St. Nicolai (Klettenberg)
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The Protestant Church of St. Nicolai is located in the Klettenberg district of the Hohenstein community in the Nordhausen district in Thuringia . It emerged from the former St. Georgii castle chapel, which was repaired in 1647 and rebuilt around 1681 as the village church of the community. It got its erroneous name from confusing the patronage with the demolished, former so-called lower church “St. Nicolai ”when it was put back into operation in 1993.
history
The St. Nicolai Church emerged as the St. Georgii Church from the former castle chapel of Klettenberg Castle. It was originally reserved for the knight's and castle seats as well as the free estate owners of the Klettenberg residence and was rebuilt by the court and castle preacher Mehler at the time of the Sayn-Wittgenstein government, during a plague epidemic in 1681. It was only consecrated in 1706, as the villagers had used the Beatae Mariae Virginis lower church until then . Since 1706 the church for all local and castle residents is church become.
The lower church Beatae Mariae Virginis , also called Klauskirche because of its lonely location, lost its function for the community until 1718 when the "Klaushaus" serving the church had to be sold because of organ repairs. It was then only used for burials in the adjacent so-called Klauskirchhof, which the community only closed in 1879. Remains of the Klaus or Marienkirche are still in the place today, in the form of their former wooden church tower. The municipality of Klettenberg undertook to repair it on October 6, 1938. Until the middle of the last century, the still existing bells of the Klauskirche tower were used to ring in the service, which always took place a quarter of an hour before the actual beat of the upper church, so that the scattered residents below the mountain could hear summons in good time. The renaming of the Klaus and Marien Church to St. Nicolai Church only happened in the course of the 18th century, therefore after its abandonment.
In contemporary texts there are also the terms Upper Church for today's St. Nicolai Church (St. Georgii) and Lower Church for the old Marien or Nicolai Church in the village.
In the years 1931–1933 the church was renovated at the instigation of Vicar Otto Steinwachs, the roof was re-covered on all sides and on the south side, the masonry in the northwest with concrete anchors was redesigned, the interior was covered with brick walls and plastered. In addition, various parts of the interior, u. a. repairs to the altar wall, the organ, the gallery and the stalls. The congregation discovered a walled-in, Romanesque baptismal font with a base in the altar.
In 1978 the church had to be given up because of the border security measures of the GDR . It had been shown as a ruin since 1976 , various structural security measures were necessary, so u. a. the re-plastering of the interior, which was already crumbling badly because the walls were painted with non-breathable tar. The art goods of the church went to various other parishes and cultural institutions in the then district area. The Romanesque font was sold to the parish of St. Jacobi Frauenberg in Nordhausen in November 1977 and can still be seen today in the rebuilt transept of the former Frauenberg church .
After the fall of the Wall , the focus was initially on securing the ruins. The friends' association was formed in 1993 , the church was completely renovated, and in 2005 a community room was built that enables year-round use. So far, the roof structure , the load-bearing wooden structure and the barrel vault have been repaired with funds from the monument protection . The association is also aiming to return the works of art to the church and to restore the altar wall, which was renovated in 1933.
architecture
The large building in the former castle garden , with unpainted arched windows and without a church tower , has four entrances that were once assigned to selected people in the village (two each for the office and the preacher and one for everyone else on the south side).
Inside there is a whitewashed barrel vault that stretches lengthways from west to east, two one-story galleries that are also suspended along their entire length and extend to the east gable and a carved altar wall with baroque elements. On the east gable is the underground burial place of the Counts of Sayn-Wittgenstein outside the church . The crypt, whose entrance is in a locked path behind the pulpit, is empty.
In place of the tower, there is a belfry next to the church . It was a half-timbered building with a tiled roof and a ring of thresholds on a broken stone base. The open compartments are partially covered with slats.
Bells and organ
The older bells of the place came from the Klaus church. It was a small, cast in 1603 with the inscription " to 1603 Walkenrid Hans Wingarten, Hans Lisegang, Matz Hartung " and a large bell that jumped in 1840 and was replaced by the bell-maker supporter in Benneckenstein at the instigation of Pastor Wernicke at the time . These bells hung in the tower of the Klauskirche until after 1945, while the pastor Roever had another small bell made for the free-standing belfry east of the upper church, which bore the inscription: " God's word and Luther's teachings will never escape us now ".
The bells were melted down on July 18, 1917, due to the war , with the exception of the bell from 1603 . Pastor Fahrenbusch replaced them in 1919 with two steel bells 'f sharp and' d by the bell maker Ullrich from Apolda , which were supposed to improve the tone of the former bells (df). Thus a new steel bell was placed in the Klauskirche tower and one in the free-standing bell tower on the upper church. The inauguration of the new bells (fis-d-fis) took place on May 11, 1919; it went into operation on August 31 of the same year. Due to the Second World War and the subsequent abandonment of the church, the bells were lost again, except for the small steel bell on the upper church. However, this small bell that was left over had already rusted so badly in 1958 that it could no longer be used.
The first organ in the church was donated by Count Johann von Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1656 after the chapel had been completely repaired in 1647. The Klettenberg bailiff Henckrodt installed the positive in the church a year later. In order to play this organ, the castle preacher Urbani had to raise the parish income through a contribution to the former castle residents and villagers and employ his own organist from this.
The organ positive was repaired for the first time in 1718, for which the pastor sold parts of the old Klaus church in the village. In 1833 Pastor Wernicke bought a new organ through voluntary donations and a gift of grace from the Prussian king of over 400 Reichstaler , which he had made by the organ builder Christian Knauf from Großtabarz near Gotha . The organ, inaugurated on August 3, 1833 for the birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm III, had 76 pipes in 17 registers and thus replaced the much smaller positive. Like the bell, it is destroyed today.
literature
- Thomas Müller: The churches in the southern Harz. with photographs by Christoph Keil and others. Nordhausen 2017, p. 122f.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Church book Klettenberg 1702–1765, fol. 585 (with the condition that the parish house remains subject to a loan)
- ↑ The Church on the ward website , accessed February 18, 2014
Coordinates: 51 ° 33 ′ 26.7 ″ N , 10 ° 36 ′ 0 ″ E