with a wooden barrel ceiling . The oldest item in the inventory is the stone altar , which is estimated to be over a thousand years old. Small consecration crosses from the Romanesque period are incorporated into the corners of the altar plate . Twelve wood carved figures from the 15th century come from an earlier pulpit altar that is no longer in existence and are now installed in the chancel . More recently, there is a candlestick and a baptismal bowl stand, both wrought iron, and donated in 2011 by a former couple from Eggersdorf. On the middle part of a three-sided gallery painted with ornaments stands a neo-Gothic organ built in 1895 that is no longer playable . On the ground floor there is a small Ladegast organ from 1865. The Martinskirche has only one bell, which was cast in 1926. The church tower clock installed in 1893 and wound up weekly was manufactured by the JF Weule company from Bockenem in Lower Saxony .
history
Various chroniclers assume that the first church was built between the 11th and 13th centuries, of which the tower and parts of the eastern choir have been preserved. The original hall church was 17 m long and 5.5 m wide. In 1643 a fire almost completely destroyed the church, only the tower, the south wall and the choir remained. When the Eggersdorf church is mentioned in the Calbian heritage book in 1705, the destruction is no longer mentioned, rather the presence of the pulpit, altar and organ is described. In 1750/51 extensive alterations were made. The north and west walls were rebuilt and the nave lengthened by three meters to the west. All outer walls were raised by around 1.3 m and larger windows were installed. On the west side a gallery was built in as a location for the organ and a new wooden pulpit altar was erected. In 1895 a new organ was purchased and a new three-sided gallery was built. Until the outbreak of the First World War , the Martinskirche had two bells. The large bronze bell , cast in 1908, was melted down for war purposes in 1917. In 1926 and 1937 two new bells were purchased, the larger of which had to be returned to the arms industry during the Second World War in 1940.
In the 1960s the church began to decline. A resolution of the parish council of 1968 to give up the church was rejected by the Magdeburg consistory . In 1970 the pulpit altar and parts of the stalls were removed after worm infestation, and later a large gap opened in the roof. In 1982 the church was closed by the building authorities due to sponge infestation . Work to secure the building did not begin until 1993, and in 1996 a church building association was formed to save the church. The renovation work began in 1997. Substantial funding was raised in 1999 with the help of the ARD television gala “So that the church stays in the village”. In the same year, the work to restore the Martinskirche was completed. In 2001 the only bell was extensively repaired by a Kölleda bell company.
The Eggersdorf Church is consecrated to Saint Martin (~ 316–397), Bishop of Tours .
literature
- Georg Dehio: Handbook of German Art Monuments, Saxony-Anhalt I , p. 190, Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2002, ISBN 3-422-03069-7
- History and stories from our hometown Eggersdorf - special issue on the history of the Eggersdorfer St. Martin Church , published by Kultur- und Heimatverein Eggersdorf eV, undated.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 58 ′ 38.3 " N , 11 ° 42 ′ 30.2" E