St. Georg (Nordhausen)

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The St. Georg chapel was first mentioned in a document in 1289. In 1612 it was destroyed in a city fire. It was located on the corner of Kornmarkt and Rautenstrasse in Nordhausen in the Nordhausen district in Thuringia .

history

Probably before the year 1140 one which was on the grain market St. George consecrated Hospital built. At that time it was outside the city on the corner of Töpfergasse and Hundsgasse. The hospital was used to care for lepers. In the Middle Ages, due to the risk of infection, they could only be admitted to houses in front of the city. This was true because the Kornmarkt was still outside the city at that time. The hospital belonged to the parish of St. Nicolai , which suggests that it was built before 1140 (in that year the parish of St. Petri was established, in whose area the hospital was geographically located). The St. Georg Hospital is mentioned for the first time in 1289.

In 1289 the Nordhausen citizen Hertwig von Ellrich (also Hartwig or Hartwich) donated the hospital “in the house of the lepers in front of the city (in curia leprosorum ante civitatem) [a] chapel consecrated in the honor of St. George”. This was built next to the hospital on the Kornmarkt. It was now directly opposite the town hall, both only separated by the city wall. Nothing is known about the appearance of the Chapel of St. George or the associated hospital. It can be surmised that the hospital, given its character as a poor house, was built very simply. Most of the building fabric consisted of a half-timbered construction, the compartments of which were filled with wattle and daub. The chapel, on the other hand, was probably made of solid masonry. If in 1289 St. George was talking about a chapel, it was mentioned in 1401 as "ecclesia", so by this time a community had already formed around this chapel.

In the course of the expansion of Nordhausen outside the city, residents on Kornmarkt soon expressed their displeasure at having a leper hospital in the middle of an inhabited area. Therefore, soon afterwards, the lepers who had been housed in the St. Georg Hospital up to this point were relocated to the St. Cyriaci Hospital , also known as the Siechhof. In the years 1290-1330, the city's fortifications were expanded. The city wall was led around the pottery district. From 1330 it can be assumed that the chapel and hospital St. Georg were no longer outside the city, but in the center of it. Thus the tasks of the hospital changed fundamentally. It no longer took in lepers, but rather poor and disabled people, as well as sick people whose diseases were not at risk of infection.

A good 100 years later, in 1428, the use of the St. Georg Hospital changes again. The area around the Kornmarkt was specially developed, and wealthy citizens had their houses built there. A hospital seemed inappropriate in such a neighborhood. The St. Georg Hospital was merged with the St. Martini Hospital . On July 3, 1428, Johannes de Rengilderade, provost of Jechaburg, provost of the monastery in Sondershausen, on behalf of Archbishop Konrad von Mainz, issued the certificate of approval for the association. For the merger of the two hospitals and the relocation of the inmates of the St. Georg Hospital to St. Martini, he envisaged the condition that the St. Martini Hospital would be expanded by at least the same number of needy people as there was no longer in St. Georg. In addition, the "spiritual benefits and the service" in the St. George chapel should not be reduced. The St. Georg Hospital was dissolved and most of the hospital's inmates were relocated to the St. Martini Hospital. Some inmates were moved to a house behind the donation cemetery. This is proven in the year 1600 as "Domus senatus der alten frawen von S. Georgen". This house, also known as the second Georgshospital, was demolished in 1739 to expand the cemetery at the Donation Church. The house gave its name to the Georgengasse located there today, which was first mentioned in 1740 as "behind St. Georgen". Some old inmates are then admitted to the St. Elisabeth Hospital.

The Chapel of St. George is said to have been used as a council chapel after the resettlement in 1428. The services continued until the Reformation , as did the use of the chapel by the Nordhausen City Council. There is no clear evidence for an alleged sermon by Martin Luther to St. George. The St. Georg Hospital died after the Reformation and became municipal property. In the Chapel of St. George, services continued to take place from time to time, but church life in this chapel soon came to a standstill. A vicar for the chapel was mentioned for the last time in 1544 , after which a vicar position no longer seems to exist here.

From 1569 the chapel was then used by the city of Nordhausen as a rifle house, known as the "Buchsenhauß zu St. Jergenn". The St. George Hospital had served the same purpose since all inmates had left it. The chapel became the main armory of the city of Nordhausen, where the heavy artillery was housed. On August 21, 1612, St. George's Hospital and Chapel were completely destroyed by fire. A new armory was soon built at the same location. This is broken into by soldiers and plundered on February 9, 1703 - the year the city of Nordhausen was occupied by Prussia. The building was destroyed in the fire in 1712 and not rebuilt. Town houses were built on the site.

Facility

The chapel contained relics of St. George. Above the entrance there is said to have been a relief that showed St. George slaying a dragon. The chapel had two to four altars . All of them were donated by Nordhausen citizens who came from the socially well-off upper class. Up until the beginning of the 16th century, the hospital received donations and foundations, so on May 10, 1308, the Hohnstein Counts gave it four acres of forest near the village of Wachsbach . Vicariates were donated in 1401 and 1450. In 1471, Berlt Gyse and his wife Alheidis donated a vicariate, which was confirmed on August 6th of the same year by the Mainz canon Count Heinrich von Schwarzburg. On November 28, 1502, Henricus Noyss and Johann Koell founded a vicarie at the altar on the north side of the chapel. It was consecrated to honor the sufferings and five wounds of Christ and the holy cross.

Thomas Müntzer memorial stone

Today there is a memorial stone on the Kornmarkt, which is supposed to remind of the work of Thomas Müntzer at the St. Georg chapel. The fact that Müntzer was employed at St. Georg is, however, controversial. The memorial stone was erected on September 27, 1989 and was to be inaugurated in October of the same year for the 500th birthday of Thomas Müntzer, but this did not happen because of the subsequent political changes. The inscription on the memorial stone reads: "The violence should be given to the common people - Thomas Müntzer - He worked not far from this place in 1522 - Dedicated to his 500th birthday in 1989 by the City Council of Nordhausen".

literature

  • Eugen Duval: Nordhausen's medieval art monuments . Nordhausen: Nordhäuser Section of the Harz Association, Theodor Perschmann, 1872
  • Walter Joedecke: Nordhausen together with Halberstadt, city of church reconstruction - historical and local history considerations by gardener Walter Joedecke, church elder at St. Blasii - Petri zu Nordhausen . Nordhausen, 1955–1966: unpublished, pp. 184f.
  • Ernst Koch : History of the Reformation in the imperial city of Nordhausen am Harz , series of publications by the Friedrich-Christian-Lesserstiftung, Volume 21, Nordhausen: Friedrich-Christian-Lesserstiftung, 2010, p. 29
  • Karl Meyer: Festschrift for the 36th Annual General Meeting of the Harz Association for History and Archeology in Nordhausen on July 15, 16 and 17, 1903 . Nordhausen, 1903, p. 63
  • Jens Stiller: On the history of the St. Georgen Hospital and Chapel in Nordhausen (= contributions to local history from the city and district of Nordhausen, issue 14). 1989, pp. 38-43
  • August Stolberg, Friedrich Stolberg: The architectural and art monuments of the city of Nordhausen : In: The thousand-year-old Nordhausen , Volume 2, Nordhausen am Harz: Magistrat Nordhausen, 1927, pp. 517-552
  • Robert Treutler: Churches in Nordhausen - A foray through church life . Verlag Neukirchner, 9/1997, pp. 20-44

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Documents for the St. Georg chapel in the city archive
  2. ^ Küllmer, Björn, inventory of the monuments in Nordhausen. 1871-2004 , 2004

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 8.1 ″  N , 10 ° 47 ′ 42.5 ″  E