St. Laurentius (Ortenburg)
St. Laurentius is a Protestant church in the small town of Steinkirchen near Ortenburg in the Lower Bavarian district of Passau . It is known for the numerous historical grave monuments in the nave and for the evangelical cemetery that surrounds them. Today St. Laurentius is mainly used as a cemetery church for the municipality of Ortenburg, but it is one of the oldest churches in the Wolfachtal . Before the Reformation was introduced in Ortenburg , St. Laurentius was one of the largest Catholic parish churches in the Passau area. Because of the masonry called "the stone church", St. Laurentius is said to have given the place its name to Steinkirchen itself.
history
Catholic use until 1573
St. Laurentius is one of the oldest churches in the Wolfachtal. A church in the village of Steinkirchen is mentioned in a document in 1130. Much earlier, in the period between 748 and 788, a St. Laurentius Church is mentioned in the "Traditions of the Diocese of Passau". The historian Max Heuwieser assumed that the St. Laurentius church must have been an own church of the Passau Cathedral monastery and came to the conclusion that this was the church in Steinkirchen. Heuwieser also assigned the church in Steinkirchen an administrative task for the Passau possessions in the area. The latter assumption is entirely permissible, as there was later the office of administrator.
The name “stone church” came up early, probably because of its stone construction. The St. Laurentius Church was in contrast to other churches in the area that were still built of wood. It is therefore assumed that it did not get this nickname from its founders, but from new settlers who noticed this characteristic.
The first reliable mention of a pastor in Steinkirchen is on February 12, 1241 in the will of Heinrich I von Ortenburg , in which two priests from Steinkirchen are named as witnesses. For a long time it was assumed that the sovereignty of the Counts of Ortenburg over St. Laurentius goes back to the beginning of the 16th century, when Count Georg III. von Ortenburg in Steinkirchen appears as a pastor. However, it turned out that this was the case much earlier. In 1404, Count Georg I von Neu-Ortenburg had mentioned his bailiwick of Steinkirchen in an opening treaty with the Bavarian dukes . Thus St. Laurentius was already in the possession of the counts at this time.
During its time as a parish church, St. Laurentius had numerous branch churches and chapels in the near and distant area. Among other things, there were branch churches in Ortenburg (today's market church ), Holzkirchen , Sandbach , Rainding , Sammarei , Unteriglbach , Söldenau and Ortenburg . She also looked after the chapels of the count's castles in Neu-Ortenburg and Söldenau .
The current church building dates from the second half of the 15th century and was consecrated in 1478 . 40 years later, a small chapel, a so-called Karner, was built on the east side of St. Laurentius . This was consecrated on June 1, 1518 by Auxiliary Bishop Bernhard von Passau. It can still be found in 1625 on a watercolor by Count Friedrich Casimir , but was later demolished (today there are graves from the cemetery). In 1505 a brotherhood of the poor souls was established. In the time immediately before the introduction of the Reformation by Joachim von Ortenburg , the mass in St. Laurentius was read by monks of the St. Salvator monastery .
Evangelical use from 1573
After the confirmation of the imperial immediacy of the county, the ruling Count Joachim had the branch church “ To our dear women ” in front of the Ortenburg market transformed into a Protestant church. The first public Protestant church service took place there on May 24, 1573. One day later, the count had the St. Laurentius Church closed so that the monks of St. Salvator could no longer read mass there, and removed all church equipment and clothes, and the paintings were whitewashed.
Between 1703 and 1706 the second largest bells of St. Laurentius were brought to Ortenburg by Countess Amalia Regina as part of the redesign of the market church .
In 1751 the steeple of St. Laurentius was demolished because it was dilapidated and replaced by an emergency roof. In 1821 this was replaced by the tent roof that still exists today.
In 1873, the pavement in the nave was re-laid, and numerous epitaphs of the aisle were embedded in the church walls.
In 1921 some of the old church paintings that had been whitewashed under Joachim von Ortenburg were exposed again under the plaster.
In 1939 the extensive renovation of the St. Laurentius Church began. Among other things, this provided evidence of burials in the ship and in the choir of the church. The last epitaphs were removed from the aisle and let into the church walls. The church floor was then re-laid, the altar and sacristy restored. Other frescoes were also uncovered. The work dragged on for several years due to the Second World War.
In 1948 a given bell, the small Seiser bell, from the year 1601 was rediscovered at the "Hamburg bell cemetery" and put back in the church.
In 1955 the tower had to be plastered to protect the masonry. An extensive renovation of the church and the tower took place 30 years later. Numerous stones of the ship have been incorporated.
description
Building
The current church construction goes back to the year 1474. This is evident from an inscription in the nave. A "TM" is mentioned as the client. This was probably the architect Thomas M. von Braunau, who was recognized at the time. During the same period he also built other churches in Grongörgen , Gergweis , Oberuttlau, Wolfakirchen and Dietersburg . On 19 May 1478 the church was by Bishop Albert of Passau consecrated . For the time before 1474, one assumes a smaller Romanesque church at the same place near St. Laurentius . Of this, the four basement floors of the tower still exist today. This has a square floor plan with a wall thickness of 1.80 m. Up to a height of about ten meters it still consists of granite rubble stones, after which bricks were used.
The nave itself is a late Gothic vaulted structure and thus a single-nave hall church . It is only leaned against the church tower , which can be seen through the broken edge behind the organ gallery. The tower is thus free from the nave . Apart from the original stone west gallery, there is no other gallery in the nave.
Furnishing
altar
Today's altar has been on loan from the Bavarian National Museum since 1946 . It shows the adoration of the Three Kings in the altarpiece and was probably made around 1450/60. The plague saints Rochus and Sebastian are depicted on the side wings of the altar . The altar fits well into the overall picture of the church.
The former altarpiece of the Descent from the Cross is now in the Ortenburg Palace Chapel .
pulpit
The pulpit is on the right of the choir arch. The pictures were only exposed again in 1966 and represent a sermon about trusting God. The pulpit and the pictures date from the 18th century. It clearly shows the change in the church since the loss of rights in 1573, that it was only used as a burial church.
organ
In 1902 St. Laurentius received a new organ. It was the old organ from the Marktkirche, which probably came from the times of Countess Amalia Regina. While a new organ was purchased for the market church for 5,000 marks, the old one was overhauled and brought to Steinkirchen. It is one of the five oldest still playable church organs in Lower Bavaria.
Funerary monuments
30 grave monuments adorn the church walls of St. Laurentius. These used to be in the central aisle of the church, only in 1873 and 1939 were they embedded in the side walls.
In contrast to the Marktkirche, however, it is not family members of the Counts of Ortenburg that are represented here, but rather numerous citizens, but also Bavarian aristocrats of various origins.
The epitaphs can be divided into four groups:
- Deceased from Ortenburg's immediate vicinity
- Servants and officials of the Counts of Ortenburg
- Passau citizens from the 16th century
- Bavarian nobles
At this point the most important ones should be mentioned, the aristocrats from Bavaria. Two epitaphs are reminiscent of members of the Schwartzenstein family , the first of Hippolytus von Schwartzenstein zu Katzenberg († 1587), the latter of Hans Wolf von Schwarzenstein zu Fürstenstein and Engelburg († 1599). This was the last of his tribe and was married to Martha von Maxelrein , Freiin zu Waldeck. The close relative of these two, Burkhard von Taufkirchen zu Guttenberg auf Clebing and Katzenberg († 1600) is represented with an epitaph. He was married to Maria von Tannberg zu Aurolzmünster and Maria Elisabeth von Schwartzenstein zu Fürstenstein. The Taufkirchen family inherited the Schwartzenstein family. The last epitaph, which also includes a death shield in the nave, is Bartholomäus Khevenhiller (* July 25, 1625 - June 28, 1678), Freiherr zu Aichelberg on Lands-Cron and Wernberg, hereditary lord on Hochen Osterwitz and Carlsberg, Erblandt. This has no relation to stone churches or nobility from the Bavarian area. It thus occupies a special position in St. Laurentius. He was a Carinthian aristocrat and probably died on the journey by ship on the Danube to the Perpetual Reichstag in Regensburg. However, St. Laurentius was the only Protestant cemetery nearby where he could be buried.
From the period of the epitaphs from the second half of the 16th century, it can be seen that evangelical aristocrats could no longer be buried in their traditional hereditary burials under pressure from the Counter-Reformation in Bavaria. Just as striking is the proximity of the noble families to the Ortenburg Count's House, for example the Lords von Schwartzenstein and Maxelrein were also accused with Count Joachim in the so-called Bavarian Noble Conspiracy .
The portal of the church.
View into the nave.
The Gothic altar with the central image of the Adoration of the Magi.
The oldest representation of St. Florian in the Wolfachtal.
graveyard
The cemetery surrounding the church has been used for the burial of deceased parishioners since the time when St. Laurentius was a Catholic parish church. This use was maintained even after the Reformation was introduced, and also when the Ortenburg market church replaced St. Laurentius as the parish church. Until the late 18th century, Steinkirchen was the Protestant cemetery closest to the city of Passau. That is why not only parishioners from Ortenburg, but Protestants from all over Eastern Bavaria were buried here. Among the deceased, who found their final resting place in the Steinkirchen cemetery, are u. a. the Bavarian Lieutenant General Paul von Köberle .
literature
- Peter Poscharsky: The Protestant Churches in Ortenburg and Steinkirchen , 3rd edition, Ortenburg 2012.
- Evangelical Parish Office Ortenburg (ed.): Evangelical Market Church Ortenburg 2006 , Ortenburg 2006.
- Markt Ortenburg: Citizenship pamphlet of the Marktgemeinde Ortenburg - published on the occasion of the inauguration of the converted town hall on the Ortenburg market square and at the end of the restructuring of the Marktgemeinde administration , Ortenburg 1994.
- Working group for local history of Ortenburg (ed.): Steinkirchen - The grave monuments in the evangelical burial church of the former imperial county of Ortenburg / Lower Bavaria (= Ortenburg local history - contributions to the history of Ortenburg, issue 1), Vilshofen 1991.
- Hans Schellnhuber : The Reformation in the imperial county of Ortenburg appeared in: 400 years evang.-luth. Kirchengemeinde Ortenburg , Ortenburg 1963.
- Carl Mehrmann: History of the Evangelical Lutheran community of Ortenburg in Lower Bavaria - memorandum for the anniversary celebration of the 300th anniversary of the introduction of the Reformation there on October 17 and 18, 1863 , Landshut 1863. ( digitized version )
Remarks
- ↑ In the tradition code of the diocese of Passau donations of land to the diocese of Passau are listed. Among the donations listed there is also a donation to a church of St. Lawrence , but in this context neither the location and scope of the donated goods nor which church it is concerned are mentioned.
- ↑ Soon afterwards Joachim von Ortenburg had the Catholic branch churches in Bavaria, over which he still held the patronage through the parish church of St. Laurentius, informed that he would continue to provide for a Catholic priest there and that the services there would continue to take place in the previous form . In the branch church in Holzkirchen, on the other hand, the Protestant service was ordained. However, this was soon ended violently by ducal intervention. On the other hand, the Catholic priest Höhenkirchner remained in the service of the Count, he appeared from 1567 as a beneficiary of the Sixtus Chapel , the Catholic burial place of the count's family next to the Passau Cathedral .
Web links
Coordinates: 48 ° 32 '1.4 " N , 13 ° 13' 22.6" E