St. Laurentii (south end)
St. Laurentii is an Evangelical Lutheran parish church in the municipality of Süderende ( Frisian : Söleraanj ) on the North Frisian island of Föhr .
location
The church is located in the Westerland of the island of Föhr, south of Süderende in the direction of Hedehusum . It is located in the middle of a church cemetery where the dead of the seven surrounding villages find their resting place. The tower, which towers over the flat landscape, is crowned with a gable roof .
Namesake
In the pre-Reformation period, the church was consecrated to St. Lawrence , who was a deacon in Rome and was considered the patron saint of the poor and to ward off fire. Even after the Reformation on Föhr, which was completed in 1530, no renaming was carried out, although the Protestant denomination does not recognize the veneration of saints in the scope of the pre-Reformation church.
history
St. Laurentii was first mentioned in a church directory from 1240. The building has been expanded several times over the centuries. Originally, however, a Romanesque field stone building made of granite harvesting stones was built towards the end of the 12th century , from which parts of the masonry remained. The church building at that time consisted of a rectangular nave without a tower. It was the height and width and about a third of the length of today's nave . In the east there was probably a square or rectangular choir and a semicircular apse . The first building of St. Laurentii was one of the Romanesque granite square churches widespread on the Cimbrian peninsula . It was probably the only North Frisian example that was made of granite up to the eaves. Similar churches were mostly started as granite blocks, but then completed with brick or tuff . The flat beamed ceiling spanned the entire nave.
In the first half of the 13th century there was an extensive expansion of the church. At that time, brick construction began to replace field stone construction in North Frisia as well. The west wall of St. Laurentiis was removed in order to later extend the structure by around nine meters. The granite blocks of the wall were used in the construction of the extension, which was mainly made of brick. The windows built into the new walls are already slightly tapered, a feature of the late Romanesque .
Simultaneously with the westward expansion or immediately afterwards, the church received a new, larger chancel in the east and a modified apse, the floor plan of which no longer shows the Romanesque semicircular shape, but a polygon made up of three sides of the hexagon. The windows correspond to those of the west extension. On the south side of the choir, a walled up priest door is visible, which connected the church with a thatched vestibule, which adjoined the church to the south until the door was walled up in 1844.
A second expansion of the building was made in the 13th century. Instead of a complete transept as in the St. Johanniskirche in Nieblum , a square north transept was built after the redesign of the choir . The windows of the enlarged chancel are clearly pointed in a Gothic way. As with the western expansion and the renovation of the apse, the remaining old granite blocks were also used for the northern expansion. For the construction of the north transept and the late Gothic sacristy , the remnants of the walls were also used from the first apse.
In the 13th century, the nave had already reached its current size, but a massive tower was still missing. The tower at St. Laurentii was only built in the course of the 15th century in a late Gothic construction period. The expansion also included the installation of vaults in the nave, new windows and the addition of the sacristy.
Over the centuries, the North Sea climate meant that all three historic churches on Föhr almost completely lost their original outer shell, apart from a few remains on the north sides. A facing made with small-sized bricks in 1771 was so damaged in 1964 that the outer shell of the west, south and east sides had to be replaced. Machine-made bricks were used for this.
The three bronze bells St. Laurentiis are in the uppermost area of the tower. The oldest was cast in Hamburg in 1753 and in 1869 by Gustav R. Oftlich in Husum . The two smaller ones from the Rincker in Sinn foundry were added in 1965 and 1966.
Interior design and equipment
Vestibule
The baroque marble baptismal font was captain Rörd Früdden from Klintum 1752 in the Italian port city of Livorno produced by a stonemason and donated it to the St. Laurentiikirche. The onion-shaped bowl rests on a profiled shaft, the center of which is an inverted truncated pyramid with the inscription RF 1752 .
The confectioner's drawer , probably from the 18th century, is next to the door to the nave. The parishioners of the seven villages of the parish put the slip of paper with the registration for the Lord's Supper, which was required according to the earlier worship custom, into the slot assigned to each village in the lid of the simple white lacquered folding box .
ship
The pulpit was probably made at the beginning of the 17th century in simple late Renaissance forms in the same unknown workshop that made the pulpit of the St. Clement's Church in Nebel on Amrum in 1623 . The sound cover was probably only added in the second half of the 17th century. The pulpit received its current color version, which was renewed in 1952, in 1671.
The baroque frescoes by an unknown artist, which had adorned all the vaulted ceilings since around 1670, were painted over for a long time. They were uncovered in the course of the interior renovation in 1954 and restored in 1955 and 1956 by the church painter Franz Dubbick and largely supplemented and painted over. Only the figure of the executioner from the description of the beheading of John the Baptist above the organ is still the baroque original . The much worse preserved paintings on the two eastern nave vaults were then restored by the Hamburg restorer Neubert in 1957/1958. The high salt content and the fluctuations in the relative humidity in the church, also caused by the church heating, led to damage in the 1960s to 1980s. Therefore St. Laurentii was included in a research program of the German Center for Handicrafts and Monument Preservation in Fulda . The results of the investigations led to another more careful restoration by the Hamburg restorer Christian Leonhardt from 1997 to 2000.
Three baroque chandeliers made of brass adorn the Gewölbejoche above the nave and the choir. The middle one with horse heads on the light arms was donated by Peter Petersen in 1702. The two outer ones from 1677 are gifts from whaling commander Matthias Petersen and his brother John.
The medieval brick altar with a winged reredos stands in front of the apse. The built-in carved figures can stylistically be dated to the third quarter of the 15th century. On the altar are two pairs of candlesticks , the older of which is from the late Gothic around 1500. The two younger baroque candlesticks were donated by Janes Petersen in 1680. A late Gothic crucifix , probably from the end of the 15th century, stands between the candlesticks .
The Romanesque granite baptismal font from the granite square church from the late 12th century is the oldest piece of equipment. Like the marble baptismal font today, it was kept in the anteroom for a long time. The Italian marble baptismal font was moved to its current location in the 1950s, with the intention of giving the chancel its medieval appearance again. In the course of this redesign, the baroque elements were also removed from the altar.
The organ with its three - part neo - Gothic prospectus was built from 1887 to 1890 by the Marcussen workshop in Aabenraa, which has numerous works throughout Schleswig-Holstein . It lost its original sound as a result of extensive renovations and extensions in 1948 and 1962. Master organ builder G. Christian Lobback renovated the organ from 1989 to 1990.
graveyard
The cemetery extends over the areas north, east and south of the church building. As in the cemeteries of the two other historic churches in Föhr, St. Nicolai in Wyk-Boldixum and St. Johannis in Nieblum , there are several “ talking tombstones ” in the St. Laurentii cemetery . These are provided with a summary of the biography of the person buried.
A special iconography tradition has been preserved in the floral motif: the husband and sons of the family are listed on the tombstone on the left in tulip-like flowers, the wife and daughters on the right in the form of four-flowered flowers. A broken flower indicates that the person concerned had already died at the time the tombstone was made. The frequency of this symbolism testifies to a high child mortality rate.
One of the better-known personalities with tombstones is Matthias Petersen , who donated two chandeliers to the church. The only picture decoration of the stone is a round relief, which shows the goddess of luck Fortuna above a swimming whale like a coat of arms. The Latin inscription - the only one in the cemetery - reports on the success of the man who died in 1706, having killed 373 whales in five decades.
The tombstone of Elen Flor, who died in 1736 at the age of 86, 51 of which as a widow, stands at the north exit of the cemetery. The independent woman had become so important that she was appointed to the church lawyer, which was an absolute exception in society at the time. The stele, decorated with acanthus decorations, shows the deceased in front of the enthroned Christ between Moses, death and the devil in the final round relief with the saying: "What harm can law, death, the devil do, Jesus accepts me with grace".
Happy Matthias's tombstone
Gravestone of the couple Flor
View over the St. Laurentii cemetery
Tombstone of the Nickelsen couple
Gravestone of the painter Oluf Braren
literature
- DKV art guide No. 545, 1st edition, Deutscher Kunstverlag , Munich a. Berlin 2000
- Joachim Taege: The St. Laurentii Church. Self-published by Ev.-Luth. Parish of Süderende / Föhr 2018, ISBN 978-3-00-059335-2 .
- Joachim Taege: The historical gravestones of St. Laurentii. Self-published by Ev.-Luth. Parish of Süderende / Föhr 2018, ISBN 978-3-00-061168-1
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Insel-Bote : New Doctrine fell on fertile ground , accessed on November 6, 2016.
- ↑ See the introduction by Joachim Taege, The historical tombstones of St. Laurentii. Süderende 2018, p. 11f.
Coordinates: 54 ° 42 ′ 59 ″ N , 8 ° 26 ′ 6 ″ E