St. Mauritius (Medingen)
St. Mauritius is the monastery church of the monastery in Medingen , a district of Bad Bevensen in Lower Saxony. Medingen is about 16 kilometers north of the old Hanseatic city of Uelzen .
Namesake
Patron saint is Saint Mauritius , who was beheaded around 290 by Emperor Maximian after he had refused to make sacrifices to the Roman gods.
history
In 1228 a convent was founded by a Cistercian lay brother and four nuns (Clementina, Anthonia, Floria and Zacharia) from the Wolmirstedt monastery. After first attempts to settle in Bohndorf, Wendland and Altenmedingen , where they were under the protection of the Knights of Medingen, the Cistercian monastery, which was already wealthy at the time, managed to settle in Medingen in 1336. In the following centuries the Medingen monastery was expanded and renewed.
At the beginning of the 15th century the partly badly damaged monastery church was rebuilt and reinforced with new vaults.
In 1502 a chapel was completed on the south side of the monastery and in 1507 a free-standing bell tower was built in the churchyard.
Due to the fact that the Reformation was difficult in Medingen, the abbess Elisabeth von Evern is said to have burned a Luther Bible in the fire house of the monastery in 1524 .
On July 11, 1529, the provost was appointed to Celle by the duke. There he declared him deposed because he was also hostile to the Reformation and probably supported the abbess. The successor of Elisabeth von Evern, the abbess Maria von Stöterogge, also resisted the "Lutherization" of the monastery.
"In 1536 Duke Ernst visited Medingen and, after several attempts to influence, presented the management of the monastery with a fait accompli by simply tearing down parts of the monastery." In 1542, Duke Ernst went a little further and withdrew all income and goods of the monastery. Thereupon Abbess Margaretha II fled to Hildesheim and took all the treasures and the archive of the monastery with her instead of leaving them to the duke. As a result, Bishop Christoph stood at the side of the monastery and filed a complaint against the Duke at the Speyer Supreme Court . This resulted in an imperial mandate against the duke, which was supposed to ensure peace between the two parties to the dispute.
In 1555 the convent declared itself to be Lutheran and has been continued as a women's monastery ever since.
In the further history of the monastery, the building had to be repeatedly destroyed, such as during the Thirty Years' War .
After a devastating fire in 1781, a new building was built in the baroque and classicist style in 1788 . Only the Gothic brewery was spared from the fire. The new building of the monastery remained the only one of Protestantism in northern Germany. Landbaumeister Christian Ludwig Ziegler received this order for the reconstruction in the same year, when it was destroyed by the fire. The resulting new building was ultimately built by King George III. inaugurated.
Pastors
- Julius Oeltzen (1821–1831)
- Katrin Dieckow (2003-2018)
- Johannes Luck (since 2018)
The organ
The in monastery exploiting Dende organ was designed by the organ master Ernst Röver built in 1909. The organ has a pneumatic traction. For visitors to the church, the organ is often difficult to see because it is behind the pulpit . The organ builder uses pneumatics to describe the parts of the instrument that are required for the generation, distribution and action of the wind (compressed air that makes the pipes sound). Another noticeable feature of the organ is that all the pipes in it stand on three large wind boxes, the heart of the organ, although each individual pipe has its own valve. This only opens when the associated tone color train is switched on and the associated key is pressed. This system was developed by Caspari in 1679 and taken up in the 19th century by Ernst Röver, the builder of this organ. Nowadays such systems are no longer used in the construction of an organ.
In 1986 there was a major, time-consuming restoration of this historic organ. The approximately 800 small bellows, i.e. air containers that release the sucked air to a vibrating body by pressure, had become brittle and porous and new ones were installed by the organ builder in time-consuming and painstaking detail.
The bell
The bell is almost a meter tall and weighs 240 kilograms . It dates from the 17th century. In 2015 it had to be restored.
The Medingen Monastery
The monastery in Medingen has been run as a monastic community with a convent and abbess since the Reformation to this day . The Convention was after a tough confrontation with the rulers, Duke Ernst the Confessor Brunswick and Lüneburg in 1555 finally converted, to the Protestant faith.
Numerous art treasures were destroyed by the fire in 1781. The abbess's valuable crook , a gilded reliquary statue of Saint Mauritius , a woven tapestry and a Gothic oak chest were spared the fire.
The building
Despite its overwhelming sight, the monastery shows a certain lightness and is reminiscent of a classical castle. This effect on the viewer is created, among other things, by the central tower and the classicist construction.
The tower of the building also shows influences from the Baroque , this is mainly due to the copper helmet of the tower.
Another feature of the church is the resurrection altar with a sarcophagus and a relief image of Jesus Christ . The pulpit is located directly above the altar . Directly opposite is the square of the women's choir.
Another eye-catcher of the church is the large brass chandelier , which is decorated with a double-headed eagle and a dragon. It also bears the inscription "Margredta von Dassel Abbetista in Medingen" and the year 1655.
present
Today the monastery presents itself as a castle-like building in the classical style with a baroque church tower and a church. Furniture, carpets, paintings, silver and embroidery with river pearls from the Ilmenau are among the most important art treasures.
In the past, unmarried women of aristocratic and bourgeois origin were accepted. This was particularly true of the daughters of officers or senior officials.
Today, however, it is often women who enter the monastery after their work. Today you no longer have to be of aristocratic origin and unmarried. However, they must be living alone. Single, widowed or divorced women are counted as single women.
Nowadays, events are also held in the monastery. The special atmosphere ensures an unforgettable experience and inspires many spectators.
The renovated brewery is now also used as a conference room.
The Medingen manuscripts
The Medingen manuscripts are unique in Europe. Nowhere else has such an abundance of personal prayer books been preserved, compiled by the women themselves and written and colored by hand. However, they are now scattered across libraries in Germany, Denmark and England. An online project by Henrike Lähnemann has set itself the goal of at least virtually reuniting the scattered manuscripts and prints.
Web links
- Website of the Medingen Monastery
- Information on the history of the monastery at www.heidekirchen.de , accessed on January 21, 2014
- Bad Bevensen's homepage about the monastery
- List of Abbesses of Medingen In: Johann Friedrich Pfeffinger: History of the Braunschweig-Lüneburg House. 1731, p. 236.
literature
- Götz J. Pfeiffer: Tradition and Change. Works of art in Medingen as evidence of the monastery history . In: Hans Otte : Evangelical monastery life. Studies on the history of the Protestant monasteries and monasteries in Lower Saxony . V&R Unipress, Göttingen 2013, pp. 361–394.
- Christian Wiechel-Kramüller: Churches, monasteries and chapels in the Uelzen district. Wiekra Edition, Suhlendorf 2015, ISBN 978-3-940189-14-1 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Christian Wiechel-Kramüller: Churches, monasteries and chapels in the district of Uelzen . Bahn-Media / Wiekra Edition, 2015, ISBN 978-3-940189-14-1 .
- ↑ Medingen manuscripts
Coordinates: 53 ° 5 '30.3 " N , 10 ° 33' 55.9" E