St. Peter and Paul (Ufnau)

St. Peter and Paul

The former parish church of St. Peter and Paul is a Romanesque religious building on the island of Ufnau in Lake Zurich . It is the mother parish church of all parishes in the surrounding lakeside communities, after the Church of St. Martin had previously held this function for around two hundred years . The large parish reached from Altendorf to Wädenswil and from Feldbach and Hombrechtikon to Erlenbach , but had its administrative seat on the mainland in Pfäffikon ( Phaffinchova = court of the priest).

construction

The church was rebuilt in 1141 on the foundations of a previous church donated by Reginlinde in the 10th century and built by her son, St. Adalrich , and consecrated to St. Peter and Paul . A Gallo-Roman temple had already stood on the same site since the 1st or 2nd century, the foundations of which were proven in archaeological excavations in 1959. The church was restored between 2007 and 2009.

The church is a single-nave Romanesque complex with a tower choir . The two-storey sacristy on the north side was added in the 13th or 14th century, while the tower structure with the typical regional cheese bite dates from 1630. A lintel from the 10th century with simple ornamentation was reused for the 12th century portal.

Interior

Light falls through round arched double windows and Romanesque round arch friezes on the choir tower into the interior of the church. During the restoration of the Romanesque building stock in 1959, remains of wall paintings were uncovered: a poorly preserved frieze depicting the martyrdom of the apostles and a large St. Christopher - both in the 13th century nave. Saint Adalrich is depicted on the pillars of the choir arch, opposite his mother and donor Reginlinde. These paintings probably date from the 15th century. In the choir itself there are remains of various layers of paint from the 14th to 17th centuries.

In the choir there is a walled-in Romanesque holy water basin and to the side of the choir arch there is late Gothic wooden statues of the princes of the apostles from the second half of the 16th century. The Gothic grave slab in the nave from 1372 shows the figure of the island's saint Adalrich and is made using a scratching technique. The empty baroque sarcophagus of the saint was in the back of the nave until the restoration in 2009.

literature

Fredy Kümin, Markus Bamert, Peter Ziegler, Valentin Kessle: The sacred buildings on the island of Ufnau . (Swiss Art Guide, No. 856, Series 86). Ed. Society for Swiss Art History GSK. Bern 2009, ISBN 978-3-85782-856-0 .
Peter Ziegler: Frescoes in the churches on the island of Ufnau and in the tower choir of the parish church in Freienbach . Freienbach: Bruhin, 1975.