St. Mary's Assumption (Blankenheim)

St. Mary's Assumption with castle and rectory

View of the choir

Aerial photo (2016)

The Catholic parish church of St. Mary of the Assumption is a listed church building in Blankenheim (Ahr) , a municipality in the district of Euskirchen ( North Rhine-Westphalia ).

History and architecture

The south-facing, star-vaulted hall with a three-sided choir was built from 1495 to 1505 on the basis of a donation from Johann I. Graf von Manderscheid-Blankenheim-Gerolstein and his wife Margarete. The church, together with the rectory from the 17th century and the Blankenheim Castle towering above it, form an impressive assembly. The tower was set up in 1616 and a two-aisled crypt room was built under the north end of the hall . The burial place of the Counts of Manderscheid-Blankenheim was set up there in 1815 after the castle chapel was demolished . The decorative late Gothic vault paintings were uncovered from 1954 to 1956 and supplemented according to findings. The tower was raised by a fourth floor at the beginning of the 20th century.

See also : List of architectural monuments in Blankenheim (Ahr)

Furnishing

Carving on a pew

• The essays on the high altar and the side altars are richly carved neo-Gothic shrine architecture from around 1870. There are small-figure carved groups of late Gothic altars in them. They come from the former castle chapel and were carved in the middle of the 15th century. They were in the 19th century passed and gilded .
• A rectangular late Gothic sacrament niche with a push-through grille
• The pulpit with wall staircase dates from the 17th century
• two late Gothic choir stalls with five seats and two late Gothic pews assembled from remains
• The organ work and the organ case were built in 1660 and are among the oldest of its kind in Germany.
• On the consoles with rich Renaissance ornaments in front of the vaulted ribs of the nave there are twelve apostles made of tuff in the late Gothic style.
• In the choir a memorial tablet made of sandstone for Count Johannes (died 1524) with a splendid coat of arms of those of Manderscheid-Blankenheim is exhibited.

Church treasure

• The church treasures include liturgical implements and vestments from the 18th century.
• The embroidered coat of arms of Gerhard von Loen and his wife

In the middle of the 15th century, Gerhard von Loen collected a reliquary treasure for the castle chapel , which is now a church treasure:

• A bust reliquary of St. George from the middle of the 15th or the beginning of the 16th century
• A fully armored life-size silver bust. The foot pieces of the base and the tendril frieze stylistically point to the period around 1420/1430 and may be used here a second time.
• Six precious reliquary cloths from Flanders from the middle of the 15th century
• The fabric relics presented by embroidered figures of angels and priests are sewn onto richly patterned Italian velvet.

Web links

Commons : St. Mary of the Assumption  - collection of images

• On the history of the parish of Blankenheim. Parish association Blankenheim, accessed on February 10, 2016 . 

literature

• Dehio, Georg , edited by Claudia Euskirchen, Olaf Gisbertz, Ulrich Schäfer: Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler. North Rhine-Westphalia I Rhineland . Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2005, ISBN 3-422-03093-X .
• Jürgen Kaiser: Blankenheim. St. Mary of the Assumption . Regensburg 2005. ISBN 3-7954-6547-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Claudia Euskirchen, Olaf Gisbertz, Ulrich Schäfer (arr.): Handbook of German art monuments , North Rhine-Westphalia, Volume I: Rhineland. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-422-03093-X . Page 140.
2. ^ History of the parish church of St. Mary of the Assumption. (No longer available online.) Blankenheim parish association, archived from the original on February 10, 2016 ; accessed on February 10, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Coordinates: 50 ° 26 ′ 16.1 ″  N , 6 ° 39 ′ 1.5 ″  E