St. Moritz (Mittenwalde)

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Moritz Church in Mittenwalde

The St. Moritz Church is the Protestant town church of Mittenwalde in the Brandenburg district of Dahme-Spreewald . The mainly Gothic hall church was the place of activity of Paul Gerhardt from 1651 to 1657 , who wrote many of his songs there.

history

Building history

Mittenwalde came into being in the second phase of the German eastward settlement in the 13th century. The church received the patronage of St. Maurice , which since the founding of Mauritius monastery in Magdeburg and the relics transmission by Otto I as the patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire was.

The first building was a Romanesque stone church with a transverse rectangular west tower and an equally wide, presumably basilical nave .

In the 14th century, with the inclusion of parts of the Romanesque field stone masonry, a three-aisled hall church in the style of brick Gothic with star vaults was created . At the beginning of the 15th century the ambulatory choir was added, which suggests possible pilgrimages at that time.

With the Reformation in Brandenburg in 1539, the Moritzkirche became Lutheran .

The church received a baroque tower tower in 1773. The current neo-Gothic tower with rich architectural decorations was built in 1877/78 according to plans by Johann Eduard Jacobsthal , after a neo-Gothic restoration had already taken place in 1861/62.

A renovation of the interior in the simple taste of the times took place in 1956/57, a tower renovation in 1991.

Paul Gerhardt in Mittenwalde

Postcard from 1910
Paul Gerhardt monument in front of his former place of work (1651–1657)

Three years after the end of the Thirty Years War , 44-year-old Paul Gerhardt, who had been a chaplain in Berlin until then , was appointed provost in Mittenwalde. On September 28, 1651 he gave a guest sermon in the Moritzkirche, and on November 18 he was introduced to his office here. Most of the Paul Gerhardt songs that were newly published in Johann Crüger's practice Pietatis Melica from the 5th edition (1653) were composed in Mittenwalde, including some of the most famous. In 1655 Gerhardt married Anna Maria Berthold in Berlin and took her home to Mittenwalde. Her first daughter Maria Elisabeth was born here on May 19, 1656 ; she died on January 14, 1657. Her wooden grave plaque is in the Moritzkirche. In July 1657 Gerhardt was appointed to the Nikolaikirche in Berlin . The Mittenwald church registers with his entries have been preserved.

In 2001 a copy of the Paul Gerhardt statue, which Friedrich Pfannschmidt created for the church in Lübben in 1907 , was placed in front of the Moritzkirche .

Theodor Fontane on the Moritzkirche

In the 307th chapter of his walks through the Mark Brandenburg (1880) Theodor Fontane draws a detailed picture of the Moritzkirche and the time of Paul Gerhardt there.

Furnishing

Significant pieces of equipment in the church include a late Gothic carved altar (1514), the carving of the choir stalls (mid-16th century), the wooden sculpture of a holy Pope (around 1510), one made by the Berlin painter Emma Mathieu in 1829, which approximates the romantic sense of style Copy of the Paul Gerhardt portrait from Lübben and the baroque prospectus of the Grüneberg organ from 1787. The choir stalls have 45 panels, which were created in the middle of the 16th century.

literature

  • Evangelical Church District Zossen-Fläming Synodal Committee for Public Relations (Ed.): Between Heaven and Earth - God's Houses in the Church District Zossen-Fläming , Laserline GmbH, Berlin, p. 180, 2019

Web links

Commons : St. Moritz (Mittenwalde)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Information board at the church
  2. ↑ a b c d Vera Schmidt, local chronicle from Mittenwalde: Paul Gerhardt
  3. ↑ Figure
  4. ↑ text ; Fontane must have been there before 1877 because he still describes the baroque tower.
  5. ↑ on this Livia Cárdenas and Dirk Schumann : The medieval altarpiece of the Moritzkirche in Mittenwalde . In: Tatjana Bartsch and Jörg Meiner (eds.): Art, Context, History: Festgabe for Hubert Faensen on his 75th birthday . Berlin 2003, pp. 129–155 ( partially digitized )
  6. ↑ Life and songs of Paulus Gerhardt. Published by ECG Langbecker , Berlin 1841, p. 232 . -
    “The painter used the Lübbener as a model for her Mittenwald portrait. In the Mittenwald picture, Gerhardt appears younger and more sensitive, seen from the perspective of romanticism and the awakening movement. The body gesture of Jesus on the cross has been intensified affectively ”( Christian Bunners : Paul Gerhardt. Way - Work - Effect . Göttingen 2007, p. 114 ).

Coordinates: 52 ° 15 '49.4 "  N , 13 ° 32' 5.4"  E