St. Jakob (Speyer)

Jakobskirche (2), Marxtor (3), Franciscan monastery (4) on an engraving by Merian

St. Jakob was a Jakobskirche located in the core town of Speyer , which later was also one of 15 parish churches in the medieval city of Speyer.

history

Presumably in the first half of the 12th century, a chapel dedicated to St. Jacob was built in the west of the city near the old gate , which is first mentioned in 1180 and at that time belonged to the cathedral monastery. After 1250 the chapel was replaced by a 30 m long and 20 m wide Romanesque hall church with a possibly, to the collegiate church of St. Paul in Worms to the Speyer Cathedral , to the church of the Speyer Holy Sepulcher Monasteryajar tower replaced. A few years later, before 1296, it was elevated to a parish church, although the church was still under the control of the cathedral monastery. A parish church often also had a cemetery, which is why the Jakobskirche also had a cemetery, which was first mentioned in a document in 1376.

From the year 1525 it is known that there was a Beguinenklause near the Jakobskirche . When it was founded and how long it existed is unclear, as the only written record about this hermitage dates from 1525. At that time, all the churches and monasteries in Speyer were recorded with all their property on behalf of the city council.

In 1689 the church, like large parts of Speyer, was destroyed by the city ​​fire and was not rebuilt afterwards.

The third synagogue of the Jewish community of Speyer was built on the site around 1830, but it was destroyed during the Reichspogromnacht on November 9, 1938 by a fire started by members of the SS and demolished a little later. After that, the site was a fallow land for a long time until it was finally used for the construction of the Kaufhof building in the 1950s with an area adjoining it to the north, which extends to Maximilianstrasse . A memorial plaque was placed on the building near the former synagogue site in 1978 in memory of the synagogue. In front of it there was a stone memorial which commemorates the deported Jews. However, this memorial was moved to the opposite side of the street a few years ago, as it was often delivered by bicycles at its former location.

The church grounds around 1525

According to a map from the Palatinate Atlas, which shows Speyer around 1525, the church and the cemetery, which almost completely surrounded the church, were located on the site of the church. Only in the east was the church directly on the road. The church itself consisted of the choir on the street to which the nave was connected to the west, on the north side of which there was probably an aisle. Between the north wall of the choir and the east wall of the aisle was the tower of the church, to which a small building, which could have been the Beginenklause, was connected in the direction of the street running east of it.

Today's remains

There are pictorial representations on a woodcut from 1550 from Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia , on a copper engraving from Frans Hogenberg's Civitates Orbis Terrarum from 1537, a similar city view from 1600 and on the city view from 1637 by Matthäus Merian . The complex can be seen very well in Philipp Stürmer's picture The Free Imperial City of Speyer before its destruction in the Palatine War of Succession in 1689 . In addition, the ruins of the Jakobskirche could be seen in the oil painting The Ruins of the Jakobskirche by Franz Stöber, which has been lost since the end of the Second World War . Jakobsgasse used to be a reminder of the church. However, this street was renamed Heydenreichstrasse in 1889 after Ludwig Heydenreich . Only the Jakobsbrunnen on the corner of Heydenreichstrasse and Hellergasse reminds of the church.

literature

• Robert Plötz, Peter Rückert (ed.): Jakobuskult in the Rhineland . Gunter Narr Verlag, Neustadt an der Haardt 2004, ISBN 978-3-8233-6038-4 , p. 105–108 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Speyer - an important pilgrimage town on jakobsweg-rothenburg-speyer.de
2. ^ Franz Xaver Remling : Documented history of the former abbeys and monasteries in what is now Rhine Bavaria . tape 2 . Christmann, Neustadt an der Haardt 1836, p. 297–298 ( full text in Google Book Search).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Fritz Klotz: Speyer - Small town history . 4th expanded edition. Speyer 1971.
4. ^ Stations through the Jewish Speyer
5. ↑ Wolfgang Eger : Speyer street names. A lexicon. Hermann G. Klein Verlag, Speyer 1985.

Coordinates: 49 ° 19 ′ 0.9 ″  N , 8 ° 26 ′ 2.6 ″  E