St. Leonhard (Pfronten)
St. Leonhard is the church in the Pfronten districts of Heitlern and Dorf. It is a branch of the parish church of St. Nikolaus in Pfronten-Berg.
history
The district of Dorf is one of the oldest settlements in Pfronten, although it has only been documented since 1497. It can be assumed that the residents of older individual farms in the Dorf-Heitlern area left their location and founded the “village” around a newly dug pond.
Heitlern on the other hand was the location of a common church. It was also mentioned for the first time in 1497, when its church keeper appeared in a document. The patronage of St. Leonhard , whose veneration began in southern Germany at the end of the 11th century, suggests that the church was much older.
In the Middle Ages, a Reichsstrasse passed the Heitlerner Church. She left flood-proof ground here and crossed the Vils to the north on a bridge. Between the street and the church there was still an old carter's house, today the Adler inn. He is mentioned for the first time in 1519 as “landlord at St. Lienhart”.
The church was of great importance for all parts of the community south of the Vils. During numerous floods of the Vils, the river crossing was repeatedly destroyed, and the “Lower Parish” could no longer attend the Sunday service in the parish church. This is also why a chaplaincy was founded in Heitlern in 1526. Today's kindergarten next to St. Leonhard served as the home of the early knife . The clergy's income, however, was far too little to make a living from. The chaplain was orphaned before 1600, after which the parish school was housed here until 1816. St. Leonhard even had its own small, walled cemetery. Up to 1800 burials of non-residents took place here, for whom there was no space provided in the parish cemetery. Among these dead were people who had died in the nearby Pfrontener Seelhaus .
construction
The original church was smaller than the current structure. The oldest parts in the tower and the surrounding walls are dated to around 1423. From 1603 the church bills have been preserved. They show that repairs were always necessary, especially on the steep shingle roof after a "big wind". The sacristy was probably damp, because in 1603 the shawls ornate chasuble and other things were sanctified , so they had to be dried in the sun.
The location of the church on Reichsstrasse was unfavorable in times of war. During the Thirty Years' War St. Leonhard suffered like no other church in Pfronten. When Swedish soldiers invaded the chapel in 1634, it was set on fire, but could be repaired in the following years. In 1641 the tower was bricked up to its present height. As the fresco in the nave shows, an onion roof , similar to that of the parish church, was planned for him .
In 1726 the people of Pfronten received the episcopal permission for a new building because the church had to be completely rebuilt from the ground up . In this new building, the church was extended to the east and west. A retracted semicircular choir with two axes was attached to the nave with four window axes. A spacious gallery was created in the rear. The builder was Michael Erdt from Pfronten, whom the pastor referred to in the death register as a master of his subject (“in arte Magister”).
Furnishing
As with the construction, almost only local craftsmen and artists were involved in furnishing the church. The high quality stucco work was designed and executed by Peter Heel and his journeyman Magnus Bertle. The splendid early Rococo altar, in which the two columns no longer have a supporting function, is also by Heel.
The painters of the ceiling frescoes are not clearly documented by archives. In 1961, during renovation work in the choir, an older picture was discovered under a painting by Karl Keller (1895). The now uncovered fresco shows Saint Leonhard as the patron saint of the prisoners who languish in chains in a dungeon. It is probably the work of a Pfronten painter. What is certain is that Johann Heel , a half-brother of the altar builder and plasterer Peter Heel, and Bonaventura Stapf worked together on the ceiling fresco in the nave . It is believed that Stapf performed the rural scenes, while Heel could have done the rest of the picture. In the cycle of the "Four Last Things" on the gallery balustrade, stylistic features point to the authorship of Johann Heel.
The sculptures on the side altars were made by Maximilian Hitzelberger , while the altar superstructures in the high Rococo style probably go back to designs by Joseph Stapf . No altars are known from Hitzelberger. All altarpieces and figures are dedicated to saints named Franz: Franz Xaver , Franz Solanus, Francis of Assisi , Franz von Paula and Franz Borgias . This honored Franz de Paula Wind (1710–1769), who was then parish priest of Pfronten.
Originally not intended for St. Leonhard was the Rococo pulpit, a work by Joseph Stapf , which the latter donated to St. Martin in 1778 . In 1898 Pastor Köberle had them taken to the Heitlerner Church. During renovation work in 1962/53, the leaky church doors were replaced with new ones. The old door wings of the northern entrance with the mighty fittings now lean against the front of the ice cellar in Heimathaus Pfronten.
In the past, the church of the " chain saint " St. Leonhard was completely spanned on the outside by an iron chain supported by stone bollards . Tradition has it that a carter who asked for and received help donated this chain. However, only remnants of it were preserved until the second half of the 20th century. During the last renovation of the church in 1981, the damaged bollards on the south side were erected again and the chain added above them.
literature
- Annemarie and Adolf Schröppel: Pfrontener churches and chapels and their pastors . In: "Encounter" (parish letters of the parish of St. Nicholas), collected articles ed. from Heimatverein Pfronten 2002 (The well-founded articles do not provide any source information, but are essentially based on the church bills largely preserved from 1603 to 1674, which Schröppels excerpted in detail.)
- Anton H. Konrad / Annemarie and Adolf Schröppel: The Parish of Pfronten , Schwäbische Kunstdenkmale booklet 34, Weißenhorn 1986
- Michael Petzet: Bavarian Art Monuments - City and District of Füssen , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1960, p. 108
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bertold Pölcher / Thaddäus Steiner, Pfrontener Flurnamen , Gemeinde Pfronten (ed.) 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-032977-7 , p. 331
- ↑ Pfronten parish archive, foundation of a chaplain in Pfronten-Kappel, document 1497/1
- ↑ Liborius Scholz, Chronik von Pfronten in: Unterhaltungsblatt zum Pfrontener Bote, 1910 No. 34
- ^ Parish archive Pfronten, Saint Leonhard's accounts of saints, 1603
- ^ Parish archive Pfronten, Saint Leonhard's accounts of saints, 1732/33
- ↑ Herbert Wittmann in Alt Füssen 2002 (yearbook of the historical association "Alt Füssen"), p. 80 ISSN 0939-2467
- ↑ Herbert Wittmann, Joseph Stapf in: Extra Verren 2011 (to be published in April 2012)
- ^ Liborius Scholz, Chronik von Pfronten (entertainment sheet on the Pfrontener Bote, 1911 No. 33)
Coordinates: 47 ° 34 ′ 43.7 ″ N , 10 ° 33 ′ 26.1 ″ E