Collegiate Church of Mary in Need

The Collegiate Church 2013

Choir apse 2013

Interior towards the choir apse 2010

The collegiate church Maria in der Not is a church and a monastery consecrated in 1074 on the Kapitelberg in Essen 's Stoppenberg district .

history

The collegiate church was founded by Abbess Swanhild and consecrated as St. Nicholas Chapel in 1074 by Archbishop Anno II . The church initially served a convent of Premonstratensians , which was founded in the 12th century on the Stiftsberg. In the 13th century there was only one nunnery, from which a free secular women's monastery emerged in the 15th century. The number of canonesses was limited to twenty, because that was the number of benefices that each canoness was entitled to from the manorial property of the pen. In 1803, at the time of secularization , the monastery was abolished. Some of the canonesses stayed because they owned their own houses on the mountain. The collegiate church then existed as a parish church until 1907, when the Nikolauskirche was built as a new parish church at the foot of the Stiftsberg due to the rapidly growing population of Stoppenberg . In 1965 a nunnery of the order of the Discalced Carmelite Sisters of “Maria in der Not” was founded at the collegiate church . The sisters run a monastery garden and a wafer bakery. Several parishes are supplied with around 17,000 hosts daily.

The construction

The church building itself, which was completed around the middle of the 12th century, is a three-aisled, two- bay pillar basilica made of Ruhr sandstone in Romanesque style with an eastern end of a square choir with a semicircular apse. The church is one of the earliest vaulted basilicas in the Rhineland , the vault caps were not rebuilt after the war destruction in 1945.

A pair of western towers, of which only the full height of the southern tower has been preserved, enclosed the western gallery, which was initially only a half-bay wide. After the double monastery had become a premonstratensian monastery alone, an extension of the gallery was necessary to accommodate the larger convent, with the church interior being extended to the west. The modified roof shape with roof turrets and the porch extension in front of the southern entrance date from the 17th century. Difficult soil conditions prevailed on the hill, which also made it necessary to have supporting buttresses built in the 17th century. The ground conditions were also responsible for the subsequent installation of a stone vault. A chapter house to the west of the church, where most of the novices and canonesses lived, was sold for demolition in 1826. The collegiate church was badly damaged in the Second World War and rebuilt after 1945. Due to mining effects in the years 1900 to 1985, the entire area has sunk about twelve meters. The most severe mining damage occurred before mining safety measures were installed in 1977, which consist of a circumferential reinforced concrete ring anchor above the outer wall and an enclosing ring anchor installed in 1978 with transverse reinforcement at the level of the foundations.

The church contains a Romanesque baptismal font from the 12th century made of bluestone, the individual shapes of which suggest an import from the Maasland.

A historical bronze bell with a strike note e ² , a weight of 230 kg, height 58 cm and diameter 70.3 cm bears the beginning of the Ave Maria (Mariengruss) as an inscription in Gothic minuscule . The epigraphist Sonja Hermann describes the execution of the inscription as "somewhat clumsy" and therefore classifies it as an early bell inscription in this font, which leads to a dating from the end of the 14th to the middle of the 15th century.

Baron von der Wenge

The collegiate church is also the burial place of the Münster canon Franz Ferdinand Freiherr von der Wenge , the founder of the St. Antony hut near Oberhausen-Osterfeld , which was built in 1758 and with which the iron and steel industry in the Ruhr area began.