St. Martin (Mertingen)

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St. Martin, exterior view

The Catholic parish church of St. Martin in Mertingen , district of Donau-Ries in the Bavarian administrative district of Swabia , is essentially a late Baroque building with an older tower.

history

The patronage of St. Martin suggests a very old foundation. Mertingen was a main place of the Reichspflege Wörth ( Donauwörth ) and came to the Electorate of Bavaria on September 24, 1749 . The church of the original parish of Mertingen was first mentioned in 1096. The four basement floors of the tower are still Romanesque. In 1678 the church burned down and the heat even caused the bells to melt. Under the direction of Valerian Brenner , the octagon of the tower was built in 1680 . Up to the new building of the nave, construction defects occurred again and again.

In 1726/27 the late baroque hall building was built with a retracted, semicircular closed chancel; The builder was Joseph Meitinger from Ustersbach . The walls of the nave are structured by pilasters, the two windows on the south side (in front of the tower) are only painted on. Because there was a lack of money, the design of the interior stretched into the Rococo for decades. The painters Johann Baptist Enderle and Joseph Leitkrath as well as the sculptor Johann Georg Bschorer ensured the successful execution. On October 20, 1761, the Augsburg Auxiliary Bishop Franz Xaver Adelmann von Adelmannsfelden consecrated the church. The sacristy is from the early 20th century. The building is entered in the list of monuments.

The altars

The high altar

The four-column main altar was built around 1730/40. The life-size figures of Saints Peter and Paul come from Bschorer's workshop . Leitkrath painted the altarpiece with the church patron St. Martin in 1800 and shows part of the village of Mertingen in the background; of him is also the picture in the excerpt with God the Father, who is surrounded by angel figures.

The side altars

The center of the north side altar is the motif Anna herself third with Anna , her daughter Maria and her grandchild Jesus, popular since the Middle Ages . The figure decorations include a Pietà from the late Gothic period, the Saints Walburga , Joseph , Catherine of Alexandria and Notburga . At the front of the altar table, a relief shows Saint Anne with her husband Joachim . A picture of the Trinity and a representation of the Sacred Heart crown the altar. The southern side altar was built in 1731 by the Rosary Brotherhood . The carvings, created around 1730, depict the Madonna with the Child Jesus and Saints Dominic and Catherine of Siena . On the altar table, a relief shows the Annunciation by the Archangel Gabriel , at the top there is a picture of the Holy Family and the depiction of the Heart of the Virgin .

Frescoes

Choir room

The main picture with the Last Supper was created by Johann Baptist Enderle in 1787 - that is, in his late creative period. The six representations grouped around the Lord's Supper stand for Christian virtues: faith, hope, humility, pure love, purity and repentance.

Nave

The ceiling paintings originally all came from Enderle, but had fallen off over time and had to be replaced, so that nothing of the originals remained. In 1986 Hermenegild Peiker tried to follow the structure and color of Enderle in the central representation of the Sermon on the Mount . The picture for the choir shows the rescue of Peter from the waves (Mt 14, 22-36), above the organ the parable of the Pharisee and tax collector is shown. Six paintings of saints are assigned to the six pillars of the nave: Anthony of Padua , George , Thomas Aquinas (all north side) and Sebastian , Florian and Aloisius (south side). Further motifs are the Mother of God with child (choir arch) and the lamb on the book with the seven seals (fifth chapter of the Revelation of John ).

Figure decorations

The Bschorer figures in the choir were created between 1730 and 1740 and depict the Saints Rochus , Johannes (apostle) , Johannes Nepomuk , Florian and Leonhard . The figures in the pulpit may also be by Bschorer : the trumpet angel above the bell , the dove of the Holy Spirit and the Symbols for the four evangelists . The furnishings also include a crucifixion group in the nave (around 1500), the two confessionals (they were in the choir until 1934), four carrying poles, the fourteen pictures of the stations of the cross (1848, unknown artist). The Munich painter Gotthard Bauer created the “ Dance of Death ” cycle on the double gallery (remodeled from 1896 to 1908) under the impression of World War I in 1921 . In the middle of the lower gallery, however, the Risen Savior symbolizes the contrast to earthly transience. King David as a singer with the harp crowns the five-part organ front from the mid-18th century.

literature

Coordinates: 48 ° 39 ′ 21.5 ″  N , 10 ° 48 ′ 6 ″  E