St. Laurentius (Lunden)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The extended choir of the church is evidence of its use as a monastery church.

The St. Laurentius Church in Lunden is one of the oldest churches in Dithmarschen . The field stone church belongs to the parish of Lunden in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany . The gender cemetery is located around the church .

history

Medieval parish church

The parish of Lunden is one of the oldest Dithmarschens after the original church plays in Meldorf , Weddingstedt , Süderhastedt and Tellingstedt . A church was built on a sand dune as early as 1100, on which a pagan cult site may have been located before. It was first mentioned in 1140 in a document in which the Archbishop of Bremen Adalbero awarded the Hamburg cathedral chapter the churches of Meldorf, Weddingstedt, Hastedt, Büsum , Uthaven (the old Brunsbüttel ) and Lunden. The nave, a Romanesque stone building with a flat roof, dates from the end of the 12th century. The use of Rhenish tuff indicates on the one hand a great age and on the other hand the importance of the place. The church was under the patronage of St. Lawrence of Rome .

As the northernmost parish of peasants' republic Dithmarschen who played stains Lunden an important role, which can also be seen from the fact that the most distinguished families of the country from which the rulers were recruited, were buried for centuries around the Lundener church. Due to their elevated position, the church and cemetery were repeatedly a refuge from storm surges until the dikes of several kegs protected Lunden from direct access by the North Sea from the end of the 15th century. The large market square south of the church underlines the importance of the place. The church was also furnished in a correspondingly precious way.

View from the northeast: On the north side of the nave, some Romanesque windows and the north portal have been preserved.

On January 23, 1451, there is said to have been a murder at the St. Laurentius Church, reported by several chroniclers of the 16th century, including Johann Russe according to older sources: Hinrich Grove (or Groff), a follower of the doctrine of Jan Hus , was in the parish in Lunden during or shortly after an outbreak of the plague . A crowd, who regarded the heretic as responsible for the disease, pursued him to the church, where he was about to make confession, dragged him to the churchyard and killed him there. Thereupon the Hamburg cathedral chapter placed an interdict on Lunden and the cathedral provost sentenced the main culprits, who belonged to the most distinguished families, to a heavy fine. The interdict, which banned all worship and sacrament foundations at the site of the murder, i.e. in the Lunden church, was probably soon lifted again. Possibly as an atonement, a bell tower made of field stones with a wooden roof was built next to the church in 1454 .

An organ is reported as early as 1457 . Around 1470 the church was expanded to include a Gothic choir made of field stones , which was consecrated in 1471 . In order to be able to finance further equipment, the priest allegedly obtained a letter of indulgence from the papal nuncio Marinus de Fregeno in 1481 . In 1497 a new reredos for the main altar could be purchased, the work of a master Absalon from Hamburg, probably the painter Absolon Stumme .

Monastery and Reformation

In 1513/17 the Hemmingstedt Benedictine monastery , founded in 1502, was transferred to Lunden and converted into a Franciscan monastery. Instead of building a monastery church for the convent located near the parish church , the choir of the St. Laurentius Church was lengthened. This brick extension , which doubled the length of the choir, is clearly visible from the outside. Inside, the extension of the choir, in which the brothers held their hours of prayer , was separated from the older choir by a flying buttress . The Franciscans initially belonged with the convents in Kiel , Husum and Schleswig to the Custody Holstein of the Danish Order Province (Dacia) , but in 1518 the Custody was incorporated into the Saxon Franciscan Province (Saxonia) .

In 1508, the Lunden priests and respected residents founded the Pantaleon Guild, a brotherhood to support up to 25 poor people who, in return for food, were to attend soul masses twice a week for the benefit of the founders and their ancestors. After the Mass, the food was distributed in front of the church on the brick-built Ebbingmannen funeral cellar, which was therefore called "The Armory Table". When the people of Lunden decided to break away from the ecclesiastical sovereignty of the Hamburg cathedral chapter, the taxes saved were dedicated to poor relief. While the friars may have left the place before the first Lutheran sermon was held in the church in the course of the Reformation in 1533 and the monastery buildings were demolished in 1539 , the guild named after Pantaleon , the helper in need , celebrated its 500th anniversary in 2005.

Three fires

During the conquest of Dithmarschen, the last feud , the Lunden church burned down, allegedly because, as Neocorus reported, a woman in her house had set fire to her house out of desperation over the lost freedom of Dithmarschen, which spread to almost the entire place, including the church. The medieval furnishings, which included nine altars, were completely lost. The church was largely rebuilt in its old form. In 1566, Carsten Schröder and his siblings donated a carved reredos acquired from Lübeck with a depiction of the crucifixion in the middle and scenes from the Christmas story on the sides. The predella showed Jesus' last supper.

Another fire occurred in 1783: a lightning strike destroyed the bell tower next to the church, which was then demolished as well as an extension on the south wall of the nave, the so-called south church, in which the pastor's crypt was located. This pastor's cellar has been outside the church ever since. Then the steeple was built over the west gable of the church.

Interior, looking east, in the center of the chandelier from 1774.

In 1834 the church and the tower burned down again, this time because a charcoal fire, which was used for organ repairs and was obviously forgotten, spread uncontrollably during the night. Again all valuable church furnishings were lost. Among them was a baptismal font from the 17th century, some epitaphs from earlier pastors and a "hanging chamber", a raised box with painted parapets, as well as the carved altar donated in 1566. Only the forty-armed chandelier that Triencke Behrens from Kleinlehe donated in 1774 survived the fire and is still hanging in the church today in its restored form. For the church, which was rebuilt from 1836 onwards, Claus Harms , who had been a deacon of the congregation from 1806 to 1816, donated two paintings by the reformers Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon , as well as copies made in 1568 of the portraits of the reformers by Lucas Cranach the Younger made in 1559 . The new altarpiece showed the crucified between the apostles John and Peter, in the predella the Lord's Supper. The church tower was also redesigned in its current form.

View of the gallery and organ

The churchyard as a burial place was replaced in 1880 by a new cemetery on the site of the former Galgenberg.

Before 1936, plaques with the names of those who died in the war were attached to the right and left of the choir arch. Instead of the previous ornamental painting, it now read "Be true to death" above the choir arch. The whole Church thus served to glorify death on the battlefield. During the same renovation, the gallery was removed from the choir room, which until then had covered the south window of the choir.

During the renovation in 1957, the church was simply plastered in white. The choir room in particular has been redesigned. The middle choir window, which had been walled up until then, was opened again. The church furnishings from the 19th century have been replaced by a simple altar table, a baptism and a pulpit made of Swedish marble. Only the pictures of the reformers in the choir have been preserved. An embroidered red altar ceiling from 1642 hangs on the wall. In 2017, the renovation of the church and churchyard began.

organ

The Kühn Organ (2013)

An organ in the Lunden church was reported as early as 1457. The church, which was rebuilt after the first fire in 1559, received an organ, which the local organ builder Tobias Brunner repaired in 1634.

Today's organ has 23 registers and 1,600 pipes . It was built in 1839–1846 by the organ builder Kühn from Segeberg and his son and restored from 1996–1997 by the organ building company Paschen from Kiel .

Clergy and community

For a long time the populous and prosperous parish had two clergymen, a pastor and a deacon. From the registers of the Hamburg cathedral chapter it can be seen that the income of the Lunden priests before the Reformation was only exceeded by that of the Meldorfer.

Well-known preachers after the Reformation were:

  • Johann Magdeburg was a deacon around 1556.
  • Jacob Fabricius (the younger) became pastor in Lunden in 1614. When he became court preacher to the Dowager Duchess Augusta in 1616 , his younger brother Philipp followed him, but died in 1619.
  • Mauritius Rachel was a deacon from 1616 and pastor in Lunden from 1620 until his death in 1637. His epitaph, on which he was shown with his wife and seven children in front of the cross, was lost in the fire in the church in 1834.
  • Johannes Wendler was initially court preacher at the palace in front of Husum and from 1639 pastor in Lunden. History tells of him that he asked God for a sign of his displeasure when the congregation wanted to have the bird shooting , a folk festival, absolutely on the day of Pentecost , a major religious holiday, whereupon lightning struck the bird pole. He retired in 1665 and died two years later.
  • Claus Harms became a deacon in Lunden in 1806. In addition to theological works, he wrote several papers in which he thought about church administration, the poor and - on the occasion of a series of arson during his tenure, in which 42 of the 198 houses in Lunden were destroyed - a reorganization of the fire insurance. Even after he was called to the main church in Kiel in 1816 , the now famous preacher dedicated several writings to his former congregation and, after the fire in 1836, gave the church two paintings by the reformers Luther and Melanchthon.

Over the centuries, several parishes were spun off from the large parish: The Hemme chapel, built in the parish area in 1325 , became an independent parish by 1340 at the latest. 1491 the parish was St. Annen ausgepfarrt after three families from the Association of Russian gender Belling men had praised Lundener parish, a Chapel to build if them the embankment of a new polder would, of Bosbüttelerkoogs succeed. The Lunden parish council fought in vain against the loss of influence, because Pope Julius II approved the building of the church.

literature

Web links

Commons : St. Laurentiuskirche (Lunden)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The St. Laurentius Church - 900 years of eventful history
  2. ↑ Children: Old Ditmarish Stories. I. Pictures from the Lunden Chronicle , pp. 64–67.
  3. ↑ Children: Old Ditmarish Stories. I. Pictures from the Lunden Chronicle , pp. 13–15.
  4. ↑ Dieter Berg (Ed.): Traces of Franciscan History. Chronological outline of the history of the Saxon Franciscan provinces from their beginnings to the present. Werl 1999, p. 249.
  5. ↑ Children: Old Ditmarish Stories. I. Pictures from the Lunden Chronicle , p. 76f.
  6. ↑ Pantaleon Guild.
  7. ↑ Children: Old Ditmarish Stories. I. Pictures from the Lunden Chronicle , p. 51.
  8. ^ Antoine-Augustin Bruzen de La Martinière : Historical-Political-Geographical Atlas of the Whole World; Or a large and complete Geographical and Critical Lexicon, Vol. 7 , Sp. 255f.
  9. ↑ Children: Old Ditmarish Stories. I. Pictures from the Lunden Chronicle , p. 15f.
  10. ^ Propstei Norderdithmarschen. Lunden. Communicated by Deacon J. Rulffs. In: Archives of the Schleswig-Holstein-Lauenburg Society for Patriotic History . Volume 16, 1862, pp. 58-60; P. 59.
  11. ↑ a b Jochen Bufe: St. Laurentius Church Lunden (kirchenschätze.de).
  12. ↑ Children: Old Ditmarish Stories. I. Pictures from the Lunden Chronicle , pp. 190f.
  13. ↑ Choir arch and pulpit 1936 at bildindex.de
  14. ↑ The gender cemetery at the church is unique in terms of cultural history
  15. ↑ Lars Brunner: The organ builder Tobias Brunner (1602 – ca.1660), a student of Gottfried Fritzsche In: Ars organi , 67 (2019), issue 2, pp. 92–97; P. 93.
  16. ↑ St. Laurentius Church, Lunden | Dithmarschen. In: Parish of Lunden. Retrieved June 3, 2021 .
  17. ↑ Children: Old Ditmarish Stories. I. Pictures from the Lunden Chronicle , p. 12.
  18. ↑ Children: Old Ditmarish Stories. I. Pictures from the Lunden Chronicle , p. 16.
  19. ↑ Claus Harms: Pastor Johannes , in: Ders .: Mixed essays and small writings . 1853, pp. 55f.
  20. ↑ Claus Harms: Against the iniquity of arson and the despicable perjury , in: Ders .: Mixed essays and small writings . 1853, pp. 85-91.

Coordinates: 54 ° 20 '0.7 "  N , 9 ° 1' 22.3"  E