St. Laurentius (Lettenreuth)
The Roman Catholic parish church of St. Laurentius in Lettenreuth , a district of Michelau in the Upper Franconian district of Lichtenfels , was built from 1753 to 1758 as a baroque-style exposed sandstone block . The central system designed by Johann Jakob Michael Küchel is one of the most remarkable country churches on the Upper Main .
history
Above Lettenreuth, on a high road from Weidhausen near Coburg to Marktgraitz, there was a corridor chapel, probably from the 12th century, consecrated to St. Laurentius . It was a small octagonal house of worship with a floor space of around 40 square meters with a pyramid roof and a ridge turret . The richly furnished church was probably devastated during the Peasants 'War and the Thirty Years' War . Four services were held annually. In 1724, due to dilapidation and space problems, first efforts were made to build a replacement church. The responsible bishop of Würzburg approved the plans in 1725. The sovereign, the Bamberg bishopric , agreed after lengthy disputes in 1738. It was financed by a chapel foundation. A plot of land in the middle of Lettenreuth was available as a building site. A draft of the Bamberg court architect Justus Heinrich Dientzenhofer from 1740 was rejected on site. The Bamberg government did not agree to the next plan by the master builder Johann Thomas Nißler from Staffelstein. Finally, in 1751, the bishopric engineer Johann Jakob Michael Küchel received the order for the new design of an almost round central building , around 18 meters wide, 14 meters long and 7.5 meters high. The foundation stone was laid on July 4, 1753. Johann Thomas Nißler and the Lichtenfels master mason Johann Schnapp erected the building. Among other things, the old chapel was demolished and reused. The parish had around 200 members and felt the new building was too small. They caused the nave to be built around 3.3 meters longer and the gallery larger than planned by Küchel. In 1755 the shell was completed and the blessing followed in 1756. On September 29, 1759 the Würzburg auxiliary bishop Daniel Johann Anton von Gebsattel consecrated the new branch church of the Graitz parish. The establishment with the gallery , the pulpit and the side altars followed in the 1760s. A high altar was erected in 1789.
At the beginning of the 19th century Lettenreuth came to the Archdiocese of Bamberg . In 1850, the Archbishop of Bamberg, Bonifaz Kaspar von Urban, set up a local chaplaincy , which was elevated to a curate in 1886 and a parish in 1921. Between 1853 and 1855 the community had a first major renovation carried out and purchased two new bells. In 1889 the baroque high altar was replaced by a neo-renaissance one. The current side altars are from the same year. Extensive restoration work followed again in 1893/94. This is where the current ceiling painting was probably created. In 1897 the sacristy was extended and a side, neo-baroque connecting passage to the church was built. In 1934 the lay chairs in the nave were replaced . In the years 1951 to 1954, 1971 to 1974 and 1989/1990 further restoration work took place.
Building description
The parish church stands in the middle of the village in the valley of the Nonnenbach on a gently sloping terrain. It is indented from the line of buildings on Weidhauser Straße with a forecourt to the northeast. It is a two-axis exposed sandstone block construction with a slated mansard roof and a ridge turret .
The façade is divided vertically, among other things, with ribbed pilaster strips and drilled and profiled window frames. Horizontal design elements are the base zone below, the wall surfaces in the middle and the beams above . The east facade consists of a retracted choir with a semicircular apse wall . Rounded corners form the transition to the nave in the facade. At the front of the choir is the single-storey sacristy with a hipped roof . Pilasters inside divide the choir wall into four sections. The choir area is spanned by a stitch cap vault with straps that meet at the apex of the choir arch . The choir arch, designed as a pressed basket arch, forms the transition to the nave.
The nave, with its almost square floor plan, has two axes with segment-arched long windows. In between and at the ends of the wall there are pilaster strips. The interior has a pre-blinded pilaster structure and is spanned by a flat ceiling with a circumferential cove as the edge. The corners of the nave interior are bevelled and provided with niches. In the west and in the western parts of the north and south walls up to more than the center of the room there is a single-storey wooden gallery with a baluster parapet. It has six columns and is drawn in a semicircle in the middle, where the organ stands. A seventh support was probably installed later. In the northwest niche is a narrow, quarter-turn staircase with a small square window for lighting.
The ceiling of the nave is decorated with Rococo stucco from 1755 by Andreas Luntz with curved painting frames and rich rocaille cartouches. The ceiling paintings in the stuccoed frame were made in 1893. The picture in the middle of the ceiling shows the transfiguration of the Lord , above the popular altar the martyrdom of Laurentius and above the western gallery Saint Cecilia as an organ player. The church fathers are represented in medallions in the four corners of the room, in the north Ambrose , in the east Gregory , in the south Augustine and in the west Jerome .
The west facade, which is structured with three axes, is drawn into the nave with concave sides and ribbed pilaster strips at the corners. There is an eight-step, pyramidal staircase in front of it. In the two outer axes there are large, segment-arched windows and in the middle a segment-arched portal with a profiled frame. Instead of a vertex , in the center of the lintel there is a band wrapped around the frame, rolled up at the ends. Above the portal there is a coat of arms in relief with the Christ monogram IHS and a round arch niche with a crown stone in the lintel, including a figure of the church patron Laurentius. This is a work by the Lichtenfels sculptor Kaiser from 1904. An oil mountain relief is arranged in a recess in the southwest concave wall surface . There is another entrance portal in the south wall.
The high mansard roof has a barrel dormer on both sides in the middle of the long side and a roof turret with segmented arched, lamellar sound windows and a strongly constricted onion hood at the eastern end of the ridge. A Greek cross forms the top . At the western end of the ridge there is a patriarchal cross .
Furnishing
The high altar has a wooden structure marbled in red and gray tones in neo-renaissance forms. It was created in 1889 based on a design by the Regensburg cathedral vicar Georg Dengler . In three arched niches there are wooden figures, in the middle St. Laurentius in the deacon's robe with book and grate and on the right St. Kunigunde with a church model and ploughshare. The two sculptures from the beginning of the 16th century probably come from the old chapel. The figure on the left shows Saint Heinrich with a scepter and orb and probably did not originally belong to the group. Two angels sit on the entablature, probably from the end of the 17th century, and above in the pull-out niche is St. Sebastian , in an officer's uniform with two arrows as a sign of his martyrdom. The figure dates from the early 18th century. On the right side of the high altar there is a figure of St. Francis from the 18th century and on the left of St. Anthony of Padua on consoles .
The two side altars with their wooden structures marbled in red and gray tones, consisting of two columns and an extension with a triangular gable, were erected in 1889. The angels and cherubs date from around 1700. In the left altar there is a Madonna in a halo, in the right Saint Joseph with a carpenter's angle. Both figures were acquired in 1978.
Only the pulpit on the southern pillar of the choir arch remains of the Baroque furnishings from the construction period . The marbled wood structure with Rocailles decor is the work of the Kronach carpenter Paul Mahr. The sculptures are from Pankraz Fries. Figures of the four evangelists sit around the round basket in front of rocaille templates . The sounding board carries Lambrequin , sit on it cherubs. At the top is a small cross that was added in 1853.
The octagonal baptistery of sandstone in neo-Renaissance forms created in 1885 by the Bamberg sculptor Lorenz comb and the offertory oak next to the south entrance of 1760 the carpenter Hans Konrad foot. Under the organ gallery there is a painting from the middle of the 18th century depicting the crucifixion and an Immaculate Conception with Saints Benedict and Bernhard from around 1730/40 . There are also four wooden figures on consoles, John the Baptist , made in the 17th century, Saint Wendelin from 1898, a Sacred Heart figure and an associated Mary, both acquired in 1887.
organ
The organ was installed in 1868 by the Nuremberg organ builder August Bittner . The instrument has nine registers on a manual and pedal . The simple, white neo-renaissance case from 1866 is the work of Jakob Schmitt-Friderich from Bamberg.
Bells
Three bells hang in the roof turret. The oldest dates back to 1448 and was acquired by the Mistelfeld parish . The other two were cast in the Karl Czudnochowsky bell foundry in 1953 . They replaced steel bells from the 1920s.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Peter Ruderich: Catholic parish church St. Laurentius Lettenreuth .
- ↑ a b c Roland Kunzmann: The church buildings of Johann Jakob Michael Küchel . Dissertation, University of Bamberg 2005, pp. 279–290.
- ^ A b c d Tilman Breuer: Bavarian art monuments, district of Lichtenfels. Deutscher Kunstverlag Munich 1962, p. 86 f.
Coordinates: 50 ° 10 ′ 35 ″ N , 11 ° 9 ′ 34 ″ E