St. Gangolf (Amorbach)
St. Gangolf is the Catholic parish church in Amorbach . In its current late baroque form, it dates from the middle of the 18th century and has hardly been structurally changed since then. It contains works of art from different centuries. She is particularly known for the ceiling paintings and the organ.
Building history
Amorbach had a Gothic parish church since the late 12th century . The appearance of this church is u. a. known from a view of Amorbach by Matthäus Merian from 1646. The old church already contained an organ, which has been documented by invoices and reports about it since the beginning of the 17th century. In the middle of the 18th century, a completely new building was necessary, probably also for reasons of space. The then Archbishop of Mainz Johann Friedrich Karl von Ostein approved the project. His brother Franz Wolfgang von Ostein was then working as a senior bailiff in Amorbach. Some drafts were discarded for reasons of cost; the executed plan came from Alexander Jakob Schmidt from the year 1751. Schmidt was an employee of Anselm Franz von Ritter zu Groenesteyn . Construction began in the same year. The church was consecrated only two years later, on November 4, 1753, by the archbishop himself. She received her patronage from St. Gangolf .
Basic structure and appearance
The church is a three-aisled hall church . The total length inside from the portal to the apse is 27.26 meters, the choir has a width of 9.30 meters. The total width through all ships is 18.01 meters. The choir is retracted and closes with a semicircular apse. The outer walls of the church consist of red sandstone blocks and are structured between the deep-drawn arched windows by pilasters of a variant of the Ionic order , as well as in the area of the two three-storey towers flanking the choir. The northern tower contains the bells of the church, the southern one is used as a sacristy in the basement . The west facade with the main portal is, following the structure, three-axis and two-story with the main portal in the middle projection. The pilasters are placed in pairs in the middle section. The door lintel is straight, and above the cartridge there is another arched window with a curved segmented arch gable. The two outer axes contain niches with figures of saints under the windows. The facade is closed off vertically by a field with the depiction of the crucified and the coat of arms of the archbishop. Both the gable roof and the towers are slated . In contrast to the actual, rather simple outer structure, the top floor of the towers is designed much more elaborately, with fluted and tapering volutes at the corners.
Interior
Inside the church is divided by the three pillars between the naves, which carry the separating arcade arches. Corinthian pilasters are placed in front of them on each side , as well as towards the choir and the west side. The capitals are cranked and stepped several times in the area of the choir. A special feature are the high-pedestal and sweeping fighters with triglyphs , actually a design element of the Doric order . The naves are covered by barrel vaults with stitch caps . The frescoes on the ceilings of the nave and choir are considered to be “top achievements in baroque wall painting” and even exceed the representations in the famous Amorbach abbey church . They come from Johannes Zick from 1753. The central nave depicts scenes from the life of St. Sebastian and in the choir scenes from the life of St. Gangolf. The aisles also contain frescoes, depicting various saints. The church vault is not stuccoed , the frames, the rocailles and other vault decorations, such as the joists of the arcade arches, are only painted.
Furnishing
The high altar from the time the church was built is a work by Materno Bossi . He also worked for the prince-bishops in Würzburg . The altar is framed with pillars and pilasters made of stucco marble, between which there are four figures of saints. They are Saints Sebastian, Kilian, Gangolf and Martin. The altarpiece was originally not created for St. Gangolf, but for the Amorbach Abbey Church and was only brought to St. Gangolf when the altar was erected. It depicts the Assumption of Mary and comes from Georg Heydt . A glass work of the Holy Trinity is inserted in the middle above the cornice. Above it is the coat of arms of the archbishop with the electoral hat as a sign of his electoral dignity .
The northern side altar also contains an - albeit much older - work of art from the abbey church. It is a carved Mother of God with the baby Jesus and a lion and dates from the beginning of the 14th century. A 17th century Madonna of Sorrows is on the southern side altar.
The carved choir stalls, decorated with apostle reliefs in fields, also date from the time the church was built. Only a few decades later - in 1769 or 1783 - the confessionals were built.
The church contains two pulpits. The reason for this is solely the intended effect of complete symmetry in the church building. The northern pulpit is a dummy pulpit, it cannot be used, only the southern one serves its purpose. Both pulpits are from 1753/54.
organ
The organ is essentially the work of the well-known Würzburg organ builder Johann Hoffmann from the first quarter of the 18th century. The date of origin of the oldest case parts and pipes can be precisely dated by an inscription with the year 1717. The organ was originally built for the Benedictines - Monastery Neustadt am Main created. Since the old organ of St. Gangolf, partly from the first half of the 17th century, was described as completely unusable around 1800, the decision to buy the organ for 2000 guilders was made when this monastery was closed. She came to church in 1805. The Benedictine priest and composer Peregrin Pögl (1711–1788) certainly used the organ for his compositions, however, despite similar rumors, it is impossible that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played on the organ. After renovation, the organ was 1880/81 of Balthasar Schlimbach new fully scheduled , while retaining much of the old register . There have been various overhauls and repairs, the last more extensive one was carried out in 1994. The instrument has 21 stops on two manual works and a pedal . the playing and stop actions are mechanical.
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- Coupling : II / I, I / P, II / P
Bells
In 1961 Dieter Otto from the Otto bell foundry in Bremen-Hemelingen cast a five-part bronze bell for St. Gangolf. The row of striking notes of the peal is probably successful with the following notes: b 0 - des '- es' - as '- b'. The bells have the following diameters: 1720 mm, 1460 mm, 1310 mm, 980 mm, 870 mm. The bells weigh: 3519 kg, 2083 kg, 1492 kg, 605 kg, 445 kg. The bells ring out with a long, calm reverberation.
literature
- Walter Hotz: Amorbach - The Catholic parish church , special print from the Amorbacher Cicerone , Hermann Emig, Amorbach 1997
- Norbert Schmitt: The organ of the cath. Parish church Sankt Gangolf Amorbach , four-page information leaflet, Amorbach, no year
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Hotz: Amorbach - The Catholic Parish Church , p. 2.
- ^ Hotz: Amorbach - The Catholic Parish Church , p. 1.
- ↑ Schmitt: The organ of the cath. Parish Church Sankt Gangolf Amorbach , p. 1.
- ↑ All information according to the floor plan in Hotz: Amorbach - The Catholic Parish Church , p. 8.
- ^ Hotz: Amorbach - The Catholic Parish Church , p. 5.
- ↑ Information about the organ at trierer-orgelpunkt.de
- ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto Glocken - family and company history of the bell foundry dynasty Otto . Self-published, Essen 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063109-2 , p. 588, here in particular pp. 388, 389, 447, 449, 557 .
- ↑ Gerhard Reinhold: Church bells - Christian world cultural heritage, illustrated using the example of the bell founder Otto, Hemelingen / Bremen . Nijmegen / NL 2019, p. 556, here in particular 343 to 345, 512 , urn : nbn: nl: ui: 22-2066 / 204770 (dissertation at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen).
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 38 ′ 43.9 " N , 9 ° 13 ′ 12.7" E