St. Petri (Melle)
St. Petri is the Evangelical Lutheran inner city church of Melle , built around 1721 . It is centrally located on the market square opposite the town hall and is the main Protestant church of the Melle parish in Grönegau .
history
Due to the Capitulatio perpetua , the Catholics living in Melle were awarded St. Matthew's Church , which was previously used simultaneously . In 1652 a new church, the St. Petri Church, was built close to the Catholic Church for the Protestant congregation, which was completely destroyed by the great Mell city fire of 1720. The patronage of St. Petri is based on the original patronage of the Meller Church, built around 800, which was rededicated in St. Matthew's Church in the 12th century with the emergence of the devotion to the Apostle Matthew .
As early as 1721, immediately after the town fire, construction work began on a new, larger church building, which was inaugurated in 1723 and with the complete inventory completed by 1724. The then Osnabrück Prince-Bishop Ernst August II of Braunschweig - Lüneburg particularly supported the construction . The master mason and mason Hermann Schmidinger from Herford played a key role in the new building. The first Protestant pastor at St. Petri was Pastor Anton Seumenicht, who previously worked at the Catholic St. Matthew Church in Melle.
The heating system was renovated from 1992 to 1994. The heating system, which was around 30 years old, had to be replaced because it damaged the organ, did not allow reasonable temperature control, had an annoying fan and was partly lined with harmful asbestos. The cost of the new hot water heating was around DM 900,000 . A crypt was discovered during the construction of the underfloor heating. Friedrich Freiherr von Hammerstein, who made a great contribution to the reconstruction of the church, and his wife Sophie Charlotte von Chalon were buried there. The grave was closed again. Cracks were found in the ceiling two months after the start of construction. These were remedied with a stainless steel construction in the roof structure and resulted in additional costs of 500,000 DM. During the renovation, the benches were given their current light paint. The church was consecrated on December 18, 1994. During the renovation, services were held in the parish hall, in the Paulus Church or the Catholic St. Matthew Church.
Architecture and equipment
The church is a three-aisled hall church in Gothic form with finely structured pillars and a choir in five-eighth . The west tower has a hump helmet at the end. The interior of the church is equipped with continuous galleries and aristocratic boxes.
The painted vault is unique in the Osnabrück area. The vault painting bears the coat of arms of the builder Ernst August II. With the duchy of York and Albany , which was given to him by his brother King George I of England . The four-pass coat of arms in a cartouche frame with flowers and fruit pendants is accompanied by eight angels. It shows the split coat of arms of England , held by the English lion and the Scottish unicorn. Another coat of arms in the vault with a red ploughshare is the coat of arms of the Osnabrück Episcopal Privy Councilor Jobst Itel von Vincke . He was commissioned by the sovereign to rebuild the city of Melle and the Protestant church.
The baroque altar by Ernst Dietrich Bartels (1723) is divided into several zones and bears the image of the Lord's Supper and the Resurrection in the center. It is adorned with the coat of arms of the baron of Gesmold Castle Christoph Ludolf von Hammerstein and his wife Johanna Sophia Schenk von Winterstedt zu Diek.
The baroque pulpit dates from 1724. It is decorated with rich figures. The founder is Abraham von Arnim zu Boitzenburg and his wife Anna Sophia von Oer zu Bruche . Their coats of arms are in the pulpit cover.
The gallery parapets are provided with the coats of arms of the local noble families Vincke, Nehem, Hammerstein and the four-spoke wheel, the coat of arms of the city of Melle, as well as depictions from the Old and New Testament.
Two bronze chandeliers adorn the central nave: They consist of spindles with 16 arms and a spherical body with upright angels with raised wings and a double-headed eagle. They are donations from the Mell merchant Henrich Borgstede (1726) and the Melle executioner Georg Ludwig Lohdi (1759).
Christian father organ
The partially preserved baroque organ by Christian Vater was built between 1722 and 1724 with originally 27 registers . It was completely restored in 2000 by the organ builder Bernhardt Edskes . The organ builder from Hanover , Christian Vater, worked in Arp Schnitger's workshop from 1697 to 1702 . Father's oeuvre comprises a total of 36 organs. The organ of the Petrikirche is his largest work in Germany. The organ builder, who also worked temporarily as an organist, was a Hanoverian court organ builder and ran a workshop in Hanover. The Petriorgel has a total of 37 registers spread over three manuals and pedal .
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Bells
In the tower of the first church, built in 1652, there was only a 200 pound bell. For the tower of the second church two bells were made by bell founder Rinker from Gießen. They were about 3000 pounds and about 1200 pounds. The heavier bell was soon damaged and in 1732, with financial help from the church patron, it was cast over. Around 1840 a third bell was installed in the church tower.
During the First World War, two bells had to be handed in for armament purposes. After the end of the war two new bells could be purchased from the community. The inauguration took place on July 4, 1925 in a festival service.
For centuries, the custom of the harvest bell always took place at the beginning of the rye harvest on the Meyerhof in Bakum. The bells were rung for half an hour a day for a week to remind the population of the busy times of the farmers. The fire bell was rung in the event of a fire until shortly after the First World War.
literature
- District of Melle (ed.): The Grönegau in the past and present. Home register of the district of Melle . Fromm, Osnabrück 1968.
- Edgar Schroeder (Ed.): Melle in eight centuries . Ernst Knoth, Melle 1969.
- Ludger Stühlmeyer : The organ of the St. Petrikirche Melle . In: Uwe Pape : Organ Atlas . Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-921140-22-6 .
- Fritz-Gerd Mittelstädt : Effects of the Reformation in the city of Melle . Unpublished manuscript, lecture on May 12, 2017 in the city church St. Petri in Melle as part of the opening of the traveling exhibition of the Landschaftsverband Osnabrücker Land e. V. Live together? Reformation and confession in the Osnabrück region 1500–1700 .
- Fritz-Gerd Mittelstädt: Building and Message (s). The St. Petri Church in Melle . Melle 2019.
Web links
- Homepage of the Meller Petrikirche
- Photo gallery St. Petrikirche ( Memento from April 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ^ Fritz-Gerd Mittelstädt: Effects of the Reformation in the city of Melle . Unpublished manuscript, lecture on May 12, 2017 in the St. Petri Church in Melle as part of the opening of the touring exhibition of the Landschaftsverband Osnabrücker Land eV Live together? Reformation and confession in the Osnabrück region 1500–1700 .
- ^ Wilhelm Knigge: The renovation of the church in the years 1992 to 1994 . In: Meller history. Reviews from Wilhelm Knigge . S. 188-191 .
- ↑ Gustav Fock : Arp Schnitger and his school. A contribution to the history of organ building in the North and Baltic Sea coast areas . Bärenreiter, Kassel 1974, ISBN 3-7618-0261-7 , p. 125 .
- ^ History of the Christian-Vater-Organ ( Memento from February 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Wilhelm Knigge: The bells in the church tower . In: Meller stories. Reviews from Wilhelm Knigge . S. 191-192 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 12 ′ 8.8 ″ N , 8 ° 20 ′ 17.8 ″ E