St. Vitus (Sparneck)

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St. Vitus Church in Sparneck
Look into the choir

The St. Vitus Church Sparneck is an evangelical Vitus in the market Sparneck .

Emergence

Sacrament house in the choir room
So-called Wandereisen woodcut from 1523, on the left in the background the monastery building, next to it the monastery church with a roof turret, today the choir of St. Vitus
Stucco work

The development of the church was closely related to the foundation of the Sparneck monastery . Friedrich von Sparneck was buried in the church as the monastery founder as early as 1477. The former monastery church forms today's chancel, the nave was added later. A sacrament house from this period has been preserved as a niche in the choir. Frescoes depicting Saints Catherine and Barbara date from the late Gothic period and were whitewashed again after their exposure in 1932.

The monastery perished in the course of the Reformation and the place became Protestant. The monastery church was converted into a Protestant church in 1562. The turn to the new creed was encouraged by the patron saint Christoph Haller von Hallerstein and then Margrave Georg Friedrich . Initially, Sparneck was looked after by the clergy from Weißdorf and Zell . Only after the complaint of the Sparnecker landlord Georg Zahn about two children who died unbaptized was Peter Hochmuth appointed as the first Protestant pastor in 1572. He stayed only one year and kept a church book in 1572, his successor was called Moritz Eck. A rectory was built at the end of the 16th century.

In 1695 the church was expanded, the nave was added and the original wooden roof turret was replaced by a stone tower. Bernhard Quadri's stucco work in the choir room also dates from this period. The christening angel was made in 1761 by Georg Friedrich Hartung, a son of the Sparneck bailiff Johann Georg. In 1845 the church and the rectory burned down. As a result, the church received a new interior in the neo-Gothic style , including the altar, the pulpit, the choir stalls, the parish stalls and the organ. The three stained glass windows in the choir are the work of the glass painter Sebastian Eisgruber from Nuremberg. Her motifs are Peter , the resurrection and Paul . The Paulus Window, which was destroyed in a storm in 1962, was reconstructed from a photo in 2001.

Epitaphs and tombs

The preserved epitaphs of important people from the local history are placed in the basement of the tower, in the nave and in the choir of the church. The tombstones were made from the local marble of the Fichtelgebirge . The oldest stone reminds of the founder of the monastery, Friedrich von Sparneck. Hans Siegmund Rebhun, who died in 1587, was the administrator in Stockenroth and Hallerstein , his wife Helene died in 1579. The tombs of Pastor Melchior Apel († 1674) and his wife Margaretha († 1647), who died early, have also been preserved. A later bailiff, Hans Heinrich Müffling, called Weiss († 1637) was buried in or near the church in the Müffling crypt, the exact location of which is no longer known. The margrave forester Johann Konrad Beyer († 1702) was buried together with his wife Cordula, the stone was only found and recovered in 1997. Further epitaphs stand for Mayor Ruckdeschel († 1684) and Aegidius Konrad Brückner († 1759). Since the last church renovation from 1994 to 2002, all epitaphs have been kept inside the church.

There are two crypts in the church, which were located during the recent renovation and opened for a short time. A well-preserved crypt, which was rediscovered during renovation work in 1853, is located near the pulpit in the chancel, another was in the front nave, it is filled with stones. The epitaph of the founder of the monastery, Friedrich von Sparneck, was also found. The opening of the crypt nourished the legend of the steadfast hand . After that, the hand of a knight's son, which he raised in an argument against his father, did not rot.

literature

  • Tilmann Breuer : District of Münchberg . The art monuments of Bavaria , brief inventories, XIII. Band . German art publisher . Munich 1961. pp. 37-39.
  • Karl Dietel : The former monastery in Sparneck, Hof district . In: Archive for the history of Upper Franconia . Bayreuth 1976.
  • Evangelical Parish Sparneck (Ed.): 525 years of St. Veit Church 1477-2002 . Weißenstadt 2002.

Web links

Commons : St. Vitus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Th. Stark: Festschrift 400 anniversary of the Reformation in the church district of Münchberg . Court. P. 19.
  2. ^ Sparnecker burial book 1637 / I / No. 1 / S. 496.

Coordinates: 50 ° 9 ′ 43.2 ″  N , 11 ° 50 ′ 46 ″  E