St. Trinity (Warlitz)
St. Trinitatis zu Warlitz is a baroque church from the 18th century in the Mecklenburg village of Warlitz with one of the last two organs by Johann Georg Stein in Germany. The parish belongs to the Parchim Propstei in the Mecklenburg parish of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany ( Northern Church ).
history
The Warlitzer Church was built as an estate chapel under the responsibility of the local patron. It has had the practical status of a village branch church, with the addition of a baptismal font, only since 1855.
During the construction period, the chief captain Maximilian von Schütz was the owner of the property. In 1761 the Hamburg theologian Heinrich Julius Tode became second pastor in Pritzier , where Warlitz was parish. His inauguration in Pritzier led to a violent argument with the first preacher Georg Ludwig Neubauer, in the course of which death was so attacked that Maximilian von Schütz offered him asylum in the Warlitzer manor house. During this time the plan for the construction of the church, which Tode was commissioned with, was drawn up.
Construction of the church began in 1767. Maximilian von Schütz linked the building with the construction of a family crypt as a center in memory of the branch of his family that died out with him. Because he did not have the construction of the church approved by the Duke, charges were filed anonymously against him, which resulted in an investigation. Nevertheless, the building was completed and inaugurated on June 10, 1770 ( Trinity Sunday ).
Apart from a renovation around 1868, there were hardly any changes in the period that followed. In 1989, due to the precarious state of construction, an emergency backup had to be made. A development association founded in 1999 supported the gradual restoration; The new construction of the roof structure, the plastering of the outer walls and the restoration of the baroque organ took place until 2004. The interior was then restored; The final highlights were the restoration of the clock, the re-casting of the bells and the renovation of the crypt with the restoration of three preserved coffins in 2013.
architecture
The baroque chapel consists of a rectangular church space with a straight east end and a retracted west tower and is built from field stones . This construction method saved material, but made it necessary to plaster the exterior of the church. However, the plaster cannot have lasted long, because the external appearance of a stone church has been handed down for at least a hundred years. The restoration of the plaster was urgently required on the occasion of the renovation, since moisture could penetrate the masonry unhindered. The tower is crowned with a copper octagonal helmet, in which the dial of the clock is inserted, on which there is a Welsche hood .
The elaborate portals were made from Velpker sandstone by Johann Heinrich Körner . In the main portal there is a crown with a Latin dedication, the coat of arms of the Sinold family called Schütz and the year 1768 in Roman letters.
Furnishing
Interior furnishings
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The rectangular church space, which is illuminated with nine windows, is divided into two halves by the centrally positioned crypt access. The pulpit altar, flanked by columns, dominates the eastern part . To his side are the closed patronage boxes of the Warlitzer and Setziner estates, in front of them the open boxes for the teachers' families. The community chairs in the western part consist of two blocks of nine rows. The benches are designed in a remarkable way like waves of water, with foam crowns painted on the inner cheeks. The organ gallery in the west is elegantly supported by iron supports in which golden plant ornaments are worked that grow both below and above. The room is crowned with a stuccoed mirror vault .
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Exactly in the middle there is a ceiling mirror in which the gold-colored trinitarian triangle with a halo , which contains the quotation of God's address to Moses from Ex 3.14 in Hebrew letters, forms the center. The blue-framed cloud surrounding this triangle contains 14 stucco angel heads. The ceiling plan is exactly above the crypt entrance. The mirror vault is divided by two stucco frames with ten stucco medallions. The Brunswick court sculptor Johann Heinrich Oden supplied the valuable plastic jewelry on the altar and organ . Joachim Heinrich Krüger from Wismar took care of the painting of the church, as indicated on the back of the altar.
The interior furnishings, the program of which has been carefully thought out down to the last detail, is based on plans by Heinrich Julius Tode . It was extensively restored between 2004 and 2007 by the restoration workshops Hilke Frach-Renner and Dirk Zacharias (Dresden), whereby special attention was paid to the original color version.
organ
The small baroque organ was made by Johann Georg Stein , organ builder from Erfurt , who later settled in Uelzen and Lüneburg and delivered many organs from there. Only two instruments have survived to this day; the Warlitzer organ is the only stone organ in Mecklenburg. Apart from the removal of the prospectus pipes for war purposes in 1917, their pipe inventory was never changed and today represents the rare case of an intonation in the style of a Thuringian baroque organ that has been preserved almost completely untouched. In 2004 the instrument was restored by the Jehmlich and Wegscheider workshops (Dresden).
Bells
The original equipment included two bells that had been cast by Johann Hinrich Armowitz in Lübeck. Unfortunately, these were expanded in 1942, transferred to the war economy and melted down. In 2010 it was decided to commission the Rudolf Perner bell foundry in Passau to re-cast two bronze bells to replace the chilled cast iron bell that was purchased in 1962. The new bells also bear the Latin inscriptions of the originals documented by Friedrich Schlie . Particularly noteworthy is the saying of the big bell, which bears verse 8 from Psalm 66 in the humanistic new version of the Bible in Latin by Sebastian Castellio from 1551. This bell also contains the coat of arms of the Sinold family called Schütz, documented for the original, with the six-star of the landgrave house of Hessen-Darmstadt . In 2011 both bells, which are tuned to the chimes a 1 and c sharp 2 , were ceremoniously handed over to their destination. In consideration of the otherwise completely original equipment, the new bells are also traditionally rung by hand.
Clock
In the tower there is an originally preserved historical clockwork, which was manufactured by Nikolaus Schröder in Lüneburg in 1769 . After decades of shutdown, it was completely restored in 2010 by the restorer Thomas Wurm from Erfurt and put back into operation. It is a twin of the clockwork in the Ludwigslust town church , just like the one that only shows the hours and has been striking every full hour since October 2010. The striking mechanism is connected to the big bell. It needs to be hand wound every two days.
Crypt
The crypt space under the eastern part of the church originally contained five coffins. The buried are Maximilian von Schütz with his wife Amalia Margarethe geb. von Fabrice, his sister Albertine and the children Ferdinand and Georg Ludwig von Schütz. The third son August Albrecht von Schütz was buried in the Petrikirche in Lübeck. The only daughter Louise Elisabeth von Veltheim b. von Schütz is buried in Destedt near Braunschweig. After the property was sold to the von Könemann family , the crypt was not used again as a burial place and, like the whole church, remained in its original state. Unfortunately it was broken into after 1945 and the coffins were opened and robbed. As a result of the leaves and other rubbish that were subsequently blown in, the coffins with the buried fell into a desolate and unworthy state. In 2013 the research center Gruft (Lübeck) recorded the holdings from an archaeological and medical point of view, sorted them and buried them again in three restored coffins. The fragments of the two coffins, which cannot be restored due to advanced decay, have since then been securely and documented in the crypt.
Church music
What is unusual for a manor chapel of this size is that after its completion, not only were the services musically arranged, but regular figural music also took place. However, these were probably only of modest size and were modeled on the Concerts spirituels in the court church in Ludwigslust, which was built at the same time . Today's organ loft was empty in the first few years until the founder of the church; it was intended exclusively for these musical performances. Johann Caspar Bing from Gamstädt near Gotha was employed for this , and as the lord's spiritual supervisor, he was also responsible for his private church services. Immediately after the death of Maximilian von Schütz , however, this tradition broke off. Since the restoration of the organ in 2004, it has been revived with a new series of church music concerts, in which the focus is on music from the time the church was created and composers who are directly or indirectly related to it.
Theological conception
The church is dedicated to the Holy Trinity , which is artistically implemented in various places in a symbolic way. At first glance, the interior appears to be plain and without any picture elements. The building thus corresponds to tendencies of Lutheran orthodoxy on the one hand and the development of art of the Enlightenment on the other.
The three persons of the Trinity manifest themselves in three places of the church, whereby they represent three spatial dimensions in which the believer moves when entering.
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The pivot is the triangle as a symbol for the Trinity. It can be found in two places: In the ceiling mirror in the middle of the church and on the middle upper part of the altar, here embedded in a magnificent cloud structure. The stone pavement in front of the portal is not simply a decorative doormat, but contains a symbolic structure that refers to Christ: two flat round stones mark the door posts ( I am the door, if someone enters through me he will be saved , Jn 10 , 9). More probable, however, is the interpretation of the pavement as a symbolic image of the camp of Jacob, who dreamingly saw the ladder to heaven . The two round stones could then stand for the imprints of the ladder rails. The subsequent vow of Jacob to build the house of God (Bethel) in this place (Gen 28, 17) would fit the biographical situation of the church founder Maximilian von Schütz . The puzzling structure on the front edge of the pavement should originally have been four dew crosses in memory of the four deceased children of the church founder.
The Hebrew word from Ex 3.14 depicted in the ceiling mirror can be read in the inscription as AHJH . In contrast to the more frequently used name of God YHWH , it means God's self-designation "I am who I will be". According to Christian tradition, the promise made to Moses to lead the people of Israel out of slavery is linked here with the promise of the resurrection, which is addressed both to those buried below in the crypt and to the assembled community.
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Above the altar there is a simple column structure with a pulpit and a large cloud structure, above it a huge halo with angels. It also contains a triangle. It contains the Hebrew letter iodine three times combined with the vowel symbol Quamaz underneath . The combination of the triple iodine, which is more frequently used in Christian iconography, would represent the Holy Spirit , in the present extension with the vowel sign it means in the narrower sense the word of creation (Gen 1,3), which emerges from the spirit of God hovering over the waters. In the cloud representation there are five winged angel heads.
The church chairs have curved backrests that represent the waves of water that saved the Israelites from the Egyptians. The center aisle refers to the sea of reeds divided by Moses through the foam crowns painted on the sides of the stalls .
At the top of the church tower, Jona's fish is emblazoned instead of the otherwise common rooster. On the one hand, this is an indication of the resurrection; on the other hand, the believer should be reminded that he must obey God's instructions.
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To the right of the altar, behind the Warlitzer patronage box, is the sacristy , which originally also served as a Protestant confessional . On the outside there are four valuable grisaille paintings depicting parable scenes. These genre paintings, which are rare today, are well preserved and have been restored in the meantime. They are hidden from the view of the congregation and served the pastor as a source of inspiration and also as an illustration for the confessional talk. It shows motifs from the parable of the prodigal son as well as the prodigal sheep and the sower. They were probably painted by Heinrich Julius Tode .
The observance of the biblical ban on images was otherwise consistently implemented. The numerous depictions of angels are an exception. Uniform pairs of stucco angel faces are located above the windows on the side walls. There are two sculptural angel figures on the altar on the right and left. They each have attributes that have a symbolic meaning that was often used in the 18th century. The southern one bears a cross and chalice, the northern one a flaming heart. These three attributes represent the decisive elements of the Christian proclamation of salvation, the redemption of the cross through the blood of Christ and the Christian cardinal virtues of faith, hope and love. The flaming heart, presented in a raised position, takes on a prominent position in the sense of the Sursum Corda , just as Paul also emphasizes love "as the greatest of them" in the first letter to the Corinthians. A third angel sits on the organ and blows a trumpet. These angels in turn represent the trinity.
The basic color white as well as the colors blue, gold and purple-violet dominate the color concept of the church . This also shows the trinity: gold stands for the divine, blue for the heavenly body or the Holy Spirit, and purple for Christ. The additive sum results in the basic color white as a symbol of purity and perfection.
See also
literature
- Friedrich Schlie : The art and history monuments of the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin , Bd. 3, Schwerin 1889, pp. 35–37
- Jan von Busch: Faith turned to stone. Heinrich Julius Tode and the Trinity Church in Warlitz . In: Mecklenburg Magazin No. 37 (September 16, 2005, supplement to the Schweriner Volkszeitung), p. 21
- Jan von Busch (ed.): Theology of the Enlightenment - tension between baroque church space, church music and natural science. On the 275th birthday of Heinrich Julius Tode, series "Rostocker Theologische Studien", Vol. 19, LIT-Verlag Münster 2009, ISBN 3-8258-1797-0
- Ev.-luth. Vellahn-Pritzier parish (ed.): Festschrift for the consecration of the new bells of the St. Trinity Church in Warlitz on June 19, 2011 , Vellahn 2011
Individual evidence
- ↑ Detailed information on ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ], seen April 28, 2012.
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 22 ′ 43 ″ N , 11 ° 9 ′ 0 ″ E