St. Agidius (Kirchenlaibach)
St. Egidius is the Catholic Church in Kirchenlaibach in the Bayreuth district and belongs to the Diocese of Regensburg . The neo-Romanesque hall building with east tower was built after a fire in 1859 in 1878 on the foundation walls of the previous Baroque building from 1798 and is a Bavarian monument.
The parishes Kirchenlaibach and Mockersdorf merged in 2012 to form a parish community. Today about 1,800 Catholics belong to the church district Kirchenlaibach.
history
The first mention of a church in Kirchenlaibach is from the year 1125. The elevation to an independent parish took place in the middle of the 15th century. The church is dedicated to St. Aegidius , one of the fourteen helpers in need .
The Premonstratensian Monastery of Speinshart took care of its land holdings by founding its own parish in Kirchenlaibach. The oldest parish registers of the Diocese of Regensburg from 1286, 1326 and 1438 do not yet mention a parish in Kirchenlaibach, but it is already listed in 1459 and 1487 in the cathedral registers. So it must have been founded around 1450. Speinshart Abbey had the right to appoint.
In the course of the Reformation and the Thirty Years War, the community changed creeds several times from 1556. With the conquest of the Upper Palatinate under Maximilian I , the community finally returned to the Catholic faith at the end of the 1620s.
In the time of the religious split, the sovereign determined the religion in Kirchenlaibach. The Kur- Oberpfalz (capital Amberg) and the adjacent margraviate Brandenburg-Bayreuth introduced the Lutheran faith. In Kirchenlaibach, Protestantism and Calvinism ruled from around 1556 to 1625. The Electoral Palatinate several times forced their subjects to adopt Calvinism, while the Margraves of Bayreuth stuck to Protestantism. Calvinist church visits in Kirchenlaibach showed that the four altars were still “full of idols and many helpers”. That was in the years 1600 and 1615. Pastor Johann Heuringer, who had already been working in the parish for 40 years, said to the Calvinist superiors about his parishioners: “Dear Lord, if only they followed!” The people apparently inwardly resisted the new faith.
As a memorial stone on today's church on the south side attests, the parish church in Kirchenlaibach was rebuilt in 1798 under the last abbot Dominikus Wagner. It had a domed tower and baroque furnishings.
After the abbey in Speinshart was abolished in the course of secularization in Bavaria in 1803, secular priests of the Archdiocese of Bamberg carried out pastoral care. The connection to the village of Kirchenlaibach was thus broken. In 1805 a new cemetery was created. The old cemetery was originally to the east of the church and schoolhouse and was abandoned after 1805. Several pastors are buried inside or on the church wall.
The old tower was built in 1819, "but already showed such subsidence in the masonry during the construction period that it had to be provided with a retaining wall, which served to expand the sacristy". The walls were 17 m high and had a slate-covered domed roof. Nothing is mentioned in the files about the consecration of the new parish church. On the other hand, it is recorded in a note that on “Thursday, July 17, 1845, the Most Revered Bishop Valentin Riedl carried out a church and parsonage visit”. In 1847 a new tower clock was bought for 300 guilders, mostly raised through voluntary donations.
In 1859 the church, like a large part of the village, fell victim to a fire. A neo-Romanesque church was built on the foundation walls of the previous church, the construction of which stretched over several years. In the difficult times of the reconstruction, the sick priest Dismas Cigoni abdicated. His successor Jakob Hermann was only able to put an emergency roof on the church ruins, which was in no way sufficient. He gave up the parish after two years. Only pastor Josef Bolland succeeded in building the shell in 1863/1864. At Christmas 1865 the new organ, built by Weineck (Bayreuth), sounded. When the Prussian soldiers marched through Kirchenlaibach after the battle of Seybothenreuth in 1866, the church tower was under construction. The workers had to get down from the tower "until the troops had pulled through". No sooner did the new bells hang in the tower than they woke the town's residents on the night of November 6, 1867 because of a new conflagration. “As if by a miracle”, the church and parsonage were saved. Horchler from Regensburg built the high altar in 1868, the two side altars followed in 1887. In 1875, the community bought a new tower clock for 500 guilders. Bishop Ignatius of Senestrey consecrated the church on July 6, 1878. He also signed the children of the parish. The bishop donated the six altar candlesticks, which have been refurbished and used again today, for the consecration of the church. In 1905 the church was renovated under Pastor Prühschenk. In 1937, under Pastor Kirschner, it was given its current interior with three modern altars and the Stations of the Cross fresco by G. Bauer (Munich).
Due to the increased population, the parish church of the Holy Trinity was built in Kirchenlaibach in 1961/1962.
architecture
The hall church, completed in 1878, is built in the north-west of the town between Friedhofstrasse and Bayreuther Strasse in the neo-Romanesque style. The floor plan of the church with a small chancel and sacristy has not changed compared to the previous building. The new tower had to be built from scratch. The church made of red sandstone blocks is covered by a gable roof. The long sides are exposed through arched windows. The west side is windowless and has two window screens. In between there is a small semicircular apse. A memorial stone on the south wall commemorates that of the previous church from 1798.
The multi-storey east tower, which is structured by cornices and is 40 m high, has an octagonal pointed helmet on top, which is crowned by a tower knob and a cross.
organ
The organ is a monument organ from the workshop of the Bayreuth organ builder Karl Ernst Ludwig Weineck (1809–1884) from 1874. The romantic instrument has eleven registers distributed on a manual and pedal .
The first organ in the Aegidius Church was installed in 1803 and is believed to have come from the Speinshart Monastery . The organ was built in 1703 by an unknown organ builder.
After the fire of 1859 and the reconstruction of the church, Weineck built a new organ on the east gallery in 1874. The organ is registered in the register of the monument organ (Bavaria). The prospectus has five flat pointed arches. Three smaller flat fields are flanked by two larger ones. The case is closed by a crenellated cornice above a gilded frieze .
The game action is mechanically executed with wooden abstracts and bearings. The registry is also mechanical. An electric blower was connected to the bellows. The organ can also be supplied with wind by means of a lime edge . The free game table is set up in front of the gallery balustrade with a view of the altar area.
The disposition is as follows:
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- Pairing : I / P
literature
- Denis André Chevalley: Upper Franconia . Ed .: Michael Petzet , Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments (= Monuments in Bavaria . Volume IV ). Oldenbourg, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-486-52395-3 , p. 152 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Bavarian Monument Atlas , accessed on March 12, 2019.
- ↑ a b c website of the parish community , accessed March 12, 2019.
- ^ History of the village of Kirchenlaibach. Retrieved March 12, 2019 .
- ↑ a b History of the village of Kirchenlaibach. Retrieved March 12, 2019 .
- ^ Walter Thurn: On the early history of the organs in the monastery church Speinshart . Speinshart 1997, p. 7 .
- ^ Hermann Fischer , Theodor Wohnhaas : Historical organs in Upper Franconia . Schnell & Steiner, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7954-0385-5 , pp. 280 .
Coordinates: 49 ° 52 ′ 32.7 " N , 11 ° 46 ′ 5.5" E