Gallus Church (Pappenheim)

Gallus Church

The St. Gallus Church , usually referred to as Gallus Church , is an Evangelical Lutheran church in Pappenheim in the Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen district in Central Franconia . The current cemetery church from the 9th century is the oldest church building of Carolingian origin in Franconia and one of the oldest churches in southern Germany as well as the oldest building in Pappenheim. The building is registered under the monument number D-5-77-158-31 as an architectural monument in the Bavarian monument list. The underground components of the church are also registered as a ground monument (number D-5-7031-0256). The church belongs to the parish Pappenheim in the Evangelical Lutheran Deanery Pappenheim .

location

The church marks the initial settlement area of Pappenheim, before settling near today's castle ruins . Today the church is north of the Altmühl and the historic town center . The postal address is Dechantshof 8.

history

The patronage , which is extremely unusual for the region, goes back to a donation dated November 12, 802 by the noble Frau Regins to the monastery of St. Gallen , whose patron saint is St. Gall . In the 9th century, the monastery built the single-nave hall church as Pappenheim parish church. It was probably reconstructed in the 11th century, as a new consecration is documented in 1060. The extension of the central nave and the installation of narrow windows in the upper aisle may be due to this conversion. In the Middle Ages , from the 13th to the 15th centuries, the church underwent several changes to the Gothic style to match the taste of the time . The small church was enlarged by adding side aisles, with the large arcades being broken out. The choir , the side chapel and a sacristy were also built in the 15th century . Until the Reformation in 1539/1540, the Gallus Church functioned as the parish church of Pappenheim. Since then it has only served as a cemetery church. An extensive renovation took place in 1953. A number of paintings were found and the pulpit from 1700 was removed. Today the owner of the building is the city of Pappenheim.

Building description

The core of the Romanesque Gallus Church, which dates back to the 9th century, contains elements from the Carolingian era to the Gothic. The architecturally rather simple building has three aisles and was originally a basilica complex. On the east gable there is a half-timbered structure attached around 1450 . The mighty church tower has a gable roof and was built in the 11th century. On the outer wall there are two stone tablets with the inscriptions "The city of Pappenheim your loyal dead 1914–1918 - the city of Buchau Sudetenland to commemorate your fallen sons " and "To commemorate the violent expulsion of the Germans from their ancestral homeland 1945–1946 Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft Local group Pappenheim Bay. "

inventory

Chancel of the Gallus Church

The altar is late Gothic , was created in 1520 and has in the shrine sculptures of St. Barbara , St. Katharina and Maria with child . It was created under the influence of Nuremberg masters . When open, the wings show several reliefs. The stone, six meter high sacrament house is from 1468. Its housing is supported on a winding column. In the middle part you can see angel figures with tapes. The extension, a canopy flanked by pinnacles, contains the figure of Christ in the depiction of the Man of Sorrows. The stalls and the crescent moon Madonna are from the 14th or 15th century. Remains of the late Gothic pews are dated to the period between the early 15th century and 1500. The Marien Altar is believed to have been built around 1520 under the influence of Nuremberg masters. In 1953, several wall paintings from the 13th century were found during a renovation. They show Christ , the Annunciation and the Last Judgment . Another mural shows the St. Gallus legend .

graveyard

As the death church, St. Gallus has its own cemetery . Inside the medieval complex is the cemetery house , a single-storey hipped roof building from the 18th and 19th centuries. The wall dates from the 17th or 18th century. Several grave slabs from the 17th to 19th centuries are embedded in it. The archway is from 1692. To the south of the church are six and to the east two free-standing grave monuments from the early 19th century. A small grave plaque is dated to 1824. Worth mentioning are the tombs of Mayor Beck (1878), Carl FW Stöber (1865) and the painter and writer Sophie Hoechstetter (1943), as well as another early Classicist tomb with an urn top and a medallion-holding angel sculpture as well as a few other tombs (18th to 20th centuries) . Century). On the site there is a memorial from 1922, on which the dates 1939 and 1949 were subsequently carved. The monument is flanked by two stone crosses.

literature

Gotthard Kießling: Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen district (= Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation [Hrsg.]: Monuments in Bavaria . Volume V.70 / 1 ). Karl M. Lipp Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-87490-581-0 .