St. Peter and Paul Church (Stettin)
The St. Peter and Paul Church ( Polish Kościół św. Piotra i Pawła ) in the Polish city of Szczecin is a Gothic building and is considered the oldest church in the city and in Christian Pomerania . Its founding dates back to the beginning of the 12th century and is today the house of worship of the Old Catholic Polish Catholic Church .
Geographical location
The St. Peter and Paul Church is located in the center of Szczecin on Plac św. Piotra i Pawła on the lower section of Trasa Zamkowo im. Piotra Zaremby (until 1945 monastery courtyard ). The nearest train station is the Central Railway Station (Dworzec głowny). The church is one of the listed sights on the " European Route of Brick Gothic" (Europejski Slak Gotyku Ceglanego).
Building history and description
Church from 1124
Bishop Otto von Bamberg is said to have had a wooden church built in Stettin on the occasion of his missionary trip in 1124, which he placed under the patronage of the apostles Peter and Paul . There are no remains of the wooden church, which was mainly used as a place of worship for the fishermen who lived at the Oder port, and a fire destroyed the building in 1189.
Church from 1227
In the period from 1223 to 1227, the church was rebuilt with bricks . Now it also served the residents of the fishing suburb Unterwiek and the Oder villages Grabow (Grabowo), Nemitz (Niemierzyn), Zabelsdorf (Niebuszewo) and Züllchow (Żelechowa) as a place of worship . Nothing can be seen of this building today either.
Church from 1425
In 1425 a brick church began to be built - supported by the now richer residents of Unterwiek. The construction was carried out according to plans by the Szczecin master builder Heinrich Brunsberg (or Braunsberg) on the site of the earlier wooden building. A hall church with five bays was created, which was divided into three naves by ten pillars. A sacristy was added to the north aisle and a crypt was placed under the floor . In the outline of the church, structural similarities with the Stettin Jakobikirche are obvious.
The exterior decoration of the church consists of large ogival windows and flat pilaster strips with applied decorations made of glazed bricks and shaped pieces that form niches decorated with eyelashes . Beneath a row of niches are consoles made of very realistic and individually designed terracotta heads . They are probably portraits of respected Szczecin citizens from the Middle Ages and donors of the church.
In 1460 the building of the church began. The ships were extended by a wide yoke with a tower on the west side. Next to the small crypt, a larger one was built and covered with a barrel vault.
In the Middle Ages there were many valuable altars and art treasures inside the church, but they have been lost. Two stone slabs, which are walled into the facade of the sacristy on both sides of the former alms niche, have been preserved as Gothic art pieces . On the plates you can see bas-reliefs with the two namesake of the church, Peter and Paul . They were created at the end of the 14th century and were moved here from the previous church.
After the Reformation , the parish was forced to sell valuable pieces of equipment in order to finance a necessary renovation. The bell was sold in 1546 and the church silver in 1556. The tower was also torn down, which was only replaced by a roof turret in 1602.
In August 1677 the church roof of the Peter and Paul Church burned, which had been ignited by the flames of the fire of the Marienkirche . In the autumn immediately afterwards, the valuable facade collapsed, destroying the pillars and vaults. The reconstruction of the west wall began immediately and the Gothic-Baroque form was restored. The work was carried out by Johann David Bralim from Ulm . The church also received a new roof, on which a ridge turret was placed again in 1683. In 1694 three porticos made of limestone columns were erected from the Carthusian Church in Grabow .
The reconstruction of the interior could not be completed until 1792 - without the three-aisled structure. The carpenter Johannes Kämmerling covered the interior with a wooden vault, which was decorated with polychromies a year later by the painter Philip Ernst Eichner . On March 25, 1708 the inauguration of an organ took place.
In the course of the 18th century, the church received donations of valuable art treasures and works of art, most of which are still preserved today. After several alterations, some of which were due to the war, the church was changed in 1817/18 in the neo-Gothic style according to the plans of the architect Henke. The church was only slightly damaged during World War II, but part of the interior was lost.
In 1960 a thorough renovation of the interior of the church took place, during which the neo-Gothic furnishings were removed and a concrete organ loft was added. In the 1990s, restoration work was carried out on the vault polychromies and the consoles on the facade. In addition, parts of the roof covering were replaced.
One of the outstanding works of art in the church is the polychromy on the vault, painted on the ceiling to a size of 27 by 3 meters. It depicts biblical scenes with depictions of the Egyptian plagues , the Last Judgment and the adoration of the baby Jesus. The interior is illuminated by three chandeliers made from a metal alloy in 1661, 1702 and 1703. The two-story, sixteen-armed chandelier from 1661, donated by David Ertmann, is particularly splendid.
The 21 epitaphs in the interior and two on the outer walls are also worth mentioning : they date from the 17th and 18th centuries and belong to the so-called inscription tablets. The Peter and Paul Church houses the largest collection of such objects in Szczecin. An epitaph reports on the painter Jacob Wildenberger, who died in 1674.
Parish
Pre-Reformation
In the Middle Ages, the St. Peter and Paul Church was one of four parish churches in Stettin - next to the Marienkirche , the Nikolaikirche and the Jakobikirche . In 1268 the parish was determined by the Camminer Bishop Hermann von Gleichen with the parish neighboring villages Grabow , Nemitz and Frauendorf .
Evangelical
With the introduction of the Reformation , the Peter and Paul Church became a Protestant house of worship. The parish settlements became independent over the centuries or were assigned to other communities. In 1940 the Peter and Paul congregation had a total of 15,533 congregation members and was looked after by two clergymen until 1945 - as always since the Reformation. She belonged to the Stettin-Stadt parish , whose superintendent she provided from 1897 to 1945. The church district was in the western district of the church province of Pomerania of the Church of the Old Prussian Union .
The parish registers from the Protestant era of the church are preserved in large numbers (baptisms: 1619–1945, weddings: 1647–1945, burials: 1744–1945, confirmations: 1836–1944) and are in the Evangelical Central Archives in Berlin-Kreuzberg .
Pastor
The following were in office as Evangelical Lutheran clergy at the Peter and Paul Church until 1945:
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Georg Rhete is notable among the pastors of Peter-und-Paul : In 1577 he founded the printing house named after him, which continued to exist as Hessenlandsche Buchdruckerei until 1945. There was u. a. In 1618 the large Pomeranian map was printed by Eilhardus Lubinus .
Other church staff
- Theophil Andreas Volckmar (~ 1684–1768), worked from 1707 to 1712 as an organist at the Peter and Paul Church
- August Todt (1833–1900), worked from 1863 to 1868 as organist at the Peter and Paul Church
Old Catholic
In February 1946, the City Council of Szczecin handed the church building over to the Polish Catholic Church (Kościół Polskokatolicki), an Old Catholic church, to whose Wroclaw diocese it belongs. The current pastor is Infułat Stanisław Bosy.
The St. Trinity Church (former Gertrud Church) on the Stettiner Lastadie is now available to the former Protestant users of the church .
literature
- Hans Moderow : The evangelical clergy of Pomerania from the Reformation to the present. Part 1, Stettin 1903.
- Hans Glaeser-Swantow: The Evangelical Pomerania. Part 2, Stettin 1940.
- Johannes Hinz : Pomerania. Signpost through an unforgettable country. Wuerzburg 1996.
- Johannes Hinz: Pomerania. Dictionary. Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-88189-394-6 .
- 100 times Peter and Paul. The oldest church in Szczecin and Pomerania. In: The Pommersche Zeitung. Episode 48/2010, p. 4.
- Christa Stache: Directory of church records in the Evangelical Central Archive in Berlin. Part 1: The Eastern Church Provinces of the Evangelical Church of the Union. Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-9801646-4-0 .
- Christian Zickermann : News from the old inhabitants in Pomerania, also about religion and conversion, but especially from the St. Petri and Pauli Church in Old Stettin, which Otto von Bamberg had built in 1124. Szczecin 1724 ( online ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Aktuellności. Parafia Polskokatolica pw.sw.Piotra i Pawła, accessed October 30, 2018
Coordinates: 53 ° 25 ′ 41 ″ N , 14 ° 33 ′ 31 ″ E