St. Marien (Bernburg)
The city church of St. Marien in Bernburg an der Saale is a Gothic church in the Salzlandkreis in Saxony-Anhalt . It belongs to the valley town of Bernburg in the Bernburg parish of the Evangelical Church of Anhalt and receives its special character from the finely crafted architectural sculpture of the choir.
History and architecture
The parish church of the old town in Bernburg is a three-aisled, five-bay, Gothic hall church with a two-bay, single-nave choir that closes with five sides of a dodecagon. It is disputed whether the documentary mention from 1228 refers to the Marienkirche. The oldest part is the basement of the mighty west tower made of ashlar masonry on a rectangular floor plan from the middle of the 13th century. It is slightly separated from the nave, but connected to it by a connecting structure and has a portal with pear-shaped pear-shaped profiles that are partly buried in the ground due to the elevated terrain level after repeated floods. The lower tower room is closed with three groin vaults and was originally opened to the central nave with two pointed arches over a central pillar. When the tower was completed in the first half of the 14th century, three storeys were added with windows increasing in size and topped off with a tent roof with corner points. Then the nave was built in the second half of the 14th century as a relatively low hall, of which the side aisle walls of the three western bays have largely been preserved.
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Around 1420/40 the two eastern bays were renewed together with the choir, which can be recognized by the continuous plinth. The choir is magnificently designed in the forms of the soft style in the succession of Conrad von Einbeck similar to the Moritzkirche in Halle . The finely crafted building sculpture is characterized by freely hanging tracery arches in front of the choir windows with grooved reveals and deeply drawn inward glazing with rich, largely renewed tracery windows . In contrast, the architectural sculpture of the figurative consoles, following the style of Peter Parler, is original, but of varying quality.
Stylistically related and certainly at the same time, the steeply proportioned keel-arched portal in the second yoke of the south wall from the east is also made with freely hanging tracery. A two-bay sacristy was added to the south of the choir a little later; the star vault dates from the second half of the 15th century. Presumably, after the choir was built, the nave roof was placed over all three naves, which makes the tower seem a bit too low.
The interior of the choir has a special spatial effect, which is characterized by a ribbed vault over circular services , which was largely renewed in 1868 . In each of the polygons there is a pressed, ogival niche; A richly decorated keel-arched door leads to the sacristy. A sacrament niche from the construction period is also available.
The slender octagonal pillars in the nave merge without a fight into the arcade arches. Consoles on the pillars and aisle walls indicate that a vault was planned. However, this was no longer carried out; Instead, the nave was given a baroque pointed arched barrel vault in the central nave and flat ceilings in the side aisles.
In the western part of the nave there is a monumental stone gallery from 1555 with a polygonal protruding tracery parapet; Above it is a large, free-hanging segmental tracery arch, the upper edge of which indicates the former height of the central nave.
The buttress figures on the exterior, like the choir vault, were created during a restoration in the 19th century. Another restoration was carried out in the years after 1971.
Furnishing
The main neo-Gothic pieces of the furnishings, altar and pulpit, are works by the masters Ch. And M. Kielhorn from 1870. A late medieval iron offering box has also been preserved. The liturgical equipment consists of a large gilded chalice with paten from the 15th century, which is decorated with scenes from the life and the Passion of Christ on the six-pass-shaped foot in incised technique, which is framed with keel-arch canopies and pinnacles. Two pastor portraits from the 19th century are also preserved.
The core of the side aisles is baroque, but wooden galleries that were modified in the 19th century; in the south-east there is a glazed mansion box, also from the 19th century.
In the choir there are stained glass from the 19th century, which were used in 1864. Of the organ originally built in 1902 by the Röver company from Hausneindorf, only the prospectus has survived. A work by Rainer Kapischke from 1995 serves as the interim organ.
Two bronze bells from 1373 and 1707 make the chime; the latter bell was cast by Johann Christian Bachmann in Halle.
literature
- Georg Dehio : Handbook of the German art monuments. Saxony Anhalt II. Administrative districts Dessau and Halle. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-422-03065-4 , pp. 65–67.
- Walter May: City churches in Saxony / Anhalt. 1st edition. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin 1979, p. 197.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Website of the valley town municipality of Bernburg. Retrieved August 18, 2017 .
- ↑ Information about the organ on orgbase.nl. Retrieved July 5, 2019 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 47 '58.6 " N , 11 ° 44' 8.8" E