St. Laurentius (Wernsbach)

St. Laurence

St. Laurentius is a church named after the Roman deacon and martyr Laurentius of the Evangelical Lutheran community of Wernsbach . It is a branch church of the St. Nikolai community in Neuendettelsau and currently has 110 community members. The parish fair is celebrated annually on August 10th or the following Sunday.

history

A first reliable reference to this church can be found in 1548 in the Salbuch of the Landalmosenamt. The round arched portal of the church, which is still essentially preserved today, is in the late Romanesque style, but indicates that it was built well before it was first mentioned (12th century). It is commonly assumed that Burgrave Konrad II, the pious of Nuremberg, gave this church to the canons of St. Nikolaus Spalt , founded in 1295, together with St. Georg Bertholdsdorf , the parish church of St. Vitus Veitsaurach , even though it was not explicitly stated in the deed of donation mentioned. Even if it cannot be said without a doubt that the Canon Monastery already became the owner of the church with this donation, it is considered certain that this was done before the Reformation, since the subjects of Wernsbach had to pay their tithes there and in return were spiritually cared for by the parish of Bertholdsdorf.

With the introduction of the Reformation in the Margraviate of Ansbach in 1528, Wernsbach also became Evangelical-Lutheran, although the Canon Monastery continued to own the church and made it a branch of St. Vitus, which remained Catholic. As a result, Catholic services continued to be held in the church. This gave it the status of a simultaneous church, which was rare at the time . The Catholic Church also took care of the maintenance of the church. So 100 florins were made available to restore the church, which was damaged by a village fire in 1724. Two bells were donated in 1743 and a clock in 1746. After 1766 no more Catholic services were celebrated because there were no more Catholics in Wernsbach. The right of the Canon monastery expired on September 10, 1807 when it was dissolved in the course of secularization. It was not until 1810 that St. Laurentius became a branch of the Nikolaigemeinde Neuendettelsau in the full legal sense.

On July 16, 1724, the interior of the church was largely destroyed by fire. The lower part of the choir tower with sacrament niche, piscina and vault (14th / 15th century) and the late Romanesque arched windows and the arched portal have been preserved. In 1743 the church, which originally had three bells, received two new bells. In 1862, the churchyard wall with gate and stairs was repaired under Pastor Wilhelm Löhe . In 1963, under Pastor Werner Beltinger, the open staircase to the gallery was roofed over, a wooden ceiling was drawn in and the entrance door to the sacristy was replaced by a pointed arch window. Between 1969 and 1973 Pastor Gerhard Betzner had a new organ and a statue of Mary and Laurentius purchased for the choir and two more bells.

literature

• Eberhard Braun / Adam Schuster: St. Laurentius Church Wernsbach , Windsbach 1964.
• Günther P. Fehring : City and district of Ansbach (=  Bavarian art monuments . Volume 2 ). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1958, DNB  451224701 , p. 153 .
• Reinhold Friedrich, Johann Michael Enzingmüller (= Rother miniatures booklet 4), Roth 1995.
• Ludwig Hefele: History of the parish Veitsaurach . Funk Druck, Eichstätt 1977, p. 30 .
• Manfred Jehle: Church conditions and religious institutions on the upper Altmühl, Rezat and Bibert: Monasteries, parishes and Jewish communities in the Altlandkreis Ansbach in the Middle Ages and in modern times (=  Middle Franconian Studies . Volume 20 ). Historical Association for Middle Franconia, Ansbach 2009, ISBN 978-3-87707-771-9 , p. 173-174 .
• Manfred Keßler: The knight's seat in Dettelsau in the high and late Middle Ages . (Dissertation). Erlangen 2009, DNB  998940933 , p. 306 ( PDF; 11.1 MB ).
• Eberhard Krauss: Exiles in the Evangelical Luth. Deanery Windsbach in the 17th century. A family history investigation (=  sources and research on Franconian family history . Volume 19 ). Society for Family Research in Franconia, Nuremberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-929865-12-7 , p. 51 .
• Hans Rößler (Ed.): Under thatched and tile roofs. From the Neuendettelsau story . Past and present. Freimund, Neuendettelsau 1982, ISBN 3-7726-0110-3 , p. 50 f .
• Hans Roessler; Jürgen Singer: St. Laurentius in Wernsbach bW In: Deanery info for the parishes in the Evangelical Dean's District Windsbach (spring 2013), p. 2f.

Web link

Commons : St. Laurentius  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} M. Keßler, p. 306.
2. ↑ GPFehring, p. 153; H. Rößler: Under straw and tile roofs , p. 51; M. Jehle, p. 173.
3. ↑ L. Hefele, p. 30. Three services were to be held on Easter Monday, Whit Monday and on the Sunday after Laurentius (patronage).
4. ↑ L. Hefele, p. 30.

Coordinates: 49 ° 15 ′ 55.5 ″  N , 10 ° 48 ′ 22.5 ″  E