City Church (Sontra)

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The town church stands on the highest elevation of the historic old town.
Sontra town church (south side aisle and sacristy)

The Evangelical City Church of St. Marien in Sontra , a town in the Werra-Meißner district in Hesse , is a sacred building in the Gothic style . It was built as a Catholic church between 1483 and 1493 and consecrated to Saints Mary and George . Today's town church belongs to the Protestant parish Sontra in the Werra-Meißner parish of the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck .

history

The first churches in Sontra were first mentioned in 1408. A church stood on St. Hülfensberg (today Stubsberg), which is no longer preserved. Another church was on the Kirchberg, the site of today's town church. Few remains of the Romanesque predecessor church are preserved in the tower of today's town church.

The church was built from 1483 as a Gothic hall church, initially with the five-sided choir and the sacristy . The nave was then completed with a main and a shorter (south) side aisle, including the medieval defense tower. A year in one of the buttresses of the choir indicates that the construction work was completed in 1493, so that today we can look back on a church that is over 500 years old and its basic form has not changed.

With the Reformation the church became a Protestant town church.

The tower and the five bells fell victim to the flames in 1558 during a major fire in the old town of Sontra. After the church was rebuilt, the steeple was given a distinctive spire, but this fell during a storm on July 27, 1598. In 1619, the new tower was fitted with today's octagonal tower.

In the course of the Thirty Years War , the church was set on fire on Christmas Eve 1634 by ardent Croats. After 1667 mainly repairs (including windows on the south side around 1840) were carried out. Between 1709 and 1711 a new organ was purchased, the roof was covered with new shingles, new doors were installed, and the interior and exterior facades were renovated. Another major fire destroyed significant parts of the church in 1821. Among other things, this made the renovation of the west portal (1865) and the outer facade necessary.

Extensive repairs to the town church were carried out in 1934 and 1964. In 1964, a mosaic window in the choir, the steel bell cage and the external staircase to the tower were created. The tower roof was re-roofed in 1991. The last major repair was carried out a few years ago (as of 2020). The rubble stone masonry of the tower, which had been badly damaged by the weather, was plastered.

architecture

inside view

The Gothic architectural style of the church is evident in several elements: the pointed arches on the portal, in the vaults and on the windows.

The late Gothic nave with only one southern, shorter aisle with a gallery and the same vault height is more common in Hesse. This type can be found in a modified form e.g. B. also in the Marburg University Church and the Kassel Brethren Church .

City church Sontra - (21) south aisle.jpg

The nave consists of three vaulted bays, the choir has two bays . Above all, the three thick, round, undivided columns, which protect and separate between the nave and aisle, shape the spatial impression. The wide arcade arches rest on them . The columns are painted with their colorful tendrils on a dark gray background, the only decorative elements in the church. It is dated to 1568 and has been renewed during renovations. The meaning of a Wotan's head on the base of a vaulted frame in the raised choir is still unclear today .

The exterior of the church shows carefully worked red sandstone blocks and a mighty roof. The large pointed arch portal on the north side is particularly noteworthy for the entrances.

In the interior, the post-medieval fixtures recede strongly. The painting from 1934 is based on the color version of the painting restored in 1568.

Tower with external staircase

The church tower with its thick quarry stone masonry has a floor plan of around 10 × 10 meters and measures 21.5 m to the edge of the eaves. In total it is 36 m high. The three upper floors can be reached today via an external spiral staircase. In times of armed conflict, the defense tower was previously secured by a light wooden staircase that could be retracted in an emergency. At the beginning of the 19th century, an open gallery led around the octagonal tower tower. Now this is covered, so that between belfry and "Herrmann-parlor", the old residence of the watchman is, a facilitating roof band. The year 1619 is written in large letters in the tower flag. Reports from mayors and pastors are kept in its capsule.

Interior and equipment

altar

Today's table altar

There used to be three altars in the church. With the Reformation, however, the side altars disappeared. The original stone main altar is no longer preserved. Today there is a table age.

Church window

The choir is illuminated by the six large pointed arch windows with the varied tracery. Since 2003, three choir windows with the Trinity theme by London artist Graham Jones have been decorating the three choir windows.

Epitaphs and plaques

In the basement of the tower with its ridge vault are the tombstones of Philipp von Diede († 1558) and Sophia von Baumbach (around 1820) and another epitaph.

Also in the basement of the tower are a memorial stone for those who fell in both world wars, a memorial stone for the plague of 1626 and the tombstone of Ulfen pastor Bormann, who died in Sontra in 1628 and ensured with his tombstone that “the terrible numbers of the dysentery and the plague were not only were recorded on paper ":

“ANNO 1623 ARE ALHIER AT THE ROTHEN RUHR. 137 PEOPLE DIED; ANNO 1626 IS AT THE PESTIL. 549 PEOPLE DIED. SYR: 7 WHAT YOU THUST, O MAN, THINK THE END. "

In the church there are still two memorial plaques for those who fell in the wars of 1870/1871 and the First World War 1914–1918.

organ

Two manual organ with Gundermann prospectus

Of the situation created by Johann Adam Gundermann in the years 1710/1711 Baroque organ is Prospekt received.

Johann Adam Gundermann from Wommen is considered to be the builder of the earlier Sontra organ, he was a student of the organ builder Arp Schnitger from Stade . Under his direction, Gundermann had built the valuable organ in Rastede in Oldenburg in 1709 as Schnitger's master student. Gundermann came from an old family from Wommen, whose ancestors can be traced back to the year 1520. He died on August 22, 1711, 33 years old, in Sontra and was buried in the oldest churchyard. This organ work, which counts 18 stops , was Gundermann's last.

In 1759 Johannes Schlottmann repaired the organ. After the inauguration and renovation, the Sontraer instrument had Gundermann's 18 registers and the new five pedal registers. For two centuries this organ was considered to have the best sound quality in a wide area in Kurhessen outside of Kassel. The orchestra was badly damaged in the 20th century. An unsuccessful renovation in 1903 robbed it of its baroque work.

Today's organ was rebuilt in 1964 by the Dieter Noeske workshop from Rotenburg / Fulda using the original Gundermann organ brochure. It has 25 speaking stops on slider chests , the game and register contractures are mechanical. The main work (1st manual) is located behind the visible prospectus pipes, the breastwork directly above the console, behind two doors decorated with rich and gilded carvings. The pedal mechanism with its seven registers is placed on the tower wall behind the original Gundermann case.

In 2019/2020 the organ was cleaned of mold , a ventilation installed, partly rearranged and re- intonated ( medium-tone tuning ).

Today's disposition is:

I main work CD – c 3
1. Quintad 16 ′
2. Principal 8th'
3. Reed flute 8th'
4th Octave 4 ′
5. Capstan whistle 4 ′
6th Octave 2 ′
7th Pointed flute 2 ′
8th. Nassat 3 ′
9. third 1 3 ⁄ 5  ′
10. Mixture IV-V 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
11. Trumpet 8th'
II breastwork CD – c 3
12. Wooden dacked 8th'
13. recorder 4 ′
14th Principal 2 ′
15th third 1 3 ⁄ 5  ′
16. Fifth 1 1 ⁄ 3  ′
17th Scharff III 1 ⁄ 2 ′
18th Vox Humana 8th'
Tremulant
Pedal C – d 1
19th Sub-bass 16 ′
20th Octave flute 8th'
21st Night horn 4 ′
22nd Pipe whistle 2 ′
23. Rauschpfeife 2 ′
24. trombone 16 ′
25th Trumpet 8th'

Bells

Until 1635 five bells hung in the tower , then only three . Two bells each had to be delivered in times of war. The current three bells were brought into the tower in 1950 and form a harmonious ring.

gallery

  • Main portal (west side)

  • Nave (north side)

  • Gothic portal in the north nave

  • Choir and sacristy

  • Main nave with ribbed vault

  • Wotan's head on the choir vault

  • Main nave, south aisle with gallery and west gallery with organ

  • Gravestone of Philip Diede zum Fürstenstein

  • Gravestone of Pastor Bormann from Ulfen

  • Memorial plaques for those who died in both world wars

Web links

Commons : Evangelical City Church (Sontra)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Dorothea Schäfers: Sankt Marien - the parish church of Sontra . In: Werratalverein Eschwege e. V. (Ed.): The Werraland . Issue 3. Eschwege 1976, p. 36 .
  2. ↑ HNA of January 2nd, 2020: Church districts Eschwege and Witzenhausen merge. HNA.de, January 2, 2020, accessed on January 3, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Merger decided: From 2020 there will only be one church district here. February 25, 2019, accessed January 3, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Sontra - www.sontra.info - The city in the heart of Hesse. Accessed January 1, 2020 .
  5. ↑ a b Sontra. Accessed December 31, 2019 .
  6. ↑ GJP (Götz J. Pfeiffer): stained glass windows by Graham Jones. In: Courage to design. Art funding in the Evangelical Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck. Kassel 2013, pp. 42–43.
  7. ↑ Information board in the town church
  8. ↑ Dieter Großmann: The city church St. Georg in Sontra . In: Werratalverein Eschwege e. V. (Ed.): The Werraland . Issue 2. Eschwege 1957, p. 22-24 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 4 ′ 6.5 ″  N , 9 ° 56 ′ 2.8 ″  E