St. Michael Church (Leer)
The Roman Catholic St. Michael Church in the city of Leer ( East Frisia ) was built in 1775 as the city's first new Catholic church after the Reformation .
history
After the Reformation there was no longer a Roman Catholic parish in the city. It was not until 1643 that a small missionary station was established, initially with 15 communicants , which financed a priest and which grew to 120 communicants by 1658. After disputes between the princes of the East Frisian rulers from the House of Cirksena and the East Frisian estates, imperial troops were stationed in Leer to ensure peace. With these a priest came to the place as field priest in 1676 and supported the existing community, which was added to the Diocese of Osnabrück . There is a document from the year 1700, according to which Catholic services were held in a private house. In 1719 the constantly growing community bought its own house for 600 Reichstaler. A few years later this was already too small for the community, so that the Catholic commandant of the Leeraner Salvegarde, Baron Höfflinger, turned to the East Frisian sovereign in 1725 to advertise an expansion. Prince Georg Albrecht initially agreed to this verbally, but withdrew this promise after a great protest from the Protestant side. In 1728 he again allowed the Catholics to build a new place of worship. This was to be built on the old foot of the previous church, so that in the same year a modest chapel without a church tower was built in Kirchstrasse. After the death of the last Prince of East Friesland, Carl Edzard from the House of Cirksena (reign 1734–1744), East Friesland, and with it Leer, fell to Prussia in the course of an expedition . In 1767 the Catholic community applied for an extension of their church and the construction of a bell tower. Again, the local Lutherans spoke out against it, arguing that the Catholic Church was not far enough away from the Lutheran Church.
On January 2, 1775, the congregation received permission to build a new church with a bell tower. The previous building began to be demolished on June 6, 1775. The present church was then built as a hall with a hipped roof and consecrated on December 15, 1775. When East Frisia belonged to France from 1810 to 1813, the mission station in Leer was raised to a parish. It initially belonged to the Diocese of Münster and was added to the Diocese of Osnabrück in 1824 , which formed the Deanery of East Friesland in 1835.
From 1933 until his arrest by the Gestapo in 1941, Heinrich Schniers was pastor at St. Michael; he died in 1942 in Dachau concentration camp .
After the Second World War, the congregation experienced a strong growth spurt from the influx of many expellees from the eastern regions of the German Empire , which is why the church was extended in 1951 in the west. In the same year the church council decided to purchase a loan bell. In 1955, a second Catholic parish was founded in the city, which in the same year received its own church, St. Marien Leer-Loga .
In 1978 the interior and especially the altar area were redesigned to meet the requirements of the Second Vatican Council for the liturgy. The high altar and other pieces of equipment were replaced.
The number of parishioners has shrunk sharply since the 1990s. Therefore, the St. Michael parish with the Catholic parishes of St. Marien in Loga, Assumption of Mary in Oldersum and St. Joseph in Weener founded a community and developed a parish community. On January 1, 2018, the two parishes in Leer merged to form the parish of Seliger Hermann Lange . The community belongs to the Dean's Office of East Frisia in the Diocese of Osnabrück .
From 2014 to 2015 an extensive interior renovation followed for 1.7 million euros, which included a renewal of the roof, the heating system and electrical installation, a renovation of the outer walls and a new design of the church and the Heinrich Schnier House, the parish hall of the community . The entrance and altar areas of the church have been radically redesigned, the floor renewed and the western aisle converted into a foyer. The interior has been made smaller and a room behind the foyer has been separated as a memorial for the victims of National Socialism . The pews were replaced with individual chairs and the interior was given a bright color version . The inauguration was carried out on May 1, 2015 by Bishop Franz-Josef Bode .
Building description
The aisle church on a rectangular floor plan is not easted , but oriented to the south-south-west according to the course of the street. A hipped roof covers the church, which is built from red bricks.
A square tower is integrated into the nave on the north side. The slim tower was built based on the model of the church von Wahn , whose plans go back to the Münster master builder Johann Conrad Schlaun . It has corner pilasters and beveled corners in the upper part of the masonry shaft, the bell chamber. Round-arched sound holes are embedded here. The tower houses two bells that sound on the notes a 1 and c 2 . The smaller bell is a loan bell from the Silesian Ullersdorf. It weighs 230 kg and was cast in 1796. The tower structure consists of a very small pointed helmet, which is crowned by an ornate cross between two gilded tower knobs and a gilded weathercock, the symbol of vigilance. The round-arched north portal made of light sandstone has protruding, profiled spiers and an ornate keystone . A building inscription above the portal reminds of the royal permit to build. The roman letter values of the chronogram result in the year of construction 1775: "EX SpeCIaLI gratIa FrIDerICI MagnI BorVssIae RegIs posIta". Above the inscription is a sandstone relief depicting the Archangel Michael with the dragon.
The nave is illuminated in the north and east through large arched windows. The southern part of the church is the sacristy . In the west, a transept-like extension includes an entrance area and a memorial for martyrs. Here, among others, Heinrich Schniers and Hermann Lange , who was born in Leer, are remembered. In the south the Pfarrer-Schniers-Haus adjoins to the west. Between the pastor-Schniers House and the portal cultivation is under a canopy roof , a side vessel to be by rectangular window light.
Furnishing
The interior is closed off by a coffered ceiling . In the north, the organ gallery rests on slender pillars. A stone, cup-shaped baptismal font is placed in front of the gallery. A statue of the Virgin Mary is placed on the east wall. A wooden sculpture depicting the Archangel Michael with a raised sword comes from the former high altar.
The altar area in the south is characterized by the anvil-shaped altar made of light Euviller sandstone, which was designed by the sculptor Janning from Münster-Angelmodde in 1978. The ambo , which Janning and the tabernacle executed in the same year, shows a bronze sculpture with the four evangelist symbols on the front . The simple wooden cross on the south wall was created by the Krefeld artist Klaus Simon from oak planks. The four arms of the cross are human length and represent the Lübeck martyrs .
Simon also designed the memorial for the martyrs behind the western entrance area. Four 1.80 meter high glass steles with photos of the four martyrs and selected texts flank a glass window set into the wall with a large red leaf and the Beatitude from Mt 5.10 EIN . Another glass stele reminds of Heinrich Schniers. A stone relief depicting Saint Liudger originally hung on the outer wall. Since the renovation in 2015, the aisle has been separated from the church interior by glass walls with three doors.
organ
An unspecified organ builder , probably Heinrich Wilhelm Eckmann , built an organ for the previous chapel in 1767 and included older parts of a previous organ by Johann Friedrich Constabel and Christian Klausing . Dirk Lohman transferred this organ to the new church. The instrument was sold to St. Bernhard in Flachsmeer in 1867 . St. Michael received from Friedrich Fleiter a new organ with 13 registers in a neo-Romanesque case. The present organ with a back positive in the gallery parapet behind the box-shaped prospect typical of the time was built by Alfred Führer in 1972. The instrument has 14 registers with a total of 1045 pipes, which are distributed over two manuals and pedal :
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- Coupling : II / I, I / P, II / P
See also
literature
- Hans-Bernd Rödiger, Menno Smid : Frisian churches in Emden, Leer, Borkum, Mormerland, Uplengen, Overledingen and Reiderland , volume 3. Verlag CL Mettcker & Söhne, Jever 1980, p. 74.
Web links
- Homepage of the parish
- Parish community MoWeLeLe
- stadt-leer.de: Catholic Church
- Paul Weßels (local chronicle of the East Frisian landscape ): Leer (PDF file; 150 kB)
- Genealogy Forum: The Catholic Church
Individual evidence
- ^ Menno Smid: Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte (= East Friesland in the protection of the dike . Volume 6 ). Self-published, Pewsum 1974, p. 389 .
- ^ Menno Smid: Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte (= East Friesland in the protection of the dike . Volume 6 ). Self-published, Pewsum 1974, p. 390 .
- ^ Menno Smid: Ostfriesische Kirchengeschichte (= East Friesland in the protection of the dike . Volume 6 ). Self-published, Pewsum 1974, p. 393 .
- ↑ parish community MoWeLeLe , accessed on 13 March 2018th
- ↑ a b Church of St. Michael Leer will be inaugurated on May 1st , accessed on March 13, 2018.
- ^ Ostfriesland.de: Catholic Church of St. Michael , accessed on March 13, 2018.
- ↑ stadt-leer.de: Catholic Church , accessed on March 13, 2018.
- ↑ a b c Church guide , accessed on March 13, 2018 (PDF).
- ^ Walter Kaufmann : The organs of East Frisia . East Frisian Landscape, Aurich 1968, p. 158 .
Coordinates: 53 ° 13 ′ 40.7 " N , 7 ° 26 ′ 53.9" E
