St. Nicholas Hospital
The St. Nikolaus-Hospital (short: Cusanusstift ) in Bernkastel-Kues is the late Gothic foundation of the cardinal and bishop of Brixen Nikolaus von Kues .
The founder founded the facility on December 3, 1458 as a hospital for the poor for exactly 33 (after the age of Jesus Christ) single men from the nobility (six nobles), clergy (six priests) and the bourgeoisie (21 common people). Since the late 1960s, women have also been admitted to the nursing home. To this day, the monastery fulfills its role as an old people's home. The complex owes its name to St. Nicholas , the patron saint of boatmen and at the same time the patron saint of the family of Nikolaus von Kues.
Thanks to the famous library and the historic winery, a more than 500-year-old tradition has been created and preserved.
Hospital building
The monastery buildings are located away from the old town center on the banks of the Moselle. Construction began around 1460; a building inscription on the east wing of the cloister indicates the year 1458. The chapel was probably consecrated in 1465. A partial reconstruction took place in the years 1748–1778.
The floor plan is designed in the manner of a small monastery complex and combines architectural cohesion with a sensible, well thought-out arrangement of the buildings and rooms. The chapel and the kitchen separated from it by a courtyard with the foster brothers' rooms on the upper floor are connected to the cloister in the middle. These two parts were connected by a wing added in the 18th century with representative rooms and the rector's apartment. The protruding ends of the eastern cloister wing open to the north to the farm yard with today's main portal and to the south to the town. A two-aisled hall runs parallel to the north wing, which is divided into a refectory and hospital ward by a transverse wall. The cells for the lay benefactors were originally arranged above this . The cells next to the south and west wings, which were not originally built over, were reserved for six clergy and six noble beneficiaries. All parts have direct access to the chapel through the cloister and the corridors above.
Hospital chapel
architecture
The chapel, built between 1453–1458 and consecrated in 1465, is a slender, proportioned room with an approximately square floor plan and star vaults over an octagonal central pillar and an elongated choir with a three-sided end. The model for this single-pillar room with a reticulated vault were the Bohemian, Austrian and East Bavarian single-pillar rooms from the second half of the 14th century and the first half of the 15th century, such as the Church of St. Mary on the Lawn in Prague, the Nikolauskapelle in Neuhaus / Bohemia and the Hospital chapel in Braunau am Inn . The vault shapes can be derived from the Lower Bavarian school of Hans Stethaimer . The architectural structure of the hospital chapel in Kues has itself become a model for numerous one-pillar churches on the Moselle and in the Eifel.
Furnishing
The main piece of the remarkably rich furnishings is a large painted grand piano , an early work by the Master of the Life of Mary from Cologne from around 1450/1460. In the middle is a crucifixion rich in figures with the portrait of the cardinal as the founder and his deacon . The mocking and entombment of Christ can be seen on the inside of the wings, and saints in groups of three on the outside. Two side altars from 1731 and 1733 show figures of Salvator mundi and Our Lady . A large mural of the Last Judgment from the second half of the 15th century has been preserved on the north wall of the nave. Three panels from a painted altarpiece after the mid-15th century show Our Lady, the Annunciation and a group of four saints.
Two richly carved choir benches with high backs date from around 1725, the upper tower from the middle of the 18th century. A confessional was also made during this period. A wooden reliquary with a neo-Gothic shrine shows wings painted with figures of saints (outside Saints Philip and John, inside Matthew and a holy bishop), valuable Cologne works from the second quarter of the 15th century. In the floor in front of the high altar, a copper plate with the portrait of the cardinal († 1464) can be seen in full figure, an artistically valuable, Lorraine work that was carried out in 1488, similar to the grave slab of Archbishop Jakob von Sierck of Trier in Metz Cathedral . Only the heart of the founder is buried in Bernkastel, the bones in San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome .
The tombstone of Clara Kriftz († 1473), the cardinal's sister, was once the cover plate of a high grave in front of the St. Mary's altar, probably comes from a workshop in Trier and shows an artistically designed, praying portrait between angels holding coats of arms in front of a patterned background. Georg Dehio paid tribute to this work of art with the words: "The realistic style in this excellent work has refined to a rare level of sensitivity."
The tomb of the rector Johannes von Neuerburg († 1576) was set in 1569 during his lifetime and was probably created by Hans Sculptor in Trier, from whom the blessing tomb in Trier's Church of Our Lady comes. The relief portrait as a half figure with expressive physiognomy and richly pleated robe is presented in a framing pilaster - aedicula . The tomb of the rector Nikolaus Deunsch († 1618) was created by a successor to Hans Ruprecht Hoffmann and shows the deceased in a rich framework architecture.
Library
The library is located above the sacristy attached to the north of the chapel choir . The intimate little room is closed off by four cross vaults over a central support, similar to the library of the church in Klausen . The current arrangement of the books, many of which are in the cardinal's personal possession, dates back to the 18th century. Numerous valuable bindings from the 18th century and illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages are among the books. Astronomical devices from the 13th to 15th centuries, a ciborium and two chalices from the mid-15th century are part of the facility. A chasuble with a Cologne border from the 15th century and an altarpiece from 1732 that does not belong here are also kept.
Cloister and adjoining rooms
In 1966, late Gothic wall paintings were uncovered in the refectory on the north wing of the cloister, depicting a Vespers image and the Saints Jacob, Magdalena, Nicholas and the Holy Family . A relief with the Annunciation can be seen on the outside of the lintel.
A finely crafted life-size figure of St. Nicholas from the mid-18th century is attached to the porch of the cloister east wing. A canvas painting from 1774 by Franziskus Freund from Bernkastel depicts the works of mercy . The cardinal's coat of arms and that of his diocese of Bressanone are shown in relief above the door to the kitchen. A finely worked head of a Madonna and an angel console in the manner of Nikolaus Gerhaert are kept in one room of this wing .
The connecting wing to the library, added in the 18th century, contains the convent hall on the ground floor with rich stucco decoration by Michael Eytel from Trier and four canvas paintings from 1756 by Johann Leutzgen from Graach depicting the life of the cardinal. The fifth painting with a well-designed depiction of the crucifixion was probably made by a foreign painter.
The rector's apartment with stucco ceilings and furniture from the 18th century is located above the convent hall. The richest is the so-called cardinal's room with an inlaid oak floor and hand-painted wallpaper in baroque shapes from around 1850. The farm buildings date from 1552 and 1716.
literature
in alphabetical order by authors / editors
- Andreas Britz: A cardinal and his building idea. Nikolaus von Kues and the one-pillar churches in the Eifel . In: Rheinische Denkmalpflege . Vol. 53, No. 3, 2016, ISSN 0342-1805 , pp. 173-184, here 172-177.
- Johannes Dehner: St. Nicholas Hospital. A Riesling winery on the Middle Moselle undergoing climatic and technical change at the turn of the 3rd millennium . Kliomedia , Trier 2009, ISBN 978-3-89890-151-2
- Klaus Freckmann and Michael Leonhardt: The Cusanusstift in Bernkastel-Kues and its one-pillar church - a Central European location . In: INSITU 2018/2, pp. 211–226.
- Meike Hensel-Grobe: The St. Nicholas Hospital in Kues. Studies on the foundation of Cusanus and his family (15th – 17th centuries) . 2007. ISBN 978-3-515-08242-6 (not viewed) Review by Thomas Frank .
- Gottfried Kortenkamp (Ed.): The documents of the St. Nikolaus Hospital in Bernkastel-Kues on the Moselle. (= History and culture of the Trier region. Volume 2). Trier 2004.
- Hans Vogts : The art monuments of the district of Bernkastel = The art monuments of the Rhine Province 15 / IL Schwann, Düsseldorf 1935, pp. 105-137.
Web links
- Website of the Cusanus Pen
- Master's thesis on the establishment of the institution ( Memento from February 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Bernd Brauksiepe: Bernkastel-Kues - Cusanus pen . In: Monasteries and monasteries in Rhineland-Palatinate
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Georg Dehio: Handbook of German Art Monuments. Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland. Special edition for the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1985, pp. 98–100.
Coordinates: 49 ° 54 ′ 57.6 " N , 7 ° 4 ′ 16.4" E