Petrikirche (Rostock)

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Petrikirche with remains of the city ​​wall (2006)
Aerial view with St. Petri and the city harbor (2006)
Reconstruction of the historical surroundings with Petrischanze, Petritor and Petridamm
City wall inscription for the founding of Rostock at the Petrikirche: After the Wendish settlement of Rostock on the other side of the river was destroyed in 1160, German merchants founded the city of Rostock on this hill around the year 1200, which was granted the Lübeck law in 1218

The Petrikirche is the oldest and at 117.0 m the highest of the four former city churches in the Hanseatic City of Rostock .

Baptismal font (bronze) from 1512

The others are or were the Marienkirche , the Nikolaikirche and the Jakobikirche , which was destroyed in the Second World War and finally demolished in 1960 . Like the other churches mentioned, it belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran inner city community of Rostock of the Rostock provost in the Mecklenburg parish of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany . The Reformation in Rostock started at the Petrikirche when Duke Heinrich V commissioned the local chaplain Joachim Slueter with the evangelical sermon in 1523 . In an air raid in 1942 , the Petrikirche burned down with all of its interior fittings and lost its characteristic spire.

Building history

First church

A church was built on the site of today's Petrikirche as early as 1300 (the oldest known documentary evidence dates from 1252.) It was a three-aisled building, the stones were dark red to purple, and its walls were partly made of granite . Parts of this first phase of construction are still preserved up to the coffin cornice of the two side aisles. The tower was probably a transverse or double tower, which the remains of the wall on the south side of the tower suggest.

Second church

In the middle of the 14th century, the church was erected as a three-aisled basilica in the brick Gothic style that is typical of northern Europe in the Baltic Sea region in place of the previous building.

Around 1500 it received an approx. 127 m high tower, which was destroyed by lightning in 1543, in which the Catholics who remained in Rostock saw a punishment from God. The tower with the spire was rebuilt by 1578 after it had been partially destroyed again by storms. With the height of 117 m then reached, it also served as a landmark for both sea and land. In the centuries that followed, bad weather left their mark, which in 1902 led to a comprehensive renovation of the basilica.

In the four-day attack by the British Air Force at the end of April 1942, Petrikirche was badly hit on the night of April 26th to 27th, 1942. The copper-studded spire burned down, the organ, the baroque altar, the Renaissance pulpit and the only epitaph were destroyed in flames. On the other hand, the valuable bronze baptismal font was saved (1942 by relocation and 1945 by burial). A cruciform relief of Christ before Pilate was also saved from the fire. While the vault of the central nave and the south aisle collapsed, the vault of the north aisle was preserved. The spire weathercock was also preserved, although damaged, and was placed in the church. In the course of a very hesitant reconstruction, the tower was secured with an emergency roof and the central nave was closed with a flat wooden ceiling, which reached a height of 24 meters. In addition, the arcades between the central and side aisles were bricked up and the walls of the central nave were whitewashed. The spire was initially not rebuilt, only the tower shaft remained for 52 years.

Interior before the destruction (1899) and now (2005) Interior before the destruction (1899) and now (2005)
Interior before the destruction (1899) and now (2005)

In 1994 a copper-clad spire was put on again within the framework of urban development with funds from the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the city of Rostock, from appeals for donations and funds from monument protection organizations, so that St. Petri is once again widely visible as Rostock's landmark. For this purpose, from May 1993 to November 1994, three parts of the tower spire were first prefabricated south of the church on the ground floor and then placed on top of one another on the tower shaft with the help of a mobile crane with a load capacity of 500 tons. As the crowning glory of the reconstruction, the restored, newly gold-plated weathercock was attached to the top of the tower on November 13, 1994. In addition, at a height of 45 m, a viewing platform was built that can be reached via 195 narrow steps or an elevator, which enables a wide view over the city of Rostock to Warnemünde and the Baltic Sea in clear weather .

On the west wall of the main room, not far from the entrance, hangs a painting that shows the burning Petrikirche (and the burning houses on the Alter Markt ) in the night of April 26-27, 1942. It was created by the amateur painter and innkeeper Albrecht Krohn in the 1980s and handed over to the Petri community when the tower was built in 1994.

Building description

The building is a three-aisled basilica with four bays , closed off by the west tower with its high pointed spire. The basement of the tower has a screen structure on the west side with deep niches in it, on the middle floor of the tower there are three four-part high pointed arch blind arcades except on the east side, where the tower meets the central nave, above three pointed arch windows on all four sides as sound openings .

On the north and south facades of the ship there are two high pointed arch windows per yoke, one above the other. The choir ends in a five-eighth end with very high pointed arch windows, on the north and south sides there is a small stair tower with a pointed helmet.

The two-zone interior wall elevation in the central nave shows a wide strip of wall with a walkway, which is led through the wall pillars with passageways, above the arcades, which were open before the war destruction and were only walled up during the reconstruction. Above this, the light falls through the upper facade windows . The ribbed vault over the north aisle has been preserved. The south aisle, however, was too badly damaged to restore the original structure. A reconstruction of the vault was also dispensed with in the central nave, instead a wooden flat ceiling was installed. The south aisle was expanded to two storeys, with a hall on the upper floor and several rooms on the ground floor, which are illuminated by the round windows in the base area that were broken in during the restoration. In the aisles and in the choir, too, walkways lead above the plinth under the windows; the walkways are accessed through the stair towers at the choir.

On the western yoke of the side aisles, pointed arch portals with profiled walls are built in in the north and south, and in the south aisle there is an additional portal in the eastern yoke with glazed shaped stones . The west portal in the tower shows a deep, richly profiled wall, which is alternately made of glazed and unglazed shaped stones.

A chapel adjoins the north aisle to the west and extends to the tower facade. This chapel was profaned after 1989 and converted into a public toilet. It is illuminated by wide four-part pointed arched windows and accessed through its own portal with a very slim wall made of shaped stones. No chapel has been added to the corresponding south side of the tower; a modest building with a kitchen and toilet for the community was added there during the reconstruction, which is considerably smaller than the north-west chapel.

Furnishing

A copy made in 1920 of the Reformation altar of the Wittenberg town church by Lucas Cranach the Elder hangs in the first yoke on the south side of the nave. In addition to the bronze baptismal font mentioned above, made by Andreas Ribe in 1512, a candlestick and 13 bronze sconces from the 16th and 17th centuries have been preserved. Three epitaph paintings for members of the von Sparlink family from the 17th century show kneeling family members and depictions of the carrying of the cross, the resurrection and the last judgment.

The 17 m high colored choir windows with scenes from the life of St. Peter were designed in 1963 by the local artist Lothar Mannewitz (1930-2004). The western entrance portal was redesigned in 1999 with a motif of Noah's Ark by Jo Jastram . The organ of the Petrikirche is a work of the Schuke Orgelbau company from 1971 with six registers on a manual with attached pedal. Three votive ships, including the oldest such ship model in a Mecklenburg church, are kept in the church.

The bells

Entrance to Petrikirche and provisional belfry

The Petrikirche originally had five bells, two of which were clock strikes . The largest tower and bell with a diameter of 179 cm was cast by Otto Gerhard Meyer in Rostock in 1742. The smallest with a diameter of 65 cm came from the Middle Ages . Only one bell, the historical bronze bell from 1548 (weight 1250 kg), named "Peter-Matze-Glocke" after its founder , survived the many wars. It served first as a guard bell and later as an hour-bell . During the church fire, after the bombing in April 1942, the spire of the Petrikirche burned down and fell down with the three existing bells. The Peter Matze bell also crashed, but fell on the roof of the church annex. As a result, she survived the crash without damage. Until 2010 it was initially hung in the Marienkirche . It is currently on the ground floor of the Petri tower. It is to be hung again in the tower with two more new bells, which are currently still in the entrance area of ​​the Marienkirche. The two new bells were originally made in the bell foundry in Apolda in 1979 for the Marienkirche. The larger one (strike note h) has a weight of 3465 kg, a height of 147 cm and a diameter of 170 cm. The smaller bell (tone d) weighs 1948 kg, is 120 cm high and 140 cm in diameter. Before the bells can be lifted on the tower of the Petrikirche, two new belfry must first be financed and built. The Friends of Petrikirche Rostock e. V. , who had already collected donations and applied for funding for the restoration of the tower and other projects of the Petrikirche, has also taken this financing into hand. Until then, a provisional belfry has been set up next to the entrance to the Petrikirche. Three steel bells hang temporarily here .

  • Bells for the Petrikirche

  • Historical "Peter-Matze-Glocke" from 1548, 1250 kg

  • Cast 1979, tone d, weight 1948 kg, 120 cm high, 140 cm diameter

  • Cast 1979, tone h, weight 3465 kg, 147 cm high, 170 cm diameter

Clergy

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ingo Ulpts: The mendicant orders in Mecklenburg. Werl 1995, ISBN 3-87163-216-3 , p. 367.
  2. ^ Arno Krause: Rostock. In: Götz Eckardt: Fate of German architectural monuments in the Second World War. Volume 1, Henschel-Verlag, Berlin 1978, DNB 790059096 , pp. 61-63.
  3. ↑ Achim Schade and Matthias Redieck: The tower. From the reconstruction of the St. Petri church tower in Rostock. Photos: Gerhard Weber . 1st edition, Rostock 1994, ISBN 3-929544-18-0 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Information on equipment on the Church website. Retrieved November 12, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Gerd Baier , Horst Ende , Brigitte Oltmanns : The architectural and art monuments in the Mecklenburg coastal region . Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-362-00523-3 , p. 396-399 .
  6. ↑ Information about the organ on orgbase.nl. Retrieved November 12, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Petrikirche belfry project

literature

  • Arno Krause: Rostock district. In: Götz Eckardt (ed.): Fates of German architectural monuments in the Second World War. Volume 1, Henschelverlag, Berlin 1978, pp. 61-63.
  • Burned size: Rostock - the language of stones. German Foundation for Monument Protection, Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-936942-25-0 .
  • Angela Pfotenhauer: Brick Gothic. German Foundation for Monument Protection, Bonn 2000, ISBN 3-936942-10-2 .
  • Gottfried Kiesow : Ways to Brick Gothic. German Foundation for Monument Protection, Bonn 2003, ISBN 3-936942-34-X .
  • Ev.-luth. Inner City Municipality of Rostock (Ed.): Rostock - St.Petri . Kunstverlag Peda, Passau 2004, ISBN 3-89643-553-1 .

Web links

Commons : Petrikirche  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 54 ° 5 ′ 26.5 ″  N , 12 ° 8 ′ 52.6 ″  E