St. Valentin (Limbach)
St. Valentin in Limbach is a Catholic parish church . The historic church burned down in 2003 and was subsequently expanded and modernized and restored.
history
A Marienkapelle in Limbach is already occupied in the 14th century. Around 1426 this chapel was significantly expanded at the same time as the establishment of its own parish . The tower base of today's church goes back to this extension. The right of patronage lay with the respective abbot of the Amorbach monastery , so that Limbach remained Catholic at the time of the Reformation . Ecclesiastically, Limbach first belonged to the Diocese of Würzburg , from 1656 to the Archdiocese of Mainz , from 1799 to the Archdiocese of Mainz-Regensburg and from 1827 to the Archdiocese of Freiburg .
The church was significantly expanded again in 1773 when the tower was raised and a new nave was built. In the course of this expansion, a new rectory was built in 1772. Due to the poor building structure, the gable side of the nave had to be completely renewed in 1809, whereby a figure of the patron saint of the church, St. Valentin, was placed in a niche in the gable.
In the Second World War, the bells of the church had to be delivered except for a historic Lachmann bell from 1489. In 1950 the ringing of bells from Schilling from Heidelberg was added to the four-chimes again. Since numerous refugees and displaced persons came to Limbach after the Second World War , the church was too small for all believers. It was expanded from 1962 to 1965 according to plans by Hans Rolli and Erhard Eisele by demolishing the long sides of the church and expanding the base of the nave to form a hexagon. Some Gothic round pillars were found in the building fabric and uncovered. In 1970 the old rectory from the 18th century was demolished and replaced by a new building.
On September 17, 2003, improper repair work caused a smoldering fire in the roof structure of the church. The source of the fire was in an inaccessible space between the roof beams and a metal support structure that had been inserted during the renovation in 1962/65. Heat accumulated under the eyes of the helpless fire brigade and finally the entire iron structure collapsed, whereupon the nave burned down to the foundation walls. The historical furnishings of the church were solidly anchored for reasons of theft protection, so that almost nothing could be saved from the flames in the fire area.
Soon after the fire, reconstruction began according to plans by Werner Wolf-Holzäpfel from the Archbishop's Building Department in Heidelberg. While retaining the historical tower, the choir and the historical west gable, the nave was given an oval extension instead of its old hexagonal shape. The walls of the oval are provided with numerous windows, some of the windows with abstract colored design by Gabriele Wilpers are viewed as a modern Passion. The artist also used ashes and soot from the destroyed building to design these windows. After completing the furnishings, the church was consecrated with a solemn altar by Archbishop Dr. Robert Zollitsch returned to their destination on October 7, 2007.
description
The church of St. Valentine faces east with its octagonal choir closure. To the north of the choir is the church tower, the base of which dates from the 15th century. A modern sacristy is located south of the choir. The nave to the west of the chancel has an oval floor plan that merges into the old gable facade from 1809 in the far west. In terms of its external cubature, the church gives the impression of a rectangular main nave spanned by a gable roof and an oval transept spanned by a flatter and low roof. The indicated main nave roughly corresponds to the construction of the church before 1962. Inside, this separation into supposedly old and new components is not noticeable due to the semicircular arrangement of the benches and the suspended ceiling under the gable roof.
The interior of the church is today particularly characterized by the glass art by Gabriele Wilpers. In addition to the abstract, modern stations of the cross in some of the window openings of the oval, the approximately 17 × 7 meter large glass plate with plant motifs, with which the ceiling is suspended under the partially glazed gable roof, comes from her. Since there are window openings both in the roof and in all directions in the facade and some strips of plaster were specially smoothed inside the church as reflectors, the spatial effect of the church is primarily determined by a constantly changing play of light reflections. Gabriele Wilpers also designed the church's new organ, which was manufactured by Vleugels in Hardheim and has an unusual round prospect , as well as various small objects such as the Easter candlestick. The Mannheim sculptor Jens Trimpin created the altar table, ambo and base for various figures of saints and baptismal fonts from Greek marble.
The older fixtures and fittings in the church include a few objects that survived the 2003 fire. These are two of the original 15 panels of the old Passion cycle, which a Mudau artist created in 1777, a baroque baptismal font and old figures of St. Mary, St. Joseph and the patron saint St. Valentine, the valuable Pieta in the southeast entrance area, the Child Jesus from the arm of the burned St. Anthony in the fire-memorial glass box and the Child Jesus with globe in the passage to the sacrament chapel. The sacrament chapel contains a tabernacle designed by Harry MacLean for St. Aegidius in St. Ilgen in 1962 , which had become superfluous after a renovation, as well as the only church window that was not destroyed in the fire in the original place in the sacrament chapel, a black and white glass work Mother of God with Baby Jesus by the Constance glass artist Sepp Biehler from the early 1960s.
literature
- Hans Gercke: Phoenix from the ashes. The parish church of St. Valentin in Limbach , Limbach 2010
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ 14 panels would be common, the old Passion cycle thus represented a special feature.
Coordinates: 49 ° 27 '40.6 " N , 9 ° 12' 44.3" E