St. Marien (Weißenfels)
The Protestant town church St. Marien in Weißenfels is a late Gothic hall church in Weißenfels in the Burgenland district in Saxony-Anhalt . It belongs to the Weißenfels-Burgwerben parish in the Merseburg parish of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany and shapes the market square in Weißenfels with its richly decorated choir.
History and architecture
The Marienkirche in Weißenfels was first mentioned in a document in 1158 as the town church of the market settlement. The church was consecrated in 1351. The lower part of the tower is still preserved from this building, which resembled the church in Burgwerben . After a city fire in 1374, the tower was raised by the octagonal storeys with edge bars. The medieval church building was destroyed in the Hussite Wars in 1430. The late Gothic church construction began with the choir, which is decorated with rich décor in the soft style and dominates the market like a choir facade.
The five-bay nave was started in simpler forms according to dendrochronological dating in 1455/56. The window tracery show increasingly younger forms from east to west. The side aisles are closed with two-sided polygons to the east. The buttresses in the north as well as the arcades differ from those in the south, which may be due to a change of plan. The west tower was completed by a hipped roof between 1530 and 1535. After a fire in the town between 1718 and 1722 a lavishly structured tower with pilasters and a pleasing curved dome was built.
At the beginning of the 16th century, a sacristy with a square plan with a star vault and figural keystones was added to the north side of the choir. The stair tower on the south aisle was added in 1636.
The nave is accessed from a vestibule portal in the shape of a keel arch on the south and north side. The sacristy gate on the north side of the choir is designed in the same way.
The spacious choir is relatively simple on the inside and is finished with a reticulated vault with numerous keystones and coats of arms from the last quarter of the 15th century. It ends to the east in a polygonal end consisting of five sides of a decagon.
In the nave, simple octagonal pillars support the arcades , the eastern of which is somewhat narrower and lower. The net vaults of the side aisles date from around 1520 and rest on masked consoles from the time the ship was built. The vault in the main nave was also supposed to rest on heraldic consoles, but was no longer built in stone and instead made as a wooden barrel vault between 1655 and 1660.
The spatial impression is determined by galleries in the side aisles and on the west side, which, like the furnishings, date from the years 1670 to 1684, when the church was converted into a court church.
A restoration of the interior took place from 1981 to 1985; the tower was repaired in 1991/92.
Furnishing
The altar is highlighted by a large wooden display wall with free columns and rich figural decorations from 1684 by Andreas Griebenstein. In the main field it shows a relief of the Mount of Olives scene and below it a relief of the Lord's Supper. The figures on the side represent David and Simei . In the top of the display wall, the Christian virtues and angels are shown next to a glory of rays.
The pulpit is a joint work by Andreas Griebenstein with the painters Christian Hoffmann and Johann Christoph Goldner from 1674. The Salvator and the four evangelists are arranged in high relief on the parapet of the sandstone basket . The stair parapet shows a representation of the Good Shepherd and a mirror-inverted city view of Weißenfels before the city fire of 1718. The wooden sound cover shows a representation of God the Father with the risen Christ in a cloudy sky and on the underside the dove of the Holy Spirit.
The large sandstone baptismal font shows high reliefs of Adam and Eve and deer drinking water as a symbol of baptism and, like the altar, was made by Andreas Griebenstein in 1681.
Painted scenes from the Old and New Testament are depicted on the balustrades of the galleries. In the choir there is a painting with the Last Judgment and the portrait of the founder from the third quarter of the 16th century. In front of it is a small wooden pietà , which dates from around the same time.
A baroque crucifix and an epitaph by Martin Hundt († 1515) and his family with an artful ecce homo depiction should also be mentioned.
The rich liturgical furnishings include a baptismal font from the Renaissance period. The completely preserved glazing of the choir with neo-Gothic glass paintings was carried out by the Wilhelm Franke workshop from Naumburg from 1899 to 1903.
organ
The organ was built by Friedrich Ladegast from 1862 to 1864 and has 41 stops on three manuals and a pedal . It is the oldest surviving work by this organ builder. It was restored in 2001 by Thomas Hillebrand from Altwarmbüchen according to the original plan. The disposition is:
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- mechanical play and stop action
- Coupling: main work - positive, main work - echo work, positive - echo work, pedal - main work, pedal - positive, pedal - echo work.
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. 849–851.
- Walter May: City churches in Saxony / Anhalt. 1st edition. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin 1979, p. 215.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Weißenfels in the picture , accessed on October 17, 2017.
- ^ Hannelore Sachs, Ernst Badstübner, Helga Neumann: Christian iconography in key words . Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 1980, p. 181 .
- ↑ Website of the Friends of the Ladegastorgel Weißenfels. Retrieved September 1, 2017 .
- ↑ Information about the organ on orgbase.nl. Retrieved May 10, 2019 .
- ↑ The organ - ladegastorgel-weissenfels.de. Retrieved May 2, 2020 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 12 '2.8 " N , 11 ° 58' 17.4" E