St. Leonhard (Wirsberg)
The St. Leonhards Church is an abandoned church near Wirsberg in the Upper Franconian district of Kulmbach .
In addition to the parish church of St. Johannis , Markt Wirsberg used to have two other churches. The Heilingskirche ruin is located near Neufang . Of this former pilgrimage church , only the gable front remains, the church was demolished from 1564 as a result of the Reformation .
The St. Leonhard's Church was north of the main town, east of the road to Neufang, on the eastern crest of the Buchleite above the Kos Valley and the Hag Graben. The Colloquium Historicum Wirsbergense and the Franconian Forest Association carried out the excavation of the foundation walls from 1933, the focus of the excavation work was in 1935 and 1936 under the chairman of the Franconian Forest Association, Eduard Margerie . Dean Johannes Schlund was also one of the contributors. Lorenz Reinhard Spitzenpfeil got involved as a building researcher . Remnants of the foundation wall of a Gothic church building were found, including the remains of a smaller late Romanesque church, dating from the beginning of the 12th century. An annex with bone finds was identified as an ossuary . In the north-west of the church in particular, there were remains of an enclosure or cemetery wall . In the northeast of the church remains of an older chapel-like building were uncovered, which Schlund interpreted as a baptistery . Today the area is a ground monument (D-4-77-163-24) and also an architectural monument (D-4-77-163-24).
Saint Leonhard is considered the patron saint of cattle, especially horses, and mining, which is why some finds were attributed to this veneration of saints. A previous wooden chapel and a place of worship were suspected. The Leonhardskirche is mentioned in documents from 1400 onwards. A Rabenstein was an early messenger there in 1400. When Marktschorgast was replaced and elevated to its own parish in 1433, the St. Leonhard chapel was named next to the Johanniskirche, which can explain the expanded new building at that time. In 1486 St. Leonhard was a pilgrimage church. In 1600 the construction was canceled, the stones were used to build the cemetery church in Wirsberg.
literature
- August Gebeßler : City and District of Kulmbach . The art monuments of Bavaria , brief inventories, III. Band . German art publisher . Munich 1958. p. 109.
- Hans Seiffert : The former Leonhardskirche on the Hag near Wirsberg . In: Frankenwald - Journal of the Frankenwald Association . Issue 5/1937, pp. 61-67.
- Georg Will: The excavation of a missing church near Wirsberg . In: Frankenwald - Journal of the Frankenwald Association . Issue 10/1933, pp. 153–157.
Web links
- Entry at frankenwald-tourismus.de
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 42.4 ″ N , 11 ° 36 ′ 6.9 ″ E