City Church Friedberg
The Protestant town church of Our Lady in Friedberg (Hesse) is a Gothic hall church that was built between 1260 and 1410.
history
.jpg)
.jpg)
As early as the late 12th century , a Romanesque basilica was built on the site of today's town church . Parts of the rood screen in the church are still preserved today.
Due to the enormous economic boom of the city of Friedberg in the middle of the 13th century, the Romanesque church building was replaced by a larger one. From 1280 the choir was built first. On May 29, 1306, the Sunday after Pentecost , the high altar was consecrated. King Albrecht I was among the guests of honor. The nave was also completed around 1380 . Due to military concerns of the immediately neighboring Reichsburg Friedberg , the expansion of the originally planned double tower facade was stopped in 1410 . The fear was that the church towers could be used as platforms for an artillery fire directed against the castle . The north tower so only received a verschieferten truss tower , reaching a total height of 62 meters. Only the ground floor hall of the south tower was built.
After the Reformation , the church became Lutheran . Minor damage to the structure during the Thirty Years War was repaired in the following decades. After years of economic decline, the church became so dilapidated in the 19th century that it was necessary to sell most of the Friedberg church treasures to save the church. Due to the danger of collapse, the choir and transepts were demolished and rebuilt in 1896–1901, and the remaining parts of the church were restored. In addition, the unfinished south tower received a new exterior decoration adapted to the rest of the church.
The church suffered only minor damage during the Second World War and was again extensively renovated between 1957 and 1964. This was done under the supervision of Theo Kellner , who also built the new sacristy. In 2006 the parish celebrated the 700th anniversary of the church with numerous events. There are regular church music concerts.
Furnishing
Parts of the church treasure from the town church are exhibited on the upper floor of the Wetterau Museum , including a reliquary box and two silver chalices .
Rood screen
The middle part of the rood screen was built around 1240. It was part of the previous Romanesque church. Around 1430 the rood screen was given its present form in the Gothic style . Two ogival doors with branched tracery were added. The grandstand of the rood screen is reached via a stone staircase. Below the rood screen is the altar "To the Holy Cross". This previously served as a community altar. Above is a larger than life crucifix that was created around 1500. It wasn't moved to its current location until 1934 and originally hung in a different church.
On the left side of the rood screen is the Friedberger "Lettnermadonna", a precious Gothic sculpture that was created around 1280. It shows Mary as the crowned queen with the baby Jesus in her arms.
Choir stalls
The church choir contains oak stalls from the mid-14th century. It consists of 20 folding seats and is decorated with mostly restored panel paintings from the 15th century.
Sacrament house
On the north wall of the choir is the 14 meter high sacrament house , a masterpiece of late medieval stone carving . It was commissioned on June 4, 1482 by the Frankfurt sculptor Hans von Düren . The invoice documents received mention 250 guilders as payment , plus 20 guilders and deliveries of wine as further remuneration for the artist. The payments end in 1484. It is a spectacular small late Gothic architecture, numerous interwoven strands in yellow-gray Eiffel tufa on a hexagonal floor plan . Only the supporting posts are made of local red sandstone. The surrounding latticework, still largely preserved in the original color, must be dated at the same time.
Stained glass
The stained glass in the Friedberger Stadtkirche essentially originates from three epochs: Gothic, Historicism and the second half of the 20th century.
- The three central stained glass windows of the town church date from the Middle Ages, but were revised as part of the restoration work around 1900. Mary, to whom the church was consecrated, stands in the center of the central choir window. There are also numerous depictions of saints. The windows were designed by the Friedberg painter Henritz Heyl and built into the choir in the 1470s. From 1886 the important medieval glass paintings were restored and, among other things, supplemented by the Frankfurt Atelier Alexander Linnemann in 1890 with three coats of arms in the central choir window.
- Numerous other neo-Gothic windows in the church and additions were made between 1899 and 1918, also by the Linnemann studio. Today these dominate the color glazing of the room. In their choice of topics, they refer to the New Testament and show the coats of arms of the founders, including that of the then sovereign Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse and of the Rhine and his sister, the Russian Tsarina Alexandra Fjodorovna .
- The choir glazing and the west window were created by Charles Crodel (1962–1964). The stained glass of the sacristy and the painting of the pulpit in front of the late Gothic rood screen are also by Charles Crodel. All of them are handwritten, signed works.
Further windows were created based on designs by Elfriede Böhmer (1977), Blasius Spreng (1985) and Hans-Gottfried von Stockhausen (1986) and Helmut Lander's “Ökumene-Fenster” (1994).
organ
The organ was built in 1965 by the organ builder Werner Bosch. The slider chest instrument has 44 stops on three manual works and a pedal. The game actions are mechanical, the stop actions are electric.
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- Coupling : I / II, III / II, I / P, II / P, III / P
- Playing aids: 3 free preparations, principal choirs manuals, principal choir pedal, organo pleno, hand registers for the free combinations, 8 reed holders, swell step with indicator.
- annotation
- (h) = Historical register, pipe material from 1756
literature
- Ernst Götz: The City Church of Our Lady zu Friedberg , German Art Publishing House: Munich and Berlin, 2nd edition 1974 (Grosse Baudenkmäler, booklet 203)
- Ernst Götz: The town church of Our Lady in Friedberg in Hesse . Koenigstein i. Ts. Verlag Langewiesche 2006 (= The Blue Books), ISBN 978-3-7845-4490-8
- Georg Ulrich Großmann : Central and South Hesse: Lahntal, Taunus, Rheingau, Wetterau, Frankfurt and Maintal, Kinzig, Vogelsberg, Rhön, Bergstrasse and Odenwald. DuMont, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-7701-2957-1 (= DuMont art travel guide ), p. 132f.
- Klaus Güthlein: The Friedberger Stadtkirche as a hall church in a national and international context . In: The used church - symposium and lecture series on the occasion of the high altar consecration of the city church of Our Lady in Friedberg (Hesse) 1306-2006 = workbooks of the State Office for Monument Preservation Hesse , vol. 15. Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-8062 -2371-2
- Michael Keller (Ed.): Received. Renew. Complete. 100 years of renovation of the Friedberg town church . Bindernagelsche Buchhandlung; Friedberg 2001, ISBN 3-87076-091-5
- Seeliger, Hartmut: The town church in Friedberg in Hessen. A contribution to the history of Gothic architecture in Hesse and the Middle Rhine. In: Archive for Hessian History and Archeology NF 27 (1962/67), pp. 1–118.
- Hans Wolf: "Church windows tell the Bible": History and interpretation of the stained glass in the town church in Friedberg (Hesse) , In: Wetterauer Geschichtsblätter Vol. 54 (2005) pp. 3–92
- Susanna Domnick (Rev.), Paul Dzieia: The Ten Commandments panels , City Church of Our Lady in Friedberg Hesse, Wetterauer Druckerei, Friedberg
- Ernst Götz: The bells of Friedberg from 8 centuries, castle church, town church, Marienkirche, Hl.-Geist church in Friedberg (Hesse) - 19 bells unite to ring the town , CD, a project of the THM in Friedberg, Friedberger Geschichtsverein e. V.
Individual evidence
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 20 ′ 12.5 ″ N , 8 ° 45 ′ 19.1 ″ E